Nearline Storage Part 2
RAID Recovery - Nearline Storage
Nearline storage and archiving reduce the load on online systems and result in better performance. However, retrieval of data in nearline storage devices is slower than the SCSI hard disks that are usually connected to servers or are in a storage area network (SAN) environment.
Nearline storage is advantageous since the data stored in such media do not require instant access and high throughput. Hence this method is less expensive than SAN and SCSI. Also, the data, when on the shelf, are immune to malware attacks as they are physically disconnected from networks, computers, servers, and the Internet. They also provide the write-protect facility to ensure complete protection.
Nearline 2.0
‘Nearline 2.0’ is a software-based nearline data repository that uses standard disk storage devices. It uses a data compression technology that allows higher amount of data to be stored in a given amount of disk space. This data can be searched and retrieved without being de-compressed. Therefore, this method is faster than earlier such methods. This technology is employed in SAP’s Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) architecture, which is designed to improve the performance of the main database of the SAP business intelligence (BI) system.
Summary: Nearline storage is an intermediate data storage type between online and offline storage. Nearline is advantageous because it helps in preserving huge amount of data. The only disadvantage associated with nearline storage is its slow retrieval process. With latest technologies such as Nearline 2.0, this problem can be addressed to great extent.
