1. CDW Storage Solutions
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH STORAGE
There was a time not too long ago when hard drive capacities were measured in megabytes. Now, even
small-business hardware can be scaled to hold more than a terabyte — 1024 gigabytes — of data. Does any
company need that much storage? The answer is an unequivocal yes.
The amount of information produced each year is skyrocketing.
According to the Enterprise Strategy Group, companies are seeing a
90 percent annual growth rate for e-mail, reports and presentations.
In other words, every message, every PowerPoint file and every
document produced by every employee in an organization is being
stored somewhere, and the bulk is nearly doubling every year.
Large businesses store data on tape drives and hard drives, both
in servers and backup repositories. Depending on the size of the
operation, the amount of data and the speed with which personnel
needs to access the data, storage costs can be considerable.
Trends
A recent CIO Insight report by Jeffrey Rothfeder (May 2006) pointed
out that many companies are realizing that they can no longer benefit
sufficiently from the vast amount of information they maintain.
THE STORY CITES RESEARCH COAUTHORED BY ECONOMIST
HAL VARIAN, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA–BERKELEY’S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS, WHO
FOUND THAT COMPUTER USERS PRODUCED FIVE EXABYTES
OF NEW INFORMATION IN 2002, TWICE THE AMOUNT
CREATED JUST TWO YEARS EARLIER.
(Five exabytes is roughly equivalent to the information that would
be contained in a half-million new libraries the size of the print
collection at the Library of Congress.) About 92 percent of this new
information is stored in magnetic media, primarily hard disks.
How can companies gain control over that kind of information
overload? And how can they ensure that older data is stored and
protected appropriately while new information is kept closer to “Our ability to store and communicate information has
the ”surface“ but also protected? far outpaced our ability to search, retrieve and present
“Information governance programs,” Rothfeder writes, “are an
it. Information management may turn out to be one of
attempt to corral all of this information into a useable form, the major challenges of the new century.”
an ambition that so far has eluded most organizations.” — Hal Varian, economist, University of California
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2. CDW Storage Solutions
STORAGE
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
ILM involves a set of policies, processes and tools used to match the
“[NEW YORK State Attorney General] Spitzer figured business value of information with the most appropriate and cost-
out e-mail is the Achilles’ heel of the folks he went effective IT infrastructure, from the time that information is created
after. Then other regulatory agencies and plaintiff’s to the time it is destroyed.
attorneys jumped on the bandwagon.” Companies are also using storage area networks (SANs) —
— Rosalind Conway, manager of information document a separate infrastructure of communication hardware and
retention services, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP administrative software tools — to better manage the flow of
information between corporate servers and storage media. The goal
In addition to the glut of information clogging up corporate data with ILM is to establish a set of rules — for example, transaction
centers, recent government and industry regulations have put data is resident on location three’s NAS device for six months, then
tremendous pressure on executives to ensure that customer and moved to the tape archive and kept for five years, then destroyed —
financial data is both readily accessible and safe from theft. and to automate the policy using management software, so IT
administrators aren’t stuck managing scads of information.
Laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the Financial Services Modernization
MAIL SERVER APPLICATION SERVERS
Act (also known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley) require strict privacy
protocols for medical and consumer-banking records. The
Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandates an audit trail for critical accounting
FILE SERVERS
activities and requires procedures that limit the ability of
employees to access and alter internal corporate files.
COMPANIES THAT HAVE GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS MUST
MEET NUMEROUS POST-SEPT. 11 SECURITY DEMANDS,
RANGING FROM SECURITY AND INTRUSION PREVENTION TO HIGH-SPEED
FURNISHING RECORDS OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK SWITCH
AND REPORTING SUSPECTED ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.
ETHERNET
Meanwhile, companies involved in litigation may have corporate
or e-mail data subpoenaed, and those records have to be up to date BUSINESS NETWORK
and accessible.
In response to these concerns, approaches such as tiered storage SAN (Fiber Channel or iSCSI)
and information life cycle management (ILM) have evolved.
Tiered storage architecture puts the data that is most frequently
NETWORK-ATTACHED BACKUP SERVER TAPE ARCHIVE
accessed and most time sensitive (e.g., transaction data from STORAGE
a customer database) on high-end storage systems, such as
network-attached storage (NAS) or direct-attached storage (DAS).
