Tag Archives: SAN Health

Five essential tips for Good Practice in Storage Area Networks

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Managing Storage Area Networks comes with a particular set of challenges.

To help you ensure that your company’s data is safe and that your SAN is configured in line with best practice, we’ve compiled a list of five essential tips that should ensure your EMC SAN runs smoothly:

1. Don’t use the vault drives for time-critical applications. The first five drives (0-4) of your SAN hold the Operating System for both storage processors. Using these drives for application data can negatively impact the response time.

2. Maintain host multi-path connectivity. Much of the emphasis around improving performance is put on the drives themselves but it’s equally important to regularly check all host connections and paths. A host may have registered paths that are logged in, but they may not have an active connection to the storage. Reliable MPIO software can help monitor and resolve many issues.

3. Ensure you have sufficient hot spares. Things do go wrong, even in the most scrupulously maintained Storage Area Networks so it’s good practice to configure one hot-spare for every drive type you have. Keep in mind that any hardware failure will need to be dealt with promptly and to have the correct type of drive (FC, SATA, SAS) and the correct speed of drive to cover all eventualities. EMC recommend one hot-spare per 30 drive type, however many sites have one hot-spare in each enclosure.

4. Balance the configuration of your buses. Effective load balancing is essential to avoid data bottlenecks and to keep your SAN running at maximum efficiency. Idle buses are wasted resources while over-used buses could spell trouble in the event of a failure so it’s good practice to distribute the load as evenly as you can.

5. Perform regular defragmentation. This is a particular issue for RAID groups that have been through multiple LUN bindings. It’s good practice to perform regular, periodic defragmentation to keep the available space contiguous. This will improve performance and utilize your available storage more efficiently. We recommend that this takes place outside peak hours as the process will impact the response time for the configured LUNs bound to the group.

Com-Com offers expert support and manufacturer-trained engineers to help keep your SAN running at peak performance. To find out how Com-Com can save you money on your storage maintenance contact us on 0845 643 1180 or visit our website.

 

 

The three most common issues in Storage Area Networks

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Simple configuration issues that impact your SAN performance

As an experienced maintainer of EMC and other SAN hardware, we see a lot of Storage Area Networks. While SANs may have been optimally configured at installation, their configuration and use may have evolved over time and problems can creep in.  Our engineers have noticed significant numbers of SANs which are no longer configured in line with best practice. Many customers don’t realise that their SAN is not working at its optimum and may be unaware that they are running unnecessary risks with their data.

Here are the top 3 SAN issues we encounter.

  • LUNs bound to system drives. Drives 0-4 are reserved as system drives to run the array’s O/S. In 90% of the systems we check, we see these drives being used for mission critical storage. It’s a simple, basic error that impacts system performance yet only one in ten of the SANs we check is configured correctly.
  • Use of SATA drives for virtualization. Both EMC and VMWare advise against this practice, warning of the performance and throughput impact it has. Yet we see this being done in more than 70% of the SANs we check.
  • Poor metaLUN implementation. Configuring metaLUNs incorrectly can pose serious risks for data corruption through hardware failure. We see this in more than 60% of the SANs we check.

These are simple issues to correct but they often go unnoticed for years, until a problem arises and the data is corrupted or until we send an engineer to perform a SAN Health Check.

Make sure your SAN is in optimum health

Com-Com are offering a free EMC SAN Health Check to the first ten respondents to this email.

The health check consists of a day’s consultancy, worth £1,200, where one of our qualified engineers will come out to your site and run through a comprehensive audit schedule in order to identify any faults or areas for concern with your EMC storage array.

Within ten days of the site visit we will provide you with a full report of our findings, together with recommendations on ensuring your equipment is working to its optimum performance level.

Call us on 0845 643 1180 or click below to claim your free SAN Health Check.

Show your Data some Love with a Free SAN Health Check

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At Com-Com, we know how important your data can be and how, like a long-standing love, it can be taken for granted and neglected. That’s why we offer our customers a Com-Com EMC SAN Health Check, a comprehensive storage audit that helps to ensure that your SAN, and the hosts it is attached to, are properly configured and fit for purpose.

Don’t neglect your Storage Area Network

In questions of SAN, as in questions of the heart, many people don’t realise they have a problem until it’s too late. They suddenly find themselves faced with a mission-critical failure when a little bit of care and attention could have saved a lot of heartache. There are simple, common mistakes that we see time and time again:

  • LUNs bound to system drives. Drives 0-4 are reserved as system drives to run the array’s O/S. In 90% of the systems we check, we see these drives being used for mission critical storage. It’s a simple, basic error that impacts system performance yet only one in ten of the SANs we check is configured correctly.
  • Use of SATA drives for virtualization. Both EMC and VMWare advise against this practice, warning of the performance and throughput impact it has. Yet we see this being done in more than 70% of the SANs we check.
  • Poor metaLUN implementation. Configuring metaLUNs incorrectly can pose serious risks for data corruption through hardware failure. We see this more than 60% of the SANs we check.

Claim your free EMC SAN Health Check today

In the spirit of the day, Com-Com are offering a free EMC SAN Health Check to the first 10 respondents to this email.

The health check consists of a day’s consultancy, worth £1,200, where one of our qualified engineers will come out to your site and run through a comprehensive audit schedule in order to identify any faults or areas for concern with your EMC storage array. Within 10 days of the site visit we will provide you with a full report of our findings, together with recommendations on ensuring your equipment is working to its optimum performance level.

 

SAN Health is critical for QinetiQ

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When Com-Com was approached to provide an interim SAN solution for QinetiQ, we knew that the task would be demanding and the requirements would be precise.

For QinetiQ, data integrity and security is of paramount importance. With its position as a leading global technology supplier to the defence and aerospace industries, QinetiQ is not a company that’s able to take risks or cut corners when it comes to data storage.

Com-Com was contacted to assist with an efficiency saving exercise and found themselves competing directly against the manufacturer for the support of QinetiQ’s EMC central storage infrastructure. QinetiQ’s objectives were clear, they wanted to:

  • Improve on the existing service they received from the manufacturer
  • Reduce the cost of the service
  • Secure continuity of support for a further 12 months and beyond
  • Receive genuine 24×7 support

Com-Com’s approach was to offer a level of service that the manufacturer simply could not match. We provided QinetiQ with a team of named, security-cleared engineers to provide round-the-clock cover for their systems and invested in an extensive manifest of on-site spares to ensure that any issues could be dealt with promptly. Our team were able to deliver manufacturer-trained levels of support and service in four strategic locations throughout the UK, maintaining a mixture of various EMC array models and Brocade switch equipment. In addition to the day-to-day support we assisted QinetiQ with their end-of-life planning, helping to ensure that they could migrate seamlessly to a new storage solution with minimal disruption.

Thanks to their partnership with Com-Com, QinetiQ achieved their goals and delivered the following business outcomes:

  • 50% cost reduction
  • SLA delivering 100% system availability
  • Continuity of support to provide elegant migration to new central storage solution
  • Unified support arrangements to reduce complexity and management overheads

Com-Com are experts in EMC SAN maintenance and support.

To learn get the best value in EMC maintenance, call us on 0845 643 1180.

Contact us now to see how we can help you with your maintenance and get a little bit more from your IT budget in 2012.