CSG2132: Enterprise Data Assignment - Storage Virtualization

This assignment solution addresses key concepts in enterprise data management, focusing on storage virtualization and capacity planning. The solution begins by differentiating between examples and non-examples of storage virtualization, explaining the functionality of LUNs, DAS, and RAID0. It then examines SAN configurations, discussing oversubscription and its implications. The differences between NAS and SAN are outlined, followed by an explanation of LUNs and their uses. Thin provisioning benefits are discussed, along with strategies to prevent SAN oversubscription. The relationship between thin provisioned LUNs and capacity planning is explored, as well as methods for storage administrators to plan for increased storage requirements. The solution also considers the primary concerns during application server migration to a larger storage array and how to address them. Finally, the solution recommends a data archiving solution for an organization with strict data retention requirements, detailing the solution's benefits and potential drawbacks. The assignment concludes with a bibliography of relevant sources.

Running head: ENTERPRISE DATA
Enterprise Data
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1. Which of the following are NOT examples of storage virtualisation?
Describe the functionality of the ones that are examples of storage
virtualisation.
In this case the VMWare Workstation, Microsoft Hyper-V and Software Defined
Storage are not the examples of storage virtualization.
LUNs being provisioned from a disk array:
LUNs are used in thin provisioning (also known as virtual provisioning) for storage
area network (SAN) management. A virtual LUN is also sometimes called a thin LUN.
Direct Attached Storage:
The main functionality of Direct attached storage is in reference to dedicated storage
arrays attached directly to servers. It is used to distinguish DAS from networked storage
arrangements, like SAN or NAS devices.
RAID0:
The main functionality of the RAID0 is storing the same data in different places on
multiple hard disks to protect data in the case of a drive failure. However, not all RAID levels
provide redundancy.
2. Describe whether each of the following SAN configurations is
oversubscribed. Is this a bad thing?
Currently all the following SAN configuration are oversubscribed. This happened due
to the fact that multiple devices are connected to the same switch port for the switch use
optimization.

Oversubscription:
Oversubscription is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, SAN admins have been doing
this for some time. For the typical Windows administrator who has graduated to virtualization
administrator, managing oversubscription may be a new skill.
3. Describe the primary differences between a NAS and a SAN
NAS is a single storage device which operates on data files, whereas SAN is a local
network of multiple devices which operate on disk blocks.
SAN connects to only those devices that have SCSI fibre channel and belong to the
server class. In contrast, NAS can connect the devices that exist in a LAN and able to utilise
protocol such NFS or CIFS.
In SAN the file system is handled by servers, whereas in NAS the head unit controls
file system.
Information is shared by a server-based operating system in SAN, which is why it
relies on the operating system. As against, NAS allow higher sharing particularly among OS
like UNIX and NT.
The backup and mirrors are made using blocks in SAN. Inversely, in NAS files are
used to generate backup and mirror.
4. Why can a SAN be divided into separate LUNs? Give an example of
what a LUN might be used for.
In a SAN fabric, LUN storage is essential to the configuration of the environment and
its performance. A LUN is a unique identifier given to separate devices, or logical units, so
they can be accessed by a SCSI, iSCSI or Fibre Channel protocol. LUNs are key to disk array

configuration because disks are typically defined in sets of RAID groups to protect against
failure; however, those RAID groups can't be presented to the host. By assigning LUNs, all
or a portion of a RAID group's capacity can be presented to the host as individual, mountable
volumes.
Use of LUN:
In computer storage, a logical unit number, or LUN, is a number used to identify a
logical unit, which is a device addressed by the SCSI protocol or Storage Area Network
protocols which encapsulate SCSI, such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI.
5. Thin provisioning allows administrators to dedicate more storage to
LUNs than is physically available. What benefits does this have for a
business? How can a storage administrator prevent a SAN from becoming
oversubscribed when overprovisioned?
Thin provisioning can aid storage capacity management by allowing storage
professionals to optimise their purchases of disk space by allowing a LUN volume to be
provisioned without requiring the physical disk space to be present until it is ready to be
written to. In the business aspects thin provisioning allows storage to be provisioned but not
consumed until data is written. Storage-provisioning time is greatly reduced, because the
storage for an application is crated quickly, without depending on the actual physical space
available.
Oversubscription is a slightly different concept in storage provisioning. In thin
provisioning, a large amount of storage is set aside for an application, but storage is only
released incrementally as additional capacity is needed. Since the application is given control
of far more storage than it's actually able to use at the moment, that total storage capacity is