Data that has less stringent access time requirements or that is
less needed for daily operations is stored on lower-performance
(Online Hard
systems or archived to tape. Drive Array)
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3. CDW Storage Solutions
STORAGE
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Issues and challenges
Information life cycle management projects can take up to four » Create a (print and electronic) document retention strategy
years to complete, and the costs may seem steep at the outset. and schedule
But companies need ILM to address concerns about: » IT and business staffers work together to classify information
» Regulatory compliance based on:
» Preparation for litigation » Low-hanging fruit (applications that consume the most or least
space, critical servers that are nearly full or empty)
» Service-level maintenance
» Priority of specific applications
» Data availability
» Automate the policy for data creation and storage going forward
» Application performance
New storage technologies such as virtual tape drives and
» Disaster recovery/business continuity
disk-to-disk backups are being used to address some of the cost
In a recent CIO Insight report, Mike Workman, CEO of network storage and retention issues. In a virtual tape library, hard disk–based systems
company Pillar Data Systems Inc., states, "ILM doesn't save you money. reside between a data storage setup and a tape archive, and act as
It just lets you exploit the information your company owns." That a buffer when backup to tape takes more time than is available. Hard
exploitation can reap serious benefits, however, in terms of improved drives serve as a relatively low-cost middle tier for storage.
resource utilization and operating efficiency.
On the regulatory side, backup and ILM software products
The report suggests that companies follow this sequence let you manage your data storage with global policies and
for implementing a data management solution: automated enforcement, sometimes combining time stamps
» Start with e-mail retention and archiving and write-once-read-many (WORM) features to ensure that
(because of legal concerns) documents and files are not tampered with.
» Take an information inventory
to determine what else is being
Meta data and retention
stored and how 1 policies used to store
data on appropriate
» Implement tiered storage storage system
Data to be archived and
2 backed up is moved to
disk-based system Data saved to
3 tape for disaster
recovery purposes
Disk-based backup Tape backup
Low cost High performance
Modest to low I/O Removable media
Secondary storage
Modest performance
Modest to high I/
O
Primary storage
High performance
High system I/O
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4. CDW Storage Solutions
STORAGE
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
Integration
The best way to derive the most benefit from revamping storage
systems and deploying an ILM scheme is to ensure that your data
center is fully integrated with other cutting-edge solutions.
Specifically, you’ll want to ensure that network switches are tightly
coupled with new servers to ensure optimized performance. Many
backup and monitoring products are designed to fit directly into server
racks and blade chassis, so you can leverage the space-saving and
management ease already built into the hardware and use the
accessory devices to support entire stacks.
In addition, security products — either software or appliances — and
uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) are also crucial to maintaining
“ILM WON’T TELL YOU WHAT DATA TO RETAIN FOR REGULATORY
the integrity of your data storage. Security software scans and protects
COMPLIANCE, BUT IT CAN HELP YOU TO RETAIN APPROPRIATELY,
network devices from malicious code, and UPSs provide a window
SO INFORMATION CAN BE PRODUCED IF THE COMPANY IS
of opportunity for data to be saved and servers to be shut down
SUBPOENAED… A GROWING BODY OF CASE LAW IS EVOLVING
gracefully in the event of a power loss.
FROM COMPANIES THAT WERE BLINDSIDED BY THEIR LACK
OF A RECORDS-RETENTION PROGRAM.”
— DAVE RUSSELL, RESEARCH DIRECTOR, GARTNER
Tiered Storage at Work
Solutions — what’s available $50
$40
Storage solutions, including NAS, DAS and storage-attached
$30
network devices, provide primary storage capacity that is
$20
online and accessible at all times.
$10
Hard drive and storage device vendors such as Buffalo, LaCie and $ 0
Maxtor are well known in the DAS and NAS market categories for < 1 month 1 month – 1 year 1 year +
solutions that can store from 200GB up to two more terabytes. Data Age
These devices feature Gigabit Ethernet connections for high
performance and high-speed transfers.
SAN management systems are available from HP, IBM and
Veritas, to name a few. These come with high-speed hubs and
cables to connect the network with the storage infrastructure, SOURCE: CIO Insight, June 2006
plus management software to let administrators write and enforce
CareGroup Health System and Harvard Medical School, as healthcare providers
policies, and monitor performance and capacity. required to comply with HIPAA regulations, must guarantee the integrity of their
data. The state of Massachusetts requires them to maintain clinical records for
Backup and archive solutions include tape drives (from such vendors 30 years. CIO Dr. John Halamka uses a “scalable and predictable solution” involving
as Exabyte and Quantum) and data management software — from multiple, tiered SANs. New information is stored for the first month on a high-end
storage facility that costs $44 per gigabyte. Between one month and a year, it moves
BrightStor, Symantec and Veritas, for example — which makes backup to less expensive, less reliable middle-tier storage, at a cost of $22 per gigabyte.
schedules, file recovery and ILM protocols easier to implement. Information older than one year is maintained at a cost of $11 per gigabyte.
