Overview

As more organizations embark on the journey to create a more dynamic and efficient data center, management solutions that ensure optimization and availability will be critical. In the storage domain, Symantec has been working diligently to deliver improvements to its Veritas Storage Foundation Family and Veritas Cluster File System products. The enhancements include:

• The addition of SSD visibility to Storage Foundation HA 5.1 Dynamic Storage Tiering (DST). Leveraging a policy-based engine that will place files based on by type, size, and owner, DST will also automatically redistribute files to a more appropriate storage tier based on averages of IOs, access characteristics, and even changes over time. This is accomplished using single or multiple heterogeneous storage arrays and can be combined with SSDs located in the host, JBOD, or in any of the arrays. Symantec’s Storage Foundation automatically discovers SSDs and presents them to storage administrators for rapid identification of existing assets. DST can be configured to scan the file system as often or as little as the user would like—ranging from hourly to daily, weekly, or longer—and will automatically and non-disruptively redistribute files.
  • Symantec also has a DST analyzer. This utility allows users to conduct “what if” analyses for future planning or even varying write and read frequencies. This utility will work with Symantec and other file systems.
• Greater thin provisioning awareness and adoption, specifically with SmartMove and the Veritas Thin Reclamation API.
  • Symantec’s SmartMove, a feature of Storage Foundation, enables organizations to migrate data from thick storage environments to thin or even thick to thick, but only copies the blocks that need to be moved—not all of them. SmartMove now migrates data non-disruptively between multiple arrays either locally or across a campus environment with Veritas Volume Replicator.
  • The Thin Reclamation API is gaining traction, with IBM’s XIV and 3PAR arrays now supporting Symantec’s API. The Thin Reclamation API enables storage administrators to automatically and non-disruptively reclaim storage in a thinly provisioned environment. By enabling this API in the storage array, storage administrators will have greater visibility into an environment and can even distinguish between thick and thin as well as which thin pools can be reclaimed and which ones can’t. ESG expects EMC, HDS, NetApp, and Fujitsu to follow suit shortly with full support of the Thin Reclamation API. The Symantec Thin Reclamation API is currently being approved by the T-10 committee to become an ANSI standard.
• Higher levels of availability leveraging Veritas Cluster File System. Symantec claims that it can dramatically accelerate the time required to fail over a mission critical application or database by taking advantage of its clustered file system to mount the storage more rapidly and achieve sub-minute failover times. It will work with a variety of software solutions including SAP, DB2, and Oracle (does not require RAC, only a single instance). With the Cluster File System, all nodes in the cluster have read/write access to the storage, so the application simply needs to be restarted on the alternate node—dramatically reducing application failover times.

The capabilities listed above are all part of SFHA 5.1. Dynamic Storage Tiering is available for Linux and Unix environments. SmartMove and Thin Reclamation are available for Linux, Unix, and Windows environments. Thin Reclamation is generally available for IBM XIV and 3PAR arrays. Veritas Cluster File System 5.1 is also generally available through Symantec distribution channels.

Analysis

Symantec’s announcements are well timed with developments in the data center market. 2009 has been a very difficult year for IT, with many organizations being forced to reduce or keep their budgets flat, so any opportunity to drive greater efficiency and reduce costs by extracting greater value out of existing solutions will be well received. These new enhancements should help Symantec end the year strong and be well positioned for 2010 because:

• In order to justify IT purchases, ESG determined that users need to be able to demonstrate reduced operational expenses, reduced capital expenses, and improved business processes (see Figure 1). [1] The new enhancements to Symantec’s SFHA 5.1 and Clustered File System will meet those requirements.

For example, by using the Clustered File System and a single instance of Oracle instead of RAC, Symantec claims users can save as much as 50-70% of the cost and still ensure sub-minute failover times. Thin Reclamation enables storage administrators to optimize existing storage and reduce the capital budget for additional storage. Dynamic Storage Tiering will ensure that SSD investments are being leveraged correctly and that mission critical applications are guaranteed the performance required. Because it can be used across heterogeneous arrays, organizations are not locked in with a single vendor and competitive bids will drive prices down.

