Addressing Business Challenges with a Scalable Storage Infrastructure

W H I T E P AP E R A d d r e s s i n g B u s i n e s s C h a l l e n g e s w i t h A S c a l a b l e S t o r a g e I n f r a s t r u c t u r e Sponsored by: HDS Richard L. Villars October 2008
E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y moc. In today's rapidly changing business environment, companies rely on an expanding cdi. set of applications to compete, and these new applications have significant effect on ww how they organize their datacenters and store structured and unstructured w information. One major consequence of these changes is the emergence of modular 510 storage systems as the "primary" storage platform, in terms of capacity deployed and 4.53 IT staff resources required. 9.805. A number of IT technologies and data center practices are accelerating this F development, changing both the scope and type of modular storage systems that 002 organizations need to deploy. The most influential new developments are: 8.278. ! Use of virtualization to improve asset use and application availability 805.P ! Replication of information to boost recoverability and meet retention mandates ASU ! 1 Accelerated creation and long term archiving of rich digital content 0710 New modular storage systems like those in Hitachi's AMS 2000 family are addressing AM , these new requirements by delivering: mahg ! Superior throughput, resiliency, and processing capabilities through use of nim flexible and dynamic active/active controller architectures arF t ! e Improved data access rates, reliability, and energy consumption through use of ert new disk storage technologies such as Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) S nee ! Optimal in storage capacity and energy efficiency through use of disk spin down pS 5 technologies to better match the needs of large backup and file repositories :sret ! Logical abstraction between the physical storage elements and the data volumes rau that virtualized servers and applications need to access qdaeH Hitachi new systems and supporting software solutions address many IT lab organizations most critical information management needs. Companies must, olG however, also look for a business partner who can help them select, integrate, and deploy these new storage systems as part of a complete solution that meets their unique requirements.
T H E C H AL L E N G E O F I N F O R M AT I O N M A N AG E M E N T I N T O D A Y ' S E N T E R P R I S E Today, your company relies on an expanding set of applications to compete in a rapidly changing business environment. You rely on email, ecommerce systems, and Web sites to conduct business with customers and business partners. You are collecting, storing, and analyzing more information about products, customers, and transactions. You are digitizing records, images, and other unstructured data to offer new services and comply with evolving government regulations.
The expansion in the range of applications that companies are developing and deploying has a significant effect on how they organize their datacenters and store structured and unstructured information. IT executives must judge all storage offerings based on three business requirements. Does the system
! Enable more effective use of all types of information by a wider range of users
! Reduce and control the cost of doing business by boosting asset utilization
! Ensure the integrity of the business and its information assets in the face of natural disaster, systems failures, or outside regulatory oversight K e y C h a l l e n g e s R e s h a p i n g S t o r a g e R e q u i r e m e n t s
Prior to the mid-1990s, storage was a primarily a subsystem (e.g., a hard disk drive or tape drive) within a system (server or PC). With data intense and mission critical applications running on large servers. As a result, expanding storage capacities, boosting IOP performance, and improving data integrity became critical new storage requirements. Developers of the first generation of high-end storage systems sought to provide more capacity/higher reliability (e.g., RAID) and broader accessibility (e.g., storage area networks) for structured data in transaction-intensive applications.
In the late 1990s, storage systems suppliers began to offer modular st... [download for more]