Reliable hard disk drives for data backup and archiving

With the shipping rate of disk storage devices increasing annually at more than 60%, the diversification of digital information is upon us.
But in the enterprise, such information system's data must be managed not only for growth but also in accordance with regulatory compliance and life cycle requirements.

Data tends to have differing frequencies of use as it ages. For simplicity let's just consider here two types of data; 'frequently accessed data' and 'still important but not so frequently accessed data.'
In practical terms data access requirements have meant that both frequently accessed data and not so frequently accessed data have required the same high accessibility capability on retrieval, and have therefore been managed in high performance storage devices.
However, managing data not frequently accessed, in high reliability storage devices on a 24 x 7 basis is not cost-effective.
Hence, there is a growing demand for cost-effective, high capacity storage, to manage less frequently accessed data.

Fujitsu's has answered this demand by integrating reliable, yet low-cost, high capacity devices as Nearline FC disk drives in its ETERNUS3000 and ETERNUS6000 storage systems.

Where Nearline FC disk drives sit in the hierarchy of data storage

• "Online" is used to describe highly available transactional data, typical of bank-transactions, financial applications and other mission critical systems. It requires the high performance and reliability of high speed Fibre Channel disk drives.
• "Nearline" describes data less frequently accessed, which must still be readily available on demand. This includes medical records, images, sound files and e-mail archives. Here the use of lower-cost, high capacity yet reliable Nearline FC disk drives is a practical solution.
• "Offline" describes data rarely if ever accessed but which must be retained for long term data security, regulatory requirement, or as a multi-generational archive of data snapshots. Here high capacity tape drives are the most suitable medium.

Specification of Nearline FC disk drives and comparison with other media

• Nearline FC disk drives provide 400GB and, 500GB capacity with low noise rotational speeds of 7200rpm.
• Nearline FC disk drives ensure high reliability through use of a duplicated Fibre Channel interface.
• Nearline FC disk drives provide for 24 x 7 operation with their Fibre Channel disk drive configuration, which ensures mission-critical application retrieval requirements are maintained for infrequently accessed data, but at a lower overall cost.

Uses for Nearline FC disk drives

The combination of Fiber Channel disk drives with Nearline FC disk drives (*Note 2) enables ETERNUS storage systems to cost effectively handle the following applications.

Disk to disk backup

As demands for high-speed backup/recovery grow, disk to disk backup is becoming a mainstream strategy. Here the backup volume is generally used as both temporary storage and high-speed recovery storage following any unexpected storage event. Low-cost, high capacity and reliable Nearline FC disk drives provide the most appropriate storage spaces. Plus when configured in ETERNUS storage systems they provide a highly accessible and cost-effective backup environment through the use of the ETERNUS Advanced copy functions (*Note 3).
Moreover, the support for version control of backup data across numbers of generations ensures significant reductions in replication processing time.

Longer term storage of reference data

Every business has data, such as e-mail archives, image and sound files, CAD, R & D documents, history or regulatory compliance requirements, that needs to be fetched easily and simply on demand, despite having an infrequent access profile. Such data is not only rapidly increasing, but also requires long-term retention. So when it comes to selecting a storage medium, low-cost and high capacity Nearline FC disk drives are very appropriate.

Reduced energy consumption

Eco-mode (*Note 4)

ETERNUS3000 storage systems feature an eco-mode with Nearline FC disk drives.
This function, applying MAID technology(*Note 5), controls the spindle motor depending on your need and system requirements and is capable of setting each RAID group independently.
As can be seen in the example below, this function can reduce the power consumption by about 20%.

Summary

With data diversification still expanding, ETERNUS storage systems continue to deliver innovative solutions in support of your business needs.

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Fujitsu offers a range of SAN storage products including the following major disk storage systems.