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Overview
Microsoft System Management Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 have provided administrators with tools to centrally manage and monitor Windows Client and Server Infrastructure. Sanbolic’s LaScala clustered volume manager and related software products provide a complementary tool kit which enables administrators to centrally configure and assign storage assets in a SAN storage environment.
As a clustered volume manager designed for shared storage environments, LaScala allows multiple servers to have access to one or multiple large shared partitions on an iSCSI or Fibre Channel storage array. Storage LUN(s) can be configured into mountable volumes using LaScala volume manager on each host server. Access to the volumes is assigned using native Windows security (ACL) and the native Windows security interface. By using LaScala Disto, any operation available on LaScala can also be performed remotely for any server.
LaScala supports Active Directory, so that multiple nodes and accounts can be provisioned centrally. In Active Directory environments, user accounts have consistent access rights to a volume from any physical server. A user can log into any physical machine, and the volumes for which the user has access rights will be mounted. This functionality removes the current limitations of SAN storage, where a LUN is assigned to a specific HBA and a specific server at all times, and storage reassignment requires proprietary array-based management tools.
Sanbolic’s SILM - Simple Information Lifecycle Manager provides policy-based copies or migrations of files among any of the volumes within the storage infrastructure. As an example, SILM could migrate infrequently used files from Fibre Channel to SATA storage, or copy files that have recently been accessed to a secondary location.
LaScala, LaScala Disto and SILM are fully WMI compliant, and can easily be incorporated in existing management screens. Sanbolic’s products provide Windows administrators with new ability to centrally manage and assign and provision storage resources in large, dynamic data center environments.
Background
Fibre Channel or iSCSI storage is becoming increasingly pervasive in data centers deploying applications on Microsoft Windows Server platforms. With the recent launch of Microsoft’s Storage Server 2003 R2 with an embedded iSCSI target, many more applications servers are likely to utilize block iSCSI storage.
Block storage access provides important performance advantages for many applications, but it often adds administrative complexity. Typically the storage pool on an ISCSI or Fibre Channel storage array must be partitioned into multiple virtual disks or LUNs. Each server must be assigned unique access to a virtual disk or LUN, which is then managed with a local volume manager and file system.
Although the storage array is typically shared via the SAN fabric, each partition becomes part of a storage-serverapplication silo. These silos are typically fairly cumbersome to resize or reassign, and often requires the administrator to use separate GUIs for the storage, storage switch, and server. In environments utilizing heterogeneous storage arrays, the administrator may need to learn a separate management platform for each piece of hardware. LaScala is designed to allow users to elevate the configuration and assignment of storage to the host level (and LaScala Disto to a central or remote GUI), greatly simplifying the management of storage resources and providing flexibility to dynamically expand or reassign storage as needed.
LaScala Clustered Volume Manager
LaScala is a symmetrical clustered volume manager designed specifically for SAN storage. It installs on each SANattached Windows server in a few minutes. LaScala utilizes the same industry proven transaction management, distributed locking, and clustering technology as Sanbolic’s Melio clustered file system, and is designed to work in conjunction with Windows NTFS or with Melio FS. Once installed, LaScala provides an intuitive tool for centrally managing a large storage pool, while coexisting with the native volume manager.
LaScala can aggregate both the bandwidth and the storage space of multiple heterogeneous storage arrays into a single pool of storage. LaScala uses only basic disks for all operations. Stripe sets across both Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage targets can be created, and LaScala maintains the native block size of applications and can align stripe sets with storage controller RAID sets—enabling multi-gigabyte per second bandwidth for performance sensitive applications running on multiple high performance storage arrays.
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