Chapter 5 - Storage Solutions

Abstract

There are many differing manufacturers of storage-based equipment, and several methods of delivering storage solutions to servers and clients. Some manufacturers design their storage equipment so that it relies on software that is placed on each host to facilitate access to storage devices. Security should always be a concern, but it is especially important given the high visibility of internet service providers (ISPs) and application service providers (ASPs). Another factor to be considered is the cost versus performance aspect of storage scheme. Server-to-storage access, or directly attached storage, has been in use in much of the history of computing, and still exists in over 90 percent of implementations today. A well-designed and implemented quality of service (QoS) schema can definitely help eliminate the impact large volumes of data may have on other time-sensitive data, but it could still expose network to a level of latency that is capable of growing exponentially. There are several scenarios behind the move to storage area networks. The major one is the need to manage the dramatically increasing volume of business data, and to mitigate its effect on network performance. Storage domain servers help to deliver enhanced data services that are unrivaled by other virtualization solutions.