1.2 Evolution of storage technology architecture
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Once, organizations had centralized computer and information storage devices (tapes and disk groups) in the data center ). with the evolution of open systems and the cost savings brought about by the total evolution, easy deployment makes it possible for commercial entities and departments to own their own servers and storage. in the sight of an earlier open system, It is typically stored inside the server.
The increase in departmental servers in the enterprise has led to unprotected, unmanaged, fragmented information, and increased operation costs. in the past, policies and procedures for managing the information and data created were very limited. to overcome these challenges, storage technology evolved from non-intelligent internal storage to only network storage, as shown in figure 1-4. the most important part of this technology includes:
- Redundant independent disk array (Redundant Array of Independent Disks-raid): This technology aims to save costs and improve data performance and availability. today, it is still evolving and used in all storage architectures, such as DAS, San, and so on.
- Direct-Attached Storage-DAS: This type of storage is directly connected to the server (host) or a server cluster. storage can be either inside the server or outside the server. external das relieves the conflict between internal storage capacity restrictions.
- Storage area network-san: a dedicated high-performance fiber channel-FC network, helps block-level communication between servers and storage. the storage is partitioned and allocated to the server for accessing its data. compared with Das, san provides the following advantages: Measurable, availability, high performance, and cost.
- Network-Attached Storage-Nas: This is a file service application.ProgramThe storage method used. unlike San, it connects to an existing communication network (LAN) and provides file access for a variety of clients. because it is designed to serve file server applications, it provides higher scalability, availability, and cost advantages than common file servers.
- Internet Protocol San (Internet Protocol San-IP-SAN): This is the recent evolution of Storage Architecture, where IP-SAN is a collection of San and NAS technologies. IP-SAN provides block-level communication across local and wider networks, resulting in stronger and more available data.
The continuous evolution of storage technology and architecture enables organizations to merge, protect, and optimize data and use their data to achieve the highest return on data assets.
1.3 Data Center Infrastructure
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Organizations provide centralized data processing capabilities in enterprises by maintaining data centers. the data center stores and manages a large amount of critical data. the data center infrastructure includes computers, storage systems, network equipment, dedicated backup energy, and environmental control (including air conditioning and fire prevention ).
Large organizations often maintain more than one data center for data processing load balancing, and provide backup in disaster events. The storage center's storage needs are achieved through a combination of various storage architectures.
1.3.1 core elements
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Five core elements are essential for the functions of the data center.
- Applications: applications are computer programs that provide logic for computing operations. an application, for example, an order processing system, can be on the database layer. It uses the services of the operating system in sequence to perform read and write operations on storage devices.
- Database: more often, the database management system (DBMS) provides a structured way to store data in a way logically organized by correlated tables. DBMS optimizes data storage and reading.
- Servers and operating systems: computing platforms that run applications and databases.
- Network: the data path that helps communication between the client, server, or server and storage.
- Storage array: a device that permanently stores data.
These core elements are typically treated and managed as separate entities, but all elements must work together to meet data processing needs.
1-5 shows an example of an order processing system. It involves five core elements of a data center and describes their functions in business processing.
1.3.2 key requirements of data center Elements
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The data center's uninterrupted operations are very important for business survival and success. it is necessary to have reliable infrastructure available at any time. although icons 1-6 are applicable to the data center architecture, we will focus on storage systems. the various technologies and solutions that meet these needs will be covered in this book.
- Availability: All data center elements should be designed to ensure that this feature is accessible at all times.
- Security: policies, processes, and appropriate integration of core elements of a data center must be established to prevent unauthorized access to information. in addition to accessing the client, you also need to establish individual mechanisms to ensure that the server only accesses the resources and storage arrays allocated to them.
- Scalability: data center operations should be able to allocate additional processing or storage capabilities as needed without affecting business operations. more servers, new applications, and additional databases need to be deployed in the business growth market. the storage solution should be able to grow along with the business.
- High Performance: All core elements of the data center should be able to provide optimized performance and provide high-speed services for all requests. The infrastructure should be able to meet high-performance requirements.
- Data Integrity: Data integrity refers to errors such as error correction.CodeOr the parity mechanism to ensure that the data written to the disk is exactly the same as the received data. any change during data acquisition means a crash, which affects the operations of organizational entities.
- Capacity: data center operations require sufficient resources to efficiently store and process large amounts of data. when capacity requirements increase, the data center must be able to provide additional capacity without affecting data access, or, at least, with minimal downtime. capacity can be obtained by allocating existing resources instead of adding new resources.
- Manageability: the data center should perform all operations and actions in the most funny way. manageability can be achieved by automating and reducing the human participation of common jobs.
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