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IMPROVING ENTERPRISE FILE MANAGEMENT WII T H F I L E A R E A N E T W O R K S W
Brocade Tapestry File Services provide the oundation or a wide range o business benets as part o a File Area Network (FAN).
As the amount o le servers and le-based data continues to grow across today’s enterprises, IT organizations ace new challenges in managing their data in the most cost-eective, ecient manner possible. To address these challenges, chall enges, Brocade® is helping to pioneer the concept o the File Area Are a Network (FAN) and developing a wide range o services and products to streamline the management o le-based data. As a result, these organizations can use Brocade Tapestry™ File Services oerings to build out and streamline their enterprise FAN FAN environments.
THE NEED FOR MORE EFFICIENT FILE DATA MANAGEMENT
By all measures, data stored and accessed directly as les now represents the vast majority o all data managed by today’s today’s enterpr ises. This This includes unstructured data organized within le systems, even i those le systems reside in ront o traditional block storage methods used to read and write data to disk drives. With rare exceptions, such as relational database management systems or structured data (or example, SQL Server and Oracle), nearly nearly all data today is organized within le systems and accessed by the applications and users that own it as a le. In turn, the rapid growth in the number o these les has caused a wide range o additional data management challenges. For instance, in a traditional RAID array, an administrator might notice that a user is consuming 100 gigabytes o disk space, but a le systems administrator might notice over 100,000 les within that same space. The development o newer and more complex operating systems, le systems, and large-scale applications that span the globe has also elevated the management o these les to a much higher level o prominence within today’s IT organizations. As a result, the growing emphasis on le data has created the need or a new management paradigm. Emerging Emerging concepts such as transparent consolidation and migration, Inormation Liecycle Management (ILM), and application-level disaster recovery simply cannot exist without sophisticated le management techniques. These concepts, as well as many others, require require le-level descriptions and classication techniques that can be done only with les or complete block objects, in order to attach policies to the data. Traditional block data techniques such as virtualization or Logical Unit Number (LUN) management management are all but useless as methods to operate policies and methods or le data—highlighting the need or new methods to manage unstructured le-based data. THE SIMILARITIES OF BLOCK AND FILE DATA STORAGE
As IT organizations increasingly ocus on shared storage inrastructure, the traditional (but somewhat arbitrary) arbitrary) barr iers between block and le storage are beginning to blur. Consider, or instance, the act that most o the world’s leading le servers have Fibre Channel Storage Area Network Network (SAN)-connected storage behind them.
Whether an organization manages its data at the block device level or le system level, many o the tasks are similar, the issues nearly identical, and the challenges ever present.
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Provisioning, backup, security, ailover, migrati migration, on, extension, and connectivity: All these tasks are perormed on data, rather than on storage subsystems or networks. Moreover, these tasks are virtually the same or both block and le data, and the management approaches are growing more uniorm by the day. SHARED STORAGE SUBSYSTEMS AND FILE SERVERS
Beginning in 2003, several leading vendors in the SAN and enterprise open systems le inrastructure market (including Brocade) began studying the behaviors o le-oriented storage in earnest. These vendors realized that even though block shared storage systems (SAN) and le-oriented shared s hared storage systems (NAS) grew in dierent directions and became their own industries, the two approaches actually have much more in common than not. All storage approaches have block data ormats at their core, and all o these block storage spaces are managed by some sort o le system, be it NTFS, UFS, or a database management system. As a result, the distinctions between SAN and NAS are quickly becoming obsolete. THE ADVENT OF THE FILE AREA NETWORK (FAN)
In keeping with computer industry tradition, the term File Area Network (FAN) has emerged as a logical way to describe an emerging class o hardw hardware are and sotware sotware technologies whose primary mission is to organize, route, manage, and provide consistent access to massive amounts o les. Table 1 describes the similarities between the SAN and FAN data management architectures.
