File virtualization helps NAS show its star power.
At some point during the evolution of networked storage systems,
network attached storage (NAS) became a second banana — the
Pepsi to storage-area networking’s Coke, the Jimmy Olsen
to SAN’s Superman. While SANs were associated with blazing-fast
performance, NAS was considered something of a low-end storage
option.
That appears to be changing. An increased focus on file-based
information is moving NAS into the spotlight.
NAS devices have traditionally been implemented as general-purpose
file servers — relatively simple plug-and-play appliances
that move data in formatted files. SANs, meanwhile, dominated the
networked storage market due to their ability to rapidly move data
in unformatted blocks among multiple hosts with multiple storage
systems.
Today, however, it is estimated that file-based information such
as spreadsheets, presentations, text documents, video and audio
files constitute about 80 percent of enterprise data. NAS, combined
with faster Ethernet speeds and the continued development of file
virtualization technology, is perfectly suited to handle this growing
workload.
Virtual Stardom
Regulatory compliance is another factor in NAS growth. Organizations
are storing more and more data to ensure compliance, and retention
times have changed from days to decades. According to analyst firm
TheInfoPro, that’s one reason NAS footprints have tripled
since 2005, from an average of 50TB to close to 150TB. Analyst
firm IDC estimates that the NAS market will grow from $2.1 billion
in 2005 to about $3.4 billion by 2009, representing a robust 12.9
percent compound annual growth rate.
With increasing numbers of NAS file servers in place, management
issues become paramount. That’s where file virtualization
has come into play.
“Virtualization has simplified the implementation of NAS.
In 2005 we started to see a big increase in virtualization, and
what we are seeing now is a lot of NAS being installed,” said
Farid Neema, a principal at the Peripheral Concepts technology
consulting firm.
Central Casting
File virtualization eases the management of large numbers of NAS
appliances by making them appear as one logical file system to
the server. This provides a central point through which all clients
can access files, breaking the traditional one-to-one relationship
between server clients and NAS file servers.
“File virtualization solutions … address three key
business requirements: the need to consolidate dispersed corporate
information onto more easily manageable NAS systems, the need to
enable more effective use of business information, and the need
to reduce the cost of doing business,” said Richard Villars,
vice president, Storage Systems, IDC. “The companies we spoke
with reported that file virtualization allowed them to reduce storage
costs by 50 percent to 80 percent, while improving management efficiency
by up to 90 percent.”
Neema said a survey by his firm indicates that 41 percent of organizations
with more than one terabyte of disk storage have implemented NAS
virtualization, up from 29 percent in 2005 and 25 percent in 2004.
NAS virtualization solutions are being deployed by customers in
major industries including automotive, biotech, education, healthcare,
manufacturing, technology and financial services (including four
of the top five U.S. financial institutions.) Benefits cited by
these customers include increased networked storage utilization,
optimized performance, accelerated storage consolidation and flexible
data protection.
While the NAS market is hot right now, that doesn’t mean
SANs are going away. The two technologies can easily coexist when
the storage environment handles a mix of block and file data. In
fact, unified storage systems that combine SAN and NAS with multiple
storage interconnects is becoming an increasingly popular storage
infrastructure. At the very least, however, NAS has shown it can
hold its own as a co-star on the networked storage stage.
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