This document discusses how CommVault Simpana data protection software and Red Hat Storage scale-out software-defined storage work together to provide an improved architecture for data backup, protection, and archival. By running the CommVault Media Agent directly on the Red Hat Storage servers, the combined solution consolidates the storage tier and eliminates network latency, providing significantly faster backup and restore performance compared to traditional NAS solutions.

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As software-only solutions,
CommVault and Red Hat
Storage represent an ideal
technology combination that
lets organizations consolidate
the Media Agent onto the
storage tier for dramatic
performance and scalability.
Together with a superior data
management and protection
architecture, Supermicro
SuperStorage storage servers
provide efficient building
blocks for scale-out Red
Hat Storage solutions with
built-in data protection from
CommVault Simpana.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 INTRODUCTION
2 COMMVAULT SIMPANA AND RED HAT STORAGE
Facilitating Data Management and Protection for the Modern Datacenter
CommVault Simpana—Protect, Manage, and Access Data
Red Hat Storage—Smaller and Smarter Software-Defined Storage
7 A SUPERIOR ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH
Performance Limitations of Traditional NAS for Backup and Archival
Consolidating the Storage Tier
9 CHOOSING STORAGE SERVER BUILDING BLOCKS
Supporting a Flexible Range of Storage Server Hardware
SuperMicro SuperStorage Storage Servers
Building Blocks for Scale-Out Storage with CommVault Data Protection
12 CONCLUSION
12 REFERENCES
TECHNOLOGY DETAIL
CONSOLIDATING THE STORAGE TIER
FOR PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY
Data Management and Protection with CommVault Simpana
and Red Hat Storage

2. 2redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
“Of all of the backup vendors
in this Magic Quadrant,
CommVault has been the most
vocal and articulate about the
future of backup.”
Gartner - 2012 Magic Quadrant
for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Software
INTRODUCTION
In a time of dramatic unstructured data growth and flat budgets, the need to scale data protection
solutions along with storage capacity has never been more apparent. The sheer amount of unstruc-
tured data that must be protected is enormous, and growing constantly. Complicating matters, IT
modernization efforts and the shift to cloud solutions have disrupted traditional data protection
models. In fact, the number and size of virtual machines is one of the key factors driving the need for
more scalable and cost effective underlying storage for data protection. Increased regulatory com-
pliance and trends such as multi-tenancy are likewise complicating data protection policies, making
flexible storage architectures essential. Simply buying more tier-1 storage is not an answer, and
many organizations are actively seeking alternative solutions.
Commvault Simpana combined with Red Hat Storage provides a compelling data protection solu-
tion that unifies storage management across data types, diverse storage infrastructure, and remote
locations—all based on open scale-out storage. Consistently listed in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for
Enterprise Backup/Recovery Software, CommVault Simpana lets organizations backup, restore, rep-
licate, archive, and recover from disasters, while also enabling essential searching and data analysis.
This innovative approach lets organizations build storage solutions tailored to their specific needs,
avoiding vendor lock-in and costly proprietary NAS solutions while riding technology price curves for
storage, processing, and memory.
Moreover, unique architectural synergies between Commvault Simpana and Red Hat Storage greatly
improve backup performance and throughput, dramatically shortening backup windows and provid-
ing other benefits, including:
• Converged compute and storage tiers, allowing the Simpana Media Agent to be consolidated into
the storage tier
• Dramatic performance improvements, with backup and restore speed up to twice as fast as tradi-
tional NAS solutions due to data locality
• Data reduction and up to a 90% reduction in backup time due to source-side deduplication
• Lower network traffic with up to a 75% traffic reduction when compared to deduplication
appliances
• Lower cost per terabyte (TB) with up to a 52% reduction in up-front storage costs and a 20%
reduction in operating costs
This paper describes the unique architectural combination of CommVault Simpana with Red Hat
Storage for software-defined scale-out storage. Components of the architecture are described
as well as a range of useful storage server building blocks based on storage server systems from
Supermicro.
COMMVAULT SIMPANA AND RED HAT STORAGE
Both CommVault Simpana and Red Hat Storage are software-only solutions, making them an ideal
technology match. By using software-defined scale-out storage as a platform for software-defined
data and information management, organizations gain the flexibility they need to build appropriate
and cost-effective storage solutions, without being restricted to the offerings of any one particular
storage vendor.

