SANsymphony Overview
This preface provides an introduction to SANsymphony™ storage virtualization software, the benefits of the DataCore Network-Powered Storage architecture and some of the concepts and terms used later in this guide.
SANsymphony software is a network-based storage management and control software that spans many different types of storage and server platforms. It is principally used to consolidate and automate the management of these key resources from a central console. Unlike hardware-bound intelligence built into storage arrays and host-based volume management software loaded on every application server, SANsymphony software provides centralized management of storage allocation, replication, mirroring, and other advanced functions at the network level. The base software features provides core management functionality, while several advanced options extend and enhance the capabilities for specific enterprise requirements.
Using SANsymphony software, enterprises are able to significantly improve resource utilization by consolidating and automating storage network management for a diversity of storage devices and servers. Rather than attempting to simultaneously maintain many individual, one-to-one relationships between servers and storage, administrators can manage storage as a consolidated pool of resources, while relying on SANsymphony tools to automatically handle many tasks such as storage provisioning. As a result, the software dramatically improves utilization of disk space and enables enterprises to cost-effectively grow storage capacity without excessively burdening administrators. In SANsymphony software, adding, moving, replicating, and reconfiguring storage volumes occurs without disrupting applications, eliminating costly downtime, and allowing common maintenance tasks to be performed during normal business hours.
Storage Networking Adds Key Functionality
SANsymphony software provides a secure, centralized drag-and-drop graphical user interface (GUI) for all pooled storage resources across the network. From this single point of management, an authorized storage administrator allocates “virtual volumes” to application servers and creates mirroring, remote replication, and Snapshot relationships. To applications, virtual volumes behave the same as very fast, very reliable locally attached disks. The SANsymphony virtualization engine enables multiple servers using different operating systems to securely access different slices of the same physical disk as if they were totally independent drives. A single virtual volume can be a portion of a physical disk, or a combination of multiple disks, and can appear to be up to two terabytes in capacity. SANsymphony software applies many other useful properties to virtual volumes:
High availability. For business environments that demand uninterrupted access to data, the SANsymphony architecture can ensure that data is protected against outages by removing all single points of failure. The optional SANsymphony Network Mirroring feature consolidates virtual volume mirroring in the network, offloading the task from application servers. Using third-party multi-pathing software or the SANsymphony Alternate Pathing option, failover between mirrored volumes is automatic and timely. The primary and secondary volumes can even reside in completely separate disk enclosures for added protection. In addition, the ability of SANsymphony software to non-disruptively add, move, change, and automatically provision capacity eliminates the need for planned downtime caused by such common maintenance tasks.
Flexibility. Unlike physical disks, which have static sizes and limited interoperability with other storage devices, SANsymphony virtual volumes draw from a pool of storage resources that can include disks from any supplier and using any connection type (Fibre Channel, SCSI, SSA or IDE, etc.). The optional Network Managed Volumes (NMVs) feature, automatically provisions storage with just enough space, just-in-time to applications so the amount of storage closely matches the data requirements.
Improved performance. SANsymphony front-ends volumes with high performance caching that increases both transactional speeds and throughput.
The result is a versatile, scalable, and manageable relationship between application servers and networked storage resources.
Elements of a Network-Powered Storage Architecture
The typical SANsymphony software configuration involves a few basic components and concepts, and enhances the properties of other elements in the SAN. A few of these are briefly discussed in this section.
Above: Network Managed Volumes appear to applications as huge locally attached disks, but are backed by a smaller pool of disks and automatically provisioned in small increments to provide just enough real storage to meet the data requirements.
For a better understanding of our SAN basics, infrastructure, concepts, and components, refer to:
For a step-by-step guide to configuring a basic SANsymphony system, refer to:
Optional SANsymphony Features
In addition to the basic storage allocation, caching, and management features, SANsymphony offers a number of separately licensed capabilities designed to provide solutions to specific problems.
Storage Server options
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Network Managed Volumes (NMVs) dramatically increase storage capacity utilization by providing automated provisioning that eliminates the need to guess how much storage each application will need over its lifetime. NMVs get rid of the waste that comes from over-provisioning, and the risky and disruptive task of manually adding disk space to servers that results from underestimating the storage needs.
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Network Mirroring creates a peer-to-peer relationship between two or more storage servers connected by a standard Fibre Channel network and allows virtual volumes to be mirrored synchronously for high availability. It is best suited for applications that require a secondary copy of data to be maintained in real-time. (Requires SANsymphony Network Edition)
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Snapshot enables a point-in-time copy of any volume to be created without disrupting the application server or requiring any application server CPU cycles to maintain the snapshot. Snapshot virtual volumes can be used for a variety of functions including non-disruptive, LAN-free, server-less backup, application testing and other projects that require independent read/write access to a copy of the data.
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Asynchronous IP Mirroring (AIM) Creates a peer-to-peer relationship between two or more storage servers connected by a standard TCP/IP network and allows volumes to be mirrored asynchronously for over long distances for disaster recovery, backup or data mining applications. ((Requires SANsymphony Network Edition; Snapshot may also be used on the destination server.)
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Proxied Volumes let users immediately benefit from some of SANsymphony advanced services by layering these features over pre-existing volumes without disrupting the data structure. Proxied Volumes also enable high-performance data migration from existing storage to a new architecture with minimal operational impact. (Requires SANsymphony Network Edition)
Optional Application Server Software
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DataCore MPIO provides seamless failover from a primary volume to a secondary mirror. MPIO requires the use of SANsymphony Network Edition and mirroring.
Please refer to the DataCore Web site for System Requirements and more information regarding these software options and products.
These features are licensed individually, and can be selectively activated to extend the functionality of the initial SANsymphony implementation.
Additional Options
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Management Console option allows you to configure and monitor your SAN from a computer that is not a storage server. You need a LAN connection and appropriate rights to the storage servers. You can use SANmanager™ to perform all configuration activities, view DataCore tool information, monitor performance, and check status and alarms of the entire region or an individual mapping. The SANsymphony Console tools installed by the SANsymphony software present local information only. The tools are always visible in the Management Console even when connected to a remote computer, but the information displayed is always specific to the server it is installed on.