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THORSTEN FREITAG
backup application with the data sorted in to different buckets. In its most basic form, the inactive data (typically, 80% of the total volume) is only tiered on a monthly basis and therefore only backed up once a month. The backup application can then remove this volume of data from the daily and weekly backup windows.
This dramatically reduces the backup window; as much as a 90% reduction for some of our customers.
Data migration is a well understood problem by customers but the existing tools rely on a labour intensive approach that results in regular periods of downtime to complete each migration. Our approach is to enable high performance non-disruptive migrations regardless of whether you are relocating data within your infrastructure, or replacing entire storage platforms within your data centre.
SNS: Just buying more storage is too simple, and expensive, an approach to deal with the problem of data sprawl?
TF: Purchasing additional storage is initially an easy way to solve the problems of data growth. However, the compound annual growth soon becomes a major issue to deal with.
Storage hardware infrastructure costs rise, the cost of management rises exponentially, and the growth impacts other key elements of the infrastructure such as data centre space, backup infrastructure, power
requirements etc. F5 work with a variety of companies from small/medium businesses, through to global enterprises. Addressing ongoing cost issues and associated infrastructure complexity are their major drivers for deploying F5 ARX.
SNS: And both IT staff and IT end users become frustrated as IT ‘meltdown’ is an ever- present threat?
TF: The biggest frustration for IT staff is that it becomes difficult to break the cycle of ‘business as usual’ storage deployment, and this growth strains IT staff resources as well as budget. The major impact for IT end users is that they see outages becoming more frequent as IT have to contend with data relocation and platform upgrades.
SNS:Smarter storage management is the way forward – but just how easy is it to implement in a legacy storage/IT environment?
TF: Implementing smarter storage management with F5 ARX is a relatively straightforward process because it relies on the existing server, storage and backup infrastructure, and is completely transparent to the user community.
ARX can be deployed without any changes to the user or application environment.
SNS: Storage tiering, or intelligent storage management, offers very real possibilities, but what do end users need to be aware of as they examine such solutions?
TF: There are unique differences in the way that vendors have developed their architectures with respect to tiering. End users need to examine whether what they are evaluating utilises ‘stub’ or ‘smart link’ technologies or, when data is moved between tiers, files and their attributes are left unaltered and there is therefore only have one copy of the file within the infrastructure. This is essential to understand.
The latter allows significant reduction of backup windows and the ability to relocate files to any location at any time within the file server infrastructure. The ‘stub’ approach can result in problems for the application accessing the file.
Finally, customers need to look at whether their technology choice locks them into a single vendor.
SNS: The end target of implementing a tiering strategy transforms IT from a business bottleneck into a business enabler?
TF: Exactly. A carefully planned and implemented storage tiering strategy will ease the restrictions placed on the business from an operational perspective.
SNS: And what are the benefits of a tiering strategy in terms of IT investment (are the accountants kept happy?!)?
TF: Major benefits from a smarter tiered storage approach will include reducing
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