Storage Solutions: NAS, SAN & Beyond

Storage capacity requirements are increasing exponentially by the day. It is

important for an enterprise to provision for its storage requirements for at

least the next five years. This can be done by calculating the volume of data

that gets generated per day/month. Apart from storage requirements, you should

also consider performance, security and reliability of the storage devices. In a

typical enterprise, the storage devices consist of a mix and match of different

technologies, such as SAN, NAS, tape drives, etc. So it is important to look for

a solution which provides easy manageability.

Network Attached Storage



Network attached storage or NAS is often the best and the most cost

effective solution for all storage needs. Contrary to common belief, NAS isn't

simply a bunch of hard drives packed into a huge box. It's a complete computer,

with an OS and one or more hard drives, dedicated to making the storage process

easier, and to connect to a network. The OS loaded on it can be Windows or

Linux, which helps in volume and drive management, networking, security, and

user access. It often comes with extended options like backup capability. A

web-based graphical user interface can be used to control and monitor advanced

features and functions of a NAS.

A good management practice for small workgroups is to centralize data on a

NAS. If your information isn't dispersed on separate PC, then accessing the same

becomes simpler. Maintaining a single device is far easier than adding and

managing local hard drives, as your storage needs increase. Selecting a NAS for

your business requirements becomes a lot easier if these small but crucial

aspects are kept in mind.

Data compression



No matter how many TBs of storage you buy, chances of running out of space

after a point of time are always there. Therefore check whether a NAS box

supports compression, as this would help you utilize the storage capacity more

effectively. Some NAS boxes run proprietary NAS OS and don't support

compression. However NAS boxes running Windows Storage Server support this

feature.

Monitoring and management



Remote management and monitoring is essential. Features that a NAS device

should have are web based interface, remote desktop connectivity, and remote

login through Telnet or SSH, email and SNMP notification, disk quota management,

file screening and storage reports. Another key feature is having an LCD screen

on the NAS, which would show a lot of important information and let you control

the NAS device.

Backup



Most NAS devices support backing up data to a local tape drive or network

backup server. In addition, one should also look for snapshot support, which is

incremental point in time copies of stored data created on local device disks

allowing only data restoration without accessing the tape. Some NAS boxes come

with an option of disk backup, where backup is done on NAS storage only. For

this, you have to configure the RAID in such a way that at least one disk

remains free. For example, if you have four drives, then create RAID with three

drives and leave one for disk-based backup. Data replication allows you to keep

an updated copy of critical data at a separate location, online and ready for

use any time, thereby enabling faster DR. DVD backup is another type of backup

that some vendors provide. It's useful when you need to send out some very

critical data.

Storage security



When it comes to storing your organization's mission critical data, security

plays a very important role. A NAS device should integrate with your existing

directory service for authentication. Some devices allow you to directly install

an anti-virus software on them, while others let you do remote scanning from an

anti-virus server on the network. Access Control lists allow file and

share-level access for authenticated users and groups to files and folders

stored on the NAS. Check what kind of ACL is supported by the NAS. Logging is

another important thing which a NAS box should have as it enables you to audit

and log most tasks like log on, log off, security modification, password

changes, user creation etc.

Storage Area Networks



Generally suitable for large organizations, a storage area network is an

architecture to attach remote computer storage devices such as disk arrays and

tape libraries in such a way that, to the operating system, the devices appear

to be locally attached. As a result, it lets you manage your infrastructure with

greater flexibility and scalability. It's a high speed special purpose network

that interconnects different data storage devices with associated data servers.

As compared to SAN, in a NAS, storage is being done on a remote device. Although

different from each other, it is possible to create solutions that incorporate

both SAN and NAS. Nowadays, SANs can work at transfer rater of upto 8 Gbps.

Data de-duplication



The issue of data duplication is becoming serious for enterprises and

redundant data keeps eating up the space. Is there any method to stop this? Data

de-duplication helps in removing duplicate data from storage devices. Here, a

single copy of data is maintained along with the index of the original data, so

that data can be easily retrieved when required. Data de-duplication can be

deployed in two ways -source based and target based. Source based de-duplication

is done before backup, in a primary storage device such as NAS, while in the

target-based method, de-duplication is done after backup. However, in this

method, de-duplication can also be done during the backup, which is known as

inline de-duplication. The benefit of in-line de-duplication over post-process

de-duplication is that it requires less storage as data is not duplicated unlike

post-process de-duplication. Source based data de-duplication is usually

deployed in environments such as file-systems, remote branch office environments

and virtualization environments. In a remote backup scenario, the source based

data de-duplication also means that there will be less data traveling through

the WAN pipe, resulting in effective bandwidth utilization. Target based

de-duplication is a good option where bandwidth is not an issue, such as SAN or

LAN backup environments.