3. 3redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
FACILITATING DATA MANAGEMENT AND PROTECTION FOR THE MODERN DATACENTER
Modern organizations need to do more with their data. They need to minimize and hit backup
windows, even as data grows. They need to be able to replicate, archive, search, analyze, and comply
with stringent regulatory requirements for data retention. Most importantly, beyond backing up their
data, organizations actually need to be able to retrieve their critical data without fail in case disaster
strikes. Modern data protection solutions must be ready to address a range of challenges with broad
functionality, including:
• Backup and recovery, archive, e-mail file, eDiscovery, and compliance
• Data reduction, deduplication, and compression
• Enterprise reporting
• Replication, management, and continuous data protection (CDP)
• Desktop and laptop backup
Legacy approaches have sought to deal with these challenges with a long list of point products, with
some vendors offering seemingly extensive portfolios. While piecemeal storage management solu-
tions and point products may have sufficed in the past, they are no longer appropriate for today’s
diverse physical and virtual environments, and the growing amounts of unstructured data. In fact,
many legacy storage management solutions only cause more complexity and cost, and can pose real
risk to the organization itself in case of a disaster.
Unfortunately, having multiple products and interfaces—even from the same vendor—can be more
costly and more difficult to support and use. At a deeper level, however, these complex non-inte-
grated approaches lack contextual and content insight due to restrictive and disconnected index-
ing and cataloging approaches. Most also lack rich metadata to link logical application context with
stored data copies. Because of these limitations, legacy point solutions typically can’t meet the next
generation of multi-tiered recovery service levels, making it difficult for IT management to adopt
modern data management models.
COMMVAULT SIMPANA—PROTECT, MANAGE, AND ACCESS DATA
CommVault Simpana addresses these issues and more with a highly integrated solution that is built
from a single common code base. This unique approach provides dramatic simplification along with
broad functionality that is difficult to match with multiple point products. Building these features
into an integrated platform also delivers a much more powerful experience for organizations deploy-
ing data protection solutions.
The solution is made simpler and more powerful still when CommVault Simpana is coupled with Red
Hat Storage. In typical enterprise architectures, data protection software resides on its own hard-
ware tier, particularly when dedicated deduplication appliances are deployed. While this approach
provides necessary functionality, it also creates latency, as data must travel over the network
between tiers. Because Red Hat Storage provides a Red Hat Enterprise Linux instance, however,
CommVault Simpana can run directly on the physical server running Red Hat Storage, consolidating
the CommVault Media Agent directly onto the storage tier, with benefits that include:
• Less hardware to buy, requiring approximately half the servers
• Dramatic improvements in throughput by eliminating a network tier
• Simpler scalability with a single hardware tier instead of two

4. 4redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
A modern approach to backup and recovery requires deep application and hypervisor integra-
tion and intelligence, paired with the capability to manage heterogeneous storage array snapshots
for fast application-consistent recovery. Organizations need to be able to maximize efficiency
with deduplication, automation, fewer processes, tiering, and replication to any storage or loca-
tion. Solutions must likewise be resilient and secure, and posses the capability to deliver insights
through integrated reporting, allowing for continual improvement. Over time, all protected data
should become an asset rather than a management burden, by securely allowing self-service access
through a single searchable index for new uses. With a unified code base, CommVault Simpana soft-
ware delivers these capabilities through a single platform and console (Figure 1).
Data mangement
• Backup and recovery
• Snapshot integration
• Deduplication
• Virtual server protection
• Archive
• Data protection
• Edge data protection
• Storage tiering
Information management
• Info governance
• Regulatory & compliance
• Meaning-based retention
• Enterprise search
• E-Discovery
• Legal hold
• Defensible deletion
• Business decision making
Figure 1. With a unified code base, Commvault Simpana includes best-in-class modules for both data and
information management.
CommVault Simpana can be deployed across locations, and at any scale—from a few terabytes to
multinational enterprises with petabytes of data to protect and manage. Organizations can protect
complex heterogeneous environments, physical servers, remote offices, and even information
on laptops and desktop systems with one solution. Organizations can also maximize efficiency by
deploying whatever storage best suits their needs within the CommVault ContentStore—optimiz-
ing for cost and access while supporting diverse media types that include disk arrays, tape, and the
cloud.
Some of the key technology innovations in Simpana software that can help organizations transform
and deliver modern data protection for their organization include:
• Simpana OnePass. Simpana OnePass converges backup, archive and reporting with a single scan
of the data to simplify administration, reducing time and resources by up to 50% and eliminating
complexity for file and e-mail data (Figure 2).

