Intelligent File Virtualization

Getting a Grip on Storage Growth
How leading companies are reducing storage costs and improving
management efficiency with intelligent file virtualization
• Richard Villars, Vice President, Storage Systems, IDC
• Nigel Burmeister, Director Product Marketing, Acopia Networks
Agenda
- Welcome and Introductions
- IDC’s Research and Analysis:
- Rick Villars, VP Storage Systems, IDC
- IDC Data & Analysis on Storage Growth
- Content and Copies – Key Challenges
- Impact of File Virtualization Real World Examples
- File Virtualization – A Real World Overview:
- Nigel Burmeister, Director Product Marketing,
Acopia Networks
- File Virtualization and Challenges of Storage Growth
- Technology Overview - How It Works?
- Review Four Customer Deployments
- Next Steps
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Getting a Grip on Storage Growth
How leading companies are reducing storage costs and improving
management efficiency with intelligent file virtualization
Richard Villars
Vice President, Storage Systems
Copyright 2007 IDC. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. All rights reserved.
Take-Aways From Today
Unstructured data is changing the storage priorities for
enterprises and industry players
Active (and permanent) archiving will be the major consumer
of disk storage and influence future storage management
strategies
Virtualization and consolidation will disrupt many existing
storage practices
With the right solution you can dramatically
reduce hardware cost, system complexity, and
administrative overhead
© 2007 IDC
How Much Will We Keep?
WW Consumption and Spending
on Enterprise Disk Systems (EB)
($B)
Our need to store more information
continues to explode
$35
35
$30
30
$25
25
$20
20
We’re not going to pay a lot for
more hardware capacity
$15
15
 Spending grows at a 3.8%
$10
10
$5
5
$0
0
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
WW disk system revenue
Exabytes shipped
© 2007 IDC
 Capacity grows at 57.3% CAGR
CAGR
The real questions
 What are we doing with all this
new capacity?
 How will we manage it?
What Will We Keep:
Changing Enterprise Data Profile
Consumption of External
Disk Capacity by Type
(EB)
CAGR
10.0
62%
Compliance and business
analysis are driving surge in
replication of data
47%
Explosion in file-based,
unstructured data is changing
storage needs in the data center
9.0
8.0
7.0
6.0
5.0
4.0
Structured, transaction-oriented
data accounts for declining
portion of storage needs
 Secondary storage is the
3.0
new primary storage
2.0
1.0
37%
 Spur to investments in file
management technologies
0.0
2006
2007
2008
2009
Fixed content
Replicated data
Traditional business data
© 2007 IDC
2010
 Cost-effective archiving
becomes a hot issue
Real World Challenge:
File Server Migration and Consolidation
Goal: Consolidate dispersed file servers/NAS systems onto
more scalable systems to boost utilization, enable greater data
sharing, and improve backup/data retention processes.
Problem: Migration of even a limited number of file servers can
take six months to a year to plan and execute
 Consumes large amounts of IT management resources and
planned downtime hours
 Severe disruptions and reduced end user productivity
"In a one European office, it took almost a year to migrate 10
file servers, including the dedication of one FTE for the entire
time.” Global Financial Services company
© 2007 IDC
Real World Challenge:
Dynamic Data Protection and Tiered Storage
Goal: Reduce the cost and effort associated with storing and
protecting old, infrequently accessed data
Problem: End users refuse to eliminate old files from
networked drives or email and refuse to manually move data to
separate archival drives
 Backing up infrequently used data increases backup times
 ….leads to massive duplication of data on tapes
"We have many static reference files as well as a large archive
of old project documents. Managing the reallocation of this
fixed data across file servers and NAS systems consumed
100% of the time of one of my three storage administrators.”
European-based International Design company
© 2007 IDC
Real World Challenge:
Building Rich Content Depots
Goal: Reduce the capital and operational costs of deploying
and expanding storage for large pools of rich content
Problem: The unpredictable growth and access characteristics
of rich content makes managing storage system capacity
growth, performance, and availability extremely difficult
 Disruptions due to constant rebalancing of systems and
directories
 Overwhelms existing backup practices
"We were adding a TB of capacity a week for rich content and
had a dedicated person juggling of files and file directories
across multiple NAS systems. Partners had to stop using the
system when we made changes." Global Media company
© 2007 IDC
Meeting File-based Storage
Challenges With File Virtualization
Enable use of installed assets and minimize disruptions to
existing processes
Allow enterprises to deploy and consistently manage data
across a wide range of storage tiers with different
performance, capacity, availability and cost characteristics,
without requiring wholesale displacement of existing assets
Provide a common set of scalable and highly available global
name space, data migration, data lifecycle management, and
data protection services
© 2007 IDC
Real World Success Stories
Network-based File Virtualization
Companies reduced migration times (including both planning
and downtime) to less than one month while dramatically
reducing disruptions for end-users
“We did a similar migration [in the US] and it took us a month,
including the planning and the coordination. The actual
migration [with file virtualization] took us 2 weekends” Global
Financial Services company
Companies reduced spending on disk storage, improved
recovery times from a days to hours, and dramatically reduced
the time and costs of backup-to-tape
“We used file virtualization and automated data migration facilities
to transparently move all the older files to SATA storage (75%
less expensive) and reduced backup for those older files from
once a week to once a month." US-based Resort and Media
Company
© 2007 IDC
Essential Guidance:
Keys to Future Success
Focus on operational efficiency
 Accelerate migration and
consolidation
 Reduce costs of backup and
archiving
Prepare for a content explosion
 Rethink IT priorities
 Prepare for the long-term data
archive challenge
Effective implementation is critical
 Faster benefits
 Extend value into new areas
