Storage Solutions

For Small and Medium Businesses

Overview
May 2008
 Overview 2
Storage Solutions

Contents

Page 3 Introduction
RAID storage
Software versus hardware RAID
Backup hardware and software
Considerations for storage planning

Page 6 Storage Guidelines

Home office solutions: Less than 1TB
Small solutions: 500GB to 2TB
Medium solutions: 2TB to 5TB
Large solutions: 5TB to 10TB
Internal versus external storage
External hard drive considerations
Long-term storage media

Page 9 Storage Connections

How are you connecting your storage?
Higher capacity RAID or SAN solutions

Page 11 RAID Types

RAID principles
Striping
Mirroring
Parity

Tip: Once your storage requirements grow
beyond a single drive, keep your operating
system and applications on a separate drive
for fastest performance and best protection.
What should you store?
Back up: Home directory, email, documents,
original assets, project files, movies, pictures,
music, library (with the exception of caches
and logs)
Archive: Project files, original assets, docu-
ments, financial data, email, business-related
iChat messages
Don’t need to back up: Applications, render
files, cache files, system folder (assuming you
have the original installation discs)
Note: An offsite copy refers to a hard drive,
tape, or DVD that’s located at home or in
a safe instead of at the office. Insurance
companies typically want you to keep data
archived offsite.
Overview 3
Storage Solutions
Introduction
If you’re in the business of creating or distributing digital content, your data is growing
fast. High-resolution photography, digital video footage, and expanding media asset
databases can require terabytes of storage. At the same time, data protection and near-
instant data access are crucial to your operation.
Do you have a strategy for data storage, backup, and archive? This document provides
guidelines, recommendations, tips, and valuable information to help you make decisions
that are right for your business. First, here are some definitions and comments.
Storage involves saving your documents, media files, and other content to a hard drive
or other device so that you can access them regularly. Most of the time, storage happens
without any thought on your part. When you save a document to your desktop, you are
storing it on your computer’s hard drive. When you receive an email message, it’s down-
loaded and stored in a folder on your hard drive. When you burn photos to a DVD, the
DVD is storing your photo files.
However, as you accumulate more and more data, finding the files you need and back-
ing up your important files can be difficult. Certain storage methods make finding and
backing up data easy, while others render these tasks nearly impossible.
Backup is a strategy wherein a primary copy of your data resides in one location, such
as the internal hard drive, and a secondary backup copy is close at hand. They might be
in the same physical location (such as your office), but not on the same storage device.
Frequent backup protects the data you use—or might use—every day. Whether email
messages, documents, or media files, this data is essential to your business operations.
Backup does not mean moving your data to another drive or device to free up space on
the main drive. Even after you’ve made the backup copy, you must keep the original or
one other copy somewhere else. If your original is lost due to drive failure or accidental
deletion (ever done a Save instead of a Save As?), you can connect, insert, or attach
your backup volume and copy the file back to its original location. This is also called an
online, or near-online, backup.
Archive is long-term storage, also known as offline backup. Archived data is crucial
to your business for legal, insurance, or other reasons, but it’s no longer changing
and doesn’t need to be accessible on a regular basis. It might be a project that’s been
completed and signed off by a client or a document that is no longer being updated.
DVDs, external hard drives, and tape cartridges are commonly used to archive. Larger,
more robust archives use a combination of hard drives and tape-based solutions for a
powerful mix of speed and reliability.
How does archiving differ from backing up? Backup data is stored in an easily accessible
location, while archived data can be stored near or far away since you’ll access these
files much less often.

