Some Basic Information of fabric switches

Some Basic Information of fabric switches …

Types of Fabric architecture

1.       Cascade

2.       Mesh

Partial Mesh

Full Mesh

3.       Ring

4.       Core-edge

Port type

N node port, connect to N or F port using point to point link

F fabric port, point to point attachment to an N port

E expansion port, connect to another FC switch using an ISL(inter switch link)

FL Fabric Loop port, connect to NL port or port through a FC-AL

G Generic port, Function as any port

L loop port, capable of arbitrated loop functions.

Where these port are.

The ports on Host or storage Filer that connects to the fabric is called N port.

The port on switch that connects to the host or storage filer is called the F port.

The E port connects one switch to another switch.

The G port are unused but when they are used and when they are plugin they automatically get adjusted them to F port or E port.

Names Space

Name server is type of server which manages all the port information and it helps to communicate between the wwn of port to wwn of node and keeps the address of each port and from which device that port is.

Zoning

Two types of Zoning

 Port based zoning

Node name base zoning

Most preferred type of zoning is WWPN (worldwide port name based zoning) because it is more flexible.

Networker a good backup & recovery solution from EMC

NETWORKER

As we know that backup on tape is very slow so most of IT manager is looking for some software which can increase the performance of backup on tape, so that they can backup data fast and retrieve it back with good speed as we know that Symantec is the leading company in selling their backup solutions

Now EMC is also giving the tough fight to Symantec by their backup product such as networker and Avamar, DataDomain

As I don’t know much about backup and I don’t have much of hands on on any backup software, so as I was going through the white paper of networker, I thought of discussing it and writing something on it

As the survey done by many IT product based company they found that in 2012 lots of company is going to spend their money in buying the backup solutions , so that means backup software sales is going to increase this year.

Now let’s talk about the networker solution given by the EMC.

Networker is a backup and recovery solution.

The below given is the Networker definition given by EMC and ESG group.

EMC NetWorker is a well-known and trusted backup and recovery solution that centralizes, automates, and accelerates data protection across the IT environment. It enables organizations to leverage a common platform for backup and recovery of heterogeneous data while keeping business applications online. Networker operates in diverse computing environments including multiple operating systems; SAN, NAS, and DAS disk storage environments; tape drives and libraries; and cloud storage. It protects critical business applications including databases, messaging environments, ERP systems, content management systems, and virtual server environments.

Now EMC networker software comes integrated with some of good EMC software such as Data Domain, DPA (data protection advisor), VADP (vmware vstorage API for data protection), DDBoost(Data Domain Boost).

Let’s see each features functionality and definition.(these definition is given by EMC and ESGgroup).

EMC NetWorker Clone-controlled replication with Data Domain Boost. A key feature available with the integration of NetWorker and DD Boost is clone-controlled replication. Through the NetWorker GUI, administrators can create, control, monitor, and catalog backup clones using network-efficient Data Domain Replicator software. NetWorker also enables administrators to move backup images to a central location where they can be cloned to tape, consolidating tape operations. With NetWorker wizard-based clone-controlled replication, administrators can schedule Data Domain Replicator operations, track save sets, set retention policies, monitor the local and remote replicas available for recovery, and schedule cloning automatically. It also takes advantage of Data Domain’s deduplication, compression, and high-speed replication to reduce data amounts and speed cloning resulting in improved performance and reduced network bandwidth requirements.

EMC Data Protection Advisor. DPA provides unified monitoring, analysis, alerting, and reporting across the data protection environment. It collects information about data protection automatically to inform IT decisions and help administrator’s correct problems and meet SLAs. The software’s single, integrated view brings simplicity to a complex environment, reduces risk, and helps IT work more effectively. DPA takes volumes of disparate data and turns it into actionable knowledge, enabling organizations to reduce costs by more efficiently managing people, processes, and equipment.

Integration with VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP). NetWorker supports VADP, VMware’s recommended off-host protection mechanism that replaces VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). VADP improves performance by eliminating temporary storage of snapshots and enabling support for Change Block Tracking (CBT) as well as improving network utilization and reducing management overhead. NetWorker communicates with VMware vCenter to auto-discover and display a visual map of the virtual environment, streamlining administrative tasks dramatically.

