iSCSI or FC- experts opinion

We all have read articles about the dilema - iSCSI or FC. Now is the time to ask the source. Let's take a look at the opinion of experts.

Tom / IT Support Team

FC is less susceptible to electromagnetic interference - it's because it uses fiber optics. I.e. even if there is a potential difference between the buildings, we won't feel any negative consequences. Generally, implementation of the FC solution is expensive, but definitely more reliable.

Peter / Research Department

FC or iSCSI? The answer is FC. iSCSI - it's only a group of SCSI commands put in a frame of TCP/IP. FC is more stable and reliable - primarily because it provides coverage on a lower level.

George / QA Department

iSCSI - is cheaper, easy to implement, it is also possible to use existing Ethernet infrastructure.

Steve / IT Support Team

If I had access to the existing Ethernet (1GbE or 10GbE) infrastructure, but a limited budget, I would use iSCSI. If the budget wouldn't be a problem and the implementation would be dedicated for a bank or a provider's service... only FC.

Lukas / QA Department

I'll paraphrase sentence I have found on the network once: FC is like a train - a very expensive vehicle that moves on tracks, quickly and confidently. iSCSI is like a sport car - fast, but requires attention and effort when driving.

And what is your opinion?

Iceland recquires an open source software

In Iceland originated a program which aim is to transfer all public institutions from proprietary software to open source software. All ministries, capital city hall in Reykjavik and national hospital are the first on the list. Education in this country is already transfering into the open source software.

Two new high schools began to use only a free and open software during the school year 2011/2012. This indicates that already 5 out of 32 schools in Iceland does not use a proprietary software. To cheer you up have a look on this hilarious Iceland team goal celebrations:

Open NAS review

Network attached storage (NAS) is a very common and cost-effective storage system. Also, by expanding the group of target users, it needs to be modernized and upgraded constantly. NAS servers are representing a large and promising market. Although this market is today dominated by large storage companies using proprietary solutions or licenses, there are several projects which aim at designing an open NAS product.

Although NAS may function with many popular operating systems, open NAS Linux operating system. Linux, due to its large platforms and file systems support, is a natural candidate to build a new generation of open NAS server, using only open source tools and inexpensive hardware, like standard PCs. An ideal open source NAS solution can be built associated with strategies where the operating system runs from solid states devices, like pendrives or compact flash cards.

Open NAS gives an opportunity for the system to develop, not only by a group of specialists employed in one company. This is in compliance with the principle and practice of open source which is based on peer production by collaboration and cooperation. The outcome of open source practices including final product, source-material and documentation is available the public for free.

There are two basic project aims for open NAS systems. The first was to define general procedures and programs for generating a live version of the system, which boots from solid state devices, starting from a running system. The scripts were modified to support Debian Linux and to generate bootable pendrives.

The second goal was to create web interfaces for open NAS administration. This is carried out by re-using known technologies. The interfaces simplify the configuration work, defining good metaphors for complex administration tasks like RAID setup, partitioning and file system exporting.

These two aims, associated with a particular PC hardware, defines the basis of an open NAS solution. For instance, there is a solution using a PC motherboard with RAID 0 or 1, USB booting and four standard 256GB IDE disks which can provide a NAS system with 512GB (RAID 1) or even 1TB (RAID 0). Obviously, better hardware platforms using e.g. SATA disks improve performance and add hot swap capability to the system.

Some open NAS projects have been accomplished, but many of them are at the design or modification phase, to improve system performance, availability and to add new functionalities.

Nas software

Network attached storage is an attractive solution for small business and private use storage. The NAS server is already equipped with operation system which contains storage for implementing NAS . However, the NAS software is also available separately and allows for quick installation on the popular operating systems.

NAS software solutions vary from the simplest applications offering basic NAS services to most comprehensive software.

These complex NAS software products do not only provides NAS services but also support SAN’s iSCSI functionality and the possibility of future upgrades and storage capacity expansion. NAS/SAN software packages also allow to transform standard hardware into a NAS/SAN type device.

NAS applications create an environment for high-speed data transfer between network devices and data storage and backup for heterogeneous clients. They provide the functionality of iSCSI targets and initiators for NAS users and allow for quick access to the data. Depending on the product, the access type can be only file level, or both file as well as block level.

NAS software is an indispensible tool for network storage management. It relieves the responsibility and saves a lot of workload to IT network administrators. The applications provide most advanced storage security system and data protection, with data reduplication, disaster recovery and automatic failover solutions. NAS allows the data to be l available on the network and accessible by clients. Fault tolerant measures such as RAID, can additionally be used to make sure that the NAS device does not become a point of failure.

NAS technology with dedicated software enables effective management and high availability of the company’s IT system, ensures business continuity and successful functioning of the enterprise at a lower cost.

