Does your Data Centre need a MAID?

Up to 80% of all information stored in the average data centre can be classed as Persistent Data.  Once stored, this data is accessed very infrequently and is rarely - if ever - changed.  Yet, for a host of legal or operational reasons, Persistent Data often needs to be retained over a long period and, in many cases, rapidly accessed if the need arises.  Until recently, organisations have had to choose between storing Persistent Data in ways that either compromise on running costs or accessibility.  Matt Winstanley, Storage Business Manager, Bell Microsystems, considers whether MAID storage can bridge the divide and offer real business benefits beyond the marketing ‘spin’ that surrounds this relatively new storage technology.

In the 1990s, when IT budgets were easily won and easily spent, businesses just bought more and more storage devices – with little thought for overall storage strategy.  High capital expenditure was accepted and – with relatively cheap energy – power consumption wasn’t such an issue.  Tiered storage architectures were less common and the majority of data was stored within expensive, high performance storage devices.  Try getting that past your board, now!

In today’s socioeconomic climate, businesses are looking to reduce their operating costs – while also boosting their Corporate Social Responsibility profile and reducing energy consumption.  So, take-up of tiered storage – whereby only data that has to be accessed rapidly is stored in expensive Tier One devices – has spread.  However, the volume of Persistent Data is snowballing and businesses are struggling to store it in an efficient, cost-effective manner.

For Persistent Data, Tier One costs too much and delivers unnecessarily high performance levels.  Tier Two offers reasonable retrieval rates but is still too expensive for data that is unlikely to see much change.  Tier Three – typically tape-based – just doesn’t cut it in terms of data retrieval times… and that’s a very real issue when data has to be produced for a court case or for regulatory reasons.  The law won’t wait.

MAID in heaven?

MAID (Massive Arrays of Idle Discs) offers the performance and data integrity benefits of disc based storage… plus cost savings that are similar to tape-based storage – but without the management and reliability headaches of tape.  MAID technology hinges on the fact that, at any one time, at least 50% of the discs are inactive – which yields massive savings on energy consumption and cooling requirements, while also extending the working life of the storage media.

MAID doesn’t replace an existing storage tier.  It’s a vital new element in a tiered storage architecture.  Adding another tier to your storage estate may seem like a whole load of hassle, but the alternatives either offer inadequate retrieval speeds or are very expensive to buy and run.  A moderate investment in adding a MAID tier between Tier Two and Tier Three in your storage estate can enable you to move data from expensive Tier One and Tier Two devices, so that you free-up a lot of capacity in the upper tiers.  This can help you to postpone planned Tier One and Tier Two investments – so the MAID tier can even be self-financing.

More benefits than you can shake a tape at…

So there you have it – unlike many new technologies that arrive into the world… looking for a market… MAID is a response to a very real business need.  For me, MAID ticks a lot of storage boxes:

• Cost savings – lower cost alternative to Tier One or Tier Two devices
• Data accessibility – faster retrieval and easier management versus tape
• Capacity gains – free-up capacity in existing Tier One and Tier Two devices
• Greener IT – lower energy consumption, less heat generated, reduced demand on cooling
• Increased reliability – extended life for storage media