EMC Data Domain. Data Domain systems deduplicate data inline during the backup process. Deduplication reduces the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect data by ratios of 10-30x and greater, making disk a cost-effective alternative to tape.  Deduplicated data can be stored onsite for immediate restores enabling longer-term retention on disk. NetWorker not only can use Data Domain systems as disk targets, but also can leverage Data Domain Boost (DD Boost) software to achieve faster and more efficient data protection. DD Boost increases performance by distributing portions of the deduplication process to the NetWorker storage nodes and/or application modules so that only unique, compressed data segments are sent to the Data Domain system.

DD Boost also provides visibility into Data Domain system information, and it enables NetWorker to control replication between multiple Data Domain systems while maintaining a single point of management for tracking all backups and duplicate copies.

As we know that in today’s world data keeps growing with continuous rate and managing and backing up data is getting complicated day by day, even after virtualization came in picture it saved us by buying more Hardware but in other hand made the backing up & managing data more complicated.

And I hope that networker is good solution for the above problem.

Even we all are very well aware of that after buying the product the next thing comes in picture is support , and according to my knowledge and some customer review  I can say that Symantec is not good in support providing,  they keep you waiting for long to provide the proper solutions.

Well in other hand EMC is very good in support, they don’t make customer wait long for their support help.

Well want to know more about the Networker and want to know how the customer feels after using this product.

Please visit http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2012/01/field-audit-emc-networker/

In above given link you can get good LAB report about NETWORKER software by ESGgroup and even you can get customer report who had deployed this software in their huge Environment.

pNFS(parallel Network File System)

pNFS Overview

"Parallel storage based on pNFS is the next evolution beyond clustered NFS storage and the best way for the industry to solve storage and I/O performance bottlenecks. Panasas was the first to identify the need for a production grade, standard parallel file system and has unprecedented experience in deploying commercial parallel storage solutions."

Introduction

High-performance data centers have been aggressively moving toward parallel technologies like clustered computing and multi-core processors. While this increased use of parallelism overcomes the vast majority of computational bottlenecks, it shifts the performance bottlenecks to the storage I/O system. To ensure that compute clusters deliver the maximum performance, storage systems must be optimized for parallelism. The industry standard Network Attached Storage (NAS) architecture has serious performance bottlenecks and management challenges when implemented in conjunction with large scale, high performance compute clusters.

Panasas® ActiveStor™ parallel storage takes a very different approach by allowing compute clients to read and write directly to the storage, entirely eliminating filer head bottlenecks and allowing single file system capacity and performance to scale linearly to extreme levels using a proprietary protocol called DirectFlow®. Panasas has actively shared its core knowledge with a consortium of storage industry technology leaders to create an industry standard protocol which will eventually replace the need for DirectFlow. This protocol, called parallel NFS (pNFS) is now an optional extension of the NFS v4.1 standard.

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NFS Challenges

In order to understand how pNFS works it is first necessary to understand what takes place in a typical NFS architecture when a client attempts to access a file. Traditional NFS architecture consists of a filer head placed in front of disk drives and exporting a file system via NFS. When large numbers of clients want to access the data, or if the data set grows too large, the NFS server quickly becomes the bottleneck and significantly impacts system performance because the NFS server sits in the data path between the client computer and the physical storage devices.

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pNFS Performance

pNFS removes the performance bottleneck in traditional NAS systems by allowing the compute clients to read and write data directly and in parallel, to and from the physical storage devices. The NFS server is used only to control metadata and coordinate access, allowing incredibly fast access to very large data sets from many clients.

When a client wants to access a file it first queries the metadata server which provides it with a map of where to find the data and with credentials regarding its rights to read, modify, and write the data. Once the client has those two components, it communicates directly to the storage devices when accessing the data. With traditional NFS every bit of data flows through the NFS server – with pNFS the NFS server is removed from the primary data path allowing free and fast access to data. All the advantages of NFS are maintained but bottlenecks are removed and data can be accessed in parallel allowing for very fast throughput rates; system capacity can be easily scaled without impacting overall performance.

pNFS eliminates the performance bottleneck of traditional NAS

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The future for pNFS

It is anticipated that pNFS will begin to be widely deployed in standard Linux distributions by 2012. The HPC market will be the first market to adopt the pNFS standard as it provides substantial performance benefits, especially for the technical compute market. However, simply supporting pNFS will not guarantee the high performance that Panasas currently delivers on its ActiveStor storage systems with DirectFlow. When it comes to matching the pNFS protocol with the back-end storage architecture and delivering the most performance, the Object layout in pNFS has many advantages and Panasas will be ideally situated to continue to deliver the highest parallel performance in the industry.