ADVANCED STORAGE

TECHNOLOGIES IN DATABASES
AND BIG DATA CLOUD
PLATFORM

Reema Adam
KING FAISAL UNIVERSITY
Contents
Storage Technologies .................................................................................................................................. 3
Direct Attached Storage ............................................................................................................................. 3
Network area storage .................................................................................................................................. 4
Storage Area Networks............................................................................................................................... 4
SAN over IP ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Fibre Channel (FC) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) ............................................................. 5
FC Topology ................................................................................................................................................ 5
FCoE Topology............................................................................................................................................ 6
References .................................................................................................................................................... 7
Data has been growing at an immense rates in modern businesses. Big Data is becoming
priority in the businesses and its increasing the storage demands in a way that could only
be imagined just a few years ago. A typical data record has been tripled if not quadrupled
in the size in just the last half decade, however this data has got the following shapes i.e.
Structured, semi-structured and non-structured. It has been stated by the IBM® that 2.5
quintillion bytes of data are being written every day and 90% of the global data has been
created in the last three years alone. It is absolutely clear that the size of databases is
growing miraculously and exponentially.
We need to accept that the data has and is becoming the most valuable corporate asset aside
from the company’s human resources. The challenge for the IT departments in the today’s
corporates is that how such data can be effectively accessed, stored and managed.
Storage area network (SAN) is a model that applies the network to store the data. The SAN
works behind the server to provide the common path between server and storage devices.
SAN also provide the file level access to data that is shared among different resources
which lacks in Server based direct attached storage (DAS) and file-oriented network
attached storage (NAS).
SAN is a predominant technology that is implemented using a fibre channel configuration,
whereas new configurations are also becoming famous these days including fibre channel
over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI. The media that stores the data is also evolving.
As the growth of SANs is increasing and so the world wide domination of internet protocol,
using internet protocol networks for the purpose of transport of storage traffic is in the
forefront of technical development.
These IP networks delivers the increasing levels of cost-effectiveness, interoperability and
manageability. Immediate benefits can be acquired through storage consolidation,
mirroring, management, backup and virtualization by converging the storage with existing
IP networks such as LAN, MAN and WAN. Such convergence will also provide the
increased flexibility, capacity, expandability and scalability.
There are two main standards that are utilizing IP protocol which are FCoE (Fibre Channel
over Ethernet) and iSCSI(IP Small Computer System Interface). Both of which either carry
FCoE or SCSI commands incorporated into an IP datagram.
FCoE is different in that Fibre Channel commands are encapsulated into IP traffic, but this
requires a converged network adapter (CNA) that is capable of speaking both Fibre
Channel and Ethernet for encapsulation. iSCSI operates over standard Ethernet networks
and standard Ethernet adapters at the edge device called the initiator.
Today, 10Gigabit of local area network is changing into more and more in style because
the horizontal application of choice in company knowledge/data centers. Gaining a
competitive edge from deploying ten Gigabit local area network within the enterprise needs
a sturdy IT infrastructure. Moreover, 10GBASE-T and 10 GB SFP+ applications give a
reliable foundation for knowledge/data centers, networking parts and SAN. With a
structured cabling system capable of 10GBASE-T, users are given associate open and trade
standards-based infrastructure that may support multiple converged applications.

Storage Technologies

In the last decade with the advent of World Wide Web and later in the half decade Big Data
emerges as a rapidly growing platform in the social networking, e-commerce and video
streaming, demand for the data storage has been increased enormously. The data has
become a vital resource for every these days to carry out its operation flawlessly. The need
of keeping a secure layer over the useful data has been increased to heights and traditional
tape backups are of no use to keep the data protected. The tape backup does not meet the
requirements of today’s growing data so it has become obsolete. Also there are many issues
associated with tape backup that needs a replacement with much better storage technology.
Downtime is one the major factor in the progress of the current businesses. It has been
published by one of the famous tech magazine that down time of fortune 500 companies is
being reported to have 1.6 hours per week. Coping with such downtime is costing around
896000$ to these companies per year. Another study revealed that such downtime is
costing around 42K$ per hour. A USA survey company concluded with one of the survey
that manager of 200 data centers found that over 80% reported that the down time cost
them over 50000$ per hour and another 20% said that it has been increased to over
500000$ per hour. The need of captivating downtime pushed the industry to develop more
available storage technologies.
There are 3 main configurations of storage technologies:
i. Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
ii. Network area Storage (NAS)
iii. Storage area Network (SAN)

Direct Attached Storage

DAS is the classical way of connection storage devices with the server using a
communication path locally. The Connectivity between the server and the storage devices
is carried out using the cable over the network. Access to the storage devices is being
controlled by the controller which is intelligently built to facilitate such function. The
method has been developed to captivate the short comings of the drive-bays of host
computer systems. When there is a deficiency of storage a new storage device is attached.
DAS also provides the server mirroring feature.

