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What is a hierarchical storage management system?
I've been doing some research into servers, storage, and other data management techniques. I still don't fully understand what a hierarchical storage management system is, and what the benefits are. Can anyone offer an easy-to-understand definition, and possibly the pros & cons of such system? Thanks.
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2 Answers
Hi,
Basically the SAN storage set up is of high cost and its hierarchy goes like:
Starting from storage array(Clariion,DMX etc) which has Storage ports or FA ports these are connected to the storage edge switch and from there to a Core switch(ISL switch) and from there to a host edge switch(server side switch) and from there to the HBA of any OS flavoured server.Generally recommended is 3 HBA(host bus adapters) per server,one for tape drives if any and the remaining two drives for the SAN disks. Two HBAs for SAN disks is for redundancy,if any one of the 2 HBAs goes down the other will continue to serve the SAN storage to the server bia a single path.this is the basic structure SAn setup follows.There are lot of hardware components that functions in this setup.which takes a lengthy description, Hope this helps.
Hi Tim. This wiki link is a little outdated but conceptually accurate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_storage_management.
Basically HSM puts really important data (Tier I) on really fast, really reliable & really expensive storage (Tier I storage like high-end EMC & HDS systems).
At some point in time this really important data may become less important, and would be a candidate for migration to less expensive storage.
The pro is that on paper it sounds like a great idea.
The con is that in reality it is often hard to implement,and requires you to purchase different Tier's of storage.
It is most likely that for HSM to work well, your application(s) must be developed with HSM in mind so that the less important data can be separated from the more important data.
Here is a link to the wiki on Symantec's Enterprise Vault product which is commonly used to archive (HSM) email.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Vault
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