Managing Web Infrastructure Storage Cost, Complexity, and Performance

MANAGING WEB
INFRASTRUCTURE STORAGE COST,
COMPLEXITY, AND PERFORMANCE
Sun SystemsWhite PaperFebruary 2009
AbstractThis paper is intended for IT managers who are responsible for the storage and management of digital assets in a Web delivery environment. It provides an overview of Sun Open Storage for the Web platform, offering evidence of the business benefits with the SunT Storage 7000 Unified Storage System and other Sun Open Stor-age offerings. The reader will learn about tools for coping with massive data growth as well as trends in open storage and key features of Sun Open Storage solutions. Sun Open Storage solutions offer radically simplified storage management and breakthrough economics for today's Web infrastructures. Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Sun Open Storage Solutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Trends and Requirements for Web Storage Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5 Trends and Requirements for Web Storage Infrastructure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Storage Challenges and Requirements for Web Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . 6Open Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 What is Open Storage?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Key Advantages of Open Storage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7 Sun Open Storage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Benefits of Sun Open Storage solutions for the Web infrastructure. . . . . 8 Sun Open Storage systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 OpenSolarisT Operating System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Predictive self-healing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Solaris ZFST file system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Real-time visibility with DTrace Analytics software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Further Reading on Open Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14Sun Storage Systems for Web . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15SunT Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Market-leading price/performance and features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Sun FireT X4540 Storage Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16SunT Storage J4000 Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Try and Buy Offer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 SunT Storage J4000 Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Recommended white papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19PAGE  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Executive Summary
Recent trends toward increasing storage capacity and performance requirements for Web applications are causing many businesses to experience exploding storage costs and increased complexity. Implementations such as social-networking sites, Weblogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS feeds are fueling the growth of digital data by giving individuals the opportunity to publish new content and data at an alarming rate. With this growth comes greater demand for I/O throughput, resulting in exploding storage costs due to demanding performance requirements and increasing management complexity. Perhaps most importantly, rapid growth in data access rates can also make it challenging to maintain high service levels and can thus result in lost business opportunities.
Many IT managers are becoming alarmed with the growing costs relating to management and scalability of proprietary storage in their Web infrastructures. Today's IT organizations are looking for new ways to lower their cost per Web user as well as the cost per GB of storage. They need cost-effective Web infrast... [download for more]