• Organizations realize the value SSDs could provide across a wide range of applications. In fact, ESG asked which business applications would require the improved performance of SSDs. [2] The results, shown in Figure 2,highlight the need for SSD in more than just high performance computing (HPC) environments, including database, e-mail, and business intelligence applications.

To ensure that the SSDs are being leveraged effectively, storage administrators need visibility into the environment and they need to know which volumes are SSD and which are FC or SATA disk. Even more importantly, not all data needs to reside on SSDs; typically 60 to 90 days after data is created, it will become relatively stagnant and will not need to reside on expensive Flash drives. It may not even need FC drives; SATA drives would be the best choice and they could reside on an entirely different array. By utilizing Symantec’s Dynamic Storage Tiering, organizations can enable a wide variety of applications to take advantage of SSDs and other tiers of storage at a file level without disruption, change to the end-user experience, or a modification to existing data protection solutions.

• Organizations are actively transforming data centers to be more dynamic and efficient. A big part of this transformation is the ability to migrate data in a timely and non-disruptive manner. In many instances, data migration causes time and budget overruns. In addition, as organizations look to optimize the new environment and, in particular, the storage environment, technologies like thin provisioning are added. The problem is that most data movement solutions don’t allow for thick to thin data migrations and copy data over exactly as it is in the old array—which is very inefficient. Symantec’s SmartMove technology enables thick to thin migrations and only copies the blocks that are used, enabling maximum utilization in the new system. Additionally, deploying arrays with support for the Thin Reclamation API will enable organizations to guarantee an optimized environment not only on day one, but also on day 10, day 100, day 1000, and so on. Symantec’s reclamation technologies represent a significant improvement over other existing techniques, like zero page reclaim, as they do not require additional IOs to write zeros across the space being reclaimed. As a result, Symantec thin reclamation can reclaim unused space inband, making storage reclamation fully automated and fully transparent to the host configuration and the applications.

What Else Needs to be Done

Symantec understands storage management and these enhancements will certainly help organizations along the data center transformation process by enabling them to better automate and optimize the storage environment. In order to accelerate adoption, Symantec needs to:

• Continue to increase awareness and its list of supported vendors for the Thin Reclamation API. Symantec is off to a good start with IBM and 3PAR, but it needs to expand support. Equally critical will be its ability to educate the market about its benefits, specifically the speed with which it can reclaim data and restore it to the pool.
• Better educate its channel partners and customers on its Dynamic Storage Tiering capabilities and how it will enable organizations to take better advantage of SSDs. With the ability to tier an application’s data across multiple storage media efficiently, organizations should begin to adopt SSDs in greater volume. Symantec needs to emphasis the fact that it doesn’t matter where you place the drive; be it host or array, DST can recognize and take advantage of it to enhance performance.
• Continue to build out utilities, like the Dynamic Storage Tiering Analyzer, that will work without other Symantec products installed. One that would assess a Thin Provisioned environment or demonstrate the savings associated with performing a thick to thin migration would also be very useful to an organization trying to transform its data center. Distributing these tools to channel partners, systems integrators, and professional services organizations would expose Symantec products to a wider range of organizations.

The Bigger Truth

As organizations continue to transform their data centers into more dynamic infrastructures to better support the business, they are going to need new management solutions that can deliver higher levels of efficiency and availability. The enhancements offered by Symantec will enable organizations to not only accelerate the adoption of new technology, but also ensure that it will remain optimized and available in the future. If your organization already has Storage Foundation High Availability deployed, it should be very easy to decide to start taking advantage of these additional capabilities. If your organization doesn’t currently use Veritas Storage Foundation, Veritas Cluster Server, or Veritas Cluster File System, these announcements should make a strong argument for evaluating them.

[2] Source: ESG Research Report, 2008 Enterprise Storage System Survey, November 2008.