Chapter8.An Introduction to Data Redundancy and Mirroring

Chapter 8. An Introduction to Data Redundancy and Mirroring

Upon completing this chapter, you will be able to

• Participate in discussions with vendors and coworkers regarding data redundancy policies and methods in your organization

• Understand the difference between MTBF, MTDA, MTDL, and MTTR calculations in a storage network environment

• Identify locations in the I/O path in a SAN where mirroring can be implemented

• Explain the performance benefits of mirroring for read operations

One of the most important and powerful concepts in storage networking is redundancy, which embodies the creation and management of spare copies of data, including encoded data and incremental changes to data; the use of multiple storage devices, subsystems, and media for storing these redundant data copies; and the ability to access data over multiple network paths. This chapter explores some of the different approaches used to create data redundancy and then takes an in-depth look at one of the most common forms of data redundancymirroring.