Mac Pro
Xserve
Promise
Tip: For the ultimate in data protection and
enhanced performance, both the Xserve
and the Mac Pro may be configured with
internal hardware RAID cards. Both cards
feature 256MB of RAID cache, a 72-hour
cache protecting battery, and hardware
RAID levels 0, 1, and 5. The Mac Pro RAID
card provides up to 304MB/s, while the
Xserve RAID card delivers up to 318MB/s.
Overview 4
Storage Solutions
RAID storage
As your storage requirements grow, the obvious solution is to add more hard drives.
It’s attractive too. Prices are falling so drastically that the latest high-capacity drives
barely make a dent in your budget. Why not pick up a new one every few months?
The problem is, there’s no efficient way to manage, retrieve, and back up your data as
those hard drives stack up. Imagine that you have 20 external hard drives (that may all
look the same), and you want to find a single asset or group of assets. Do you plug in
every single drive and search it? Do you keep—and update—a list of which assets are
on each drive? Or do you resort to Post-it notes slapped on all your drives? And in the
case of a drive failure, how long will it take to restore all of your data?
This is where RAID comes in. Redundant Array of Independent Drives (RAID) allows
you to use the storage space of multiple drives at one time. This “array” appears as
a single volume on the computer. Using hardware or software RAID (meaning that
either dedicated hardware or the operating system will handle the load), you can
configure your storage to deliver different levels of performance, capacity, and
redundancy. The most common are RAID levels 0, 1, and 5.
It’s important to understand that RAID is not a backup solution. There’s a difference
between redundancy and backup. Redundancy is a RAID feature that keeps informa-
tion about your data. This information is used to re-create your files and documents
should one of the drives fail. It’s not a backup copy of your files, but a set of instruc-
tions on how to rebuild them. The downside is that if you delete, overwrite, or corrupt
your files, the instructions for rebuilding them are lost. This is also one of the ways
redundancy differs from backup. A file that’s backed up can be restored if you delete
the original.
Redundancy is invaluable in environments where downtime is not an option. With a
backup alone, if you lose data, you can’t work until the data is restored. This can take
a while if you lose an entire hard drive. Additionally, any data you’ve created since
your last backup will be lost. RAID, on the other hand, will rebuild your data on the
fly, which means you can stay working. It’s a failover system that provides data despite
a failure.
It’s best to store your data using RAID. Be sure to back up as well to cover you in the
event of hardware failure or software data loss.
Read on to learn more about how RAID can help you prepare for future storage needs.
Software versus hardware RAID
RAID functionality can be implemented in hardware or software. Software RAID,
included in Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server, enables you to stripe or mirror disk arrays
for enhanced performance or greater data protection. However, it’s not practical for
implementing RAID levels that use parity for higher availability and drive efficiency.
Parity RAID levels, such as RAID 3 and 5, involve compute-intensive operations that
can overtax the system processor, affecting overall performance. A hardware RAID
controller prevents this bottleneck and delivers maximum throughput while providing
the highest level of fault tolerance.
 Overview 5
Storage Solutions

Backup hardware and software

Are you tired of copying files and folders manually each time you want to back up?
Choose a software solution that automates your backup plan to remove the drudgery,
while helping to ensure your important data is safe and sound. The best backup soft-
ware allows you to set a regular backup time—say, every Thursday at noon—and then
forget about it.

Backup basics
Some software solutions are optimized for backing up media and other files. Others
are designed to copy the entire contents of your hard drive, applications and all. No
matter what you use, make sure the software allows you to back up as an administra-
tor so you don’t have problems with file privileges. Most software products have you
covered, but it’s a good idea to check.

Performance and protection

What else should you look for in a backup application? With incremental backup,
only data that has changed is backed up, reducing backup time and saving hard-
drive space. Compression also saves space, and encryption protects your documents
from unauthorized access. Most backup software will even check each copied file to
verify that it was backed up correctly. And for those occasions when you actually lose
backed-up data, you’ll be relieved to have software that restores it, putting the data
where it belongs quickly and easily.

Tip: Once you’ve made a decision and have
your backup software, do a practice restore.
It’ll help you become familiar with how the
software restores lost data should you ever
need to use the process.
Advanced solutions
The more data you back up, the less practical DVDs become. Tape-based backup
provides much higher capacity and faster speed. Using a combination of auto-loading
hardware and scheduled backup software, you can automate the process of archiving
data. This is far more streamlined than manually loading hundreds of DVDs. As you
step up to tape solutions for archiving data, make sure your backup software supports
the tape interface you’re using, for example, Fibre Channel or SCSI. If you intend to set
up a storage area network (SAN) using Apple’s Xsan you’ll want an application with
SAN support.

