Server Farms & SANs
Carl Davies - Technical Support Team Leader
©1996 ECsoft Group plc
1
PinkRoccade - an Anglo Dutch Organisation
History
Revenue
Staff
Market
Position
Group
UK
50 years
€816m
8200
All Sectors
Tier 1
Number 37 in world
largest IT Services
companies, 3rd largest %
revenue growth Source:
30 years
£64m
1245
All Sectors
Tier 1/ Mid-Market
Computer Business Review
- ITIL Education & Consulting
Market Leader
- Innovator in Shared Services
- “Distinctive Managed Services
offering (based on ITIL and
Prince2 Methodologies) will help
set it apart from others servicing
the mid market.”
Ovum Holway
Competencies
Data Centre,
Network
Management
Support, Field
Services
ITIL Education
Managed Services
On-Site and Fully
Hosted Support
Offerings
Help Desks,
Support &
Service
Management
Applications
Management,
Development,
Integration &
Support.
PinkRoccade UK Ltd – Customers
Agenda
• What is Server Farm?
– What are the Benefits and Disadvantages?
• What is a SAN?
– What are the Benefits and Disadvantages?
• Implementation and Support Challenges
– Considerations and issues during implementation
– Support Issues
• Questions
Server Farms
• Also known as:• Server Cluster
• Computer Farm
• Server Ranch
Server Farms
Key Elements
• The server farm is a group of networked servers
• Intercommunication between server
• Accessible by users
The server farm streamlines processing
• By distributing the the workload between individual
components of the farm
• Harnesses the power of multiple servers
• Load balancing software required
Server Farms
Examples
User
Logon
Requests
Domain Controllers
Server Farms
Examples
Virtual Server
SCSI or Fibre Attached Storage
MS Win 2k servers with MS NLB services
Public Network
User
Requests
Server Farms
Benefits
–Reduce the Total Cost Of Ownership
Reducing Support Costs
Centralising the infrastructure
Reducing amount of different server builds
Easier to provide “Resilience” and therefore “High
Availability”
Ensuring that all servers are equally utilised
Maximising return on investment
Server Farms
Disadvantages
–Development and UAT Environments
May be more expensive to truly reflect
production environment and ensure valid
results from testing
SAN
Storage Requirements
• Operating Systems
• Applications
• User data
Definition
A high speed sub network of shared storage
devices available to all servers on the LAN
and WAN.
SAN
What Does a SAN look like
PinkRoccade Shared Services Architecture
Sun Fire 15k
Sun Fire 6800
Broccade fibre switches
Sun Fire 15k
Broccade fibre switches
c
Sun/Hitachi Lightening
9960
c
SAN
Basic Configuration
SAN
Fibre Channel Fabric
PinkRoccade Shared Services Architecture
Presentation Layer
Sun Fire 15k
Sun Fire 6800
Sun Fire 15k
Switching Layer
Broccade fibre switches
Broccade fibre switches
c
c
Disk & Subsystem Layer
Sun/Hitachi Lightening
9960
SAN
Purpose of a SAN
• Store data in a central location and make it
available to different operating systems such as:•
•
•
•
•
Windows
UNIX
Linux
AIX
Mainframe
SAN
Purpose of a SAN (2)
• Provide flexible disc configuration
•
•
•
•
•
Multiple disk sets
Striped disk sets
Mirrored disk sets
RAID 5
Hot stand-by configurations
• Easy, quick and flexible expansion
•Add additional disk storage
•Deploy disk sets quickly
SAN
SAN v NAS Solutions
NAS – Suitable for providing user data
available across the network.
SAN – Suitable for providing back-office
system storage, as well as application and
user data.
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
Business Issues Should Lead The
Technology Issues
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
Business Issues
• SLA Driven
• Detail the business criteria that needs to be met
• Need to be able to measure the effectiveness of the
solution
• Regulatory and Legislative Compliance
• Compliance for different types of data
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
• Data Lifecycle Management
• Working records Vs Fixed content
• How long do we need to keep data for?
• Does the data always need to be on-line?
Near-line storage
Archiving
• Processes for Data Management
•
•
•
•
The cost of storage should be accountable
Policies for managing data
Quotas
Billing / Accounting
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
• Data Security (Access & Fraud)
• How do we prevent our electronic data from being
manipulated.
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
Technical Issues
• Production Storage
• Appropriate storage for the business need
• Do we need a SAN? Would NAS be better?
• Backup and Restore
•
•
•
•
“The Killer Application”
Have we got appropriate backup devices and software?
Is there an overnight backup window?
Do we need to configure the SAN for Snapshot / Shadow
data
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
• Disaster Provision
•
•
•
•
What is the requirement for DR / Business continuity
Multiple Sites
Data replication / Mirroring
Has the DR provision been fully tested?
• Long Term Viability of Data Medium
• Where are the back- office systems that we want to provide
storage for?
• Needs to be a high speed network
• Have we got an appropriate support structure?
• SAN technology requires specialist support skills
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
• Several support teams will need to communicate
HDS Storage Arrays
AIX
SAN Administrator
SAN Fabric
Mainframe
????
Win2000
SAN Fabric
Solaris
Network Admin
System Admin
Win NT
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
Regulatory Issues
• SEC - American Securities Regulatory
Body
• Data Protection Act (UK)
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act (USA)
SAN
Implementation and Support Considerations
“Design for Flexibility”
• What are our future storage needs?
•
•
•
•
Have we checked the business plan / road map?
Over what period?
What type of systems will be connecting?
Can our solution deal with new technologies?
SAN
What can go wrong?
• Generally the same types of issues as any project
• No definition of requirements to implementation parties
• Unable to check if installation meets requirements
• Transition to support more difficult
• No thorough investigation of how the new infrastructure will
coexist with the current infrastructure
• Issues arise when move into a production environment
• Thorough testing including the DR / Business Continuity
environments before going into production
Questions