Storage virtualization promises reductions in the cost of managing information, and advantages in making information more accessible and useful to large organizations. It remains vital, however, to monitor and optimize the underlying storage area networks. A complete understanding of data flows before, during and after a virtualization project is vital to preventing bottlenecks, uneven load distribution and unacceptable latency. Finisar's NetWisdom offerings help you to efficiently diagnose SAN virtualization problems, to anticipate and prevent future problems, and to confidently plan and execute future virtualization projects.
Storage management costs are rising, as large organizations deal with rapid growth in the amount of storage, and with constant increases in the types and complexity of stored information. Storage area networks help, by consolidating and streamlining storage, but they still require constant management attention as storage requirements grow and change.
Virtualization of storage can greatly reduce the time and effort required to manage storage area networks, especially in complex and heterogeneous computing and storage environments. By allocating and re-allocating storage as needed, virtualization makes IT more responsive to the needs of the business, and frees IT people to tackle more meaningful and strategic tasks.
On the other hand, virtualization can also introduce a new set of challenges. By its very nature, it breaks the traditional one-to-one relationship between host applications and storage devices, resulting in a level of “blindness” about the physical location of data related to a particular host or application, and about the link-level data paths through the SAN. It can become more difficult to troubleshoot problems, to anticipate or prevent future problems, or to plan and execute storage changes with confidence.
In addition, virtualized SAN environments are increasingly composed of different types of storage devices. Each device type has different operating characteristics like latency, throughput, reliability, recoverability and cost. A virtualization architecture might automatically place information on a storage device not appropriate for its use, for example by placing video files on a device unable to properly stream them. This would cause problems for applications requiring the use of video. Virtualization might make it difficult to correlate application problems with storage device problems.
SAN management and SAN virtualization tools do not provide information or insight into the movement of data within the SAN. That insight is required to understand a virtualized SAN, to troubleshoot and resolve problems, or to optimize performance.
The
NetWisdom family of products and services, from optical networking leader Finisar Corporation, provides this much-needed insight.
NetWisdom products are available in a range of configurations to meet the needs of your environment. A software-only solution can be quickly deployed and can provide valuable new information about your virtualized SAN fabric. NetWisdom fibre TAPs and ProbeFCX probes can be used to instrument your fabric for more in-depth analysis, considerably deepening the utility of NetWisdom software. For the most demanding environments or thorniest problems, Finisar’s
Xgig network protocol analyzer can be employed. Xgig “traces” are used by your SAN vendors to design and test their own products, and can be invaluable in the face of extreme SAN challenges.
Complementary NetWisdom services include
NetWisdom training courses, as well as
protocol training and
testing services from Finisar’s Medusa Labs subsidiary.
NetWisdom products and services can provide value to your organization as you
diagnose existing virtualization problems, work to
prevent future problems, and use virtualization to
advance the use of information in your organization.
Diagnose: NetWisdom offerings allow you to examine your virtualized SAN at the link level, analyzing and understanding every conversation between hosts, switches and storage devices. When needed, Xgig analyzers can provide an even deeper look, and generate industry-standard “traces” that can be provided electronically to your SAN vendors to expedite problem resolution. This information is especially valuable when encountering intermittent problems or vendor interoperability issues. When the SAN is not at fault when consolidation problems occur, NetWisdom makes it easy to demonstrate that the SAN is operating correctly.
Prevent: NetWisdom can be used to examine virtualized storage networks for any unknown or unexpected occurrences, identifying and addressing them before they create problems. It is also extremely important to gauge the health of a SAN fabric before virtualization technology is added, because minor problems can easily be magnified by virtualization.
Advance: NetWisdom offerings can play a vital role in preparing your virtualization strategy and plans for the future. It can help you understand and harness the power of virtualization, so you can make the best decisions for your organization.
Other SAN solutions from Finisar can help address challenges in application performance, backup, storage consolidation, pre-production testing and remote replication.
For more information, please contact Finisar, representatives will be happy to discuss your virtualization process, strategy and issues, and explore with you how NetWisdom products and services can help.
Solution Brief: Virtualization
