Question

How to evaluate the acquisition of a Virtualization Storage - Section I

Answer 1

HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section I

We will develop this theme in four modules as it is extensive and very clear in all its content:

HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section I
HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section II
HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section III
HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section IV

Introduction

How can I be sure that the SAN or NAS that I will buy for my Virtualization Infrastructure is the most appropriate?
Being the cornerstone of our CPD, Storage is much more than a box of discs. It is the critical point and as such the purchase criteria must be well contemplated.
The budget line for acquiring, renewing or expanding storage is significantly more important than when we acquired Hosts or Network Electronics. Hence the importance of the decision.
When we invest in a Network Storage System we no longer consider only the space available. We can provision Storage based on Performance, Bandwidth, Capacity, Availability and Recovery. In what order? Which criterion has more weight in the final decision? What other criteria should we take into account so as not to bring unpleasant surprises?

At the time of choosing

Now we will see some questions, some more important than others, so that the decision making in the purchase or expansion of our SAN or NAS is the most appropriate.
Let's start with the importance of Design. The design of the storage system should be agnostic regarding brands and characteristics.
A good design should consider the following requirements:

-Availability -Administration -Replication -Recovery -Safety

Now we will break down the different needs in question format. Some of which will be uncomfortable to a Storage commercial.


[color = # 0000cd] What is my priority order of the design requirements? [/colour]
Priorities in the design of the solution.
Within the design requirements (Availability, Administration, Performance, Recovery and Security)
Depending on the order, some characteristics will have more weight than others, which will naturally also influence the final price of the solution.


[color = # 0000cd] How many IOPS will I have available on my SAN or NAS? [/colour]
IOPS (Input Output Per Second). When we provision an Infrastructure with Storage, we must not only have space available on disk. That space should meet the Performance requirements. And one of the most important criteria is the number of IOPS that I will have available in my Storage System. The IOPS can be measured in units: 500, 1500, 6000, 15000, Etc.

[color = # 0000cd] What technology will my system use? With what Bandwidth will I count? [/colour]
Bandwidth How wide will our Links be? The higher the flow, the greater the volume of data that I will be able to transfer at any given moment. The efficiency of the system will also depend on the technology to be used (FC, FCoE or Ethernet). Bandwidth values ​​are measured in Gbps (Gigabits per second). The different values ​​can be 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, 16 or up to 32 Gbps. FC technology is more efficient than Ethernet, but also more expensive.

[color = # 0000cd] Can we estimate what Latency values ​​to expect for our system? [/colour]
Latency A critical value in the performance of a storage system is latency. The lower the Latency the higher the System Performance. Latency will be the product of a combination of values ​​such as Cache, Bandwidth (in Gbps), Throughput (in Mbps) and IOPS. Latency is measured in ms (milliseconds). Ex 2, 5, 10, 15, 30ms.

[color = # 0000cd] What total capacity do I need according to my different needs? [/colour]
Capacity. In principle, it's the easiest thing, right? What total capacity do I need? A good storage system should have several types of storage. For example we could have a storage space for files of about 4TB in NL-SAS disks at 7200rpm, about 2.5TB for Virtual Machines in RAID 5 on SAS disks at 10k, 1TB on RAID 10 15k for critical Virtual Machines and 600GB on SSD for VDI or BBDD. As we can see not so important the total capacity as the distribution of the disks, as much in base to yield, high availability as final space available.

These are the first questions that we should ask, We continue on " HOW TO EVALUATE THE ACQUISITION OF A STORAGE TO VIRTUALIZE - Section II"

---