A Key to Averting Backup Problems When Consolidating NAS

There continues to be a lot of buzz about storage consolidation and, more specifically, consolidating file servers. Regardless of what form NAS consolidation takes - monolithic NAS filers, file virtualization or clustered NAS - companies tend to focus on its obvious benefits. Smaller data center footprints, improved storage utilization, centralized consoles for simpler administration and even deduplicating redundant files are some of the advantages that companies will realize should they consolidate NAS. Yet what companies may forget to consider is the new backup challenges that consolidation creates and that the new backup problems created may mitigate whatever benefits consolidation delivers.

The "loved the first, hated the third" is a phrase that I hear periodically when companies talk about their NAS implementations. This of course refers to the fact that they loved the simplicity of their first NAS device but, as they add more, the complexity of managing multiple systems starts to surface. Key issues that companies encounter as their number of NAS systems grows include:

• Which user or business unit do they assign to which filer?
• How do they manage out-of-space conditions on one filer and stranded capacity on another?
• How do they effectively and efficiently manage file migrations?

Because of issues like these and others, the topic of NAS consolidation naturally emerges but what companies can overlook in these situations is new problems that NAS consolidation creates. One major problem that companies can overlook is how they will manage backups in this new consolidated environment. This came sharply into focus during a recent briefing that I had with an emerging provider of consolidated NAS.

While this NAS provider was quick to elaborate upon the aforementioned benefits of consolidated NAS, when the topic of backup came up there was a noticeable pause on their end. It was only with reluctance that they admitted that doing backups in consolidated NAS environments puts incredible stress on it. It can create bottlenecks on either the NAS controller heads or at the network level which can result in failed or incomplete backups and degraded user experiences. Therefore companies must temper the benefits they expect to achieve with consolidation with the knowledge that they may not be able to provide the same level of data protection as before.

While I certainly don't dismiss the benefits of consolidation, companies need to think long and hard about the best way to implement it and what other alternatives they may have. One alternative that companies may fail to consider is to first archive infrequently accessed files on their existing file servers onto lower cost storage systems such as the Permabit Enterprise Archive.

In so doing, companies eliminate the need to backup these files in the first place, free up additional capacity on existing file servers and may even eliminate the immediate need to consolidate. Even if the decision is made to consolidate, companies can better control costs by adopting an archive first policy. In so doing, they minimize the number of files they need to migrate, they need less storage, they utilize less capacity once they do implement it, they realize better performance and they avert backup issues in the new consolidated environment before they even start.

The continuing industry buzz over NAS consolidation is certainly understandable as companies can expect to realize a number of benefits by implementing it. But as part of the process of consolidating corporate NAS environments, it is imperative for companies to take a step back and take a hard look at the backup problems that NAS consolidation likely will create and how these can be averted before they surface. Implementing scalable archiving systems such as Permabit Enterprise Archive may not only mitigate these problems, it may change the entire complexity, cost and scope of the consolidation.