This article is about how can you configure your virtual storage appliance architecture so that it proves to be useful and advantageous in the given use case and scenario. There are 5 most important tips which must be taken into consideration while setting up your software-defined storage architecture. These tips are discussed one by one below;
- Know What You Really Require
Whenever you need a solution for any problem you are facing, the most important thing is to dig deep in it and identify what actually you require. There is a need to know the type of workload that you are dealing with and also the types of applications and programs which are needed to manage the work load. A user must also know about the clientage and some hardware details such as the type of servers needed.
Some of the things which need to be known are the how many queries are in the queue for processing, the base and peak IOPs, throughput, the data being used frequently and the through put performance you will need in order to make sure that the windows’ backup is maintained.
Next comes the storage capacity requirements of your business, which enables you to configure a suitable software designed storage architecture. The RTO’s and RPO’s must also be known to decide correctly for meeting your needs.
- Know Your Vendor and the Hardware Before Purchasing
After you get to know your requirements, next step is to know the vendor, the hardware it is offering you and the capabilities and features it has on offer. You must know what you are buying is capable of doing what you expect from it.
You have to make sure that you deploy the recommended components form the vendor, so that you can get the maximum performance and of the storage architecture.
- Your Architecture Must be Resilient
While designing your software designed storage architecture, resilience is one thing that you cannot miss out. After selecting the vendor for your hardware and the buying the physical storage for your business, the storage environment needs to be finalized and configured.
Storage architecture being resilient refers to the ability of the storage to face and manage the challenges of the future world load and other dynamics of data storage world. Scalability and growth are two main factors to be taken care of.
- Designing to be done Carefully
Software defined storage architecture works in a way that the SDS is run on the top of the layer of physical storage, so it needs to be designed in a way that it supports the capacity and storage abilities of the physical layer.
- Management of Software and Physical Layers
Managing the software and hardware layers is very important to be done in a careful and tentative manner in case of software defined storage architecture as it makes the SDS to work at the best of its ability or worse than it can perform.
The storage layer is abstracted from the physical layer and it makes it more important to monitor the layers efficiently to make full use of the architecture.
Conclusion
Software defined storage architecture requires vigilant management of the layers to allow it to offer the advantages like scalability, flexibility, resilience and reliability to the users. In order to take full advantage the configuration needs to be done carefully.