Business Continuity
iSCSI in a virtualized world
Architecture can provide flexibility, scalability, high availability, reliability and performance.
by Larry Cormier
Virtualization
technologies are changing the way
organizations deploy server, networking and
storage resources. These new architectures
are more flexible and require organizations
to provision storage resources quickly and
easily in an effort to meet dynamic demand.
In the past,
organizations were likely to deploy static,
inflexible, homogeneous storage
environments, typically tapping a single
vendor to provide Fibre Channel storage area
networks (SANs). Often, manageability was
viewed as an add-on, a throw-in that a
storage vendor provided for a nominal fee
and sometimes for free. Complexity
throughout the shared storage environment
was accepted, countered only through
advanced training and by expensive
consultants.
In the past several
years, IP storage has gained traction among
large and small organizations alike, mainly
due to its scalable and increasingly
high-performing architecture. While in the
past, Internet small computer system
interface (iSCSI) was seen as low-end,
bare-bones storage that was better suited
for small, non-mission-critical
environments, the availability of
next-generation storage products has
simplified complex administration, while
offering new capabilities like
non-disruptive scalable performance.
The iSCSI architecture
can align storage environments in
virtualization technologies. These
environments need additional flexibility,
scalability, high availability, reliability
and performance. iSCSI allows IT to quickly
provision storage resources, integrates
shared storage with virtual server
environments, and enables flexible and
dynamic business models.
Leading iSCSI SAN
solutions allow organizations to take
advantage of existing infrastructure to
deploy reliable, scalable and efficient
multisite SANs. The performance increases
over the past several years make delivering
data quickly across large distances
possible–without degrading performance.
While resources may be distributed,
management remains consolidated through a
centralized console, giving administrators
the flexibility to deliver storage wherever
and whenever the business dictates.
Multisite iSCSI SANs
provide built-in redundancy and failover
capabilities, protecting the business from
regional disasters or data center outages.
For example, if a storage node is
unavailable, the infrastructure is already
in place to redirect the traffic load to
available resources–whether volumes are
stored on campus or across geographies. When
business growth requires additional
capacity, nodes can be provisioned quickly
using iSCSI, making it available to
applications and end-users.
iSCSI also enables
processing power and bandwidth to be scaled
in accordance with capacity. Some iSCSI
storage vendors allow customers to build
SANs from clusters of storage nodes, where
each node includes RAM, memory and its own
network ports and disk drives, making sure
these resources are not taken away from
existing nodes.
iSCSI SANs can also
increase utilization. With IP storage
solutions that save data over the entire
cluster, capacity is balanced between nodes,
ensuring that part of the system is not
overloaded while other nodes remain
under-utilized. This capability helps
eliminate single points of failure, allowing
data to automatically failover between nodes
in case of planned or unplanned downtime.
The modular design of
iSCSI SANs gives administrators the ability
to add, administer and replace nodes quickly
and without having to take systems off-line
or otherwise affect end-user productivity.
This extends the flexibility of the server
network to the storage realm, optimizing the
entire IT infrastructure for end-to-end
virtualization solutions.
iSCSI also can extend
virtualization capabilities throughout the
data center and beyond, without compromising
the high-level advanced features.
Larry Cormier is vice president of marketing for LeftHand Networks, Boulder, Colo.
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