Sun white paper: Building Scalable Storage Networks
Interesting reading....here's a small extract:
2. The Pressing Need for Scalable Storage Solutions
The arrival of the dot-com age has made it a competitive necessity to architect storage solutions for dynamic scalability. The data explosion, the new breed of data-driven applications, and the limitations of traditional storage architectures present you with a choice: make your move to network-based, dynamically scalable storage systems, or risk falling far behind.
The Data Explosion
The total volume of data pumping through enterprise networks is doubling every nine months. There are 500 million Web pages on the Internet, with a million new pages being added every day. Application size is increasing. The average file size is swelling. Users are saving and storing everything: Web pages, voice messages, e-mail, MP3 music, and pictures. More and more users are accessing the corporate network, generating and transmitting more and more data. And dot-com applications continue to proliferate - from Web transactions to data warehousing to enterprise resource planning (ERP). The result: storage systems now need to offer dynamic, seamless, massive scalability.
New Demands of the Net Economy
The new breed of applications places tremendous pressure on the IT department to deploy storage solutions that are not only scalable but also continuously available and easily manageable. A quick look at the experiences of real-world companies underscores the urgency of meeting these new requirements:
Massively scalable: In the dot-com world, a single television ad can result in a million visits to a Web site and thousands of online orders - in a matter of minutes. That means additional server and storage resources must be instantly accessible. Just ask Victoria's Secret, which sponsors online fashion shows that can draw up to two million simultaneous online viewers, or ask any service provider that made the "Starr Report" available for online download.
Continuously available: Service outages - for any reason and for any duration - can create what has been called a "CNN moment" - instant news coverage featuring frustrated users, along with apologies from chagrined top-level executives. And news travels fast on the Internet. Service downtime can lead to an avalanche of emails among disgruntled customers. On the other hand, a reputation for highly available, reliable services can quickly establish a company as a major competitor.
Easily manageable: Data-driven network services cannot achieve high scalability or availability if they can't be easily managed across a distributed network. Administrators need to be able to identify requirements, allocate resources, and monitor networks on the fly - regardless of where the devices are physically located.
The full white paper's available at:
sun.com |
