|
SAN
Storage Solutions
Data is the most important part of your I.T. infrastructure and could be the most important part of your business.
What would happen if you lost all your data for your business?
What would happen if all your servers were stolen?
A tornado wipes out your HQ?
These are all real life questions, and although we hope they never happen, it is always best to plan for the worst. Correctly planned data storage is essential for all businesses, and Crabtree can meet your needs in all areas of data storage including:
Storage Area Networks (SANs)
For storage solutions that provide disaster recovery, and reliability 99.999% ("5- 9's") of the time, or for business that requires real-time "up time" no matter what, a SAN is the solution for you. A storage area network (SAN) is a high-speed special-purpose network (or subnetwork) that interconnects different kinds of data storage devices with associated data servers on behalf of a larger network of users. Typically, a storage area network is part of the overall network of computing resources for an enterprise. A storage area network is usually clustered in close proximity to other computing resources such as IBM z990 mainframes but may also extend to remote locations for backup and archival storage, using wide area network carrier technologies such as ATM or SONET.
A storage area network can use existing communication technology such as IBM's optical fiber ESCON or it may use the newer Fiber Channel technology. SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archived data, data migration from one storage device to another, and the sharing of data among different servers in a network. SANs can incorporate subnetworks with network-attached storage (NAS) systems.
Crabtree's Senior Consulting can work with your organization in all your SAN needs. Call us for more details.
Networked Attached Storage (NAS)
If you are looking for lower cost storage solutions for back-up and local network access, then a Networked Attached Storage solution may be what you are looking for. A NAS device is a server that runs an operating system specifically designed for handling files (rather than block data). Network-attached storage is accessible directly on the local area network (LAN) through LAN protocols such as TCP/IP. These solutions provide additional storage on your network that can be added without having to buy new servers (you just buy hard drive storage for your storage server as needed). With proper configuration and implementation, these are good solutions for the small business.
Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
DAS is storage that is directly connected to a server by connectivity media such as parallel SCSI cables. This direct connection provides fast access to the data; however, storage is only accessible from that server. DAS includes the internally attached local disk drives, or externally attached RAID (redundant array of independent disks) or JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Although Fiber Channel can be used for direct attached, it is more commonly used in storage area networks. There are a lot of low cost options available today with Direct Attached Storage solutions. Call Crabtree Consulting for more details.
We at Crabtree would not be an ally to you if we did not stress the extreme importance of having secondary data back-ups, and even tertiary if possible. We have seen the disasters too often, and actual businesses fail because they did not have proper backs up (or thought they had them, but never had to perform a "restore" only to find out when they did restore, that their data was not there). Back-up your data. Test is validity. Do it often, and regularly. Please feel free to call us at any time, just to talk solutions. We are here to serve.
Last Edited: 2006-04-21 20:23:59
|
