Storage data centre question...

[Cliotoby]

Lets keep this simple.

Ive got (purely fictional) a company that currently has a single office in the UK. They are going to expand to europe with a second branch office.

Along side implementing a virtualised infrastructure (server, desktop etc) they want to, and I quote from my asignment brief, "consilidate their existing storage into data centres".

Now im not sure how to approach this. Im thinking ...


Outsource the storage - Both offices will have a mirrored san, but will send the data off site to a managed storage network elsewhere for DR.

Have a dedicated storage facility site in the UK/Europe, two LUNS (primary/secondary) and a tape backup for DR. Then a san at the offices which replicate data to the dedicated facility lol.


What do.

 

[Adam.]

Chapster got a rack in a colo and put a netgear readynas in. Works well iirc.



Joking aside. dk should be able to advise well on this one I should think.

 

[dk]

Hmmm, bit vague really.

Consoldate storage into datacenters would normally mean they have several sites already and would like to reduce the management and backing up of several storage products in several locations. But this is a single uk location.

If they want to consolidate existing das (direct attached storage) then they achieve this by way of a San (storage area network), and that could be in the uk office or placed in a datacenter location etc. if it was in a dc, you would then use something like Citrix or vdi and have thin clients on desks. Then you could do the same thing in the second office, and have a San and VMware cluster in their office or a local dc and then replicate the two sans to each other for resilience and dr.

Or you could just have the one San in the uk dc and the office in France or wherever could use Citrix I contect to that single dc.

You really need a bit more info. Locations for one, for where the dc could be, and the type of lie you could get etc. it's going to be slightly different if you in London to if you are in the welsh mountains for example.

 

[Cliotoby]

Hmmm, bit vague really.

Consoldate storage into datacenters would normally mean they have several sites already and would like to reduce the management and backing up of several storage products in several locations. But this is a single uk location.

If they want to consolidate existing das (direct attached storage) then they achieve this by way of a San (storage area network), and that could be in the uk office or placed in a datacenter location etc. if it was in a dc, you would then use something like Citrix or vdi and have thin clients on desks. Then you could do the same thing in the second office, and have a San and VMware cluster in their office or a local dc and then replicate the two sans to each other for resilience and dr.

Or you could just have the one San in the uk dc and the office in France or wherever could use Citrix I contect to that single dc.

You really need a bit more info. Locations for one, for where the dc could be, and the type of lie you could get etc. it's going to be slightly different if you in London to if you are in the welsh mountains for example.

employs 100 people in total, and has a number of high profile customers in the UK. Its business is rapidly expanding into Europe, selling beers to hotel and restaurant chains in France, Germany and the Netherlands. Its current business model envisages expansion into Southern Europe within the next 12 months, with a concomitant increase in staff of 20-50%, and into the Americas and Asia within the next 3-5 years with a similar increase in staff.

Its very vague tbh!

What youve said is exactly the answer I was hoping for - I can work with that!

I wouldnt worry about connection capabilities etc, im only doing this at degree level.

Ive already put forward the VDI reccomendation for the sake of scalability like you mentioned.

Ill use the dedicated DC approach I think seeing as im not limited to budget.

Thanks Big help.

 

[dk]

You're welcome, if you need any more pointers, just shout, I'm doing this pretty much everyday, so should be able to assist.

 

[Cliotoby]

Cheers, Im sure Ill take you up on that offer at some point.

 

[Cliotoby]

Thinking about it, I cant decide which would be the best idea - DC or "on site" san for each office. Either way id like a dedicated SAN for each office but seeing as its purely a retail type business, a dedicated DC might be a bit overkill with 100 employees.

On site would be easier for me to design too and I can stick replication in there, but if I add seperate DC it gets confusing, especially when I try stick redundant links in there. Do I just have the office with 2 WAN connections to the cloud, then the DC with 2 connections to the cloud?

 

[dk]

It wouldn't really be lines into the cloud, you would want redundant MPLS or leased lines or something from your offices direct to the dc, them a breakout to the Internet from the dc for the Internet and remote users/home users logging in. The lines side of thing isn't my thing though, I have "people' for that

the other option is to use a cloud provider as the dc, I.e. you put your kit in their managed environment, or you could use their infrastructure (I.e. san and virtual environment) to hosts your vms. The company I work for have a managed service offering all these types of things for clients.

