Storage Arrays Design consideration from users perspective:

With the penetration of Information Technology, all the enterprise applications are expected to be available round the clock and with very good response times. If the applications response times are not as per end users expectations leave alone the availability, there will be an impact on users perspective towards the image of the company and which ultimately leads to loss of business. Latencies are introduced while accessing applications at multiple levels (network between end user and application server, network between application server and back-end database, data latencies in database machine while retrieving data and again the same in reverse order while sending the data back to end user). Now-a-days, with 10GigE network, the network latencies are reduced by somewhat. If the entire database is to be stored in a single physical machine, then it is definitely a single point of failure scenario wherein, if you lose that machine, your application is not useful although it is up. So it is better if we have central data repository to which we can read from/write to at any time. Earlier, NAS used to serve this purpose. But again NAS works on TCP/IP layer which has overhead associated with it which increases the database latencies. With the advent of fibre channel protocol which works on physical layer (because of which less overhead compared to NAS), all the central repositories are moved to Storage Area Network (SAN). In SAN environment, storage array serves the purpose of central repository and it will be connected to hosts either directly or through fibre channel switches (to increase the number of devices the can be connected to array). All together, it maintains the separate communication channel not interfering with Ethernet network that is used for communication across all devices. Now-a-days storage arrays contain entire enterprise data and as such becoming single point of failure. Also application performance depends on the number of disks spinning in the storage array. There are many different storage arrays available in the market. As storage array is playing critical role in data center operations, the key challenges in choosing the storage array include array should be up all the time even if some parts are down, the failed parts should be field replaceable, it should serve the requests at minimal latencies, application I/O requirements should be met etc. In short it is called as RAS (Reliability, Availability and Serviceability). Following are some of the key factors to keep in mind while designing/choosing the storage arrays. 1) Ease of management i.e., most of the functions should be handled by array with very little/no human intervention. 2) Field serviceability i.e., most of the array should be field replaceable without requiring downtime.

3) Should be energy efficient i.e., storage array should not consume too much of power, reduce the amount of heat dissipates which in turn reduces the costs incurred in cooling the equipment. Also it should consume less floor space when rack mounted which reduces the real estate costs. 4) Storage should be scalable as per customer requirement i.e., customer should be able to start with minimal equipment and scale it as and when he/she requires. 5) Storage array should be able to serve different type of applications workloads that exist on it. 6) Should be able to use the latest innovations and bring cutting edge technologies to customers fore. 7) Should be able to use the already incurred expenditure and be able to extend the life of existing assets.