Continuing with the different variables of choice
[color = # 0000cd] What technology or solution can the manufacturer provide us to optimize the space in our rack in infrastructures with a large number of discs? [/colour]
Disks, Formats and Technologies . With what discs can I configure my SAN or NAS? What technologies? What transfer rate will these discs give me? At what speeds will they work? 7.2K / 10k / 15k? What number of IOPS will each disk give me? Are 2.5 ", 3.5" or both?
Number of discs per Rack Unit. The space in the CPD also has its cost. The larger the number of discs, the more space we need.
[color = # 0000cd] What levels of RAID does the Storage System offer me? [/colour]
Expansion capacity. What is the total number of disks that can be managed by the Storage System to be acquired? How will the connection with the expansion pans be? What bandwidth will I have with disk expansion systems?
RAID levels supported. Virtually all Storage System providers support the main RAID levels used: RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10. There are manufacturers that have their own RAID levels.
[color = # 0000cd] With what Protocols does the Storage System work? [/colour]
Protocols More and more manufacturers offer us Unified Storage Systems, which can work with both FC, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS. It is really interesting to be able to have all these Protocols at our disposal to serve Storage according to destination. For example, it is very practical to have CIFS since we would save a file server. And if we have NFS we could use an aggregate of links to increase the bandwidth.
[color = # 0000cd] Therefore, will the Storage System have Thin Provisioning? [/colour]
Thin Provisioning This technology allows us to achieve a provisioning of disk space without necessarily using it. In this way we can assign the necessary storage and, where appropriate, acquire more space as it is actually consumed. More and more companies are offering this technology, although not all of them at the moment.
[color = # 0000cd] Does my Deduplication Storage System count? [/colour]
Deduplication Deduplication technology identifies disk blocks with duplicate information and saves us from writing a block more than once in duplicate. This means great savings in disk space, making us more efficient.
[color = # 0000cd] Do we have Compression technologies in our next SAN or NAS? [/colour]
Compression. Like WinZip or WinRAR, there is the possibility of compressing data, little consulted or historical, in order to achieve savings in our disk space. With this functionality we continue to optimize and make our Storage Solution more efficient.
[color = # 0000cd] Can my new Storage System work with Snapshots? [/colour]
Snapshots management Having the possibility of working with snapshots at the cabin level is very interesting and it can bring us a lot of play. The cabin Snaps are totally independent of the Virtual Machine. Naturally, we can not use this solution as Backup, but we can consider it as a complement, as well as Windows file snapshots.
[color = # 0000cd] Does the Storage System we are looking for have the ability to Replicate against another Drawer? [/colour]
Replication. In parallel to the backup copies, disaster recovery plans are becoming more frequent. We use the Replicas to have a disaster recovery plan, both local and remote. That is, we can propose some Replicas to another drawer in the same CPD or to another cabinet in an external CPD.
We follow our decision making with the tutorial HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section III