5. 5redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
DOCX PDF PPTXXLSX XMLAVI DOCX PDF PPTXXLSX XMLAVI
File sytem & email File sytem & email
Backup
Archive
Report
Source
deduplication
Reporting | Recovery | ArchiveRepository
Simpana Content Store
RepositoryRepository
• Scan
• Collect
• Transfer
• Scan
• Collect
• Transfer
• Scan
• Collect
• Transfer
Figure 2. CommVault Simpana OnePass converges backup, archive, and reporting with a single scan of data
utilizing source deduplication.
• 4th generation deduplication. Building on a history of innovation in both source and target-based
deduplication, the fourth generation of deduplication in Simpana 10 allows organizations to scale
linearly from small, individual nodes up to extra large, multi-node deduplication databases by
introducing Parallel Deduplication. Organizations can multiply capacity, throughput, and resiliency
by consolidating multiple deduplication nodes under a single global reference pool.
• Simpana ContentStore. Simpana ContentStore functions as the back-end, hardware agnostic and
deduplicated virtual repository for all Simpana-managed information, consolidating protection
and archive data to eliminate inefficient data silos that waste resources. An intelligent index pro-
vides global awareness for data so users can quickly find what they need when they need it. Red
Hat Storage functions as a component of the Simpana ContentStore.
• Accelerate server virtualization. New application and virtualization compatibility provides
expanded snapshot integration, accelerating broad server virtualization by eliminating data pro-
tection roadblocks. Virtual machine backup operations are dramatically scaled with Virtual Server
Agent proxy teaming for failover, load balancing, and simplified management.
• Resilient Architecture. CommVault Simpana ensures that data can be protected and recov-
ered, even in the event of a hardware problem. The resilient architecture includes path flexibility
through GridStore and faster, more reliable data recovery with fewer points of failure thanks to
Simpana software’s distributed catalog structure.
RED HAT STORAGE—SMALLER AND SMARTER SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE
Red Hat Storage is a software-only open source solution that is designed to meet unstructured,
semi-structured, and big data storage requirements. At the heart of Red Hat Storage is GlusterFS,
an open source, massively scalable distributed file system that allows organizations to combine large
numbers of storage and compute resources into a high-performance, virtualized, and centrally-man-
aged storage pool (Figure 3). Red Hat Storage was designed to achieve several major goals.
• Elasticity. With Red Hat Storage, storage volumes are abstracted from the hardware and
managed independently. Volumes can grow or shrink by adding or removing systems from the
storage pool. Even as volumes change, data remains available with no application interruption.

6. 6redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
• Petabyte scalability. Today’s organizations demand scalability from terabytes to multiple pet-
abytes. Red Hat Storage Server lets organizations start small and grow to support multi-pet-
abyte repositories as needed. Organizations that need very large amounts of storage can deploy
massive scale-out storage from the outset.
• High performance. Red Hat Storage provides fast file access by eliminating the typical centralized
metadata server. Files are spread evenly throughout the system, eliminating hot spots, I/O bottle-
necks, and high latency. Organizations can use commodity disk drives and 10 Gigabit Ethernet to
maximize performance.
• Reliability and high availability. Red Hat Storage provides automatic replication that helps ensure
high levels of data protection and resiliency. In addition to protecting from hardware failures, self-
healing capabilities restore data to the correct state following recovery.
• Industry standard compatibility. For any storage system to be useful, it must support a broad
range of file formats. Red Hat Storage provides native POSIX compatibility as well as support for
CIFS, NFS, and HTTP protocols. The software is readily supported by off-the-shelf storage man-
agement software.
• Unified global namespace. Red Hat Storage aggregates disk and memory resources into a single
common pool. This flexible approach simplifies management of the storage environment and elim-
inates data silos. Global namespaces may be grown and shrunk dynamically, with no interruption
to client acess.
• Rapid and random access. Unlike archival systems based on tape, Red Hat Storage offers fast
random access, and data can be both accessed and recovered rapidly.
Red Hat Storage volume
Figure 3. Red Hat Storage and the HP ProLiant SL4540 Gen8 server can be deployed to serve as a large file and
object store.
From a technical perspective, Red Hat Storage provides distinct advantages over other technologies.
• Software-defined storage. Red Hat believes that storage is a software problem that cannot be
solved by locking organizations into a particular storage hardware vendor or a particular hard-
ware configuration. Instead, Red Hat Storage is designed to work with a wide variety of industry-
standard storage, networking, and compute server solutions.

