Faster, easier, cheaper
Thomas Pavel reckons up some simple steps to improving an SMB datacentre
SMBs have been a pillar of the UK economy for decades and as such have become established IT users, making investments to keep pace with the markets around them.
Today, partners can help them manage the exponential growth in data volumes as well as their need for that data to be accessible when required.
Many SMBs use direct attached storage (DAS) in their datacentres because it is easy to implement and manage, as well as being cheaper than network attached storage (NAS). For scaling up the storage, many rely on RAID to achieve the right performance, redundancy, availability and capacity for the data.
Hardware RAID based on a dedicated storage controller can deliver superior storage performance and decent RoI, since the host compute resources are free for other line-of-business tasks. RAID storage controllers are designed to meet critical requirements for RAID data protection and server storage RoI, from RAID 6 and RAID 50 to RAID 60.
The datacentre houses the data services and applications that businesses need. It is crucial that everything can be kept up and running at businesses of all sizes. Yet it has been very difficult - if not impossible - to deliver high availability in a DAS environment.
Single-node servers and DAS are easy to scale because all you have to do is add more servers and storage, but the stored data is not shared.
Upgrading to more complex and costly storage area networking (SAN) is likely to prove prohibitively expensive for many SMBs and therefore not a realistic approach for channel partners either.
High-availability storage deployments based on SAN with high-end fibre channel connections require specialised IT staff and a big enough budget to procure and manage them.
However, SMB environments can have fully redundant server and storage configurations without requiring costly or complicated failover provision or SAN.
One cost-effective alternative to traditional clustered systems is to use a small form factor server cluster with failover and inexpensive, scalable storage. Such systems offer failover for planned and unplanned outages to help ensure high availability of critical applications.
They may also feature manual and automatic failover and modular, hot-swappable components to reduce support requirements while maximising uptime.
Scalable direct-attached hardware RAID-based storage, or shared DAS storage, can be designed for transparent failover in the event of a failure. This can enable non-IT specialists to make repairs more quickly when required.
Cheaper high-availability application uptime can simplify deployments and management as well as reduce latency and power consumption.
Processor performance has skyrocketed in the past decade, but progress on the storage side has failed to keep up. The resulting bottleneck slows down applications and an organisation can lose business because transactions and application response times are too slow.
Many SMBs want to boost the performance of their storage infrastructure but hang on to their current DAS. Flash technology is fast but much more expensive than HDD.
A cheaper way of speeding up the datacentre that partners can recommend is to cache data on Flash-based controllers. A combined Flash and HDD solution is about enabling the lowest cost per GB at the lowest cost per transaction - versus products that support only Flash memory.
Flash accelerator cards can boost applications by combining RAID performance from DAS and intelligent caching using onboard Flash storage for less power and cost. Built-in intelligent caching software can accelerate applications more cost-effectively than DAS solid state drive (SSD)-only arrays or overprovisioned direct-attached HDD.
Intelligent caching algorithms can help identify application "hot spots"; frequently accessed data can be stored and accessed from Flash, reducing latency. They provide the foundation for a complete solution.
Serving data requests from Flash can reduce application latency, boost user response times and improve quality of service.
12Gb/s technology can accelerate storage speeds to meet the high-performance application needs for environments including transactional databases, social networking, data mining, and video streaming or editing.
While SMBs may be understandably concerned about achieving good datacentre performance in a world of expanding data volumes and customer demands, technology already exists to help them.
Thomas Pavel is EMEA sales director at LSI