Network area storage

In this architecture every device is attached to LAN. Every device is capable of using
resources to the file level. It is also called a file based architecture. In this topology devices
can access the storage directly where as in other network topologies it is not possible. There
is a separate layer added to cater the shared storage files. The file system that this system
uses is network file system which is an internet protocol application. There is a separate
computer in this topology called filer which acts to perform as a traffic and security access
controller for the storage. There is an advantage of using such approach that many servers
can share storage on a different unit. In this architecture server does not needs a dedicated
storage which ultimately increases the efficient utilization of availability of storage
capacity. Every server is a different platform as they use IP protocol.

Storage Area Networks

In this network like storage direct attached storage, it is connected behind the servers. SAN
is designed to provide the block level access to the shared data storage. As opposed to file
level access, block level access provides the access to the blocks of data stored on a storage
medium. A file may contain several blocks. Storage area networks are designed to provide
the mission critical and high availability needs to the corporates and organizations. SANs
are often built using the fibre channel for connectivity which termed as a switched fibre. It
provides different paths to the storage media eliminating the hazards of single point failure.
Traditional network adapters or Ethernet has many advantages like fibre channel for the
integration of storage area networks. Few of those advantages include high speed and
management tools.

SAN over IP

IP infrastructure was developed to meet the needs of interoperability of different

components and it has been released under the open standard. There are two new IP storage
network technologies that are common these days one of which is Fibre channel over
Ethernet and other is Small computer system interface. There are benefits of using IP
communication across IP network through the fibre channel in those geographic regions
where limit of 10 km may be increased. In internal data centers these fiber channels can
also operate over coaxial or twisted pair cables but at a shorter distance significantly.
The integration of IP standard into such storage mediums provide performance benefits
such as high availability, improved speed, fault tolerance and scalability.
If these solutions are properly implemented they can guarantee a 100% availability of data
at any time without any down time.
The network managers also receives new set of management tools using these IP based
protocols. Security is also enhanced with new encryption methodologies.

Fibre Channel (FC) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet

(FCoE)
Native fiber channel is also a standards technology of storage area network for the
interconnection within and between different data centers located on different geographical
regions. It is a high speed interface for connection of storage devices to servers and vice
versa. It has got very large addressing capabilities.
Like SCSI, Every device acquires the number on the channel it operates to. It is one of the
dominate storage network interface these days. It can also be meshed fully for the decreased
redundancy. It can operate at lower to high speeds. The distance of transmission may
differentiate with media. FCoE process data packets according to the length and distance
allowed by the Ethernet network and vary according to speed and distance. There are
different IEEE standards that supports different distances at different speeds.

FC Topology

Fibre channel is capable of supporting three different network topologies i,e. point to point,
switch fabric and arbitrary loop. Switch fabric allows to have a mesh within the FC. It has
the capability to be configured with fabric islands which connects geographical fiber
channel. These may range any within the medium without IP. Routers and links help fiber
to reach greater distances outside of the fabric. Fibre fabrics also comprise of multiple
topologies such as mesh, ring, cascaded, core-to-edge, but it may also require additional
configuration for connectivity with shared data access, back up and remote mirroring.
FCoE Topology

Fibre channel cannot be accomplished on Ethernet, a separate network is required for this
purpose. If we want to accomplish it on Ethernet we need to use converged network
adapters and allow a single channel to pass Ethernet and fibre channel.
 References

Lake, B., & Karpoff, W. (2002, March 1). US7577817B2 - Storage virtualization system and

methods. Retrieved from https://patents.google.com/patent/US7577817B2/en

Paulsen, J. (2018, January 20). NAS vs. SAN vs. DAS: Which Is Right for You? Retrieved from

https://blog.seagate.com/business/nas-vs-san-vs-das-which-is-right-for-you/

S. (n.d.). Data Center Storage Evolution. Retrieved from

https://www.siemon.com/us/white_papers/14-07-29-data-center-storage-evolution.asp