Introduction to Storage Networking
Storage Consolidation
Solution Requirements
For Storage Consolidation
• Data sharing:
– Concurrently access the same data from multiple hosts
– Usually software-based solutions (such as clustering)
– Network Attached Storage (NAS) architectures
– Next-generation SAN solutions
• Management:
– Hardware platform management
– Usage management
– Provisioning - automated?
– Centralized and distributed
When looking at our requirements for storage consolidation, we need to
consider the requirement of concurrent access to the same data from multiple
hosts. These hosts could be running different operating systems, or
alternatively they could be clustered to provide a high availability solution.
With storage area networks the creation of a shared data environment
requires the addition of a clustered file system or a SAN aware file system.
This will provide a common allocation table and a distributed lock manager for
data protection.
Network attached storage has a centralised file system and lock manager, to
protect data access from heterogeneous hosts, and therefore data sharing is
part of its generic architecture.