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ATTO XstreamCORE 8100T - Adding iSCSI Ethernet Connectivity to Tape Solutions
Take advantage of existing Ethernet infrastructure to deploy shared connectivity to tape libraries. Simplify backup and recovery while preserving investments and meeting compliance in modern data protection needs.
Transcript:
Thank you for joining me today to learn
more about the ADO Extreme Core 8100T.
My name is Matt Mccurio and I'm a senior
customer engineer with ADO technology.
Over the course of this presentation,
you will learn how to take advantage of
your existing Ethernet infrastructure to
deploy shared connectivity to tape
libraries so that you can simplify
backup and recovery while preserving
investments and meeting compliance in
modern data protection needs.
The digital explosion of the modern age
is showing no signs of slowing down.
There are numerous drivers of this
continuous growth from media and
entertainment to internet of things,
healthcare to surveillance. A lot of
structured and unstructured data is
generated pushing the need for smarter
and efficient data management and data
protection practices
requiring robust storage and improved
methods for accessing that stored data.
At the center of today's discussion is
tape.
Tape storage remains as a very reliable,
cost-effective solution in the storage
tier for backup, long-term archiving and
compliance, providing secure, scalable,
and sustainable data storage and
protection for business, enterprise, and
IT organizations of all sizes. The two
main tape connectivity options that are
available today are SAS and fiber
channel. both offering distinct
advantages in terms of performance,
scalability, and integration into
existing infrastructure.
Let's get a better understanding of
these two prominent interfaces for tape
connectivity, evaluating both the pros
and cons of each.
Your choice in tape connectivity is
dependent on your overall IT topology,
archiving requirements, and your budget.
SAS tape connectivity is best for
installations where the backup server is
in close proximity to the tape system,
typically small to midsize libraries.
SAS tape has the lowest entry costs and
is the easiest to configure of these two
connectivity options, but SAS
connectivity also has some
disadvantages.
The most obvious being that you have a
limited cable distance between your
backup server and the tape storage.
As your storage requirements grow,
scaling SAS tape storage also becomes
more difficult as additional SAS
adapters and backup servers are needed
to handle the additional data and
connecting larger libraries come with a
whole new set of challenges as well.
Lastly, SAS tape is not easily sharable
across multiple backup servers. Fiber
channel tape connectivity on the other
hand addresses some of the shortcomings
of SAS, although it comes at a much
higher cost. The fiber channel protocol
is designed from the ground up to be
sharable and can maintain performance
over the storage area network with the
ability to go over much longer
distances. But fiber channel does
require fiber channel expertise and a
fiber channel infrastructure including
expensive fiber channel switches and
cabling. Each fiber channel tape drive
requires at least one switch port
connection which can get costly as your
storage requirements grow. So direct
attach SAS is good but has its
limitations. Fiber channel solutions are
more robust but not everyone has the
infrastructure expertise or the capital.
Today we are introducing a third
connectivity option Ethernet. The ADO
Extreme Core 8100T brings the best of
both SAS and fiber channel connectivity.
The Extreme Core 8100T is a
purpose-built device that enables SAS
tape devices to connect seamlessly to
your standard Ethernet network,
delivering the scalability, flexibility,
and sharability associated with fiber
channel tape solutions, but at a greatly
reduced cost. This allows businesses and
IT organizations to maximize their
existing network infrastructure, enhance
tape accessibility, and streamline
backup and archiving workflows, all
while reducing costs and complexity.
The 8100T's small footprint is good for
both desktop and rack installations.
For tape connectivity, there is a single
12 gigabit Minis HD port that when used
with the proper fanout cable can connect
up to four LTO5 and later tape drives,
autoloaders or libraries. For host
connectivity, there are two 10 GB
Ethernet ports in either optical SFP
plus or RJ45 connection options. There
is a single 1 gigabit Ethernet
management port which you can use to
access the firmware management utilities
either via SSH or our web gooey via
HTTPS.
Within these management tools, you can
modify IPC scuzzi or other network
settings to configure the 8100T for your
environment as well as access our
enhanced diagnostic tools. The 8100T
also supports transport layer retries
which is an important recovery mechanism
in tape tries that is used to recover
from an IO air without manual
intervention or application level
retries. Before we talk more about the
8100T
I would like to first talk about the ice
scuzzi protocol.
Iscuzzi stands for internet small
computer systems interface.
It provides block level access to
storage devices by carrying SCSI
commands over ATCP IP network which
allows SCSI based devices to appear as
SAS targets to the host even though they
are connected over Ethernet connections.
This means that tape applications do not
see any difference in the connection and
therefore there is not any need for any
special networking license in your
software to operate your tape libraries
over the network. In order for a host
system to connect to ISCuzi devices over
the network, you have two options.
You can use a hardware HBA initiator or
a software initiator with an existing
network adapter. The most popular is the
software initiator because it does allow
you to use any standard Ethernet
adapter. Both Linux and Windows include
a free ICO Z initiator software with
their distributions. Therefore, for
Windows and Linux-based systems, there
is no added cost or licenses needed for
the software. Unfortunately, Mac OS does
not include a free initiator, but rest
assured, ADO Extens has you covered.
Extens is a lowcost software initiator
for Mac OS systems. For more information
on ExtensAn, check out our website at
atto.com.
One of the key concerns with connecting
your storage over Ethernet is the
well-known issue of latency. The further
apart the network nodes, the higher the
latency, which can negatively affect
overall tape drive performance. The ADO
Extreme Core 8100T overcomes these
obstacles through our latency management
features like speedrite and speed read.
