An area for operations growth - Storage Area Nets in MANS

Mon May 19 14:56:20 UTC 2003

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On 
> Behalf Of Rubens Kuhl Jr.
> Sent: Monday, May 19, 2003 6:37 AM
> To: Nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: An area for operations growth - Storage Area Nets in MANS
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Non-flawless software (i.e., 100% of it) is usually dealt 
> with storage snapshots; if they are kept local or remote, 
> that's a design choice that a metro SAN can impact.
> 
> Doing backup/restores thru a metro SAN also has some 
> advantages on facilities with tight-controlled physical 
> access; the bandwagon that moves tapes to off-site storage 
> still has more bandwidth than the fiber, but it can also be 
> used to smuggle <insert-your-favorite-paranoia-here>.
> 
> Rubens
> 
> 

Yeah, people with serious business continuity needs use real-time
replication for datacenter disasters, plus point-in-time copies to
protect against software error that often get replicated remotely as
well.  That way, the DR servers can serve a purpose doing regression
testing, development work, integrity testing, etc, without exposing the
possibility of unrecoverability in the event of a disaster by disabling
the real-time replication to do testing.  

The other interesting thing in terms of point-in-time replication is
what has come to be known as near-line storage.  Big boxes of
inexpensive drives that are used to offload point-in-time copies from
expensive storage for long-term retrieval.  This is someplace where
metro networks could come into play - having organizations use this
excess bandwidth to offload encrypted copies of various data sets to a
centralized point run by some neutral third-party.  This would be a good
way to enforce data retention policies and offsite storage of data.
Like an Iron Mountain, only without all the irritation of trucks,
people, and magnetic tapes.  Economies of scale, plus much better
recovery SLAs than having someone retrieve tapes out of a vault
somewhere.

Thanks,
Matt

--
Matthew Zito
GridApp Systems
Email: mzito at gridapp.com
Cell: 646-220-3551
Phone: 212-358-8211 x 359 