Basic Concepts
Basic Services
Key Benefts
Storage Area Network (SAN)
Fille Area Network (FAN) Fi
Uses Fibre Channel or iSCSI as the transport protocol
Uses IP as the transport protocol
Targets LUNs on arrays
Targets le system volumes on le ser ve vers
Manages Fibre Channel/iSCSI block requests
Manages CIFS/NFS le requests
Block-level virtualization that provides routing to LUNs and block data
File-level virtualization (Global Namespace) that provides paths to les
Vol olum umee rep replilica catition on an and d mig migra ratition on
File Fi le re repl plic icat atio ionn and and mi migr grat atio ionn
Cent Ce ntra rall poin pointt o o adm admin inis isttra rattio ionn
Cent Ce ntra rall poi point nt o o adm admin inis isttra rattio ionn
SAN extension between data centers
Remote site data connectivity
Consol Con solida idatio tionn o array array sto storag ragee syste systems ms
Consolidatio Consol idationn o le servers
Management o a pool versus discrete rames
Management o a pool versus discrete le servers
Increased st storage utilization
Increased l le se serv rveer ut utilization
NonNo n-di disr srup upti tive ve vol volum umee migr migrat atio ionn
NonNo n-di disr srup upti tive ve le le mig migra rati tion on
High ROI in terms o both capital and operating expenses
High ROI in terms o both capital and operating expenses
Table 1. Key characteristics o SANs and FANs.
What Is a FAN? FAN? “A FAN involves a systematic approach to organizing the various le-related technologies in today’s enterprise. The goal o a FAN is to provide IT managers with a scalable, fexible, and intelligent platorm or the cost-eective delivery o enterprise le inormation and a much higher level o le control.” –BradO’Neill, TanejaGroup
AN OVERVIEW OF OF THE FAN FAN
Various technical unctions and attributes can be organized into a FAN. Many o these are concepts that have been evolving over the past ve years, while some have been around or decades. Functions Functions such as path persistence or routing are traditional traditional network unctions, whereas data de-duplication and “coalescence” represents a newer concept that has been associated with ev everything erything rom content-addressable storage to hash-based compression. At a basic level FANs provide several key services: • Enterprise-wide, Enterpr ise-wide, pervasive control o all le inormation, including the management o le attributes attr ibutes based on meta data and content values, regardless o platorm • Ability to establish user le visibility visibility and access rights based on business values (such as individual departments, projects, or geographies) regardless o physical device or location • Non-disruptive, Non-disr uptive, transparent movement o le inormation across plator ms and/or geographical boundaries • Creation o le management services servic es that are deployed deployed as true “servi “services” ces” to the entire inrastructure and not deployed in application-specic silos • Measurable ROI ROI or le management due to consolidation consolidatio n o redundant le resources (such as de-duplication o redundant les) Figure 1 shows the major components that Brocade intends to support as organizations implement and develop their FAN inrastructures. As always, components and architectures will likely continue to evolve over time, as will industry standards to help guide and standardize specic implementations o le access methods.
Figure 1. The key components o a FAN.
The File Area Network Microsoft File Server Block Storage
File Routing
Cached Edge
Single Namespace
and Filer
Unified Namespace
NFS File Server
Core
• Data Centers • Main Offices
Content Meta Data
Coalescence
Edge • Branch Offices • Remote Sites • Retail Stores
Brocade believes that key FAN components will likely center on both a core (data center) and an edge (remote oce and end users) within a more traditional network network
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architecture. In addition, a large amount o sotware content will provide the backbone or higher-level unctions. Cornerstone technologies such as Microsot DFS, TCP/IP, high speed in-band routing, hashing, and signature les will likely provide the oundation or how FANs evolve over the next decade. The Core o the FAN
As with many orms o data networks, it is clear that the core o the FAN will contain a large concentration o capacity, eatures, and capabilities (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. The primary elements at the core o the FAN.
The File Area Network Core
File Routing
Single Namespace Distance Extension Components
and Unified Namespace
Content Meta Data
Coalescence
The primary core attributes will revolve around core routing, a concept sometimes reerred to as “unied namespace” and “le virtualization.” Regardless o terminology, the principal unctions will be critical to the growth and utility o FAN technology. The core “routed namespace” will likely be the unctional backbone o all FAN approaches. Central among meta unctions will be the core’s ability to “route” or provide persistent paths or users and applications to nd their data regardless o its location. As is the case with traditional routing unctions, this core unction will be based on simple meta data that will contain certain attributes about the les, where they reside, and how to access them. Other meta data could be developed with the central pieces to support new unctions over time, such as non-disruptive migration techniques or disaster recovery recov ery techniques or multiple sites.