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5. CDW Storage Solutions
STORAGE
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
CDW is your solution partner
When you’re ready to fight data overload and bring your
company into compliance with government and industry
regulations, CDW has the selection and expertise to deliver
every component of hardware, software and services you need.
CDW has the latest storage devices from Exabyte, Buffalo,
LaCie, Maxtor and many others, in form factors that will
fit every business need and budget. In addition, CDW has
cutting-edge network infrastructure hardware, including
switches that deliver 10 Gig-E speeds and Power over Ethernet.
And when you’re integrating security into the mix, CDW can
build malware scanning and filtering right in the server array.
You’ll also need the right software to monitor server and
network performance, scan and enforce security policies, and
manage backup duties. CDW has the best products from every
major vendor, and its specialists will help you choose the right
mix to keep your data center in optimal shape.
CDW’s experts are available to assist you with
design and planning, preconfiguration of hardware,
installation and integration, and post-sales support.
In fact, CDW has 250 industry-certified specialists to
ensure you get exactly what you need — every step
of the way.
Once your newly compliant and cost-effective storage network
is up and running, CDW can help with hardware and software
upgrades, maintenance and service warranties. If your equipment
needs repair or other problems arise, you have 24 x 7 access to
CDW’s technical support. And as your business grows and you
need additional hardware, more software licenses and more
advanced levels of service, you have the assurance of knowing
CDW has the selection and expertise to grow with you. Make
the right choice and partner with CDW for all your business
computing needs.
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6. CDW Storage Solutions
STORAGE
DEALING WITH EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
HP® STORAGEWORKS® 1500CS MODULAR
SMART ARRAY STARTER KIT
Provides a robust hardware foundation for future solutions which ensures
maximum investment protection CA BRIGHTSTOR® ARCSERVE® BACKUP R11.5 FOR WINDOWS
» Reduces the cost of building up to a 48TB consolidated storage array
system while giving all the benefits of an enterprise-class SAN and enabling Protect your business-critical data
near-online disk-to-disk backup » Disk-to-disk-to-tape backup (disk staging)
» Ability to mix primary (SCSI) and near-online (SATA) storage behind the » 64-bit platform support
same SAN controller for easy-to-install tiered storage solutions
» Virus-free backup
» Ability to utilize a tiered storage approach as data values decrease,
choosing the right disk technology for your data storage » Multiplexing for increased performance in a networked environment
» Broad operating system support recently expanded to include HP-UX, » Integrated support for Microsoft® VSS
®
Windows, and Linux Includes one-year Enterprise Maintenance (24 x 7 technical phone support
CDW 853440 and upgrade protection)
EDC 837987
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OVERLAND NEO™ 2000 LTO-3 LIBRARY EMC® CLARIION® CX3 ULTRASCALE™ SERIES
Rack-mount, 30-slot, Ultrium LTO-3 tape library The CX3-20 is the entry point to the UltraScale
The Overland NEO™ 2000 ensures constant access to data with features such series. With four 4Gb/s front-end and two 4Gb/s
as LiveSwap tape drives and removable power supplies, which provide nonstop back-end connections, it scales up to 120 drives,
backup operation. 60TB of capacity and 128 high-availability
(dual-connected) hosts.
» Increases the efficiency of backup/restore applications in medium-sized
organizations » Offers the flexibility to mix and match high-performance and low-cost
drives to meet different service levels — for all-in-one tiered storage
» Protects your investment by scaling to accommodate rapidly growing
storage needs » Delivers disaster-recovery capabilities with full support for MirrorView and SAN
Copy software providing a cost-effective, array-based remote-replication solution
» Always have access to your data with NEO’s Distributed Robotics Architecture
that provides failover capability from module to module » Offers end-to-end 4Gb/s bandwidth resulting in increased I/O performance
across all application types, and improved performance for CLARiiON
» Supports 30 LTO-3 cartridges (up to 24TB) and two tape drives (up to
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1TB/hour), rack-mount; available with LTO-2 and SDLT 600
CDW 986822
CDW 756497
SPONSORED BY:
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