Storage hard disk multi-protocol support

Multi-protocol support is the first element of unified storage that has attracted people's attention. Experts have always believed that support for multiple protocols can bring great value to users. In a unified storage environment, storage resources become a shared resource pool to store data blocks or file data, and storage resources are configured according to application requirements, thereby improving the user's own storage efficiency.

　　Although users could previously use NAS gateways to separate the space of SAN disk arrays for file reading and writing, thereby supporting multiple protocols, this method is not economical and users need to bear the additional construction and management costs of NAS gateways. Therefore, for users, the most convenient thing is still to support multiple protocols on a single storage device at the same time, which has also become a standard feature of the current mainstream unified storage system.

　　

　　Figure 1: NetApp unified storage architecture

　　The current unified storage system needs to support block protocols such as FC, iSCSI, and FCoE, as well as the two most common file protocols, CIFS and NFS. In addition, more and more unified storage has been supporting more and more protocols, and some manufacturers have even added support for object storage data in unified storage.

　　Of course, unified storage's support for multiple protocols must ultimately be reflected in the management software. If the management software cannot be unified, even if the hardware supports multiple protocols or multiple interfaces, it cannot be considered truly unified. Looking around the storage systems of major manufacturers in the industry, some manufacturers' unified storage products are still integrating and unifying management software (some products still have two management software under a unified interface, and they are switched to the corresponding management software through Link), but the unification of management software is bound to be the general trend in the future and has become one of the necessary standards for unified storage.

　　

　　Figure 2: Hitachi Command Suite, the unified management platform of HDS's unified storage product HUS, can manage different types of data storage through the unified management platform.