CSG Storage Workshop

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CSG Storage Workshop
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Workshop Team

• Bruce Vincent (Stanford)
• Scotty Logan (Stanford)
• Dennis Cromwell (Indiana)
• Ron Thielen (U Chicago)
• Kitty Bridges (Michigan)
• Additional presenters
• Cory Snavely (Michigan)
• Jim Pepin (USC, en route to Clemson)

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Agenda

• 1-120 Survey Results (Kitty)
• 120-215 Framing the discussion definitions,
  emerging technologies, policy, architecture
  (Ron)
• 215-245 Case Study Research storage (lots of
  small files, as in genomics) (Jim)
• 245-3 BREAK
• 3-330 Case study library archive storage (Cory)
• 330-4 Case study research storage (lots of big
  files, as in astronomy, physics) (Dennis)
• 4-445 Case study tiered storage architecture,
  virtualization (Ron, Scotty)

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Survey Results
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Institutions Responding (19)

• Brown
• Carnegie Mellon
• Columbia
• Duke
• Georgetown
• Harvard
• Indiana
• MIT
• NYU
• Penn State

• Princeton
• Stanford
• University of California
• University of Chicago
• University of Colorado
• University of Michigan
• University of Virginia
• University of Wisconsin
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
  University

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File Service Offered
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File Service Quotas
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How Many Staff Manage It?
Separate groups? Yes 74 (14) No 26 (5)
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Staffing

• Do you have problems recruiting and retaining
  skilled storage staff?
• Yes 47.4 (9) No 52.6 (10)

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Mitigating these problems?

• Adjusted the salary levels for storage staff to
  reflect the market.
• Hardware and Software Consolidation,
  automation/tools, delegation/self-service
• By keeping things simple (e.g. no SAN
  requirements, etc.), but it is unclear how this
  will scale.
• Standardize on more current mainstream
  technologies and move away from technologies with
  a strong historical legacy but not a significant
  current relevance such as AFS.
• We're currently using some contractors, and more
  training for our existing staff, but we're still
  looking for ideas.
• Take longer to find people who love storage and
  that is what they want to do as a career.

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Mitigating these problems?

• Staff members with good storage management skills
  are just one of the areas where we worry about
  finding and keeping talent. It is difficult for
  us to match corporate compensation, but we find
  that money is not the ultimate decision maker.
  Training is important and we are diligent about
  keeping a training budget. We allocate 1400 per
  FTE in the organization. This is pooled and
  allocated as appropriate, so it gives us some
  flexibility to keep staff skills fresh and to
  build depth in critical areas. We also like to
  keep work interesting, which is very important to
  highly motivated technical staff. In addition, we
  recognize outstanding work with both small
  monetary bonuses and publicity. Still, we
  recently lost our best SAN person.

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Client replication technologies, (MS Offline
Files Folders or Apple's Portable Home
Directories?

• Yes12 (2) No88 (15)

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Block storage (11 using, considering)

• Considering iSCSI
• Dont provide block storage direct to end-users.
  We think we can do it via iSCSI but haven't
  really done much than ponder the possibility.
• SAN and NAS, as well as DAS
• Provide block storage to major campus "services"
  through EMC software the EMC DMX Clarion
  storage systems.
• Fiber channel primarily iSCSI planned for future
• EMC DMX and Clariion
• Fibre Channel SAN available to servers hosted in
  data center
• Block storage is only provided in the data center
  
• NAS
• NFS, iSCSI and SAN attached.
• SAN

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Storage in Data Center

• EMC Clarion and DMX, HP EVA 8000 and 5000, also
  use CISCO directors for the SAN
• Network Appliance
• EMC, NetApps
• Almost exclusively EMC currently researching
  other vendor's offerings (SUN, Hitachi and Apple)
• IBM, Sun/Hitachi
• EqualLogic for iSCSI ACNC for direct attached
• Network Appliance, SUN, Apple, Hitachi, IBM
• IBM FastT and Shark HP SANStorage
• Network Systems EMC CX700 Storage Array for
  Databases, FileServices, Exchange and Backup
  Storage Brocade Silkworm Switches Storage TEK
  L180 Tape Library Administrative Computing
  Storage Tek V2X Storage Array for mainframe, AIX
  Oracle systems Brocade Silkworm Switches Storage
  Tek Timberwolf Tape Library
• EMC DMX, Clariion HP EVA Equallogic iscsi

