C H A P T E R 1 - Planning Your Archiving System

C H A P T E R 1

Planning Your Archiving System

This chapter provides an overview of the Sun StorageTek SAM product and outlines design considerations for setting up a Sun StorageTek SAM storage and archive management system. It also provides a high-level overview of the installation process.

This chapter contains the following sections:

Product Overview

High-Availability Configuration Using Sun Cluster (HA-SAM)

SAM-Remote

Design Considerations

Installation Process Overview

Product Overview

The Sun StorageTek SAM environment includes a storage and archive manager and a basic file system. The Sun StorageTek SAM software enables data to be archived to automated libraries at device-rated speeds. In addition, it enables data to be archived to files in another file system through a process known as disk archiving. The user is presented with a standard file system interface and can read and write files as though they were all on primary disk storage.

The Sun StorageTek SAM software archives files by copying the files from online disk cache to archive media. The archive media can consist of disk slices in another file system, or it can consist of removable tape or magneto-optical cartridges in automated or manually loaded storage devices. In addition, the Sun StorageTek SAM software automatically maintains online disk space at site-specified usage thresholds. It releases disk space associated with archived file data and restores the files to online disk when they are needed.

If you purchase licenses for both Sun StorageTek QFS and Sun StorageTek SAM software, you can run the Sun StorageTek QFS file system with the storage and archive manager found in the Sun StorageTek SAM software. Such a system is referred to as SAM-QFS.

High-Availability Configuration Using Sun Cluster (HA-SAM)

Sun StorageTek SAM can be configured for high availability by using Sun trademark Cluster software. Sun Cluster software provides high availability by enabling application failover. The primary node is periodically monitored and the cluster software automatically relocates the Sun StorageTek SAM functions from a failed primary node to a designated secondary node. By allowing another node in a cluster to automatically host the archiving workload when the primary node fails, Sun Cluster software can significantly reduce downtime and increase productivity.

High-availability SAM (HA-SAM) depends on the Sun StorageTek QFS Sun Cluster agent, so this configuration must be installed with a shared Sun StorageTek QFS file system that is mounted and managed by the Sun StorageTek QFS Sun Cluster agent.

For more information, see the Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager Archive Configuration and Administration Guide.

SAM-Remote

The Sun SAM-Remote client and server storage management system enables you to share libraries and other removable media devices in a Sun StorageTek SAM environment. All host systems included in a Sun SAM-Remote environment must have the same Sun StorageTek SAM software release level installed and operational.

If you want to configure the SAM-Remote software, follow the procedures in this manual to create a Sun StorageTek SAM file system. After the Sun StorageTek SAM file system is tested and is known to be configured properly, you can use the SAM-Remote instructions in the Sun StorageTek Storage Archive Manager Archive Configuration and Administration Guide to enable remote storage and archive management.

Design Considerations

The following are some of the design considerations that need to be taken into account in the planning and implementation of a Sun StorageTek SAM environment:

Access and usage patterns will have a significant impact on the tape systems required, including the types of tapes and the number and types of drives and libraries needed. If much staging is anticipated, linear rather than helical scan tapes are strongly recommended.

The following will strongly influence the number of drives and media required:

File system sizes and usage patterns: frequency of file updates, average file sizes, batch jobs that will wait for drives/media or users that must have priority

Archiving policies: number of media copies, release policies, level of disk over-subscription

Media characteristics: size, drive setup times

For best performance, Fibre Channel tape drives and disk devices should be accessed through separate host bus adapters (HBAs).

If you are managing a server that has the Sun StorageTek SAM software installed locally and you are configuring stand-alone file systems on the server to be archiving, it is recommended that you have at least one tape library associated with the current server. The library must contain media of a single media type.

The following table describes archiving configuration guidelines, on a per-tape-library basis, that can prevent you from overextending your environment.

TABLE 1-1 Archiving Configuration Guidelines
Number of Tape Drives	Number of Archive Policies (Sets)	Max. Number of File Systems	Max. Number of Files per File System	Library Recycler Values
2-3	1	4	6 million	Minimum Gain - 90% VSN Limit (#) - 2 High-Water Mark - 50% Size Limit - 30 Gbytes
4-5	1	6	6 million	Minimum Gain - 90% VSN Limit (#) - 3 High-Water Mark - 50% Size Limit - 40 Gbytes
6-7	2	10	8 million	Minimum Gain - 90% VSN Limit (#) - 5 High-Water Mark - 50% Size Limit - 50 Gbytes
8-10	4	10	10 million	Minimum Gain - 90% VSN Limit (#) - 8 High-Water Mark - 50% Size Limit - 70 Gbytes

The following are some further considerations that can help you from overloading your archiving system:

Tape drives are designed to write large amounts of data at one time, so a well-designed archiving system should reduce the number of loads for the tape drives and increase the amount of data being written at one time.

If you have only one tape drive with one media type, the startage, startsize, and startcount archive parameters should be set as follows:

startage - no less than 8 hours

startsize - no less than 50% of the capacity of a single tape

startcount - use a number in the thousands; do not exceed 500,000

Do not run the recycler more than three times per day.

Installation Process Overview

The following list is a high-level overview of the software installation process. For detailed installation instructions, see Chapter 3 of this manual.

1. Verify that the hardware and software requirements have been met (see Hardware and Software Requirements).

2. Install the software packages (see Installing the Software Packages).

3. If you want to configure the system using File System Manager, install the File System Manager software (see Installing the File System Manager Software).

4. Configure the Sun StorageTek SAM environment (beginning with Configuring Storage Devices).