Storfirst Admin Guide - Seven Ten Storage

178 Pages·2014·4.09 MB·English

MANAGE DATA SMARTER™

StorFirst Enterprise Archival Storage
Administration Guide

Note to StorFirst EAS users:

This manual provides instructions for an end-user to install, configure, and use StorFirst Enterprise Archival Storage
(EAS) software. For supported storage subsystems and latest updates, see the StorFirst EAS Compatibilty Guide
and StorFirst EAS Release Notes.

This administration guide assumes that you are familiar with your server hardware, Windows operating system,
and your basic system administration.

Unless otherwise specified, references to Windows refer to all supported Windows operating systems.

© 2014 Seven10 Storage Software LLC. All rights reserved. This document may not be further copied, distributed or
modified without the written permission of Seven10. Unauthorized use, disclosure, and distribution are strictly
prohibited. This software (including documentation) is subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the end user
license agreement or other applicable agreement, and you may use this software only if you accept all the terms and
conditions of the license agreement. This software comprises proprietary and confidential information of Seven10.
CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCING EAS

Break Free
Data management objectives should dictate where you store data. Break free from storage confinement and
expand your ability to make choices with enterprise archival software that automates and supports the
complete range of tiered storage solutions.

StorFirst EAS archival data management software for the enterprise will increase service levels for critical
archival data while reducing the overall cost of data storage. StorFirst provides a file system based single
access point to tiered storage environments and provides efficient integration of reference data management
for global application providers.

Retention
Retention policies in StorFirst define the minimal availability period for files in a volume; from creation to
expiration. Changes in retention requirements are easily implemented. As allowed by some regulations,
permanent deletion of data after legal expiration may be automated by policies within the StorFirst archive.
Deletion after expiration may also be left to the applications.

Life Span
Life Span refers to the maximum availability period of the files in a volume or tier. Auto Purge refers to a job
that will automate the destruction of all copies of data that have reached the end of their life span as defined
by retention and life span policies. The length of the life span is affected by policy, choice of media types,
and offline storage practices.

Key Features
File System Interface through Standard Protocols such as CIFS and NFS
StorFirst is presented as a standard file system on the network and thereby easily integrated with any
application.
WORM for Data Integrity and Compliance

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StorFirst enables the implementation of compliant archiving on disk, seamless integration with Centera,
Cloud, NAS and support of removable and indelible tape. StorFirst provides write-once file access using all
storage tiers seamlessly. A unique feature allows files to remain re-writable for a set time period before
becoming permanently un-modifiable. Write Once Read Many (WORM) behavior is implemented on disk
and other re-writable media by StorFirst and/or physically using Write-Once media.
Tiered Storage
Managed tiers of storage seamlessly provide the best all storage technologies have to offer by combining
the high performance and redundancy of enterprise RAID disk while the data is in heavy demand, low cost
and energy saving disk solutions, even lower cost and high capacity tape libraries as the latency requirements
diminish, and offline storage for lowest cost and increased data protection.
Multi-target Archiving
StorFirst offers automated multi-target archiving between its storage tiers. Files may simultaneously have
multiple locations for increased data availability, performance, and robustness. Clients may take immediate
advantage of data storage on disk while StorFirst is writing copies to lower storage tiers in the background.
Data Migration
Removal of primary, high performance and high cost file copies will release capacity for new data while
maintaining complete availability using less expensive storage tiers. Policy based, automated removal offers
these cost savings without use of manpower.
Offline Media Management
Media may be removed from the storage subsystems and kept offline while StorFirst retains complete
knowledge and accessibility of all files. Media is self-defining and may be inventoried for files by any EAS
Archive; this could be used after a site disaster for example.
File Integrity Hash
StorFirst EAS supports a file integrity hash for every file in the system. The hash is composed by sending
the file’s data through the SHA-256 cryptographic block-cipher hash function. SHA-256 was chosen due to
its strong uniqueness and complete resistance to computational attacks. The computed hash value is used
to verify the integrity of copies of the original data. StorFirst EAS stores this hash both in the database and
as part of the meta-data for each file. A Verify job is capable of reading files and recalculating their hash at
any point in the future in order to detect both, intentionally malicious attacks or silent storage corruption.

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Product Architecture

StorFirst EAS presents managed storage as a file system on your Network; think of it as Network Attached
Storage using multi-tiered devices including disk sub-systems, Centera, Cloud, NAS and tape.