7. 7redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
• Open source. Red Hat believes that the best way to deliver functionality is by embracing the open
source model. As a result, Red Hat Storage users benefit from a worldwide community of thou-
sands of developers who are constantly testing the product in a wide range of environments and
workloads, providing continuous feedback, and providing unbiased feedback to other users.
• Complete storage operating system stack. Red Hat Storage delivers more than just a distributed
file system. The complete storage solution adds distributed memory management, I/O scheduling,
software RAID, self-healing, local N-way synchronous replication, and asynchronous long-distance
replication via Red Hat Geo-Replication.
• User space. Unlike traditional file systems, Red Hat Storage operates in user space, rather than
kernel space. This innovation makes installing and upgrading Red Hat Storage significantly easier,
and greatly simplifies development efforts since specialized kernel experience is not required.
• Modular, stackable architecture. Red Hat Storage is designed using a modular and stackable
architecture approach. Configuring Red Hat Storage for highly-specialized environments is a
simple matter of including or excluding particular modules.
• Data stored in native formats. With Red Hat Storage, data is stored on disk using native formats
(i.e. XFS) with various self-healing processes established for data. As a result, the system is
extremely resilient and files will always stay naturally readable, even without the Red Hat Storage
software. There is no proprietary or closed format used for storing file data.
• No metadata with the elastic hash algorithm. Unlike other storage systems with a distributed file
system, Red Hat Storage does not create, store, or use a separate index of metadata in any way.
Instead, Red Hat Storage places and locates files algorithmically. The performance, availability,
and stability advantages of not using metadata are significant, and in some cases produce dra-
matic improvements.
A SUPERIOR ARCHITECTURAL APPROACH
While traditional NAS devices serve their intended purpose well, their use as a backup tier presents
limitations in terms of performance and scalablity. The combination of CommVault Simpana and Red
Hat Storage overcomes these limitations through an architecture that consolidates the storage tier.
PERFORMANCE LIMITATIONS OF TRADITIONAL NAS FOR BACKUP AND ARCHIVAL
Traditional NAS devices are a common choice for tier-1 backup and recovery solutions, and they
are fully supported as a part of the CommVault Simpana ContentStore. NAS devices are typically
exposed as shares over a network connection using protocols such as the Network Files System
(NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS). In a CommVault Simpana deployment, client systems
access the Simpana Media Agent, and the system running the media agent in turn mounts the NAS
device over the network as shown in Figure 4. Unfortunately, running media scans for backup and
indexing across network connections is slow, and can causes excess network traffic. Placing the
Comvault Simpana Media Agent on the NAS device itself would be ideal, but the proprietary nature
of most NAS devices prohibits this approach.

8. 8redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
Simpana Media Agent Simpana Media Agent
NFS/CIFS NFS/CIFS
NAS Device NAS Device
Client #1 Client #2
Figure 4. Network-based access to traditional NAS devices can cause undesirable latency and network traffic.
CONSOLIDATING THE STORAGE TIER
As a software-only storage solution, Red Hat Storage enables a different approach that provides
considerable flexibility and increased performance. Because Red Hat Storage runs on a standard
Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system instance across a wide range of standard hardware, it is
a simple matter to co-locate the Simpana Media Agent directly on the same servers running Red Hat
Storage (Figure 5). The result is higher performance data protection, higher throughput, and lower
impact to networks—with scale-out storage and data protection that grows with additional servers.
Red Hat Storage
GlusterFS Volume
Backup jobs
Native
protocol
Simpana
Media Agent
Simpana
Media Agent
10 Gigabit
Ethernet Shared network
A separate folder for each Simpana
Media Agent
CommVault Simpana deduplication
and Red Hat Storage
Fast local ext3 filesystem for Simpana DDB
Client #1 Client #2
Fast local ext3 filesystem for Simpana Index Cache
Simpana backup storage
(XFS filesystem as GlusterFS brick)
Figure 5. The combination of CommVault Simpana and Red Hat Storage allows the consolidation of the Simpana
Media agent on to the storage tier, improving performance and simplifying storage infrastructure.