said to be "oversubscribed" or "overbooked". This practice can tie up a considerable amount
of storage long before it's ever really used, but it allows automatic allocation that can ease the
management burden for storage administrators. Thus in this case the storage administrator
need to limit the usage of storage for preventing SAM becoming oversubscribed.
6. What is the relationship between thin provisioned LUNs and capacity
planning? How else can storage administrators plan for increases in
storage requirements?
Thin provisioning can aid storage capacity planning by allowing storage professionals
to optimise their purchases of disk space by allowing a LUN volume to be provisioned
without requiring the physical disk space to be present until it is ready to be written to. This
capacity planning can be done by forecasting storage growth and by determining different
types of storage allocation.
Rather than that, new installations can be done by the storage administrator for
increasing the storage requirements. Here the storage administrator is Responsible for
planning and execution of the storage installation. Also the storage administrator need to
perform any host-level tasks need to access new storage.
7. If an application server is being migrated to a larger storage array, what
would be the primary concerns for the users of the server and how could a
storage administrator address those concerns?
Migrating an application server can be complicated because there are bound to be
differences between the original and target environments and this is the main concern for the
users and the server. Furthermore, applications server, even cloud server applications, are not
typically designed to be portable. Applications created on various cloud development

platforms, such as Windows Azure, Google App Engine and Force.com, are usually designed
to run on the platforms they were developed on. Other elements such as operating systems,
management tools, the networking architecture, the storage system and the virtual machine
(VM) configuration can all differ from those in the environment where the application was
developed or deployed.
The storage administrators follows some steps for addressing concerns regarding
application server migration. For addressing the issues storage administrator carefully
switches off the whole system. Then a proper backup has been taken of the current system
and flowing that new storage array has been installed in this case. In the last step the backed
up data properly recovered in new storage array. The storage manager ensures that this type
of concerns doesn’t occur during the migration process by a proper planning of migration and
with that repetitive practice is also required in this case.
8. An organisation is required to meet strict data archiving requirements.
They must retain all customer documents in digital format for at least 10
years and must be able to guarantee that archived information cannot be
altered.
They process a large number of customers, but the customer documents do
not consume a lot of disk space.
What kind of solution would you recommend to meet their requirements?
Describe any possible drawbacks to your solution.
Data archiving is the process of moving data that is no longer actively used to a
separate storage device for long-term retention. Archived data consists of older data that is

still important to the organization (like the data locked when you retire legacy systems) and
may be needed for future reference, as well as data that must be retained for regulatory
compliance. Data archives are indexed and have search capabilities so files and parts of files
can be easily located and retrieved. In this case for a proper data archiving solution AWS data
archiving which is known as amazon glacier solution has been recommended in this case.
This is recommended in this case as it is affordable in nature and it offers a complete set of
cloud storage services for archiving.
The main limitations in this case are regarding its security which is provided by AWS
itself. Security is one of the main features so AWS limits some of its features which cannot
be changed at all are-
 EC-2 classic- Maximum of 500 per instance and each Security Group can have a
maximum of 100 permissions.
 EC2-VPC- Up to 100 security groups per VPC.
AWS does have general cloud computing issues when you move to a cloud such as a
downtime, limited control, and backup protection. However, these flaws can be overcome
after some time. This makes them the temporary issue. This produces the main limitations for
the provided solution.

Bibliography:
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G., Simrock, S. and Makijarvi, P., 2015. Data archiving system implementation in ITER's
CODAC Core System. Fusion Engineering and Design, 96, pp.751-755.
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