A local, on-disk database performs the same function as the directory in disk based file systems; keeping all
the file and folder names and the physical location of the file. RAID storage is turned into WORM on disk. A
local, on-disk cache is disk space used to accelerate reading and writing of files from media. Secondary
storage devices are used via the same share and drive letter as the WORM disk; all behaving exactly as a
single disk volume. Replication and migration is internal and transparent. Clients and user applications can
use the familiar and standard file system interface without training or modification.

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CHAPTER 2 - PLANNING

The Archive may include disk storage for performance, Centera and Cloud for archiving, tape for cost savings,
removability, and indelibility. StorFirst presents all these storage resources as folders in the StorFirst drive
letter and the StorFirst share on the LAN. The StorFirst Archive is a single name space, virtual file system
where file name and content remains constant while file copies may reside in multiple physical devices or
simply reside in one. The look and feel is well known:

These are system folders that are created by the StorFirst Administrator; not by client operations. The root
of the virtual drive is only writable if storage is mapped to it. We recommend against this unless all storage
is mapped to root so systems and client created folders are not mixed at the same level of the file system.

Volumes
The basic building block in the archive is a volume. A volume is a container for data files that is created by
a StorFirst volume wizard. For multiple volumes simply run the wizard several times. StorFirst offers six
types of volumes: Disk, Centera, NAS, Cloud, Object Store and Removable Media Volumes.
Disk EMC NAS Cloud Object Removable
Centera Store Media

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Disk Volumes
A disk volume in StorFirst may be any SCSI, iSCSI, Fibre Channel or
SATA disk recognized by the Microsoft Disk Manager that is not
already assigned a drive letter. Once added they will appear to all Disk
users and applications as a Windows compatible file system share Volume
that can leverage CIFS for access.

Centera Volumes
SCSI SATA
FC
A Centera contains a set of files or C-Clips, potentially created by
several clients. C-Clips created by EAS are identifiable by StorFirst
and marked with the name of the StorFirst server as well as its position in the file system. The map between
EAS and Centera is many to many.

You can create one Centera volume and mix folders and files for all the separate uses of the device. The
better approach is to create one Centera volume for each separate type of data by using Centera virtual
pools. When you later begin mapping volumes to the file system then you will find that each volume can be
mapped only once and that each volume has a single retention policy for the volume. Multiple volumes are
therefore needed if C-Clips with different retention requirements are stored.

NAS Volumes
StorFirst EAS enables you to define NAS / DAS as a target storage repository. StorFirst EAS currently
supports the following NAS file system presentation:
 CIFS/SMB
 NFS
 NTFS

Please Note: Please contact Seven10 Support to discuss other possible NAS Volume solutions / use cases.

Cloud Volumes
StorFirst EAS removes the requirement for additional programming or integration efforts to the Cloud by
providing immediate access through standard networking protocols such as CIFS, NFS or HTTP.
A typical StorFirst EAS + Cloud candidate has the following demands:
 Immediate access to cloud storage without requiring complex API integration
 Storage tiering that will ensure replication locally and to the Cloud

StorFirst EAS supports the following Clouds:
 EMC Atmos Online
 EMC Atmos On Premise
 AT&T Synaptic Cloud Storage
 HP Cloud
 NetApp StorageGRID
 Iron Mountain Medical Image Archive

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 ViPR Data Services
 Dell Cloud Clinical Archive

Object Store Volume
StorFirst EAS removes the requirement for additional programming or integration efforts to the object stores
by providing immediate access through standard networking protocols.
A typical StorFirst EAS + Object Store candidate has the following demands:
 Immediate access to object storage without requiring complex API integration
 Storage tiering to ensure performance demands and replication policies are met.

StorFirst EAS supports the following Object Store Volumes:
 Dell DX6000
 Caringo CAStor

Removable Media Volumes
A removable media volume is mapped to a set of media; each media initially located in a tape library and
later possibly extracted and offline. When you later map volumes to the file system you will find that each
volume can only be used once so create as many as you need. Like Centera volumes, removable media
volumes are free until you write data to them. Media is a member of only one media volume. Media is initiated
into the scratch pool and from there automatically provisioned into a media volume when the capacity is
needed.

Removable
Media Volume
Library
Management

Tape or
Drives
Removable VTL
Slots
Media Volume Library
Media
Robot Offline
Door

Removable
Optional
Media Volume
ACSLS
Support

StorFirst provides complete library management because, unlike disk, there is no high level standardized
virtualization model available. Library management is configured by the Library wizard.

Volumes in the File System

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The first planning decision is how to present the archive to its clients. In StorFirst, a single volume must be
added to a tiered storage volume and mapped directly to a folder so that all files written there are stored in
that volume. This allows direct selection of storage types by the clients. StorFirst also offer multiple tiers of
storage mapped to a single folder in the file system. This provides automated replication and purging using
two or three storage tiers; each being a volume as described above.