9. 9redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
This innovative approach serves to dramatically simplify the storage tier, removing an entire layer of
networking and latency, and consolidating compute and storage resources onto fewer servers.
• The network is shared by both back-end communication between Red Hat Storage servers and
traffic between the clients and media agents
• The GlusterFS volume is configured in distribute-only mode with a single volume using separate
folders for each media agent.
• Simpana Media Agent instances perform deduplication, runing directly on the same physical
server as Red Hat Storage and accessing the GlusterFS volume using its native protocol.
• Direct-attached storage is divided between the Simpana Index Cache, the Simpana Media agent,
and Red Hat Storage, with local drives dedicated to each purpose.
With the Simpana Media Agent running on the same physical system as Red Hat Storage, media
scans are often able to act on local data rather than accessing all of the data over the network—
accelerating media scans, reducing latency, and avoiding unnecessary network traffic. The Simpana
Media Agent is able to interact directly with the Red Hat Storage GlusterFS volume utilizing its open
native protocol, further accelerating the process. In this manner, backups communicate directly
with Red Hat Storage volumes, dramatically increasing throughput and reducing backup windows.
In preliminary testing conducted by Red Hat and CommVault, rates of as much as 800 GB/hour
were observed. Moreover, the shared CPU, memory, and storage resources of consolidated storage
servers are more effectively utilized. Both storage and data protection can be scaled together in a
modular and greatly simplified manner, simply by adding additional consolidated storage servers.
CHOOSING STORAGE SERVER BUILDING BLOCKS
Organizations need to be able to deploy solutions quickly and easily, and tailored to their specific
needs. To facilitate rapid deployment, CommVault, Red Hat, and Supermicro have worked together
to describe a useful set of servers that can be deployed as as scale-out storage building blocks for a
consolidated storage and data protection solution.
SUPPORTING A FLEXIBLE RANGE OF STORAGE SERVER HARDWARE
One of the strengths of the software-only CommVault and Red Hat Storage approach is that it runs
across an extremely broad range of storage server hardware. Supporting a choice of industry-stan-
dard hardware lets organizations choose the CPU, memory, storage, and networking that best suits
their needs, focusing designs on cost, performance, capacity, or related factors. This approach also
lets organizations build small or large systems to meet specific storage needs, growing scale-out
storage and data protection together incrementally as dictated by storage demand.
SUPERMICRO SUPERSUPERSTORAGE STORAGE SERVERS
Supermicro provides enterprise-class server and storage solutions that simplify scale-out deploy-
ments for critical data. A number of Supermicro’s SuperStorage storage servers provide high-
capacity application-optimized platforms that are ideal for consolidated CommVault Simpana and
Red Hat Storage deployments. Supermicro’s extensive range of rackmount storage server solutions
offer high storage density while employing high-efficiency power to maximize performance-per-watt
savings to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
Supermicro’s SuperStorage storage server product line includes 2 rack unit (RU), 3 RU, and
4 RU form factors, with each server capable of supporting up to seven PCI expansion slots and
Supermicro’s extensive line of dual-processor and uniprocessor motherboards. Offering up to 93%

10. 10redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
power efficiency, redundant power and cooling, and hot-swappable drive bays and fans, Supermicro
storage servers are designed to meet the requirements of today’s sophisticated data centers and
high performance applications with new levels of storage performance, scalability, and reliability
(Figure 6).
SSG-6027R-E1R12N
SSG-2027R-E1R24N
SSG-6047R-E1R36N
Figure 6. Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers make ideal building blocks for deploying consolidated scale-
out storage with Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana data protection.
More information on Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers can be found at
http://www.supermicro.com/products/nfo/storage.cfm
BUILDING BLOCKS FOR SCALE-OUT STORAGE WITH COMMVAULT DATA PROTECTION
With a consolidated storage tier, designing scale-out storage building blocks to host both Red Hat
Storage and CommVault Simpana data protection is a relatively straightforward exercise. As dis-
cussed, multiple consolidated storage server building blocks can be combined to create a GlusterFS
volume of virtually any size, simultaneously scaling storage and capacity for backup and archive.
Critical components for CommVault Simpana performance include provisioning for the Index Cache
and the Simpana deduplication database (DDB). Storage for these elements needs to be sized cor-
rectly and located on fast storage for optimal backup performance. Table 1 provides guidelines for
sizing the Index Cache for small, medium, and large deployments
Table 1. Index Cache sizing guidelines.
Size Estimated Weekly Backup
(File and E-Mail Data)
Estimated Index
Cache
Recommended IOPS with Eight
Worker Threads
Small Up to 20 TB 200 GB 250
Medium 20-40 TB 500 GB 300
Large 40-60 TB 1 TB 400

