In the introduction to his Sun BluePrints Online paper "An Economical Approach to Maximizing Data Availability: Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems," Mike Shapiro writes that the new Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems meet the industry requirements for reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) that enable the line to preserve customer data and meet enterprise requirements.

With such features as RAID-6, active-active clustering, integrity checking, redundancy, replication, and snapshot capabilities, the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems line is eminently qualified to deliver on the expectations that customer demands are themselves requiring of enterprises.

An entirely new feature, the use of NAND Flash devices in conjunction with the Solaris ZFS file system, defines a unique, highly reliable architecture that aims to provide the best possible price for performance ratio, Shapiro writes.

One of the principal virtues of the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems according to Shapiro is that they offer enterprise-class storage features while leveraging open source software and industry standard components to lower costs and provide greater innovation. Implementing the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems can enable organizations to realize the following benefits:

• Increase production uptime through a highly reliable architecture built with redundant components and extensive error detection and correction capabilities

• Speed problem resolution time with advance fault management, predictive selfhealing, and real-time analytic capabilities

• Improve data integrity and protection with measures that extend beyond traditional storage system features

• Simplify management by providing a clear view of storage system health and alerts

Underlying the design of the Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems, Shapiro explains, is the effort to take advantage of commodity economics, allowing organizations to take advantage of the dramatically reducing price and increasing density of general-purpose compute cycles, exceptional raw capacity of Serial ATA (SATA) drives, and high performance of NAND Flash devices. Within these storage appliances, he continues, systematic design decisions control how and where availability is achieved. These efforts help preserve the economic benefits of industry-standard volume components while optimizing uptime levels.

Key to Sun's design approach to this new product family, as Shapiro explains it, is that, "The objective is not to deliver the highest reliability at every level of the system architecture, rather to deliver the highest data availability at the lowest overall cost. This goal is achieved by solving each availability problem at the right layer of the storage system."

Shapiro's paper provides an overview of the RAS features of Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems, assuming that readers possess a basic understanding of Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems, common enterprise-class storage features, and the Solaris ZFS file system. The document addresses the following topics:

• Chapter 2, “Fault Management and Predictive Self Healing”, discusses Sun’s advanced approach to managing and preventing fault events.

• Chapter 3, “Storage System RAS Design”, provides a detailed review of the RAS features at every layer of Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems.

• Chapter 4, “Generic RAS Features”, describes additional RAS features provided by Sun’s storage appliance management software, phone home support, and upgrade procedures.

• Chapter 5, “Pulling It All Together”, summarizes the main points presented in this paper.

• Chapter 6, “For More Information”, includes links to references.

More Information

Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems

The Solaris ZFS file system

The Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace)

Solaris Predictive Self-Healing [...read more...]

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