Green Storage

Green. Not just good for the environment, it's good for business.

Going green involves a lot more than just energy consumption these days. It's the overall efficiency of the system that really counts. Which is especially important since Gartner predicts that within the next 2-3 years, half of the world's data centers will become obsolete because of power and space restrictions.

Now there's a way to use less power and less space, yet still get all the performance and capacity you need for your centralized storage system -- the Axiom from Pillar Data Systems.

How do you deliver performance while cutting costs?

Most data centers have multiple tiers of data that need to be accessible at any time, from high-priority Tier 1 data to archival (Tier 4) data. Obviously Tier 1 data needs to be accessed at the highest speeds, while archival data can be accessed at a slower pace. The Quality of Service (QoS) level you set for each tier of data will determine how much you can store on each disk (Disk Utilization), since data stored at the outside edge of the drive is the fastest to access.

To increase performance by reducing seek times, most manufacturers use a technology called short stroking, which writes data only to the outer bands of the disk, where speeds are the highest. While this reduces seek times, it also reduces the amount of data you can store on a disk, since only the outer bands are used.

Pillar uses a new methodology that places the data requiring the highest performance on the outer rings, and the data most tolerant of longer seek times (such as archival data) on the inner rings. This makes better use of each disk, while still keeping performance high. Pillar QoS manages the I/O queues to appropriately deliver the right level of performance to each type of data, simplifying life for IT managers.

The more you can store on each disk, the more you can consolidate your drives (Drive Consolidation), further saving on space while reducing power and cooling costs.

How do you improve capacity without sacrificing performance?

The easiest way to increase data storage performance is to reduce seek times. Most of the industry achieves this by "short stroking" - writing data only to the outer bands of the disk, leaving the inner bands (60 to 70 percent of the disk) empty.

Using proprietary Pillar QoS technology, Pillar segregates data on each disk platter based on accepted seek times. So your primary database files and other high-priority data (your Tier 1 data) is stored on the outer rings where performance is highest. Tier 2 data (records that are between 90 and 180 days old) is stored on the disk closer to the center of the platter. Tier 3 data (records between 180 and 365 days old) is stored further inside the disk, with archival (or Tier 4) data stored at the very center of the drive.

This allows you to reduce the amount of data storage capacity you need by approximately 63 percent. Which also reduces your power, cooling, and space needs.

By utilizing more of each disk, you can improve your Quality of Service and your ability to consolidate your drives (Drive Consolidation).

How do you get more out of a single floor tile?

Most IT professionals put simplification at the top of their key issues. One way to reduce complexity in the data center is to deploy storage platforms that are designed to host multiple services. This allows you to move off of a DAS (Direct-Attached Storage) system of silos, and onto a network-based storage solution that offers increased capacity, scalability, and cost savings.

With Pillar, you can host SAN (Storage-Area Network), NAS (Network-Attached Storage), and WORM (Write-Once, Read-Many) functionality on one Pillar Axiom system. With one user interface, one licensing scheme, one training class, and all in one single floor tile.

For example, you can consolidate your file shares off multiple servers into one NAS Slammer solution. Separate Pillar Bricks within the unit can support SQL and Exchange server files. Backups can be handled on the inner bands of disks, eliminating much of the need for tape backup. And images can be hosted on Axiom drives, eliminating the need for an optical library.

By consolidating your storage onto a single, multifunctional system, you space, power, cooling, and time, which dramatically improves efficiency. And, since IDC calculates that administrators can manage more than 20 TBs more data in a networked environment, this approach will allow your IT department to focus resources on other activities that can deliver more value to the business.