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Our Expert 

Tim Bray

(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Bray)

Tim Bray from the University of Guelph, now working for SUN Microsystems one of the industry leaders in the Storage 

industry - developed tools like Bonnie.  From the website "textuality.com/bonnie, " Bonnie is a benchmarking tool which

 measures the performance of Unix file system operations. Bonnie is concerned with identifying bottlenecks."

(ref: http://www.textuality.com/bonnie/)

Although not currently identified as a Storage expert, due to the fact - Storage is a new discipline.  Tim Bray has provided 

great new insight into the field of Storage.  He has provided simple tools like Bonnie that help to do on the job analysis and 

comparison of complex computer storage systems.   By collecting storage performance statistics that can be later pumped

into tools like SPSS (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS) to provide complex performance statistical analysis.

 

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Storage Industry Information

One of today's driving factors in the Storage industry include Content Addressable Storage or CAS.  CAS addresses 

the thinking behind how are we to find and access the information that we currently have or will gather in the future.

It is important to note that Network technology is typically referenced in Megabit and Storage technology is referenced in 

Megabyte.  [Excerpt from Wiki: 1 megabit = 10⁶ = 1,000,000 bits which is equal to 125,000 bytes or 125 kilobytes.]

There is allot of ambiguity here in the industry between the usage of bit or byte, but a byte is made up of 8 bits.

GigE or Gigabit Ethernet to the home is another concept who's time has come, allowing for eHOME's that deploy 

network technology throughout for multi-media and internet applications.  SUN Microsystems moto of the 90's 

" the network is the computer" gives us an understanding of the network centric focus for storage going forward, 

and the premise for GigE to the home.

 

 

    Policy based storage – yields storage as a utility, for example in backup solutions as provided by Backup vendors 

like: CommVault, Symantec - NetBackup, EMC - Legato, and HP - Data Protector.

Ultrium, a tape standards group including: IBM, HP and Seagate, developed the Enterprise Tape Technology 

LTO (Linear Tape-Open), that is dominating the industry due to its open source like presentation.  

LTO has replaced other proprietary tape technology in the data center like DLT (Digital Linear Tape) and DDS.

LTO 4 (800G w\ 120MB/s throughput) and LTO III (400G w\ 80MB/s throughput) is now the common standard 

that provides WORM (Write Once Read Many) capability to satisfy new government compliance laws for 

data retention and security.   SOX/Sarbanes Oxley or CSOx in Canada are two such compliance laws.

 

 

Hierarchical Storage or Tiered Storage are methods used to ensure that SAN/NAS storage implementations are cost effective

by using the most cost effective disk technology to house the data.

At the heart of SAN/NAS arrays is RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk), there are two basic types: Horizontal RAID 1

or mirrored layout, and Vertical RAID 5 striped with parity layout.  Vendors incorporate variations of horizontal and vertical 

RAID layouts to enhance data protection.

 

SAN is a block level access methodology and NAS is a fileserver level protocol access methodology.  

using 10Gig with iSCSI and 2/4Gig typically with Fibre Channel in the data center.  NFS and CIFS are two other

common network Filesystem protocols used in SAN/NAS implementations.

Also driving the storage industry are 'Bigger Pipes', a.k.a more bandwidth.  Optical Carriers (OC-n) is one type of network pipe

for carrying large amounts of data, OC-n speed will equal n × OC-1(51.8 Mbit/s) and  DS3/T3 @ 45Mbit/s used to carry data

across Wide Area Networks.

Even with Data Compression schemes like - DRE (Data Reduction Elimination), LZ (Generic Zip type example), 

TFO (TCP Flow Optimization) the drive for more storage increases dramatically every year.

Drive Technology like: SAS/SATA (Serial Attached SCSI), SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface - End of Life), and 

FC (Fibre Channel) using VDISK (Virtual Disk), LUN (Logical Unit), and LDEV (Logical devices) disk virtualization, 

leverage replication technology including: snapshot, volcopy, and SRDF has produced appliances like 

EMC Kashya/RecoverPoint appliance that move data across wide area networks with ease.

 

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More Storage & UNIX Links

	Favorite HP-UX Admin site HP
	Favorite Solaris Admin site Big Admin
	Favorite Solaris Listserv Sun Managers
	Favorite Oracle db portal Oracle db
	Favorite Storage Area Networking (SAN) portal EMC PowerLink
	Favorite Network Attached Storage (NAS) portal NetApp

Back to Top Contact Information Created by: Marlon Rose-Mighty   Created: April 2007 Research and the Internet II   Instructor: MRM Back to Top Comments and Suggestions Please do not hesitate to send mail if you have any questions or concern. Back to Top Copyright Last revised: April 11, 2007 . Google