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hp storage white paper
1
why now is the time for array
virtualization
Data centers have become enormously complex.
Interestingly, new technologies that initially held
the promise of simplifying the data center have,
in fact, added to the complexity—at least for
now. Fibre Channel, SANs, and the low cost
and ease of adding storage have enabled data
centers to expand both in size and complexity.
The world is moving from SCSI to Fibre Channel.
Fibre Channel and SANs allow for more devices
to be connected together, with greater performance,
and at far greater distances. All of these are
wonderful benefits, but along with those benefits
comes an ability to now create configurations
that are larger, more complex, further apart, and
harder to manage than anything envisioned even
a few years ago. Couple this new reality with the
exponential increase in storage, fueled by its low
cost, and you have a recipe for losing control of
the data center.
Consider this: while human resources remain static,
environments grow larger and more complex.
Simplification is the only realistic answer.
Adding newer and slicker management software
oftentimes can help, but in the long term, adding
software tends to have the opposite effect of
reducing complexity. Software may give you
a central place from which to manage your
hardware and it may simplify processes, but
it doesn’t necessarily eliminate those processes.
Armed with better management software,
environments are encouraged to add more
hardware and eventually the environment
becomes as complex as it was before, but for
different reasons. And when the human resources
are already stretched to the breaking point, this is a
recipe for complexity, stress, long hours, and human
error. Virtualization is the answer. It solves the basic
underlying problem. It permanently simplifies the
environment for the system administrator.
—Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch
Tartakower on the game’s opening
position
Configuring and managing traditional storage
is time-consuming and challenging even for
experienced system administrators. When
configuring storage, a wide variety of factors
must be accounted for, judgments must be
made, and steps repeated over and over again.
The potential for error is high. The cost of configuring
an array improperly is also high. The administrator
must consider the following factors:
• capacity, cost, performance and availability
requirements
•
requirements for future additional capacity
and performance
• number of disk drives and their capacity
• performance characteristics of the disks
•
which RAID level will meet desired capacity,
cost, and availability needs
• number and type of RAID groups
• number of LUNs based on application,
performance, and array configuration needs
• size of LUNs
•
configuration of the server volume manager
• cache configuration options
• stripe depth configuration
• implementation plan: who, what, and when
• time to bind LUNs
1.2
reasons for more virtualization in the array
managing traditional storage
“The mistakes are all there waiting to be made.”