Insure Your Customers' Data With RAID

RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a storage technology that takes data and sprinkles it over more than one disk drive. Just as wise investors don't put all their money in one stock, bond, or mutual fund, your customers shouldn't keep all their data on one disk drive. The same way a stock can take a sudden dive, so too can a disk drive. RAID makes data more secure, but it can be used to improve performance. It writes data to storage in a balanced way for efficiency, and data can also be retrieved much quicker when being collected from more than one disk.

A Flavor For Every Taste
There are at least nine types of RAID, which can be selected depending on whether accessibility, data security, or both, are most important to the end user. The data can be simply mirrored from one disk to another or striped across multiple disks. Error checking functions, called parity, can also be built in. For a good glossary of RAID levels, from RAID 1 to RAID 53, complete with helpful graphics, visit integrator ITIS Services' (South Norwalk, CT) Web site: www.itisservices.com/resourcecenter.htm.

Through all of this, to the end user, all of the disks look like one logical volume, leaving all the decision making to the RAID system itself. According to Deborah Hartson, director of sales and marketing for StorCase Technology, Inc. (Fountain Valley, CA), enclosure manufacturers are providing RAID-ready enclosure solutions that are self-monitoring, highly intelligent, and scalable.

Any application that can't afford downtime associated with disk failure can benefit from a RAID system, said Steve Garceau, product marketing manager for Silicon Image's CMD Storage Division (Irvine, CA). That's just about everyone. In addition, because of the data striping, any business that can benefit from increased performance is a good candidate for RAID. Christopher Choppelas, manager of technical services at Infortrend (Santa Rosa, CA) adds, "Video/film presentation, editing, and processing have been long companions of the RAID storage technology. The increased access speed is critical when performing multi-threaded edits on real-time motion pictures. RAID benefits database applications, too. Intelligent caching that groups and sorts the small data transactions offers a performance increase as compared to a single disk drive."

VARs Need To Know More Than Technology
All three of these experts concur that VARs need to understand more than the technical aspects of RAID if they are going to sell it successfully. Hartson said, "RAID is implemented within many different technologies, topologies, and applications. It is important that VARs understand the overall configuration and specifications."

Garceau stressed, "VARs need to know everything they can about RAID beyond speeds and feeds. Whether you are integrating components into a solution or simply reselling an already completed solution, VAR success will be directly attributable to RAID system knowledge. Every VAR out there will know about some performance claim or what host interface a solution uses. Few, though, will be able to talk about the availability features and benefits that make one solution more robust than another."

Will RAID Become A Commodity?
"VARs should know that RAID is not an 'off-the-shelf' product," said Choppelas. "They should know their customers' needs and be familiar with the various feature sets available on RAID controllers. Some storage configurations can be extremely complicated, and they may require special hardware or software."

While Choppelas asserts that RAID is not "off-the-shelf," Garceau sees that RAID is already becoming a commodity. He argued, "This trend will continue as the large storage system providers seek new ways to provide larger amounts of higher performing storage at cheaper prices. While host connects are migrating to Fibre Channel and iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface), the drive side will eventually lean towards ATA (advanced technology attachment) disk drives. The price is typically a third of a similarly sized SCSI or Fibre Channel drive, and the speed and reliability specifications are gaining ground with each generation."

Instead of the term ATA, which ANSI (American National Standards Institute) gave it, the computer industry often uses the term IDE (integrated drive electronics). IDE gets its name because the disk drive controller is built into the logic board in the disk drive.

Hartson also sees RAID becoming cheaper and adds that it will get faster and smaller. Choppelas agrees that speed will increase. "Every roadmap we develop is pointing toward faster data access. If it isn't developing Ultra 320 or 2 Gb (gigabit) and now 10 Gb Fibre Channel, it's improving internal bus and memory speeds."

From Fault Tolerance To Disaster Tolerance
But RAID's original purpose was for fault tolerance. Choppelas sees customer demands in that area increasing. "Fiber optics and other features such as volume mirroring now allow IS professionals to implement disaster-tolerant solutions. Entire RAID systems have remote duplicates that are constantly updated and synchronized in case of fire, earthquake, or other massively destructive circumstance. Financial institutions, online retailers, and other 7/24/365 businesses are interested in this model."

Choppelas believes that RAID is a key component to the storage market. "RAID offers high margins, if you know what you're doing," he said. "Poor product stability or incompatiblility issues can quickly remove the profitability, especially if the VAR is swamped with technical support issues."

Incompatibility issues crop up when RAID is used as an integral component of SANs (storage area networks). SANs operate with Fibre Channel connectivity and historically, the lack of standards caused severe headaches for VARs and integrators who tried to tackle SAN installations. But groups such as the SNIA and FCIA (Fibre Channel Industry Association) have recognized this and are guiding most of the Fibre Channel protocol enhancements. By sponsoring trade shows and "plug-fests" the issues of incompatibility are decreasing and interoperability is becoming the norm.