Distance Extension Services rom the Core o the FAN
Another cornerstone capability o the core will be the ability to extend the unctionality and access to le systems and les to edge devices with little or no latency. This will become increasingly important as more corporate data is centralized in the data center to support compliance eorts. The core will still maintain the persistent path to the le systems and les whether a traditional Wide Area Area File Services (W (WAFS) AFS) type o edge caching technique is employed, emerging le system change replicators are used, or even more network-centric bandwidth optimizers are employed. Because o this, the entire user and application base will always view a centralized le store represented outward rom where the data resides. Whether the data is provided to a branch oce or remote development center thousands o miles away—or simply to an extended campus across town—the data will appear and remain consistent rom an access point o view. Advanced Services Emanating Emanating rom the Core
As organizations begin to design and deploy their FANs, Brocade is developing a variety o services to simpliy FAN management. The unique Brocade unied global namespace provides provides the oundation to manage ser vices such as data center migration and consolidation; branch oce consolidation and optimization; business continuity and disaster recovery; data liecycle management; user access and security; and more (see Figure 3).
Figure 3. The unique services enabled by the Brocade unied global namespace.
Campus C M o i n g r s o a t l i i o d a n t i a o n n d
Branch
Remote Data Access B u s i n e s s C o n t i n u i t y
D R a e t m a o M e t a S n i t a e g e m e n t
a D n a d a t R C e l p a o s r s t i i f n c i g a t i o n
M D a a t n a a L g i f e e m c y e c n l t e
N O A n S e - t M o a - n m a a g n e y m e n t
S t o r a g e O p t i m i z a t i o n
D C a o t n a s M o l i a d n a t a e g d e m N e e t n w t o r k
A c c e s s C o n t r o l s
Policy-Based Automation
Namespace Solaris Storage
Linux
Windows
File Ser vers
Brocade believes that organizations that implement FANs and deploy Brocade services and technology will quickly realize how FANs can improve organizational fexibility and agility. File location and movement will become transparent and inconsequential to users through throughout out the entire enterprise. And administrators will have the ability to perorm le migrations whenever and wherever they need, virtually eliminating downtime and helping to ensure business continuance.
Brocade Tapestry File Services • Tapestry StorageX® • Tapestr apestryy Wide Area File Services (WAFS)
Moreover, FANs and Brocade solutions show the promise o helping to reduce capital
• Tapestr apestryy File Liecycle Manager® (FLM)
and operating costs by consolidating the branch oce IT inrastructure, eliminating
• Tapestr apestryy MyView®
the cost o remote data backup, and centralizing le storage and management. By leveraging this best-in-class architecture, organizations will be able to provide greater
• Tapestry Data on Demand Manager (DDM)
compliance with regulatory and business governance governance throug through h simple centralized le
• Tapestry UNCUpdate
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access management—intelligently management—intelligently migrating les based on ILM policies as well as maintaining le management and security protocols during WAN WAN disruptions. FOR MORE INFORMATION
With the increasing ocus on le-based data and the emergence o FANs, IT organizations should begin to consider what services and technology inrastructures they need to continue their business growth. Today, Brocade is helping to pioneer the concept o FANss with a wide range o Tapestry File Services and Proessiona FAN Proessionall Services oerings. oer ings. These innovativ innovativee solutions can help streamline management eciency while securing data and providing an impressive ROI or years to come. To learn more about Brocade Tapestry File Services, visit www.brocade.com. For additional Brocade technical inormation inor mation and resources, visit visit Brocade Connect, the Web portal designed exclusively or Brocade customers at www.brocade.com/jointheclub.
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© 2006 Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 08/06 GA-WP-852-00 Brocade, the Brocade B weave logo, Fabric OS, File Liecycle Manager, MyView, Secure Fabric OS, SilkWorm, and Tapestry StorageX are registered trademarks and Tapestry is a trademark o Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. FICON is a registered trademark o IBM Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks o, and are used to identiy, products or services o their respective owners. Notice: This document is or inormational purposes only and does not set orth any warranty, expressed or implied, concerning any equipment, equipment eature, or service oered or to be oered by Brocade. Brocade reserves the right to make changes to this document at any time, without notice, and assumes no responsibility or its use. This inormational document describes eatures that may not be currently available. Contact a Brocade sales oce or inormation on eature and product availability. Export o technical data contained in this document may require an export license rom the United States government.