© 2007 IDC
File Virtualization
A Real World Overview
Nigel Burmeister, Director Product Marketing, Acopia Networks
The Key to Managing Storage Growth
BEFORE
•
User / application access tightly coupled
to physical file storage
–
–
–
Inflexible: change is disruptive
Complex: multiple mappings to
heterogeneous storage devices
Inefficient: low aggregate utilization
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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The Key to Managing Storage Growth
BEFORE
•
User / application access tightly coupled
to physical file storage
–
–
–
Inflexible: change is disruptive
Complex: multiple mappings to
heterogeneous storage devices
Inefficient: low aggregate utilization
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
AFTER
•
File access decoupled from physical
storage location
–
–
–
Flexible: change is non-disruptive
Simple: single mapping to unified
storage pool
Efficient: maximize utilization
15
Acopia’s Intelligent File Virtualization
• Decouples access from physical file location
• Presents a “Global Namespace” view of the data – a
federation of the underlying file systems
• Masks changes to underlying storage systems from
users and applications
• Automates common storage management tasks
– Migration, Tiering, Dynamic Load Balancing,
Replication
• These tasks now take place without affecting access
to the file data or requiring client re-configuration
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Controlling Costs
• Not all data requires primary
storage
– Match cost of storage to business
value of data
– Files are automatically moved
between tiers based on criteria
• Drivers:
– Storage cost savings
– Backup cost savings & efficiencies
– Operational cost savings
• Benefits:
– Reduced storage costs
– Reduced backup windows and
infrastructure costs
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Case Study: Storage Costs
International trade show company and provider of related exhibitor and visitor services
Environment:
NetApp FAS940c, FAS3020
Critical Issue:
Cost of growing storage
infrastructure
Reasons:
Rapid growth; all data resident
on a single, costly, storage tier
Requirements:
Automated, transparent
movement of data to less
expensive storage
Solution:
ARX1000 cluster
Result:
• 50% reduction in disk spend
• Backup window reduced
from 14 hours to 3 hours
“Based upon these savings, we estimate that we will enjoy a return on our Acopia
investment in well under a year.”
Reinhard Frumm, Director Distributed IS, Messe Dusseldorf
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Case Study: Backup Costs
Leading provider of print and electronic products including the popular For Dummies®,
Webster's New World™, Frommer's™, Betty Crocker®, and Weight Watchers® series
Environment:
Windows file server environment
Critical Issue:
Backups taking too long and too costly
Reasons:
All data being backed up; capacity
growth at 100% per annum
Requirements:
Remove old data from backup data-set
but keep it accessible
Solution:
ARX500 cluster
Result:
• Backup window reduced from >36
hours to <1 hour
• Backup media savings >$60,000 p.a.
“Acopia reduced the size of our backups by 98%, which lowered our media costs by 90%.”
James Sample, Director of IT Infrastructure
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Case Study: Operational Costs
The world’s largest living history museum, including 5 hotels, a broadcast production
facility, a catalog business, retail outlets, a publishing facility, restaurants, and more
Environment:
NetApp FAS250s, R200; ~40TB
Critical Issue:
Time spent manually deleting / moving
content to address out of space issues
Reasons:
Running out of space on tier 1 filers
Requirements:
Automated, transparent way to move
old data onto R200 to free up space
Solution:
ARX500 cluster
Result:
• Manual administration tasks went
from 20 hrs / week to 2 hrs / week
• Tier 1 from >95% to ~30% utilized
“By lifecycling older data from the FAS250 filers to the R200, we avoided the need to add another
FAS250 and sufficient disk to mirror it to the R200.”
Sean Maisey, Manager, IT Operations and Engineering, Colonial Williamsburg
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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File Server Consolidation
• Movement of files between
heterogeneous file servers
• Drivers:
– File server to NAS consolidation
– Lease rollover, platform refresh
– Vendor switch
• Benefits:
– Reduced business disruption
• Cutting Migrations times by 90%
(IDC)
– Lower operational overhead
• No client reconfiguration, automated
– Faster migrations
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
21
Case Study: Server Consolidation
One of the world's leading financial services companies, with global presence
Environment:
Windows file servers, NAS
Critical Issue:
Large scale file server to NAS
consolidation in 24x7 environment
Reasons:
Cost savings in rack space, power,
cooling and operations
Requirements:
Needed to move the data without
disrupting the business
Solution:
ARX6000 clusters
Result:
• >80 file servers migrated to NAS
without business disruption
• Migrations completed faster, with
less administrator intervention
“Acopia's products allow us to consolidate our back-end storage resources while providing
data access to our users without disruption.”
Chief Technology Architect
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
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Summary
• Acopia’s solutions uniquely address the challenges
associated with managing storage growth
– Operations that were disruptive are now transparent
– Operations that were manual are now automated
– Drives dramatic capital and operational expense reductions
• Reducing Storage Capacity Costs by 50-80%
• Reducing Back up Costs by 50-80%
• Cutting Migrations times by 90%
• Acopia offers the only enterprise-class, intelligent file
virtualization solution
– Unique performance, scale, data integrity and accessibility
– Multi-protocol, multi-vendor, multi-location
• Proven in Fortune 500 environments
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
23
Next Steps
For more information
• Visit: www.acopia.com
• Call: 1-978-513-2900 Ext 2
IDC 2007 - The Economic
Impact of File Virtualization
Download the Complete Report
www.acopia.com
- Discussion, Site Assessment & ROI
• Email: [email protected]
Contact information – Acopia Networks
Joe Wisniewski – P) 978-513-2979, [email protected]
Thank you!
© Acopia Networks, Inc.
24
www.acopia.com