Network Storage

Network Storage: Tools and Technologies for Storing Your Company’s Data explains the changes occurring in storage, what they mean, and how to negotiate the minefields of conflicting technologies that litter the storage arena, all in an effort to help IT managers create a solid foundation for coming decades.

The book begins with an overview of the current state of storage and its evolution from the network perspective, looking closely at the different protocols and connection schemes and how they differentiate in use case and operational behavior. The book explores the software changes that are motivating this evolution, ranging from data management, to in-stream processing and storage in virtual systems, and changes in the decades-old OS stack.

It explores Software-Defined Storage as a way to construct storage networks, the impact of Big Data, high-performance computing, and the cloud on storage networking. As networks and data integrity are intertwined, the book looks at how data is split up and moved to the various appliances holding that dataset and its impact.

Because data security is often neglected, users will find a comprehensive discussion on security issues that offers remedies that can be applied. The book concludes with a look at technologies on the horizon that will impact storage and its networks, such as NVDIMMs, The Hybrid Memory Cube, VSANs, and NAND Killers.

• Puts all the new developments in storage networking in a clear perspective for near-term and long-term planning
• Offers a complete overview of storage networking, serving as a go-to resource for creating a coherent implementation plan
• Provides the details needed to understand the area, and clears a path through the confusion and hype that surrounds such a radical revolution of the industry

IT managers and administrators, network system sales and marketing staff, network system integrators and support staff, Networking students, faculty, and researchers

Chapter 1. Why Storage Matters

Chapter 2. Storage From 30,000 Feet

• What Is Computer Storage?
• Storage Today
• Storage in 3Years
• The Distant Future: 2019 and Beyond

Chapter 3. Network Infrastructure Today

• Storage Area Networks in Transition
• Filer (NAS—Network-Attached Storage)
• Scaling to Infinity—Object Storage
• Hard Drives
• The Solid-State Revolution
• RDMA—the Impact of All-Flash and Hybrid Arrays
• Optimizing the Datacenter
• Q&A

Chapter 4. Storage Software

• Traditional Solutions
• Pools, Lakes, and Oceans
• Compression, Deduplication, and All That
• Open-Source Software
• Virtualization Tools
• The Operating System Storage Stack

Chapter 5. Software-Defined Storage

• Prelude
• Software-Defined Storage
• A Completely New Approach
• Who are the Players?
• “Lego” Storage
• Connecting the Pieces
• Unified Storage Appliances
• Agility and Flexibility
• The Implications of SDS to the Datacenter
• SDS and the Cloud
• The Current State of SDS
• The Future of the Storage Industry

Chapter 6. Today’s Hot Issues

• NAS Versus SAN Versus Object Storage
• Ethernet and the End of the SAN
• Commoditization and the Storage Network

Chapter 7. Tuning the Network

• Getting up to Speed
• Tuning for Fast Systems
• The New Storage Tiers
• Caching Data
• SSD and the File System
• What Tuning Could Mean in 5-Years’ Time

Chapter 8. Big Data

• Addressing Big-Data Bottlenecks

Chapter 9. High-Performance Computing

• Major Scientific Experiments
• Big Simulations
• Surveillance Systems
• The Trading Floor
• High-Performance Computing Clouds
• Video Editing
• Oil and Gas

Chapter 10. The Cloud

• What Is the Cloud?
• Cloud Hardware
• The Future of Cloud Hardware
• Cloud Software
• The Changing Datacenter Density, Cooling, and Power
• Using Cloud Storage
• Hybrid Clouds
• Hardware of the Cloud Over the Next Decade
• Software of the Cloud Over the Next Decade

Chapter 11. Data Integrity

• RAID and Its Problems
• Replication
• Erasure Coding
• Disaster Protection in the Cloud

Chapter 12. Data Security

• Losing Your Data
• Protecting Cloud Data
• Hybrid Clouds and Data Governance
• Encryption
• Information Rights Management

Chapter 13. On the Horizon

• Solid-State Replaces Spinning Rust
• NVDIMMs: Changing the Balance of Storage
• The Hybrid Memory Cube
• Virtual SANs
• Internet of Things

Chapter 14. Just Over the Horizon

• NAND Killers
• Graphene
• Further Out