Introduction and value of Huawei N8000 File System Image

Information is the most valuable asset of the company. Therefore, ensuring the security and availability of information is an important task of priority. To maximize the value of information, it is necessary to keep the information up-to-date so as to provide policy makers with the knowledge they need to carry out their businesses, improve operational efficiency, strengthen customer relationships, and explore new market opportunities. If you cannot access the latest information, organizations will not be able to respond quickly to the needs of today's economic development, and thus be in a very bad situation in the competition.

The NAS File System Image Technology of the Huawei N8000 cluster ensures that your data is available and up-to-date at any time. File System mirroring technology maintains two or more copies of data online to protect your data from any type of hardware faults, including disk faults. When used together with the Huawei N8000 cluster NAS high availability solution, the file system image technology enables you to obtain the highest data availability. In addition, file system images are easy to manage and cost-effective, providing unparalleled ROI.

Huawei N8000 File System Image Technology

The NAS File System Image Technology of the Huawei N8000 cluster is built on three characteristic technologies. One is the N8000 disk virtualization technology, which brings high flexibility to the layout of volume data and allows image data to be stored across different physical devices. The second is N8000's volume layout technology. N8000 supports multiple volume la S. File System images are based on these flexible volume layout technologies. The third is N8000's fast re-synchronization technology. When image volumes are used to store data in redundancy mode, N8000 ensures that all data copies are completely consistent, however, in some cases (usually because the entire system fails), some redundant data in the volume may be inconsistent or not synchronized, and the image data will not be exactly the same as the original data, in this case, you need to quickly re-Synchronize the image data to the original data, but you do not need to re-Synchronize all the data.

The following describes the N8000 File System Image Technology from these three aspects.

N8000 disk virtualization technology

The disk virtualization technology of the NAS of the Huawei N8000 cluster brings high flexibility to the layout of volume data, and this technology allows image data to be stored across different physical devices. N8000 makes all the physical disks on the system pass through the disk virtualization technology into the volume management software that is provided to N8000 for unified allocation and use by Virtual Disks, the volume management software can create different sub-disks on each virtual disk for flexible volume layout. Shows the N8000 volume management model:

N8000 volume layout technology

NAS of the Huawei N8000 cluster supports multiple volume la S. File System images are based on these flexible volume la S. The N8000 volume management software creates sub-disks on different Virtual Disks, then, the N8000 volume layout technology is used to flexibly make these sub-disks into the volumes required by various logical image, strip, and other file systems, currently, our N8000 mainly supports the following three types of image volumes:

1. Mirror file system: this file system consists of several images, which are then composed of logical sub-disks. Shows the image volume model:

2. mirrored-stripe File System: The file system is still composed of several images in the upper layer, while the logical band is in the image, which is then composed of each sub-disk, such a file system also features high performance and high availability. Shows the image strip volume model:

3. A strip image (Striped-mirror) File System: unlike an image, a file system consists of several strip from the upper layer, and a strip is composed of several images, such a file system also features high performance and high availability, and the data availability is higher than Mirrored-stripe. Shows the model of a striped image volume:

N8000 image volume fast re-synchronization technology

The fast re-synchronization technology of NAS in the Huawei N8000 cluster is used for fast image data synchronization in the image volume. When you use an image volume to store data in redundancy mode, the N8000 ensures that all data copies are identical, but in some cases (the image may become unavailable due to its separation from the volume, or the N8000 volume management software is automatically separated due to an error, or is directly separated by the system administrator using a utility). Some redundant data in the volume may be inconsistent or not synchronized, the image data will not be exactly the same as the original data. In this case, you need to synchronize the image data with the original data, but you do not need to synchronize all the data again. Compared with the traditional method of copying all stored data to an image, this process is much more efficient.

Benefits of N8000 File System Image Technology to customers

The NAS File System Image Technology of the Huawei N8000 cluster provides a low-cost and high-performance solution for continuous data availability for key user data. The NAS File System Image Technology of the Huawei N8000 cluster is a unique solution. The solution can store data in two or more storage units at the same time to provide continuous availability and zero data loss. When a single storage unit fails, you can perform transparent fault repair without perceiving or affecting your business. In addition, repeated change management activities will be eliminated, to reduce the risk of human error and high management overhead. This solution provides local data protection without the need to use backup software, thereby providing users with continuous key data availability at a low cost.