Multi-Tiered Storage Volumes
When automated replication and purging is required, two or three volumes are mapped to a single file system
folder and assigned a retention time attribute.

Tier one should be a disk volume. The life span attribute is assigned to define the minimum length of time a
copy of the file must remain on primary storage. Tier one will usually be the highest class of disk storage
providing high
performance and
redundancy. Usually,
duration will be short.
File 0-90

Retention Days
Tier two may be any
File
volume type. The life System Time Tier I
span attribute is Folder
measured from time of
file creation and
Up to 2
should be longer than Years
the duration used for
Tier II
tier one. Tier two does
Replication
not strictly need to use
&
redundant storage Migration
21
because replication to Jobs
years &
tier three is completed
purge
Tier III
before the copy on tier
one is erased. Tier
two, if configured, will
usually be cheaper
disk, Centera or Cloud.

Tier three may again be any volume type and the life span attribute is either permanent, that is, the file is
kept here until it is manually deleted, or a specific period, in which case the file will be auto-purged when that
period expires. Tier three will usually be a removable media volume.

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File System Folders
A volume is mapped to a folder under root as shown in the first picture in this chapter and root is otherwise
not writable. It is possible to map a volume to root only once and thereby making it writable. Once root has
a volume mapped to it, no other volumes can be mapped to the root.

Database
The database is located in the install directory with the software and the log files. Make sure that you have
adequate capacity before installing. The database will grow dynamically depending on the number of files in
your archive; consider reserving 100 - 200GB as a conservative measure, as 1 GB will support approximately
1 Million files.

The database stores all file names and media location information. The database should be stored on self-
protecting storage; using RAID 1 (mirroring) or RAID 5. These types of storage devices will protect the
database in case of certain component failures. If the computer fails it is easily replaced and connected to
the database storage device. In extreme cases like site failures; the system will restore the database by re-
inventorying the media; this takes time and should be avoided.

For improved file access performance, the database should be placed on a disk resource that is independent
from other high demand disks like the cache and the Windows paging disk.

Cache
StorFirst uses disk based caching for streaming to Centera, Cloud, NAS and removable media. Cache is
used to reduce media read latency, and for improved streaming bandwidth to and from the storage device.
Write caching is not used with disk volumes; all file I/O is direct in that case. The cache space is logically
divided into three parts and the boundaries are shifting dynamically. Writing, reading, and flushing move the
boundaries while the LRU process converts Read cache to unused space on demand.

Reading from the archive will first look in cache. Failing to find the data there; it will be read back from media
and deliver it to the client. Data read from media may also be copied to the cache. If there is no unused
space left the LRU process will claim the space of the least recently used data in the Read cache. Writing to
the archive will increase the un-flushed Write cache space while consuming unused space. If there is no
unused space left the LRU process will claim the least recently used parts of the Read cache. Flushing will
write data to media and convert un-flushed data to read cached data. The LRU process reclaims space.

The size of the cache defines the working set of file media data that can be used without actual media access.
During writing a larger cache allows more data to stream to media during a single mount. In cases when
writing to the archive cache outperforms streaming to media the amount of unflushed data will grow. If the
cache is filled then an out of space message is returned to the client often causing the client to abort. The
cache size in conjunction with flushing controls should be tuned to prevent this situation.

The cache is persistent and self-healing after disruptive events. The cache will contain files not yet written
to media and should be protected in one of two ways:

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 A single StorFirst cache using external and self-protecting storage, like RAID 1 or 5.
 The archiving source should be kept available until flushing has completed.

ILM Operation

Flush Delay
All data files written to the Archive become WORM; regardless of storage type used. A system option defines
a grace period named “flush delay”; for example 4 hours. Files are kept on disk during the grace period;
flushing to media is delayed to preserve volatility. During the grace period files may be modified or renamed.
The grace period may be set to zero; disallowing all changes. After expiration of the grace period, data files
cannot be renamed or modified.

Retention
The file name and its content are guaranteed until the retention period expires; if ever. Storage location and
retention period is defined by the storage volume to which the file was written. Once retention expires, the
file may be deleted manually by a client or by an auto-purge job in StorFirst after expiration of the life span.
Deleting the file makes the file disappear from the StorFirst file system and any disk based storage.

System Disk Resources
Performance is optimized if each of the following disks uses physically independent drive resources; in order
of performance priority:
 WORM Disk Volumes
 Cache
 Database
 Windows paging and swap
Using storage systems of a SAN with RAID, LUNs, and sub-LUNs, shared controllers, and onboard caching;
true “independence” may be hard to establish.

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