Considerations for storage planning

• How much is your data worth to your business?
• How much storage will you need to consolidate 18 months from now? How are you
going to find and back up all that data?
• What is your current backup and archive plan?
• How much of your data can and should be backed up?
• How frequently are you producing new data or updating existing data? Should you
back up daily, weekly, or monthly?

Tip: If you have space inside your computer
for more hard drives, use it. A Mac Pro has
four hard drive bays, and an Xserve can hold
three Apple Drive Modules. These drive bays
are well cooled, they provide great transfer
speeds, and you’ve already paid for the
enclosure. A Mac Pro or Xserve with one
hard drive takes up no more room than a
fully loaded system, while each additional
external drive requires another cable, another
AC adapter, and more room on your desktop.
Overview 6
Storage Solutions
Storage Guidelines
The storage requirements of your business are largely driven by how much data
you create or update on a regular basis. Whether you’re a large operation or a sole
proprietor, you’ll want to consider the following:
• How much data do you need to have “online,” or instantly accessible, all the time?
• How much data have you created this year? Spotlight can find all files created in the
last 365 days.
• How much will your data requirements grow? Even if your company isn’t growing,
consider that you’ll most likely create 30 to 50 percent more data in the next year.
After determining how many gigabytes or terabytes of data you’ll have in the next 18
months, use the following guidelines to scope storage, backup, and archive solutions
that are realistic for your business.
Home office solutions: Less than 1TB
Storage: Your computer’s internal hard disk is usually the primary or only storage
device required for your home office. Additional FireWire or USB hard drives can be
added as your storage needs grow.
Backup: Time Machine in Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is an excellent solution for
one-click, continuous backup. It works with attached FireWire or USB hard drives, or
wirelessly with Time Capsule. Time Capsule is a full-featured 802.11n Wi-Fi base station
that includes a 500GB or 1TB server-grade hard drive designed to work with Time
Machine in Leopard.
Archive: You’ll need to archive important data and projects on an external hard drive
that’s separate from your backup and stored in a different location.
Small solutions: 500GB to 2TB
Storage: The internal storage of a Mac Pro (4TB) or Xserve (3TB) should be sufficient.
You can choose to consolidate your data using RAID or to store different data on
each individual drive. Now you have the ability to configure a Mac Pro or an Xserve
with an internal hardware RAID card for RAID levels 0, 1, and 5. Whether you’re storing
photography, video, or your mail server, the Mac Pro and Xserve with an internal hard-
ware RAID card can protect your data without external drive enclosures, power bricks,
or cables.
Backup: If your storage needs fall into the lower end of this spectrum, you can prob-
ably back up to a separate internal drive. But as those needs grow, you’ll most likely
want to rely on an external drive for backup. This also gives you the flexibility to move
your backup to a secure offsite location.