Since tape drives can only process one
command at a time, their performance
over the network will degrade over
distance. Speedright and speedread are
ADO proprietary algorithms which allow
us to cue a second command to the tape
drive, reducing the latency between
commands, which translates to higher
performance over the network. With
technology like this built into the
Extreme Core 8100T firmware, we can
saturate the 10 GB Ethernet ports when
performing IO to four tape drives
simultaneously.
Now, I would like to talk about a really
popular use case that could benefit from
the 8100T.
Virtualization. Virtualization is
everywhere today. In these environments,
robust data protection is more critical
than ever, ensuring business continuity
and regulatory compliance. However,
integrating traditional tape storage
into virtualized infrastructures
introduces unique complexities. Let's
look at VMware as an example as we take
a deeper dive into some of these
complexities and how the 8100T could add
significant benefits in such virtualized
environments. One of the challenges that
IT administrators have with VMware is
that it does not support the use of
direct path IO to connect SAS tape
drives to ESXi hosts. Put simply, you
can't run your backup software on a
virtual machine. A separate backup
server is needed to manage the backups
and restores and tape servers are needed
to connect to the tape drives and move
data. Additional servers are required
which equals more licenses, more power,
more cooling, more rack space, and more
IT resources needed for deployment and
management. Data must pass across the
network to the tape servers to retrieve
virtual machine data from the source
data store, process it, and then deliver
it to the target tape drives. This adds
strain to the network infrastructure.
So, how does the ADO Extreme Core 8100T
address these concerns? The Extreme Core
8100T eliminates the need for separate
physical backup and tape servers. You
can now run your backup and tape servers
on one or more virtual machines over an
ice scuzzy Ethernet network, effectively
managing data traffic across production
local area networks and storage area
networks. The 8100T will save time and
resources as it is considerably easier
to manage a bridge compared to servers
hardware and operating system updates.
Lastly, with 8100T, you are able to
fully realize the benefits of Votion
with tape backup processes. This is not
possible with traditional backup server
solutions because they cannot run on a
virtual machine. With the 8100T, you
connect to it using the virtual
machine's host operating systems
initiator. This means that when a
virtual machine is moved to a different
hypervisor, the host IQN name and
mappings remain unchanged. So if a
hypervisor needs to be taken offline for
maintenance, Vmotion can simply remap
the tape drives to a different
hypervisor without any interruptions to
your backup or restore operations. Yes,
you heard that correctly. You can votion
your backupbased virtual machines while
performing any backup or restore
operation and that backup or restore
will continue on to completion. As we
talked about in previous slides, since
the 8100T is based on the ICE scuzzi
protocol, it means that devices
presented can be shared. The 8100T can
support up to four host scuzzi
connections, which allow the user to
distribute their backups across multiple
servers or hypervisors, reducing your
backup windows by increasing backup
performance.
Using the 8100T instead of physical
servers can also reduce risk. For
example, if a server fails, it must be
replaced, delaying the backup window
until it can be brought back online.
This requires that you have a spare
server which may need to be racked,
which requires physical presence on
site. This can be really difficult for
remote sites. Once the server is
installed, you then have to reinstall
the operating system and the software.
Even if you're just reimaging, assuming
that a server and software image exists,
it will still take a lot of time.
Lastly, if metadata is lost,
reconstructing the data may take hours
to days to reinventory. And even if that
metadata is backed up, that data needs
to be restored and imported, which is
also a time-consuming process. All this
leads to a fairly large window of time
where backups cannot be performed. By
using the 8100T to run backups on
multiple virtual machines, you reduce
these risks because the 8100T always
maintains a connection to the tape
drives. And the added ability to run
votion in cases of hypervisor
maintenance or failure ensures that
you're back online in minutes compared
to hours or days. And finally, ADO makes
it easy to scale. As data grows, you
don't need to carry out cumbersome
upgrades or add additional backup
servers. Just use ADO bridges to connect
to the additional tape drives and
libraries at a fraction of the cost of
adding additional servers. And since
tape is nowworked, you can easily move
tape drives offsite for disaster
recovery. If you are thinking of adding
more tape drives or libraries into your
environment, you can easily mount
multiple 8100T bridges in the ADO Flex
Rack. The ADO Flex Rack is a oneU rack
mountable shelf that can accommodate up
to four 8100T bridge units, making it
ideal for space efficient deployments.
Lastly, one of the key benefits of the
bridge is simplicity. The Extreme Core
8100T makes deployment of tape storage
fast and simple. With a userfriendly
web-based guey, you can reduce setup and
configuration time significantly so that
you're up and running in a matter of
minutes. The device also captures vital
diagnostics information with built-in
intelligence monitoring so that you can
avoid downtime by catching potential
issues before they become failures. We
have also incorporated access control
mechanisms so that only authorized users
and systems have permissions to
configure, manage and access the
connected tape drives. This ensures that
your backup ecosystem is secured and
protected around the clock. The 8100T is
now available through ADOS's authorized
distribution partners and reseller
network worldwide. We offer two
different SKUs. One suited for optical
fiberbased infrastructure and the other
for RJ45 copperbased ensuring
compatibility with your existing
network
Contact your BackupWorks Account Rep today and
ask about the ATTO XstreamCORE 8100T Ethernet Bridge at 866 801 2944
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