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File Area Networks

From data consolidation and management, it’s time to take the next step towards file consolidation and management techniques. By Varun Aggarwal

The age of computers has resulted in the generation of tons of data in various forms. There are a number of technologies and solutions available for block data stored in voluminous databases and data warehouses. However, solution vendors have long been ignoring the importance of unstructured data lying in the company in the form of files. These files are often of different types—Microsoft Word documents, manufacturing designs in the AutoCAD format and so on. These are often critical files that companies cannot afford to lose. However, since there have not been effective mechanisms to organise these files on a large scale, they pose a challenge for most organisations.

Enterprises are facing enormous challenges managing unstructured file data, which in many cases is the bulk of an organisation’s information. Files are everywhere, on servers, on desktop and laptops in the form of documents, spreadsheets, designs and so forth and these are often critical to an organisation’s day-to-day operations. There is an urgent need to adopt a technology that can relieve you of all these troubles. This is where a File Area Network or FAN comes into picture.

Manish Bapat, National Manager, NAS & CAS, EMC India & SAARC says, “The relative importance and criticality of file data has gone through a sea change as it relates to mission-critical business processes. At some point in the past three years, we collectively crossed a threshold wherein file data became the communicative lifeblood of every company in the world.” Nearly all workflows ultimately run through some manner of file infrastructure, increasingly spanning multiple geographies, business partners and IT infrastructures, all with real-time performance and access requirements. All these have made the requirement of an appropriate FAN infrastructure indispensable.

Understanding FAN

A File Area Network is a collection of systems and software that enable the centralised management of file data to improve user and administrative efficiency. FAN is focussed on better management and protection of file data with a view to reducing cost and complexity and increasing compliance.

The network portion of a FAN is the pre-existing corporate IP network. In addition, a FAN will make use of one or more upper layer Network File System protocols such as the Network File System (NFS) and the Common Internet File System (CIFS). The FAN is however distinguished from the underlying network that transports it. FAN is a logical way to describe the hardware and software technologies used to organise, route, switch, and provide consistent access to massive amounts of file data. This is similar to other layered network models. For example, storage networking traffic may traverse Fibre Channel fabrics, DWDM MANs, and IP WANs, yet the SAN is still the SAN even when it sits on top of something else.

“The primary business objective of FAN is to reduce the total cost of ownership of file data, reduce complexity in file data management and increase corporate compliance. This is achieved by improved storage management, providing the ability to consolidate and optimise storage across an organisation, improving disaster recovery and business continuity whilst minimising or eliminating client downtime”, says Gerald Penaflor, Brocade, Regional Sales Director for South Asia Pacific and Korea.

FAN focuses upon the centralised management of file data whereas SAN enables centralised management of block data. FAN can be integrated with a SAN in a situation where file data has been consolidated into a SAN using a Network Attached Storage (NAS) head or a File Server attached to a SAN. In this situation, a customer can leverage the efficiencies provided by both FAN and SAN. A SAN is not a pre-requisite for a FAN but a combined SAN/FAN strategy does offer greater management efficiencies and a lower total cost of ownership.

The evolution of FAN

FAN’s evolution can be viewed in a similar light to that of SAN. The concept of a SAN evolved when organisations felt the need to centrally store all block-level information, from an ease of management perspective. It essentially collapsed the various silos of storage into one pool that can be accessed using standard protocols from any or every server in the enterprise. Files that are now spread across the organisation, pose a serious risk to enterprises with compliance becoming a major factor governing all businesses. Hence, FAN is gradually evolving to help enterprises pool together all file-level storage devices and using intelligent software, enable ease of migration and management across the enterprise. In essence, FAN is what drives the creation of a common network of file storage, similar to the evolution of SAN that focused on the creation of a common network of block-level storage.

“Both technologies (SAN and FAN) started with the aim of consolidating information assets, optimising infrastructure and reducing management costs. SAN evolved to address the requirement for mission-critical enterprise apps to access data with high performance; whereas FAN evolved to address the issue of managing the vast amount of unstructured data spread across the organisation,” feels Soumitra Agarwal, Marketing Director, NetApp.

In reality, the two technologies are more than complementary; they are symbiotic. A SAN is a requirement for a robust FAN solution, and FAN solutions consist of tools that SAN cannot provide. As FANs make management easier at the file level, they permit the continued growth of data in underlying storage subsystems, which are usually SAN attached. Notably, all file data is ultimately stored in block format, and block data is optimally stored on a SAN.

Prem Nithin, Senior Technical Consultant, Cisco, India & SAARC predicts, “As with a SAN, there are many technologies and approaches that will be possible in the design and deployment of a FAN. Many vendors will participate in the FAN market, and innovation will continue at a fast pace over the next several years.” Establishing an accepted definition of a FAN is critical because it will allow IT teams to develop common shorthand and reference models for how they architect, deploy, manage, and augment their file infrastructure. In the absence of this kind of framework, many enterprises will simply drown in coming years, not only from a deluge of mismanaged file data, but also from the inevitable confusion that would result without a common nomenclature.

Developments in FAN technology

Various development efforts have begun exploring different FAN technologies. All the leading vendors in the industry have some or the other solution for different aspects of FAN. Symantec offers tools that provide visibility across the entire data centre, server, storage and data protection devices, from server to SAN and delivers the capability to actively manage and control the storage environment.

Technologies like EMC Documentum Content Management give a structure to all unstructured content as well as enforce rules around access control, workflow, tiering, etc. In addition, technologies acquired through EMC’s acquisition of Infoscape allow customers to analyse file-level information based on the criticality of content within a file and accordingly decide how to act upon it. Virtualisation technologies through EMC’s acquisition of Rainfinity allow customers to implement a global namespace around all file-based storage and ease management. Content Addressed Storage (CAS) technologies like EMC Centera help enterprises in deduplicating and drastically reducing backup windows of the existing file-level storage devices.

Where possible FAN will look to leverage existing standards—file access in UNIX and Windows use NFS and CIFS respectively and FAN leverages these standards—predicts Penaflor. However, as with all new technology there will always be areas not covered by existing standards. FAN is focussed on all aspects of file data management and as a concept FAN is relatively new. However, a number of the underlying technologies used in FAN can be considered mature. Brocade has just released Storage X v6.0. A FAN is suite of hardware and, optionally, software management technologies used to organise, route, switch and provide consistent access to large amounts of file data. Different solutions in the suite will therefore be at different stages of maturity.

“There are no clear standards for FAN as yet. True heterogeneous FANs with a unified global namespace and vendor independent interoperability will take some time to arrive. Software-based solutions currently offer considerable flexibility in letting you put together FANs with storage components from a variety of vendors and across multiple OS platforms,” says Basant Rajan, Chief Technology Officer, Symantec India.