Little something about SAN

In order to manager your storage area network successfully, a professional SAN software is indispensable. SANs can be very complex systems and their administrations is often a complicated and difficult task. For this reason, IT producers have been elaborating on more innovative solutions for SAN software which simplifies this task. It allows you to build your own high availability SAN easily and quickly The prices , due to an increasing competition on the market are also more and more attractive. You can choose between solutions based on Fibre Channels as well as iSCSI protocols.
     
SAN software products vary from less complex and basic applications to most comprehensive systems. Usually, when you have got a SAN software product, there is no requirement to purchase any proprietary servers, storage or any additional networking hardware. It saves your cabling and switches cost hence effectively reducing the total storage cost. With SAN software you can convert your server into a SAN device. Of course, if you want to, you can buy a SAN device which has an operating system for SAN already installed.
  
 SAN software allows for centralization of all storage resources in the network, as well as securing the data which is stored there. Independent disk array structures, advanced backup solutions, security management applications and various updates are standards for SAN software.
  
 Many SAN systems are in the form of applications which allow for virtualization of storage resources. Here, the costs are even more reduced and you can share the benefits which are the same as provided by a physical SAN. The software can transform server disk drives and external storage into a virtual iSCSI SAN. Not only cost, but also complexity is minimized.
 
  With SAN software which guarantees business continuity and success of your enterprise, you can build a reliable source of shared storage for all your server applications.

High availability- explanation

High availability is a term used to describe a system or a service which is ready to be used, therefore “available”, almost all the time. Availability refers to the situation when a user has access to and can use the resources of a system, service or a device, either to work, add new elements or use the databases. If user cannot do any of those, it is said they are unavailable.

The time when system is not available is also called downtime. High availability ensures that the required level of operational performance is met. There is a scale of availability listing the percentage of overall times when the system is unavailable. In the case of high availability this “almost” is a matter of about 5 minutes a year when the system is unavailable. This is 99,999 percentage (five nines) of availability. There are two types of the periods when a system is unavailable. One is scheduled and the other unscheduled downtime. The first occurs when e.g. a new software is installed and a configuration changes or system reboots are necessary. During these, the system is also unavailable, but they are planned actions, that is why they are called scheduled downtime. The unscheduled downtime is caused by accidents, such as software and hardware failures or blackouts. The damages and losses caused by those unscheduled downtimes can multiply when unavailability increases. Whereas, the scheduled downtime for some systems will not impact the functioning of the whole systems, for example when in an office they occur at night, because the people working there are at home and do not use the system. Also, there is a relation between complexity of a system and its availability. The systems that consist of fewer components tend to have higher availability than the more complex ones. This is because there are more elements that are threatened by potential failures.

Webinar time

Nas device, os, storage.

Network attached storage is a storage solution which provides centralized storage and file sharing over a computer network, together with software for storage management and security. Network-attached storage refers to single hard disk-based devices that connect to a network over Ethernet or TCP/IP, and use file-sharing protocols that allow computers to access their disks as remote volumes. A storage area network is used more in enterprise-level businesses, and consists of a network of Fibre Channel-connected storage devices (usually multiple disk arrays) that communicate with servers as large-scale local disks. NAS OS can be a separate product or available with NAS device. IT providers have started to build their own storage operating systems onto the boxes, sometimes hardwired in ASICs, but more often than not as software running in a kernel operating system or a fully-fledged server OS. Storage software approaches are increasingly preferred because of the ready availability of universal operating system platforms, whether from commercial OS producers such as Microsoft with its Storage Server or from the open source community Linux or BeOS. Therefore, a NAS device is a lot more than simply a box of disk drives. In fact, all storage systems, from the most basic USB-attached or SCSI direct attached storage (DAS) array to the most exclusive storage area network with iSCSI or FC target, most products proffer at least some additional features in their storage servers. This is also the case with NAS OS. Many NAS OSs offer additional benefits. It is possible to store music, movies, and photos on a centralized server and stream content to multiple computers, since there are storage devices with NAS OS which feature media server functionality. NAS OS can provide advanced backup capability through software, a USB port to connect an external hard drive, or RAID support to back up files. For users who want to access the storage drive remotely, there are NAS OS products that offer access over the Internet or FTP.

Effectively managing storage

Storage software is an indispensable part of data storage system. The best storage software centralizes and controls the storage resources, helps reduce the complexity and costs of data storage, provides its efficient management, improves data availability, management of storage devices, monitors and tracks the performance of network storage systems e.g. in Storage Area Network or Network Attached Storage.