Tip: Hard drives are made to spin. If you’re
using a backup drive that isn’t connected to
the computer, be sure to turn it on regularly.
This gets the motor spinning and the head
moving, which in turn prevents issues related
to “sticktion”—a breakdown of lubricant
that can cause the metal surface of the disk
to stop or stick. Powering up the drive also
allows your system to identify and repair any
errors that may have been introduced while
the disk was inactive.
Overview 7
Storage Solutions
Archive: You’ll need to archive your data on an external hard drive that’s separate from
your backup. There are also affordable tape solutions. Depending on how much you
need to archive, even DVD media may be sufficient.
Medium solutions: 2TB to 5TB
Storage: As you begin to exceed the storage capacity of your computer, it’s time to
add external storage to the system. An easy, low-cost solution is to use software RAID
in Mac OS X to combine multiple external drives. But for better performance and
greater scalability as you continue to create digital content, you may prefer a hardware
RAID solution, such as the Promise VTrak E-Class RAID subsystem. Also be sure your
storage solution has enough space for the content you’re going to create in the future,
not just for what you have today.
Backup: Start by using external storage in addition to the primary storage devices. An
even better solution is RAID, such as the Promise VTrak E-Class RAID subsystem. Since it
features two independent RAID controllers, you can use one volume for main storage
and the other for backup.
Archive: To archive this much data, you’ll want to consider a robust tape solution.
Multiple external hard drives may work as well, though they present some serious
physical management challenges. Don’t even consider DVDs.
Large solutions: 5TB to 10TB
Storage: A high-capacity RAID solution gives you plenty of external storage that scales
well without compromising performance.
Backup: This is where Xserve RAID is the perfect solution for both storage and backup.
It allows you to use a combination of software and hardware RAID for an ideal balance
of performance and protection.
Archive: It’s time to invest in a tape solution—no question about it. In fact, with this
much data, consider an autoloading tape library system, which allows you to go from
disk to disk to tape for storage, backup, and archive using an integrated “tiered storage”
solution. And with automatic backup and archive software, you won’t have to worry
about loading the tape.
Internal versus external storage
Internal storage lives inside your computer or server on the internal hard drive (or
drives) that comes with your system. Since internal hard drives connect directly to the
system controller, typically using a Serial ATA (SATA) interface, data transfers are very
fast. And because there are fewer components and no enclosure, internal storage is
more reliable, more compact, and less expensive than external solutions.
External storage relies on hard drives housed in self-contained enclosures outside the
computer. They usually connect to your system via USB or FireWire, though it’s now
possible to find drives with eSATA connections. External storage is easy to set up—just
plug in the hard drives and they become available.
The limitation on internal storage is space: If you can no longer add internal storage,
it’s time to consider using high-quality external storage.

Tip: If you must use DVDs for archiving,
consider DVD+R over DVD-R.
Overview 8
Storage Solutions
External hard drive considerations
Not all storage is created equal. In addition to capacity and price, keep an eye on the
following attributes.
Technology: Make sure that the manufacturer is using the latest and most reliable
components (and that they include the cables you’ll need to connect the drive to your
system). A product that costs far less money could cost you far more in data loss. For
example, a well-protected (and more expensive) physical mount will protect the hard
disk from shock and resulting data loss.
Interface and rotational speed: Rotational speed describes how fast data is being
read/written/retrieved from the drive. If your drive’s rotational speed is extremely slow,
it doesn’t matter how fast the data transfer protocol is. Before the transfer cable sees
the data, the drive has to find it.
Enclosures: As hard drives spin and access data, they can get hot. Metal dissipates
heat well, keeping the hard disk cool and decreasing the risk of drive failure. A plastic
enclosure without fans or vents might not cool itself as well as a metal enclosure
(which has both).
Long-term storage media
Tape (capacity: 80GB to 320GB for VXA; 200GB to 800GB for LTO)
Tape-based storage uses magnetic tape stored in cartridges, which can be placed in
autoloading devices that change tapes automatically when needed. This allows you
to create a tape library that contains all your backup data. In addition to capacity
considerations, you should know how fast your transfers need to be. For example,
transferring 1TB of data onto tape can take anywhere from three hours to two days.
CDs and DVDs (capacity: 700MB for CDs; 4.7GB for DVDs)
Look for gold- or silver-based media. The write speed of the optical drive determines
transfer speeds. Keep your media in a safe environment, protected from moisture,
sunlight, and extreme temperatures. Avoid using Sharpie markers and labels for long-
term storage, as they contain acids that can eat through CD and DVD media. Neither
CDs nor DVDs are recommended for large archives. More than 200 DVDs are needed
to back up just 1TB of data.