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Storage in Data Center

• Cisco MDS 9000 series switches, Brocade Silkworm,
  EMC Clariion, DMX and Sun
• EMC DMX and Clariion storage arrays, EMC NS704G
  NAS gateway, Nexsan ATAbeast and SATAbeast
  storage arrays, IBM and StorageTek tape
  libraries, Cisco and Qlogic Fibre Channel
  directors and switches Emulex and Qlogic Fibre
  Channel HBAs
• NetApp, Dell/EMC SAN, Sun/Hitachi SAN, StorageTek
  SAN, IBM SAN
• EMC DMX, HDS USP Tagmastore, IBM DS4800, Sun 5320
  NAS Gateway
• IBM, Sun, and Network Appliances for central
  services
• Primary SAN for Enterprise systems will be an
  Hitachi Tagmastore, moving from an IBM Shark. We
  have a mix of Direct attached storage, SAN and
  NAS for other areas inlcuding EMC and HP.
• Primarily Sun storage (w/ Brocade switches) for
  Unix platforms. Windows environments typically
  have direct attach storage on file servers from
  Dell.
• IBM mid-range SAN disk, Brocade switches, IBM
  tape robotics with 3592 drives, NetApp filers,
  Linux and Windows servers, IBM SAN Volume
  Controller for virtualization

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Remote Access
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Underlying Tech for Service
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Specialized Storage for HPC?
Yes 37 (7) No 63 (12) NetApp Sort of, we
provide Network Appliance filer space to our
research clusters. EMC DMX2000 and DMX800 via
Cisco SAN Fabric BlueArc (and other dedicated NFS
servers) IBM SAN IBM DS4800
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If one backend technology for all storage (7
reporting)

• Moving into that direction - virtualized storage
  - but not there yet. We use the IBM SAN Volume
  Controller (SVC) on the hDSAN side to virtualize
  across the EMC and HP storage arrays.
• Network Appliance Filers
• Some is on direct attached storage ( a case by
  case choice by the user / service) but the vast
  majority is on EMC storage over a fiber channel
  SAN
• SAN technology with an EMC Clariion storage array
  that provides shared access to centralized
  storage.
• EMC DMX and Clariion FC storage presented via FC
  McData switches, and CIFS via EMC NS704G NAS
  gateway. Expect to expand to NFS and CIFS in
  future.
• HDS Tagmastore USP 1100

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Backing it up
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Meets Needs?
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Backing up Mobile Devices?

• mobile devices PDAs - no. mobile devices
  laptop - yes, moving to LiveBackup from Atempo.
• Connected desktop backups
• TSM (3)
• Support for these devices is provided through a
  server that is backed up with our Backup
  Services. The only supported application is based
  on MS Exchange and utilizes existing mailboxes
  already on the servers and being backed up

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Desktop Backup
We are investigating providing desktop and laptop
backup and have made a short list of vendors in
this space. Included are Atempo, Asigra and Iron
Mountain
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Tiered Solution (17)

• TSM (4)
• All of our (3) tiers of storage use the same core
  back up technology (TSM) which allows individual
  customizations of timing and overall strategy
• Multiple tiers of disk storage, but predominantly
  use TSM clients on the hosts for backup. A few
  exceptions for our large ERP systems where we
  clone the volumes storing the database and back
  them up from a dedicated server to minimize the
  backup window
• TSM, NSR, IBM's "flashcopy" and NetApp's
  snapshots
• IBM Tivoli Storage Manager policy domains,
  management groups, and storage groups allow us to
  implement numerous combinations of storage tiers
  and timing strategies for different requirements.

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Tiered Solutions

• Use the traditional Unix methodology of daily,
  weekly, and monthly incremental backups.
• See detailed slide deck (Walter Wong from CMU)
• We havent done any tiered data with backups, we
  do however utilize different disk solutions based
  on the service requirements. For Example
  Exchange We use only Fiber Channel 15000 RPM
  Drives File Servers We use Raid 5 ATA Drives
  Backup 2 Disk We use Raid 3 ATA Drives
• 2 tiered storage based on perf/avail. No backup
  distinction yet.
• Use Veritas Netbackup for large backups that
  require a small window to complete because of the
  technology Vertias provides with support for
  multiple streams we can complete backups more
  quickly than we can with TSM.
• All issues we need to consider though!

