NetApp Visual Cheat Sheet - Storage Setup

This is one of the best Visual Cheat Sheet I have seen as it can be a quick stop as volume configuration guide for Volume creation, SnapShot schedule and Storage Presentation.

STOP shouting at the disk array!!!

Disk Latency during a streaming write test - Makes me wonder how much engineering that I never thought about goes into designing disk shelves to keep drives insulated from vibrations.

6 Tips for Improving Storage System Performance

1. Connectivity – Make sure bottlenecks to do not exist within your SAN fabric. or Storage array. Often clients who have 4Gbps Storage systems connecting to 2Gbps SAN switches or HBA's. A smart idea is to quickly review all pieces of your SAN fabric  and the Storage controller ports to identify potential bottlenecks and eliminate them right away.
2. Drive Count – Storage array performance can be often fixed by adding additional disk drives to the storage configuration within the RAID group. The reason this fix works is that by spreading out the workload with the newly added disks, you gain the advantage of having more drives/arms/spindles accessing and retrieving data, and feeding that data to the storage controller to deliver faster I/O.
3. Drive Size – By using smaller & faster drives for high performance environments such as Oracle, you avoid disk drive contention(s). Contention can manifest itself when too much data is placed on larger drives. An example would be trying to place 4TB of data on 1 shelf of 14x 300GB drives or 1 shelf of 14X450GB drives.
4. Drive Type – SATA drives are an excellent format for archive or low I/O applications such as file servers or imaging, but become less ideal for larger VMWare, Oracle,  Exchange or high intensive I/O environments. Make sure you invest in the right technology according to application/workload & follow the best practices effort for implementation.
5. Controller Segregation – As storage requirements continue to grow, small storage shops can eventually grow into large storage shops. If multiple high performance applications are placed on a single modular array it may overwhelm the system. Consider a second array or a tiered architecture should your array have a high combination of performance-oriented application.
6. RAID Level – Raid 10, Raid 1, Raid 6, RAID-DP, Raid5 and other parity combination's all have their strength and limitations. Do your research to make sure the RAID configuration you are considering will support and maintain application performance for the long term.

Disk + Array + Host + Workload CALCULATOR

This tool is used for estimating the efficiency and capacity of disks and disk arrays. The results will appear automatically when you type the value of the required parameters.

Disk and Disk array calculator

NetApp Deduplication

NetApp deduplication is a fundamental component of core operating architecture - Data ONTAP®. NetApp deduplication is the first that can be used broadly across many applications, including primary data, backup data, and archival data.

Key Points:

• Utilize minimal system resources - primary data, backup data, and archival data can all be deduplicated with nominal impact on data center operations.
• Schedule deduplication to occur during off-peak times, applications can sustain critical performance but still realize significantly reduced storage capacity requirements.
• Install NetApp's simple, command-based deduplication feature in minutes. Once deduplication is enabled and scheduled, no other action is required.
• Select which datasets to deduplicate with our tools to evaluate those datasets and help point out the areas that will provide the greatest return.

• Perform a full byte-for-byte validation before removing any duplicate data for worry-free deduplication.

Deduplication Calculator

Storage Efficiency Calculator

2010 Top 10 Storage Vendor Blogs

1. Chuck Hollis (EMC) - http://chucksblog.emc.com/
2. Mark Twomey / Storagezilla (EMC) - http://storagezilla.typepad.com/
3. Barry Burke (EMC) - http://thestorageanarchist.typepad.com
4. Dave Graham (EMC) - http://flickerdown.com/
5. Val Bercovici (NetApp) - http://blogs.netapp.com/exposed/
6. Vaughn Stewart (NetApp) - http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy
7. HP StorageWorks Blog - http://www.hp.com/storage/blog
8. Dave Hitz (NetApp) - http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/
9. Hu Yoshida (HDS) - http://blogs.hds.com/hu/
10. Marc Farley (3Par) - http://www.storagerap.com/

