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Server consolidation and containment in recent years have proven to be successful techniques to optimize IT costs and efficiencies, while increasing business uptime. Today, with the advent of blade server architectures, virtual server technology, and virtualized clustered storage, the expansion of the already proven benefits of consolidation is accelerating.
Clustered storage significantly enhances the benefits of server consolidation, specifically with regard to increased availability, reduced cost, and enhanced scalability, while supporting distributed access to business data. In particular, Xiotech's Magnitude 3D® clustered storage system exploits the proven benefits of clustering within an agile storage infrastructure, enabling organizations to respond quickly and transparently to business changes. When applied to server consolidation efforts, the Magnitude 3D solution sets the storage standard for resilience, responsiveness, reduced cost, and seamless scale. Intra-Controller ResilienceIn consolidated or virtual server environments, where multiple applications access data through a single storage controller, the increased availability of that controller will significantly enhance overall server and application availability and performance.The Magnitude 3D architecture is designed to deliver continuous, uninterrupted storage performance and consequent application uptime by providing failover within the controller. In the event of a controller component failure, the workload associated with the component and its port is transparently redirected to another port. Clustered storage nodes continue to provide storage access to applications, eliminating the significant application performance impacts from failing an entire controller node. Cross-Cluster ResilienceWith the Magnitude 3D architecture, automatic failover occurs across the storage cluster in the case of a controller failure. The clustered storage system transparently redirects workloads to the remaining controller without business interruption. The server "sees" the same storage configuration even though it has been redirected to a new controller.When the controller is repaired, a single click returns the clustered storage system to its previous state- transparent to application processing. Cross-cluster resilience delivers higher availability than traditional chassis-based or replicated solutions. GeoDistributed ResilienceIn consolidated or virtualized processing environments, the ability to immediately and transparently redirect consolidated workloads to disaster recovery sites significantly accelerates the return to normal business operations and revenue generation. Xiotech's DataScaleT GeoRAIDT software delivers seamless, zero-recovery-time failover between geographically separated storage components of a single system. The Magnitude 3D family also enables straightforward data replication between storage clusters over geographic distances. With virtual links, administrators quickly redirect servers to replicated volumes in the case of clusterwide failures. Time-to-recovery can be measured in minutes versus the hours or days experienced in traditional storage environments.Dynamic ProvisioningMagnitude 3D clustered storage systems deliver dynamic provisioning and simplified management, enhancing flexibility and expanding storage and infrastructure availability. Routine tasks that once required planned downtime, scheduled most often after hours or on weekends, are performed during normal business hours. The cost of overtime hours or expensive professional services is eliminated. In one customer instance, this dynamic provisioning resulted in an 80 percent reduction for server management contract services in the first 18 months of production.Transparent Moves, Adds, and ChangesThe architecture enables transparent, online addition, replacement, and removal of disk drives, servers, and virtual storage volumes, in an operating system- and application-transparent environment. IT personnel dynamically manage the storage infrastructure in real time-organizations install, tune, maintain, and upgrade storage configurations continuously to match their business requirements-without sacrificing information availability.SummaryServer and storage consolidation projects, especially virtualization of servers, are undertaken to achieve IT goals such as responsiveness to business changes, optimization and reduction of IT costs, and increased business efficiency. When considering the storage infrastructure, decisions must be made that enable achievement of those IT goals. To achieve efficient server consolidation, containment, and virtualization, care must be taken to match the underlying storage infrastructure with the consolidated or virtualized server infrastructure to maximize business efficiency.With the Magnitude 3D clustered storage architecture, businesses gain optimal resilience, responsiveness, and scalability that enhance and underpin server consolidation and containment projects. As servers continue to be consolidated, businesses must continue to enhance their ability to deploy applications and computation power. Storage must not only eliminate barriers to this consolidation, but also must deliver increased efficiencies through elimination of planned and unplanned downtime, minimization of capital expenses, and elimination of storage-related server footprint. Clearly, the Magnitude 3D clustered storage architecture delivers optimal business value for server consolidation or virtualization projects. |
