Your storage solution must meet your basic file system management needs. In addition to the operating platform, servers store software and data. The primary challenge is to store the data efficiently while making it available to users when and where they need it. To simplify that task, your storage solutions should abstract diverse storage devices into a single logical storage space.
Storage solutions must be flexible and scalable. Flexibility lets you apply the storage solution to a variety of equipment. Scalability lets you continue to grow and adapt your solution as your business needs change.
The following table describes general storage requirements and OES 2 solutions.
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Storage Requirement |
Novell OES Solution |
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Virtualized storage management: The ability to manage diverse storage devices from multiple vendors and to present the combined space as a single resource that you can subdivide and allocate according to your data management needs. |
Novell Storage Services™ (NSS) virtualizes the file storage to take advantage of all space available on disks. NSS supports a variety of storage device technologies and vendor products. NSS is available on both Linux and NetWare® kernels. For information, see NW 6.5 SP8: NSS File System Administration Guide. |
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Flexibility: The ability to implement different storage solutions to meet a variety of workplace scenarios and to modify the storage solution easily as business needs change. |
NSS supports a variety of storage architectures, including direct-attached storage (DAS), network-attached storage (NAS) servers, and storage area networks (SANs). For information, see the NW 6.5 SP8: NSS File System Administration Guide. NSS supports both Fibre Channel and iSCSI SANs that allow authorized access to any device in the SAN fabric and optimization of available storage. For information about the NetWare iSCSI SAN solution, see the NW 6.5 SP8: iSCSI 1.1.3 Administration Guide. For OES 2 Linux, a Linux solution for iSCSI storage is available. For information, see Novell Cluster Services™ supports server clusters. Data for the cluster can be shared as DAS or in SANs, depending on your application requirements. For information see the NW6.5 SP8: Novell Cluster Services 1.8.5 Administration Guide or the OES 2 SP2: Novell Cluster Services 1.8.7 for Linux Administration Guide. |
OES 2 is compatible with a wide variety of storage devices such as disk drives, JBOD (just-a-bunch-of-disks) arrays, RAID arrays, storage subsystems, tape drives, and tape libraries.
Storage devices can be SCSI, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SATA, or ATA/IDE, depending on your performance and reliability requirements. In general, SCSI devices are faster and more reliable than ATA devices. Today’s ATA devices can be used for primary and near-line storage or as staging areas in a disk-to-disk-to-tape backup strategy.
NetWare supports both Fibre Channel and iSCSI SAN solutions. In a Fibre Channel SAN, the SAN equipment and connections are based on Fibre Channel interconnect technologies. In an iSCSI SAN, the equipment and connections are based on conventional Ethernet and IP interconnect technologies.
For conceptual information about devices and partitions used by the NSS File System and the NetWare Traditional File System, see the OES 2: Server Disks and Storage Devices for NetWare Guide.
For information about Linux POSIX file systems such as Ext3 and Reiser, see File Systems in Linux
in the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3 Installation and Administration Guide.
For more information about general storage solutions such as DAS, NAS servers, SANs, and clusters, see Storage Architectures.