Tip for professionals—USB versus FireWire:
While its theoretical transfer speed is faster
than FireWire, USB handles data transfers less
efficiently. For this reason, you may prefer
FireWire if you’ll be constantly accessing data
on the drive. Use USB only for backup or for
storing data that you don’t need to access
frequently.
Overview 9
Storage Solutions
Storage Connections
Before choosing a storage solution, you’ll need to determine how the storage will be
connected to your computer, server, or network. Each storage interface—USB, FireWire,
eSATA, Ethernet, SCSI, SAS, and Fibre Channel—has its own advantages and disadvan-
tages. Your deployment plans will help you determine the best fit.
How are you connecting your storage?
Direct-attached storage (DAS)
DAS connects directly to your computer. It’s the easiest and most inexpensive solution—
just attach a FireWire or USB drive to your system. Keep in mind that this configuration
doesn’t allow users on other systems to share your files or storage space. It’s truly a
single-system solution.
Network-attached storage (NAS)
NAS is available to multiple computers on the network using file-sharing protocols. A file
server—most often a dedicated computer—acts as a traffic cop, ensuring that multiple
people don’t write to files at the same time. This is a big step up from DAS. However,
since NAS relies on the Ethernet network, large transfers and many transactions can slow
down local network activities.
Storage area network (SAN)
SAN is a separate network used primarily for transferring data between computers and
storage devices. With SAN, data transmission for backups, restores, and mirroring doesn’t
interfere with the local network. This makes it easier to administer and frees up the local
network’s bandwidth for critical business functions. SAN is the most scalable storage
configuration.
USB 2.0 (480Mb/s)
USB has become the most popular interface for DAS devices. Thanks to high theoretical
transfer speed and relatively low cost, it’s an ideal solution for many small-office scenarios.
And with built-in drivers on both the Mac and PC, USB provides lots of flexibility.
FireWire 400 and 800 (400Mb/s and 800Mb/s)
FireWire 400 and 800 are popular storage protocols for desktop and portable devices.
Because FireWire transfers data in a highly efficient way, it’s ideal for transferring video
content or any other data that’s constantly being read and written. Unlike USB, FireWire
drives can be daisy-chained with minimal performance loss. By connecting one drive to
the next, you can attach multiple drives to a single port on your computer.

Tip for video: When you transfer video
content, it’s crucial that all the data arrives
at a precise time. For this reason, FireWire
or Fibre Channel is recommended for
video storage.
Overview 10
Storage Solutions
eSATA (3Gb/s)
eSATA is an emerging connection interface that delivers extremely high transfer speeds.
In fact, it’s so fast that the speed of the physical disk often becomes the bottleneck
instead of the connection. To take full advantage of eSATA, use it in a RAID deployment.
Since eSATA uses the same technology as the internal hard drive, it works well as an
external media drive for desktop systems. eSATA doesn’t work as well for portable
systems because unlike FireWire and USB, it requires an external power supply.
Ethernet (100Mb/s or 1Gb/s)
Ethernet is the communications protocol for nearly everyone’s local network. Easy to set
up and use, it works well for accessing and transferring small files (less than 100MB) that
are constantly being used. However, if you use the network for simultaneous access to
a shared resource, such as a network-based hard drive, network performance will start
to slow. These inefficiencies will be especially pronounced with video content and other
extremely large files.
Higher capacity RAID or SAN solutions
SCSI (320MB/s)
SCSI is a popular interface for tape backup, delivering high-quality transfers at very high
speeds. It works well for DAS but can be somewhat complex to configure in a NAS or
SAN solution. As other alternatives become more popular, it’s harder to find SCSI-based
hard drives designed for use with desktop systems; most are intended for use with
servers and in other enterprise environments.
Fibre Channel (2Gb/s or 4Gb/s)
Fibre Channel provides some of the fastest transfers available, making it a great solution
for huge files, such as HD video or large Adobe Photoshop documents. While Fibre
Channel and Ethernet can both be deployed over long distances—between office
buildings, for example—Fibre Channel has a distinct advantage. Its hardware manages
the data transfer, so there’s no extra load on the processor as there is with Ethernet.
You can connect Fibre Channel storage directly to a computer (DAS) or to a networked
file server (NAS). For large deployments, you’ll see a significant performance boost by
creating a separate network specifically for storage (SAN).
 Overview 11
Storage Solutions

RAID Types

RAID levels RAID principles

RAID technology can be applied in different
configurations—each offering a unique bal- RAID technology is based on the practices of striping to improve storage performance,
ance of performance, data protection, and and mirroring and parity to provide redundancy for increased data protection. Most
storage efficiency. Xserve RAID supports the RAID configurations, or RAID levels, combine these techniques to provide a balance of
most popular RAID levels, so you can select data protection and performance.
the best configuration for your application
and budget.

