Download - Apple Storage Tech for Small Business

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Storage Solutions

For Small and Medium Businesses

Overview

May 2008


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2Overview

Storage Solutions

Contents

Page 3 Introduction

RAID storage

Software versus hardware RAID

Backup hardware and software

Considerations for storage planning

Page 6 Storage Guidelines

Home office solutions: Less than 1TB

Small solutions: 500GB to 2TB

Medium solutions: 2TB to 5TB

Large solutions: 5TB to 10TB

Internal versus external storage

External hard drive considerations

Long-term storage media

Page 9 Storage Connections

How are you connecting your storage?

Higher capacity RAID or SAN solutions

Page 11 RAID Types

RAID principles

Striping

Mirroring

Parity


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6Overview

Storage Solutions

Storage Guidelines

The storage requirements of your business are largely driven by how much data

you create or update on a regular basis. Whether youre a large operation or a sole

proprietor, youll want to consider the following:

How much data do you need to have online, or instantly accessible, all the time?

How much data have you created this year? Spotlight can find all files created in the

last 365 days.

How much will your data requirements grow? Even if your company isnt growing,

consider that youll most likely create 30 to 50 percent more data in the next year.

After determining how many gigabytes or terabytes of data youll have in the next 18

months, use the following guidelines to scope storage, backup, and archive solutions

that are realistic for your business.

Home office solutions: Less than 1TB

Storage: Your computers internal hard disk is usually the primary or only storage

device required for your home office. Additional FireWire or USB hard drives can beadded as your storage needs grow.

Backup:Time Machine in Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is an excellent solution for

one-click, continuous backup. It works with attached FireWire or USB hard drives, or

wirelessly with Time Capsule. Time Capsule is a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station

that includes a 500GB or 1TB server-grade hard drive designed to work with Time

Machine in Leopard.

Archive: Youll need to archive important data and projects on an external hard drive

thats separate from your backup and stored in a different location.

Small solutions: 500GB to 2TB

Storage:The internal storage of a Mac Pro (4TB) or Xserve (3TB) should be sufficient.

You can choose to consolidate your data using RAID or to store different data on

each individual drive. Now you have the ability to configure a Mac Pro or an Xserve

with an internal hardware RAID card for RAID levels 0, 1, and 5. Whether youre storing

photography, video, or your mail server, the Mac Pro and Xserve with an internal hard -

ware RAID card can protect your data without external drive enclosures, power bricks,

or cables.

Backup: If your storage needs fall into the lower end of this spectrum, you can prob-

ably back up to a separate internal drive. But as those needs grow, youll most likely

want to rely on an external drive for backup. This also gives you the flexibility to move

your backup to a secure offsite location.

Tip: If you have space inside your computer

for more hard drives, use it. A Mac Pro has

four hard drive bays, and an Xserve can hold

three Apple Drive Modules. These drive bays

are well cooled, they provide great transfer

speeds, and youve already paid for the

enclosure. A Mac Pro or Xserve with one

hard drive takes up no more room than a

fully loaded system, while each additional

external drive requires another cable, another

AC adapter, and more room on your desktop.


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12Overview

Storage Solutions

Mirroring

The simplest method of achieving data redundancy, mirroring involves writing identical

copies of all data to a pair of physical drives. This results in very high data reliabilityif

one drive fails, the data is still available on the remaining disk drive. However, youll get

only 50 percent storage effi

ciency because two physical drives are required to achievea single drives capacity. Mirroring alone is known as RAID level 1.

Stripe 7

. . .

Stripe 5

Stripe 3

Stripe 1

Stripe 7

. . .

Stripe 5

Stripe 3

Stripe 1

Disk 1 Disk 2

Mirrored pair

Striped pairs

Mirrored pair

=

Stripe 8

. . .

Stripe 6

Stripe 4

Stripe 2

Stripe 8

. . .

Stripe 6

Stripe 4

Stripe 2

Disk 3 Disk 4

=

Mirrored drives contain identical sets of data for total redundancy.

Parity

A more sophisticated method of creating redundancy, parity provides data protection

for an array of drives without requiring complete duplication of the drive contents.

Parity information can be usedalong with the data on the surviving drivesto

reconstruct the contents of a failed drive. The parity data can be stored on a dedicated

drive, as in RAID 3, or distributed across an array of drives, as in RAID 5. In either case,

parity provides much greater storage efficiency than mirroringup to 85 percent for

a set of seven drives. Since parity involves calculating complex algorithms, it usually

requires a dedicated hardware RAID processor and shouldnt be implemented in soft-

ware RAID due to tremendous performance degradation.

Stripe 10

. . .

Stripe 7

Stripe 4

Stripe 1

Stripe 11

. . .

Stripe 8

Stripe 5

Stripe 2

Disk 1 Disk 2

Stripe 12

. . .

Stripe 9

Stripe 6

Stripe 3

Disk 3

Parity 13

Parity 46

Parity 79

Parity 10 12

Disk 4

Parity generation

. . . . . .

RAID 3 stripes data across two or more drives and stores parity data on a dedicated drive.

Stripe 12

Stripe 9

. . .

Parity 10 12

. . .

Stripe 7

Stripe 4

Stripe 1

Stripe 10

. . .

Parity 79

Stripe 5 Stripe 6

Stripe 2

Disk 1 Disk 2

Stripe 11

. . .

Stripe 9

Parity 46

Stripe 3

Disk 3

Parity 13

Disk 4

Parity

generation

. . .

RAID 5 distributes data and parity information across all the drives in an array.

2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, FireWire, Leopard, Mac, Mac OS, Xsan, and Xserve are trademarks of

Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Adobe is a trademark or registered trademark of Adobe Systems I ncorporated

in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective

companies. May 2008 L371597A

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