Computer Storage fundamentals

Storage system, storage networking and host connectivity

Susanta Dutta

• Publisher: BPB Publications
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9789388176552
• Topic: Informatik
• Subtopic: Datenbanken

Learn storage system usage in various solutions to meet enterprise company's business objectives. Key Features

• Different type of storage systems and their solutions are discussed.
• Learn the components of a storage solution, storage disk array, host servers, storage networking components and their communications.
• Storage performance, fault tolerance and space efficiency and their related features are explained in detailed.
• Storage management software suite that enables administrator to manage all storage hardware and software components and their features and functionalities that are discussed.

Description
With advancement of computer, mobile and popularity of internet and social media, digital data is growing exponentially. Current total global data is almost double than what was there two years back. Computer storage technologies have become most important and critical that supports this enormous growth of digital data and stores them more efficiently. Therefore demand for computer storage knowledge increased drastically in recent years.This book explains the basic concept of computer storage and its fundamental features and functionalities. It also includes topics on how the application servers access storage systems through the network. Different storage vendors use different name for physical and logical components of a storage system, but this book primarily focuses on concept of storage systems using simple and commonly understood terminologies. Almost all modern storage systems have virtualization implemented to enhance performance and fault tolerance. This book explains these implementation aspects in simple terms. What Will You Learn

• Storage System, Storage Infrastructure
• Storage Disk Array and Communication Protocols
• Storage Networking, Management and Performance
• Fault Tolerance and Data Protection
• Space Efficiency

Who This Book Is For
IT professionals, undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, researchers and storage administrators. Table of Contents

• Storage System and Solutions
• Storage Infrastructure
• Storage Disk Array
• Storage Communication Protocols
• Storage Networking
• Storage Performance
• Fault Tolerance and Data Protection
• Space Efficiency
• Storage Management
• About the Author
  Susanta Dutta is a senior R&D engineer with two decades of industry working experience in Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company. He has been working with all types of storage products development and solution implementation with latest storage technologies. He is an engineering graduate in Electronics & Communication from National Institure of technology (NIT), Durgapur, India His LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/susanta-dutta-684969152
  

Chapter 1

Storage Systems and Solutions

Learning objectives

This chapter discusses different type of storage systems, the technologies to store data and solutions that are deployed in small, medium, and large organizations. You will also learn about the pros and cons of all the storage systems with respect to their usages in the solutions.

Upon successful completion of this chapter, you will be able to learn about the following areas:

• Type of storage systems: Block, File, and Object storage systems
• Type of storage solutions:
  • DAS, NAS, SAN and Cloud storage
  • Entry level, mid-range and enterprise storage solutions
• Storage solution components
• Hyper-convergence Infrastructure

Introduction

Computer data storage has been evolving since 1950s. Initial storage systems were very simple and elementary. During those days, host servers were directly connected to its storage devices. The storage device was integral part within the computer system itself. There was no concept of a separate system for remotely storing data. Over the time for faster and efficient storing of data, storage system has become a separate entity, which can also be shared by multiple computers to store their data.

Type of storage systems

There are three most popular technologies available to store the data on to a storage system. Storage systems are categories based on how data is stored and accessed by the host servers.

Block storage: Block storage provides access to host server as raw block device. These Blocks are controlled by server based operating systems and each block can be individually formatted with the required file system such as NTFS and VMFS. Application can then access the data on the file system for read and write operations. There are also intelligent applications available, which can access the raw volume directly without any file system.

Figure 1.1: Block Storage

Storage has no knowledge of the data stored in it, however operating system and application understands it.

Block storage is primarily used for structured data, such as relational databases. Host server runs databases, supports random read/write operations. Many other client system access the application running on host server over the network.

This level of storage can also offer boot-up of systems which are connected to them.

Block level storage can be used to store files and can work as storage for special applications like databases, virtual machine file systems, and so on.

Block level storage data transportation is much efficient and reliable.

Each storage volume can be treated as an independent disk drive and it can be controlled by external server operating system. Block level storage uses Fibre Channel, iSCSI and FCoE Communication protocols for data transfer as SCSI commands act as communication interface in between the initiator and the target.

File storage: On a file, storage data is stored and accessed using filename and its directory location over Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN). In File Level storage, the storage space is configured to access files with a protocol such as Network File System (NFS) or Server Message Block (SMB) or Common Internet File System (CIFS).

File storage system uses block storage internally with a local file system to store these files, and host server only accesses for reading and writing these files. File storage deployed mainly in the environment where application requires to access data inside files or group of people require to store files such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, audio, and image files in shared storage system.

Figure 1.2: File Storage

Computer systems that access the files and folder on the file storage are called NAS clients. They can run an application to read and write data on to those files and other clients access the application over network. For example, Hypervisor enabled operating system can host Virtual Machines(VMs) on NAS shares and client can access those virtual machines.

Object storage: Object storage is a relatively new type of storage system that stores data as objects along with metadata and unique identifier. This storage is primarily evolved in recent years to support storing mass amounts of unstructured data in cloud, Big Data and mobility. Data that is often stored as objects includes songs, images, and video clips. Some of the examples of Object storage in the Cloud are Amazon S3(Simple Storage Service), Azure Blob Storage, Google cloud storage.

Figure 1.3: Object Storage

Representational State Transfer (REST) API over HTTP is used to transfer objects to and from a client system.

Storage solutions

The hardware and software component that make a solution to store and protect digital data is called a storage solution. A storage solution has the following two primary components:

Storage System: Storage system is a hardware device connected to computers through a network for storing the data. Storage disk array is an example of a storage system.

Host server: Applications that run on these computer servers, perform read and write data stored on to the storage systems. This is also called application server, host computer or just simply host or just a server.

A storage solution is formed by connecting one or more host servers to storage systems.

Type of storage solutions

Storage solutions are commonly categorized in two ways - first, categorized based on how storage systems are connected to host servers and second, based on configuration and level of complexity of the deployed solution.

Storage solution based on host connectivity:

Type of storage solution chosen by the organization is primarily driven by requirement. Selection of type of storage system for the solution and connectivity with host servers also follows accordingly.

In the previous section we learnt that the three most popular storage system technologies are block storage, file storage, and object storage. Storage systems are also primarily identified based on these technologies.

Storage Area Network

Block storages are deployed in Storage Area Network(SAN). T...