RAID 0: Striping. Lays down data in stripes

Striping
across an array of drives for exceptional I/O As the name implies, striping divides a logical drive into data blocks, or stripes, that
performance, but with no data protection. are distributed across the array of physical drives. Data is then laid down according to
RAID 1: Mirroring. Writes identical copies of the stripe paths so that each file is spread across multiple drives. Striping a set of disks
data on a pair of disks for total redundancy, greatly improves overall storage performance because each drive operates concurrently.
but with limited performance and inefficient While one drive is writing or reading a data block, another is seeking the next block in
use of drives. parallel. However, striping alone, known as RAID level 0, offers no data protection.
RAID 3: Striping with parity. Stripes data
Drive striping
across two or more drives and stores parity
data on a dedicated drive, providing data
redundancy and faster performance than
Stripe 1 Stripe 2 Stripe 3
a single drive.
Stripe 4 Stripe 5 Stripe 6
RAID 5: Striping with distributed parity. Stripe 7 Stripe 8 Stripe 9

Distributes data and parity information Stripe 10 Stripe 11 Stripe 12

... ... ...
across an array for high throughput, good
Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3
redundancy, and efficient use of drives.

RAID 0+1: Striping over mirroring. Stripes Striping breaks a single file into data blocks and distributes it across two or more drives.
data across pairs of mirrored drives for
performance and redundancy.

RAID 10, 30, and 50: Striping over RAID 1, 3,

and 5. Uses hardware RAID to create two or
more sets in RAID level 1, 3, or 5, and software
RAID to stripe across the sets. This creates a
single data volume with the best balance of
performance and data protection.
 Overview 12
Storage Solutions

Mirroring
The simplest method of achieving data redundancy, mirroring involves writing identical
copies of all data to a pair of physical drives. This results in very high data reliability—if
one drive fails, the data is still available on the remaining disk drive. However, you’ll get
only 50 percent storage efficiency because two physical drives are required to achieve
a single drive’s capacity. Mirroring alone is known as RAID level 1.

Striped pairs
Mirrored pair Mirrored pair

Stripe 1 Stripe 1 Stripe 2 Stripe 2

Stripe 3 Stripe 3 Stripe 4 Stripe 4
= =
Stripe 5 Stripe 5 Stripe 6 Stripe 6
Stripe 7 Stripe 7 Stripe 8 Stripe 8
... ... ... ...
Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

Mirrored drives contain identical sets of data for total redundancy.

Parity
A more sophisticated method of creating redundancy, parity provides data protection
for an array of drives without requiring complete duplication of the drive contents.
Parity information can be used—along with the data on the surviving drives—to
reconstruct the contents of a failed drive. The parity data can be stored on a dedicated
drive, as in RAID 3, or distributed across an array of drives, as in RAID 5. In either case,
parity provides much greater storage efficiency than mirroring—up to 85 percent for
a set of seven drives. Since parity involves calculating complex algorithms, it usually
requires a dedicated hardware RAID processor and shouldn’t be implemented in soft-
ware RAID due to tremendous performance degradation.

Parity generation

Stripe 1 Stripe 2 Stripe 3 Parity 1–3

Stripe 4 Stripe 5 Stripe 6 Parity 4–6
Stripe 7 Stripe 8 Stripe 9 Parity 7–9
Stripe 10 Stripe 11 Stripe 12 Parity 10 –12
... ... ... ... .. .

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

RAID 3 stripes data across two or more drives and stores parity data on a dedicated drive.

Parity
generation Stripe 1 Stripe 2 Stripe 3 Parity 1–3
Stripe 4 Stripe 5 Parity 4–6 Stripe 6
Stripe 7 Parity 7–9 Stripe 9 Stripe 9
Parity 10 –12 Stripe 10 Stripe 11 Stripe 12
... ... ... .. .. ..

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4

RAID 5 distributes data and parity information across all the drives in an array.

© 2008 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, FireWire, Leopard, Mac, Mac OS, Xsan, and Xserve are trademarks of
Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Adobe is a trademark or registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated
in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective
companies. May 2008 L371597A