11. 11redhat.com TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalability
Based on these values, Table 2 provides example scale-out storage building blocks for co-hosting
Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana for a range of storage capacities. For the purposes of the
table, front-end size is the total size of the application data backed up in the first full backup. Back-
end size is the total data footprint on the disk library.
Table 2. Small, medium, and large configurations Supermicro SuperStorage storage servers.
Deployment
Size (Nodes)
Supermicro
System
Index
Cache
DDB Front-End
Size
Back-End
Size
Small
(2 servers)
SSG-6027R-E1R12N
(2 RU, 64 GB of RAM)
200 GB 400 GB Up to 20 TB Up to 30 TB
Medium
(2-4 servers)
SSG-2027R-E1R24N
(2 RU, 64 GB of RAM)
500 GB 600 GB 20-30 TB 30-60 TB
Large
(2-4 servers)
SSG-6047R-E1R36N
(4 RU, 64 GB of RAM)
1 TB 800 GB - 1 TB Up to 60 TB Up to 120 TB
For each of the building blocks detailed in the table, two or more servers are deployed to implement
the GlusterFS volume and distribute both the storage and backup loads. The available disk drives on
each storage server are allocated to the Simpana Index Cache, the Simpana deduplication database
(DDB), and Red Hat Storage GlusterFS volumes.
• For best performance, the CommVault Index Cache can be placed on the fast local disk of the
Supermicro server using a RAID 0 volume to span multiple drives if necessary.
• The deduplication database is configured to use a separate RAID 10 volume that is formatted as a
Linux ext3 filesystem.
• The GlusterFS “brick” is comprised of the remaining drives.The GlusterFS volume is configured in
a “distribute only” mode for performance, and the system utilizes Simpana’s deduplication and
replication capabilities for high performance.
Individual servers for the small, medium, and large building blocks would be configured as described
in Table 2. Boot support is provided via additional 2.5-inch SATA drives or SATA DOMs.
Table 2. Individual node configuration details for small, medium, and large building blocks.
Size Drive
Capacity
Index Cache
(RAID 0)
Simpana DDB
(RAID 10)
GlusterFS Data Volume(s)
(RAID 6)
Small Twelve
3.5-inch drives
One 300 GB 15K
RPM SAS drive
Four 300 GB
15K RPM SAS
drives
Seven-drive RAID 6 volume with
SAS/SATA drives of desired
capacity
Medium Twenty-four
2.5-inch drives
Two 300 GB 15K
RPM SAS Drives
(RAID 0 volume)
Six 300 GB 15K
RPM SAS drives
16 data drives configured in two
RAID 6 volumes with SAS/SATA
drives of desired capacity
Large Thirty-six
3.5-inch drives
Four 300 GB 15K
RPM SAS drives
(RAID 0 volume)
Eight 300 GB
15K RPM SAS
drives
24 data drives configured in two
RAID 6 volumes with SAS/SATA
drives of desired capacity

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To scale to larger configurations, additional consolidated storage nodes can easily be added to
any of the above configurations, resulting in a larger Red Hat Storage volume and additional
computation capacity. This modular approach facilitates scalability of both Red Hat Storage
as well as backup capacity and compute resources for both Red Hat Storage and CommVault
Simpana.
CONCLUSION
With the dramatic and ongoing growth of unstructured data, storage needs have entered a new
era and promise only to escalate into the future. Conventional and legacy piecemeal storage
solutions simply no longer represent a viable strategy, adding complexity in best-case scenarios,
and inviting disaster under the worst of circumstances. Red Hat Storage offers a real and com-
pelling solution that lets organizations deploy scale-out storage solutions on their own terms.
The combination of Comvault Simpana and Red Hat Storage provides a unique solution that lets
organizations replicate, archive, search, and analyze their data from anywhere, without concern
for the location of the data, while restoring data without fail.
Capitalizing on the software-only strengths of both Red Hat Storage and CommVault Simpana
and consolidating the Simpana Media Agent onto the storage tier provides a unique approach.
The resulting performance and scalability advantages help minimize backup windows and let
organizations build storage solutions that follow commodity cost curves for storage and server
hardware. In comparison to other solutions with a single point of access, Red Hat Storage offers
the unique ability to address more device-streams, since each and every storage node within
the Red Hat Storage cluster acts as a storage head. Decreased backup windows result since
back-end storage can handle the data input more efficiently. Using the CommVault and Red Hat
Storage solution, organizations can easily scale both storage and backup capacity simultane-
ously, providing reliable and performant storage and data protection that precisely fit the needs
and growth patterns of dynamic organizations.
REFERENCES
To learn more about CommVault Simpana 10, visit:
http://www.commvault.com/introducing-simpana-10
To learn more about Red Hat Storage, visit:
http://www.redhat.com/products/storage-server/
TECHNOLOGY DETAIL Consolidating the Storage Tier for Performance and Scalablity