RAID Level Pros/Cons

RAID level pros and cons
RAID level	Characteristics	Minimum number of physical drives	Advantages	Disadvantages
0	Uses striping but not redundancy of data; often not considered “true” RAID	2	Provides the best performance because no parity calculation overhead is involved; relatively simple and easy to implement	No fault tolerance; failure of one drive will result in all data in an array being lost
1	Duplicates but does not stripe data; also known as disk mirroring	2	Faster read performance, since both disks can be read at the same time; provides the best fault tolerance, because data is 100 percent redundant	Inefficient high disk overhead compared to other levels of RAID
2	Disk striping with error checking and correcting information stored on one or more disks	Many	Very reliable; faults can be corrected on the fly from stored correcting information	High cost; entire disks must be devoted to correction information storage; not considered commercially viable.
3	Striping with one drive to store drive parity information; embedded error checking (ECC) is used to detect errors	3	High data transfer rates; disk failure has a negligible impact on throughput	Complex controller design best implemented as hardware RAID instead of software RAID
4	Large stripes (data blocks) with one drive to store drive parity information	3	Takes advantage of overlapped I/O for fast read operations; low ratio of parity disks to data disks	No I/O overlapping is possible in write operations, since all such operations have to update the parity drive; complex controller design
5	Stores parity information across all disks in the array; requires at least three and usually five disks for the array	3	Better read performance than mirrored volumes; read and write operations can be overlapped; low ratio of parity disks to data disks	Most complex controller design; more difficult to rebuild in case of disk failure; best for systems in which performance is not critical or that do few write operations
6	Similar to RAID 5 but with a second parity scheme distributed across the drives	3	Extremely high fault tolerance and drive-failure tolerance	Few commercial examples at present
7	Uses a real-time embedded operating system controller, high-speed caching, and a dedicated parity drive	3	Excellent write performance; scalable host interfaces for connectivity or increased transfer bandwidth	Very high cost; only one vendor (Storage Computer Corporation) offers this system at present
10	An array of stripes in which each stripe is a RAID 1 array of drives	4	Higher performance than RAID 1	Much higher cost than RAID 1
53	An array of stripes in which each stripe is a RAID 3 array of disks	5	Better performance than RAID 3	Much higher cost than RAID 3
0+1	A mirrored array of RAID 0 arrays; provides the fault tolerance of RAID 5 and the overhead for fault tolerance of RAID 1 (mirroring)	4	Multiple stripe segments enable high information-transfer rates	A single drive failure will cause the whole array to revert to a RAID 0 array; is also expensive to implement and imposes a high overhead on the system

Multi-level RAID types

RAID 0+1 (Mirror of Stripes, RAID 01, or RAID 0 then RAID 1)

• Drives required (minimum): 4 (requires an even number of disks)
• Max capacity: Number of disks x Disk capacity / 2
• Description: RAID 0+1 is a mirror (RAID 1) of a stripe set (RAID 0). For example, suppose you have six hard disks. To create a RAID 0+1 scenario, you would take three of the disks and create a RAID 0 stripe set with a total capacity of three times the size of each disk (number of disks x capacity of disks). Now, to the other three disks, you would mirror the contents of this stripe set.
• Pros: A RAID 0+1 set could theoretically withstand the loss of all of the drives in one of the RAID 0 arrays and remain functional since all of the data would be mirrored to the second RAID 1 array. In most cases, the failure of two drives will compromise the array since many RAID controllers will take one of the RAID 0 mirrors offline if one of the disks in the RAID set fails (after all, a RAID 0 array does not provide any kind of redundancy), thus, leaving just the other RAID 0 set active, which has no redundancy. In short, a total array failure requires the loss of a single drive from each RAID 0 set. Provides very good sequential and random read and write performance.
• Cons: Requires 50% of the total disk capacity to operate. Not as fault-tolerant as RAID 10. Can withstand loss of only a single drive with most controllers. Scalability is limited and expensive.

RAID 10 (Stripe of Mirrors, RAID 1+0, or RAID 1 then RAID 0)

• Drives required (minimum): 4 (requires an even number of disks)
• Max capacity: Number of disks x Disk capacity / 2
• Description: RAID 10 is a stripe (RAID 0) of multiple mirror sets (RAID 1). Again, suppose you have six hard disks. To create a RAID 10 array, take two of the disks and create a RAID 1 mirror set with a total capacity of one disk in the array. Repeat the same procedure twice for the other four disks. Finally, create a RAID 0 array that houses each of these mirror sets.
• Pros: A RAID 10 set can withstand the loss of one disk in every RAID 1 array, but cannot withstand the loss of both disks in one RAID 1 array. As with RAID 0+1, RAID 10 provides very good sequential and random read and write performance. These multilevel RAID arrays can often perform better than their single-digit counterparts due to the ability to read from and write to multiple disks at once.
• Cons: Requires 50% of the total disk capacity to operate. Scalability is limited and expensive.