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Separate Archive Service

• Operate a ADIC StorNext HSM for research data
  that sort of fits this mission.
• TSM (5)
• We currently do minimal archiving using a
  function in TSM and store both to tape and to
  disk.
• We provide archive via IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
  for servers and services hosted by IT Services.
• Do not provide a separate archive service and
  currently use the archive component of both TSM
  and Legato
• We do some end-of-semesters that are archived for
  5 yrs.
• Minimal archive service for CIS internal use
  only, using an archive to tape with Legato
  Networker. We see archival strategies as a means
  to increasing usable storage and will be looking
  into other application and file system archive
  solutions in the near future. Mainframe
  environment monthly archive of unchanged files
  to tape.

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Library Archives Service (19)
Library doesnt provide service 68.4
(13) Library alone provides service 26.3
(5) Library provides a service in partnership
with central IT 5.3 (1)
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Considered Outsourcing?

• We have a partnership with the Duke Health
  System. They have a large SAN for health care
  data that we leverage for top tier storage.
• Twice researched the option and rejected it due
  both to cost and loss of local flexibility.
• Have looked at outsourcing backup twice. Both
  times the cost benefit was not evident. When you
  assess in detail the breakdown of roles/resp
  breakdown between customer and provider, there is
  still a significant resource commitment on the
  customer side.
• Considered outsourcing our desktop backups. We
  had issues with lack of support for non-Windows
  platforms, some support and bandwidth problems,
  and no way to take a single charge from the
  vendor and break it out to re-bill our users.
• This topic brings perceived security/privacy
  concerns to the surface a cost/benefit analysis
  will be interesting outsourcing may fit as a
  piece of the life cycle management of
  information we are just at the early stage of
  "consideration."
• Considered it but found we could do it cheaper by
  centralizing all of campus

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BC/DR Impact

• Increased the storage requirements and increased
  the importance of the storage strategy. A driving
  factor in our desire to explore a more
  centralized enterprise storage architecture.
• Customers are requesting shorter RPO's and RTO's
  and in some cases are willing to accept longer
  RTO's if RPO can be improved. Causing us to more
  seriously assess replication, quasi single
  instance stores, virtualization etc. Pushed us
  toward service mirroring, replication
• For top-tier storage, the SAN is in a different
  location than the ATLs. TSM and offsite tape
  storage is also used to provide recovery
  capabilities.
• Working on a project with Virginia Tech to
  leverage our NLR connections to hold copies of
  critical data at their location.
• We must modernize and update to new software, new
  hardware, employ disk-to-disk-to-tape, and use
  off-site replication of storage arrays.
• Have looked to adopt technologies that support
  replication and failover in order to support an
  enhanced DR strategy.
• SAN extension and replication combined with both
  server and storage virtualization enable us to
  address BC and DR requirements in ways that were
  previously unapproachable.

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BC/DR

• Post 911 BCP and DRP awareness has increased
  dramatically but unfortunately that awareness has
  not been accompanied by significant increased
  funding. We are now faced with almost
  uncontrolled growth in amount of stored data.
  Since we actively mirror all institutional data
  the end result of the explosion in data storage
  has been the consumption of our entire storage
  budget in "storing". Our costs have grown too
  fast for us to be able to mount a detailed and
  effective BCP.
• Currently in the process of re-evaluating our
  entire backup and storage architectures. Also
  driven by the new compliance issues around
  Electronic Evidence and E-Discovery legislation.
• Current disaster recovery strategy is ambiguous.
  Nightly copies of our backup tapes are sent to
  Iron Mountain for storage. In the event of a true
  loss of datacenter disaster we would look for
  assistance from our vendors and peer institutes
  to assist us in our recovery. We have taken under
  advisement the need to have a well documented and
  institutionally driven business continuity plan.
  When we do move forward in developing this there
  should be many driving factors for storage,
  including requirements for data redundancy,
  archival, and data accessibility.

