Tips in Evaluating a SAN
If the time has come to purchase your first
SAN, there are many challenges to overcome
before you can reap the benefits of centralized storage.
Some of the decisions facing prospective SAN
purchasers can mean the difference between deploying a storage system that opens
up new opportunities or ending up with a very expensive anchor holding back the
organization.
There are many elements in the SAN purchasing
process. Let's look at the ones that can help you specify a system to meet your
organization's goals.
Business goals, tech specs
The starting point in a
SAN purchasing strategy is to determine the
business' needs -- both present and future -- in terms of data management and
storage. The first step is to hold assessment meetings with those areas of the
business that use the SAN in order to create a picture of the organization's
storage requirements for the next three to five years.
A key part of the process is to determine which
SAN technical specifications are needed to meet the organization's goals. For
example, if you will be running a database-centric system, you will need to
determine the disk access speeds required to guarantee performance levels. At
the same time you may want to specify advanced LUN masking features to optimise
disk access times for those applications.
If disk cost and power consumption are issues,
you may need to look for a SAN that allows intelligent disk tiering and data
migration. You will also need to consider the backup options available to
safeguard your data and how quickly the system can be restored in a disaster
recovery situation.
If the SAN is intended to form the heart of new
working practices for your organization -- for example, as a backbone for server
virtualization – you will need to think about different requirements. These
include the ability to boot virtual servers directly from the SAN itself and
apply thin provisioning to grow virtual drives intelligently.
Staff skillsets
The requirements for administering the SAN are
another important factor. If you have a dedicated and qualified SAN
administrator, this is a moot point. However, if SAN administration is to become
part of the job function of an existing member of staff, then a full assessment
of the skills and training required to manage the technology should form a part
of the purchasing process. The newest SAN products use a Web browser-style
management GUI that allows existing staff with a solid knowledge of traditional
server RAID array disk management concepts to adapt quickly to a SAN
administration role.
To summarize, the main objective when
purchasing a SAN is to ensure that it meets the needs of your business at the
point of purchase and throughout its lifecycle as a useful component of your
business. To attain this objective, you need to know the driving goals and
processes of your organization and the technical specifications available from
SAN products that can meet them.
Overland Storage
Nexsan Storage