RAID 50 (Stripe of Parity Set, RAID 5+0, or RAID 5 then RAID 0)

• Drives required (minimum): 6
• Max capacity: (Drives in each RAID 5 set – 1) x Number of RAID 5 sets x Disk capacity
• Description: RAID 50 is a stripe (RAID 0) of multiple parity sets (RAID 5). This time, suppose you have twelve hard disks. To create a RAID 50 array, take four of the disks and create a RAID 5 stripe with parity set with a total capacity of three times the size of each disk (remember, in RAID 5, you "lose" one disk's worth of capacity). Repeat the same procedure twice for the other eight disks. Finally, create a RAID 0 array that houses each of these RAID 5 sets.
• Pros: A RAID 50 set can withstand the loss of one disk in every RAID 5 array, but cannot withstand the loss of multiple disks in one of the RAID 5 arrays. RAID 50 provides good sequential and random read and write performance. These multilevel RAID arrays can often perform better than their single-digit counterparts due to the ability to read from and write to multiple disks at once.
• Cons: RAID 50 is somewhat complex and can be expensive to implement. A rebuild after a drive failure can seriously hamper overall array performance.
  

"Single digit" RAID Types

"RAID" is now used as an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple hard disk drives. The different schemes/architectures are named by the word RAID followed by a number, as in RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID  5 etc. RAID's various designs involve two key design goals: increase data reliability and/or increase input/output performance. When multiple physical disks are set up to use RAID technology, they are said to be in a RAID array. This array distributes data across multiple disks, but the array is seen by the computer user and operating system as one single disk. RAID can be set up to serve several different purposes.

RAID 0 (Disk striping)

• Drives required (minimum): 2
• Max capacity: Number of disks x disk capacity
• Description: Data to be written to the disk is broken down into blocks with each block written to a separate disk.
• Pros: Very, very fast since data is written to and read from storage over multiple "spindles", meaning that the I/O load is distributed. The more disks that are added, the better the performance (in theory). As always, if you’re looking for huge performance gains, use a tool such as IOmeter to test your storage performance as the gains may not be that great.
• Cons: When a single drive fails, the entire array can be compromised since this RAID level does not include any safeguards. As disks are added, the risk of failure increases.

RAID 1 (Disk mirroring)

• Drives required (minimum): 2 (or multiples of 2)
• Max capacity: Total array capacity divided by 2
• Description: All data that is written to the storage system is replicated to two physical disks, providing a high level of redundancy.
• Pros: Very reliable, assuming only a single disk per pair fails. RAID 1 tends to provide good read performance (equal to or better than a single drive).
• Cons: Because each drive is mirrored to another, requires 100% disk overhead to operate. Write performance can sometimes suffer due to the need to write the data to two drives, but is often still better than write performance for other RAID levels.

RAID 2: This RAID level is no longer used.

RAID 3 (Parallel transfer disks with parity)

• Drives required (minimum): 3
• Max capacity: (Number of disks minus 1) x capacity of each disk
• Description: Data is broken down to the byte level and evenly striped across all of the data disks until complete. All parity information is written to a separate, dedicated disk.
• Pros: Tolerates the loss of a single drive. Reasonable sequential write performance. Good sequential read performance.
• Cons: Rarely used, so troubleshooting information could be sparse. Requires hardware RAID to be truly viable. RAID 3 is generally considered to be very efficient. Poor random write performance. Fair random read performance.

RAID 4 (Independent data disks with shared parity blocks)

• Max capacity: (Number of disks minus 1) x capacity of each disk
• Description: A file is broken down into blocks and each block is written across multiple disks, but not necessarily evenly. Like RAID 3, RAID 4 uses a separate physical disk to handle parity. Excellent choice for environments in which read rate is critical for heavy transaction volume.
• Drives required (minimum): 3
• Pros: Very good read rate. Tolerates the loss of a single drive.
• Cons: Write performance is poor. Block read performance is okay.

RAID 5 (Independent access array without rotating parity)

• Max capacity: (Number of disks - 1) x capacity of each disk
• Description: Like RAID 4, blocks of data are written across the entire set of disks (sometimes unevenly), but in this case, the parity information is interspersed with the rest of the data.
• Drives required (minimum): 3
• Pros: Well supported. Tolerates the loss of a single drive.
• Cons: Performance during a rebuild can be quite poor. Write performance is sometimes only fair due to the need to constantly update parity information.

RAID 6 (Independent Data disks with two independent distributed parity schemes)

• Max capacity: (Number of disks - 2) x capacity of each disk
• Description: Like RAID 4, blocks of data are written across the entire set of disks (sometimes unevenly), but in this case, the parity information is interspersed with the rest of the data.
• Drives required (minimum): 3
• Pros: Tolerates the loss of up to two drives. Read performance is good. Excellent for absolutely critical applications.
• Cons: Write performance is not very good. Write performance is worse than RAID 5 due to the need to update multiple parity sets. Performance can heavily degrade during a rebuild.

Fortune "100 Best Companies to Work For" - 2010

Each year, FORTUNE magazine compiles the "100 Best Companies to Work For" list from a pool of eligible U.S.-based applicants.

For more details on this year’s ranking and process, go to http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/.

 Click here to check for 2009