Strategies for Data Protection - Brocade

Building the Foundation1Implementing a comprehensive data protection strategy begins withbuilding a firm foundation at the data transport layer to ensure highavailability access to storage data. A typical data center, for example,may have multiple, large storage RAID arrays, high-availability FibreChannel directors, fabric switches, and high-end servers running criticalbusiness applications. The data center SAN may be configured withredundant pathing (Fabrics A and B) to guard against link, port, orswitch failures. Many companies have experienced such explosivegrowth in data, however, that the original data center SAN design cannotaccommodate the rapid increase in servers, storage traffic, andarrays. The foundation begins to crumble when administrators go intoreactive mode in response to sudden growth and scramble to integratenew ports and devices into the SAN. As a consequence, data accessmay be disrupted and data protection undermined.NOTE: In this chapter and throughout the book, the term “switch anddirector” refers to a SAN platform, which may be a standalone switch,an embedded switch module, a director, or a backbone device.Ideally, a data center SAN design should be flexible enough to accommodateboth current and anticipated (typically looking out three years)needs. Although business expansion is rarely linear, it is helpful tocompare an organization's current storage infrastructure to the one ithad three years ago. For most companies, that historical reality checkreveals a substantial increase in storage capacity, servers, tapebackup loads, and complexity of the fabric. That growth may be due tonatural business expansion or simply to the proliferation of computeresources to more parts of the organization. In either case, the steadygrowth of data assets increases the delta between the sheer quantityof storage data and the amount that is adequately protected. A carefullyconsidered SAN design can help close this gap.Strategies for Data Protection 3