Typical Data Path
Milliseconds - Seconds
Application Server(s)
Milliseconds
Internet/Intranet
N
SAN
LAN
LA
Micro/Milliseconds
LAN
LAN Micro/Milliseconds
Microseconds
Tape Library
Cache/RAID
Storage
Seconds
controller
Microseconds
Hard Disk
Milliseconds
Block 1 Block 2
Block 3 Block 4
Block 5 Block 6
Client Application
Micro/Milliseconds
Some data traffic is bursty, some traffic is streaming
What is a typical data path?
Fast and slow are subjective relative terms.
Speeds and feeds are increasing at an exponential rate.
The slide shows the difference between LAN rates and SAN rates.
Storage speeds:
90% of the time our storage requests are being serviced from cache at
microsecond speeds, not from physical disks. Thus, we are dealing with
a high speed/highly-responsive device at the far end of our SAN, rather
than a slow physical disk.