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Summary of Unsolved Problems

• Funding, funding models, costs
• Smart data storage (data de-duplication,
  compression, life cycle management)
• Multi-platform, with as close to native access as
  possible
• Replacing current distributed file services (DCE,
  DFS)
• Virtualization and tiering
• More, more, more (and staying ahead of or on par
  with demand)

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Details on Unsolved Problems

• In the process of implementing a broad array of
  storage, backup and recovery services. Developing
  the detailed delivery approaches, the
  funding/business models and the policy/procedure
  details will require considerable effort in the
  coming year.
• Data de-duplication technology will make a huge
  improvement in our ability to adequately backup
  our data
• Cost control which equates to storage volume
  control. We are actively researching the
  acquisition of an automated archiving solution
  which would necessarily include storage
  classification tools / software so we can control
  both what and where (in terms of tiers and/or
  archiving) we store as well as simply how much.
  We are also looking in to adding a 4th tier of
  storage with lower performance and (hopefully)
  greatly reduced costs
• A good replacement for what we have in DCE/ DFS
  now.
• Archival Desktop Backup Centralized Storage
  for Research Computing
• True virtualization of file and storage
  infrastructure.

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Details on Unsolved Problems

• Universal client access with a reasonable
  authentication / authorization environment
  doesn't exist. vendor storage implementations are
  about 10 years behind commonly accepted ideas in
  storage/filesystem research and they don't seem
  to be generally aware of that fact. scalable
  horizontal growth of storage is just starting to
  get mainstream and usually is appearing with the
  iSCSI vendors. backup technology is slow to move
  to CDP ("continuous data protection") and still
  rooted in old models that don't fully leverage
  the cheap storage that is available. transparent
  tiering of data based on usage with policy is
  barely a glimmer in commercial products. Selling
  "ILM" solutions is confusing the market place and
  solutions for properly tagging data is being
  confused in or buried by marketing babble data
  scrubbing of failed disk drives in RAID sets
  doesn't seem to be in the common thought process
  yet similarly, disk level encryption is still in
  its infancy tape encryption is getting better
  but that is still slow. key escrow of all this is
  also a pain. "disks are cheap storage is
  expensive" isn't common knowledge so there is
  unreasonable pressure to provide "enterprise"
  class storage at commodity pricing. Compare the
  cost of a 750GB drive (0.60 per GB) vs. "cheap
  RAID" (1.33 per GB) vs. "enterprise class SAN"
  (10 per GB).... and none of these costs include
  replication for BC/DR, backups, etc (though it
  does include RAID and hot-spare overheads).

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Details on Unsolved Problems

• The need to provide a variety of network file
  system solutions (cifs,nfs, iscsi) and not a good
  platform for enabling that type of access easily
  to the storage infrastructure we have built.
• No single file protocol that works well from on
  and off campus on Linux, Mac and Windows without
  extra client software, provides rich access
  controls and supports our central authentication
  service. Enterprise scale laptop backup software
  is still lacking for non-Windows platforms. Key
  escrow for device and backup encryption is poorly
  supported by vendors.
• Growth of digitization of information,
  information life cycle management, encryption,
  compression
• Petabyte storage solutions for researchers.
  Trying to find a scalable way to store tens of
  Petabytes w/o managing multiple storage arrays.
• Adequate funding to keep up with the ever
  increasing demand within the university community
• Increasing demand for centralized file services
  from departments. Multi-site redundancy of
  storage for critical services. An enterprise
  backup solution that would allow us to provide
  backup services for department with local storage.

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Summary

• Growth in data is a huge problem - an unfunded
  mandate in higher ed
• Federal and other requirements for keeping and
  protecting data for longer periods
• Unmanaged data is becoming a larger problem -
  were just keeping ever ything because it is too
  hard to clean things up
• Inefficiency
• Not aligning least used data with least expensive
  solution
• Backing up a lot that doesnt need backup, not
  backing up what does
• Cost and funding models
• Technology pieces complicated to knit together
  into a solution

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NEXT Setting the Stage Case Studies

• Setting the stage
• Defining terms, regulations, architecture
• Case studies
• Library archive
• Large data stores
• Small data files
• Large data files
• Tiered storage and virtualization
• (Case Study on website)