31 July 2010
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MAID: Storage news summary: April 29, 2009
By Beth Pariseau | Apr 29, 2009
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PrintAs data grows while IT budgets shrink in 2009, users are looking for ways to maximize the efficiency of data storage systems. Among the product features available on the market for this is MAID, or massive array of idle disks, as well as drive spin-down.
Mark Peters, an analyst at Milford, Mass.-based Enterprise Strategy Group, draws a distinction between MAID, a term first used by Copan Systems Inc., and spin-down. According to Peters, MAID systems restrict the amount of storage capacity that can be active at any one time to approximately 25%. Spin-down systems are more variable in how much capacity is spun down according to data usage.
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), on the other hand, defines MAID as "a storage system comprising of a massive array of (idle) disk drives that are powered down individually or in groups when not required."
"People use the term glibly now, like Xerox or Kleenex," Peters said. Ultimately, Peters said he expects MAID to become so ubiquitous "it won't really matter what the differences are." For more of Peters' insights about MAID and its future, see our special report podcast.
Vendors and products that offer MAID and drive spin-down include:
Copan Systems Revolution Series
Copan was the first vendor to bring MAID to a widespread audience with its Revolution series of virtual tape library (VTL) systems, which have expanded in recent years to also serve as network-attached storage (NAS) disk-backup repositories. Copan's approach to MAID is geared strictly toward the enterprise data backup and deep archiving market, where performance isn't the top priority. Twenty-five percent of the Revolution system can be spun up at any one time; disk drives are not spun up or down individually. Copan's Disk Aerobics feature spins drives up in the background to ensure they remain available.
DataDirect Networks Inc. S2A Storage Systems
DataDirect's D-MAID feature for its S2A disk arrays allows users to spin down entire tiers of disks into sleep mode according to policy, rather than individual drives or RAID groups.
Digi-Data Corp. T2000 Controller Disk Power Management
Digi-Data's approach to disk spin-down would be outside the purest MAID definition -- it spins drives up or down according to activity, so four out of five drives in a RAID group could be spun down, for example, if a user so chooses. How long a RAID group or individual drive should wait before powering down is also user-configurable.
This article originally appeared on SearchStorage.com