Finally, you could have the main san in the main office, and then host the dr San with the cloud provider, or if they have the same San in their environment, replicate to their San for dr etc.

There are lots of options, and tbh, the more likely option these days is to utilise cloud providers for smaller businesses.

 

[Cliotoby]

There are lots of options, and tbh, the more likely option these days is to utilise cloud providers for smaller businesses.

One of my "learning outcomes" to include is about mirroring, another is about hybrid clouds. So that might not be a bad idea.

Many thanks for the input!

 

[Rob]

COLO space in a properly managed, secure, tier three minimum data centre IMO.

 

[cava83]

Thinking about it, I cant decide which would be the best idea - DC or "on site" san for each office. Either way id like a dedicated SAN for each office but seeing as its purely a retail type business, a dedicated DC might be a bit overkill with 100 employees.

On site would be easier for me to design too and I can stick replication in there, but if I add seperate DC it gets confusing, especially when I try stick redundant links in there. Do I just have the office with 2 WAN connections to the cloud, then the DC with 2 connections to the cloud?

Dedicated SAN per office? Crikey, you're a resellers ideal client. For 100 employees, depending on the infrastructure and data volumes, I would argue you even need a SAN, but that's not part of your project.

I find these fictional scenario's quite hard, I did the VCAP DCD course the other day, and that was very hard and there are too many un-answered questions/variables, that really can affect your design. Not only budget,local expertise but the relationship with your vendors can really alter the design/outcome of a project.

Your possibilities are endless, you will find there are ideal solutions for scenario's, such possible solutions such as the one DK provided, redundant MPLS and all that, but a lot of the SME industry simply cannot afford that.

Anyhow, not sure the purpose of my post, but good luck and let us know how you got on.

Thanks,

G

 

[Cliotoby]

I get where youre coming from, see post #9 - Ive gone for managed storage tbh! As you said, small enterprise cant afford that s**t.

 

[cava83]

I get where youre coming from, see post #9 - Ive gone for managed storage tbh! As you said, small enterprise cant afford that s**t.

Sexual

Good stuff.

Good luck

 

[Cliotoby]

Right changed my mind. f**k the cost......

It has been noted from the assignment brief that the company wishes to establish a branch office in Northern Europe, with the ability to replicate data between its UK and European offices.

The use of a hybrid cloud to outsource SAN requirements was considered against an "in house" SAN. Due to the small size of the business it has been decided to keep an "in house" san with synchronous replication between a primary and secondary local disc to provide failover and HA, and asynchronous mirroring to the second site opening in Europe will provide DR. The Europe site will function in the same way, local synchronous mirroring to provide HA and failover, data which is then mirrored asynchronously to the UK site. This will ensure data is easily and quickly accessible and all discs are kept up to date with data from both sites while at the same time providing DR, HA and Failover.

Asynchronous replication was chosen over synchronous due to the long connection lengths between the sites, meaning synchronous mirroring would not be possible.

This is also a standardised approach which can be used at future sites.

A second dedicated VPN line will be used to provide asynchronous mirroring between the sites and will ensure that network operation and communication is not disrupted when data is being mirrored.

Sound good? Hit me.

 

[dk]

Hmmm, you say an in house San was chosen because of the small size of the business, that doesn't make sense, the whole point of using someone elses is that y don't have to fork out a quarter of a million for a San that will perform synchronous mirroring.

Which I don't understand either, you wouldn't really do that unless you are using one product in particular, Hp p4000 which has to rely on that as its software on Hp servers and needs resilience as it doesn't have 2 controllers etc.

So unless you are going for a Hp p4000 you will not need to synchronously replicate the disks locally, totally pointless unless you have very deep pockets and want to buy twice the amount of disk.

Netapp sync mirror or metro cluster will do this, but it's very expensive as you need two sets of disks, and San disks are not cheap, you are talking around £1k a disk plus support.

 

[Cliotoby]

Fair point dk!!

Roughy how much would a managed service cost a business like this (small, 100 employees with a bit of company and custome rrecord data etc). Significant savings?