One of indisputable advantages of storage software products is that the installation and configuration of most applications takes usually only few minutes. Sometimes, the storage software is pre-configured for immediate use. It consists of several applications, including performance monitoring, file systems, volume management, virtualization software, file, audio, mail and surveillance managers. Its characteristic feature is that it odes not serve for storage of system files but data. The most popular mass storage devices will include tape libraries, RAID systems, hard disk drives, magnetic tape drives, optical disc and magneto-optical disc drives and older floppy disk drives. Storage devices differ from memory devices in that they retain data permanently, even when the computer system is turned off, whereas memory drives such as RAM (random access memory) does not save the data in this case. They can be used in most efficient way only with the dedicated storage software. The applications used for storage management enable a company or a private person to manage their storage system. They usually cover storage resource management (SRM) and network storage management software, performance monitoring, file systems, volume management, virtualization software and security software. Many IT companies for example open-e offer a universal tool for effective storage management. You can also find many trial versions and open source applications. They also include tools which are used for virtualisations and cloud storage. A storage software allow data to elastically grow, shrink or migrate across physical machines in a cluster without downtime, server failures or interruptions.

What is Fiber Channel

Fibre channel is a standard of network technology for data transmissions between computer devices. At first it was used for storage networking - connecting computer servers to shared storage devices and for connecting storage controllers and drives between each other. They can be made of optical fiber cables as well as of copper wires which are twisted. If optical fiber is used a medium, the channel can be very flexible - devices can be as far as ten kilometers apart. For shorter distances the copper cables are used more often. Fibre channel was the first technology to be adopted in storage area networks. Storage area network (SAN) is a network of storage devices that are accessible to servers and allows for resource consolidation and simplifies administration. Fibre channels are faster than SCSI, another type of network technology. They reach gigabyte-speed which is why they have become more common than SCSI in the case of SAN. The SCSI commands can also be transported via fibre channel protocol. Storage area network has been mainly deployed in enterprise storage, which, when compared to the consumer storage, needs higher scalability, higher reliability, better fault tolerance, and requires much more investment.

The large scale of this type of storage involves disaster recovery and advanced backup solutions, which are parts of a large-scale business continuity plan. Fibre channel offers three types of port connections. In limited-connectivity “point to point” topology two devices are connected to each other. “Arbitrated loop” has a set of devices connected to one another in a ring – when one device fails, the whole system is interrupted. The most reliable typology is the “switched fabric”, where all devices are connected to switches which convey the traffic and connection between ports. Here, in the case of one port failure, the functioning of the rest of devices is not affected.

IBM high end tape solutions

000-387 ibm open systems storage solutions version3 Certification

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ISCSI target

In network systems, an iSCSI target is a device to which data is being transmitted from another device by means of iSCSI technology.

Generally, the term target in IT means a destination, e.g. a file, device or any other type of location to which data is moved. In more specific terms, the computer copies data from the source which is in this case called the initiator to the destination device – the target. Therefore, an iSCSI target is a device which is connected using a network to other devices, to which data is copied in order to be stored there. In network storage where iSCSI technology is implemented there can be many storage devices. That is why ISCSI target does not have to be a single unit in the whole system. It can describe one of potentially many instances of iSCSI storage nodes running on the specific server. iSCSI target is often a hard disk connected to a dedicated storage network, but it may as well be a general-purpose computer, since as with initiators, the software to provide an iSCSI target is available for most mainstream operating systems. iSCSI targets most commonly are hard disks. However, iSCSI tape and medium-changer targets are popular as well.

Additionally, in the era of cloud computing and virtualisation, iSCSI targets can also be virtualised devices. It is possible to virtualize disk, tape and server targets used for data storage. The underlying implementation can differ drastically from the presented targets also in the case of virtual tape library (VTL) products in which data is written to virtual tapes. In both cases, the standard as well as virtual, the targets can be bridged by iSCSI target software, external bridges, or controllers internal to the device enclosure. There can be two possibilities for a device to achieve a target functionality. It can be built in their operating systems or acquired by means of additional software.

Storage software

Nowadays, it is not possible to survive on the market without storage system. Imagine what advantage an intruder could take of the financial information about the company, its functioning, employees personal data, customers and transactions which are stored in computer systems. The risk of using this confidential data is great that is why all storage systems of professional enterprises and organisations must be well-protected. On the other hand, without a good and efficient management of storage resources and the system, the company may also experience severe losses, e.g. in productivity. This is why the storage resources which are the heart of every business must also be well-managed.

It is not an exaggeration to say that to choose a reliable storage software is even more important than merely buying a capacious and reliable data storage hardware. There are many types of data storage devices for large companies as well as households. Also the market of data storage software offers a wide range of solutions. For example, there are applications used only for cloud storage and virtualised servers and others for network storage solutions for data centers that are physically present at the premises of the enterprise. They are all adapted to the particular hardware solutions and their capacity. The users who have a pre-determined requirements can choose the storage system depending on their needs and budget, but the clients who enjoy more freedom can benefit from a more functional and universal solutions such as DSS.

Generally, the main goals for all types of storage software is assuring high availability of the system and business continuity. These are achieved by storage resource management and network storage management software and security software.

Storage software products include such storage infrastructure management tools which can help the users and customers reduce the complexity of managing their storage environments. This is done by centralizing, simplifying and automating storage tasks associated with storage systems, storage networks, replication services and security management.

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