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Network File Management
Time To Discover NFM
5/1/2007
Network file management (NFM) can help your institution better manage data resources campuswide—markedly so.
VIRTUALIZATION HAS BEEN a buzzword
in IT the last couple of years. From servers
(e.g., VMWare) and networks
(network address translation [NAT]
and virtual private networks [VPNs]), to
application availability and performance
(load balancing), managing resource usage
and data delivery with virtualization devices
is a staple of many of today’s data infrastructures.
By breaking the traditional direct
physical access and inserting an abstraction
layer, what you see is what you get, but the
mechanics of delivery may be quite different.
Why Virtualization Is Worth It
The reason for the increase in virtualization deployment is simple: The return on investment (ROI) is significant. For example, load balancers present a simplified interface to the user that usually does not directly reflect the resource. In other words, what may seem like an independent application server to the end user may actually be several dozen servers, each handling a share of the load. In this instance, for example, members of the application server pool may be taken offline for maintenance, without the application delivery being affected. Clearly, the savings involved in not interrupting the business process make the expenditures (capital and administration) for a load balancer solution thoroughly worthwhile.
Network file management is, in many ways, a load balancing methodology for file access. It is sometimes referred to as file virtualization because it acts as a proxy between client file server requests and the file server resources. NFM is sometimes confused with storage virtualization (used in SANs—storage area networks—to virtualize the storage media itself), although a complete storage methodology may include both file and storage virtualization. As with other virtualization schemes, NFM can provide a significant reduction in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of systems by reducing storage and administration costs of networked data.
Better (Much Better) Storage Management
Many campuses have dozens of servers, and each typically has underutilized storage capacity. Some departments may require more storage than others, yet if a standardized server solution is applied to departmental servers campuswide, some servers may see disk utilization of 30 percent or less.
“Underutilized resources represent a capital expenditure that has a negative ROI,” points out Clay Ryder, president of The Sageza Group, a Californiabased market research firm. “If storage is utilized at 50 percent, for example, in some respects that is the same as having paid twice the purchase price for the resource.”
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