Week 7 Case Study 3
Darren Ross
Strayer University
Professor Danielle Babb
CIS 505 Communications Technologies
November 22, 2015

Abstract Carlson Companies is one of the largest privately held companies in the United States. Carlson enterprises include a presence in the marketing, business and leisure travel, and hospitality industries. The IT division, Carlson Shared Services, acts as a service provider to its internal clients. They support a wide variety of user applications and services. The IT division uses a centralized data processing model to meet business operational requirements. The central computing environment includes an IBM mainframe and over 50 networked HP and Sun servers. The mainframe supports a wide range of applications, including Oracle financial database, e-mail, Microsoft Exchange, Web, PeopleSoft, and a data warehouse application. This paper examines the case study in the textbook regarding Carlson Companies. I will assess how the Carlson SAN approach would be implemented in today’s environment, compare the pros and cons of consolidating data on a SAN central data facility versus the dispersed arrangement it replaces, and evaluate the issues raised from the Carlson SAN mixing equipment from a number of vendors and determine the management options for dealing with this type of situation. I will also justify the reduction of administration and management of storage networking through Carlson’s IP SAN, and assess how cloud computing could be used by Carlson instead of a SAN.

Assess how the Carlson SAN approach would be implemented in today’s environment. SAN (Storage Area Network) is a high-speed network of storage devices that also connects those storage devices with servers. It provides block-level storage that can be accessed by the applications running on any networked servers. SAN storage devices can include tape libraries and disk-based devices, like RAID hardware. SAN offers excellent flexibility, availability and performance. SAN removes storage from the servers and consolidates it in a place where it can be accessed by any application and tends to improve storage utilization. Storage utilization improvements often allow organizations to prevent purchases of additional storage hardware, which saves money and requires less space in the data center. SANs are especially helpful in backup and disaster recovery settings. Within a SAN, data can be transferred from one storage device to another without interacting with a server. This speeds up the backup process and eliminates the need to use server CPU cycles for backup. The Carlson SAN approach utilized IP SAN. An IP SAN is a dedicated SAN that allows multiple servers to access pools of shared block storage devices using storage protocols that depend on the IETF (Internet Engineering Taskforce) standard IP suite.
Compare the pros and cons of consolidating data on a SAN central data facility versus the dispersed arrangement it replaces. The pros of SAN are scalability, reduction in down time, sharing, long distance connectivity, improved availability for applications, and better application performance. A variety of storage devices can be added to store hundreds of terabytes of data without affecting current business operations. Storage is independent of applications and is easily assessable through alternative data paths. Improved application performance is achieved when storage processing is moved from the systems onto a separate network. A well-configured SAN that has mirroring and redundant servers can reduce downtime. A SAN is not directly attached to a particular server or network and can be easily shared. Fibre channel switching can make establishment of private connections with other SANs easy. These connections can be used for mirroring, backups, or maintenance. The cons of SAN are that they can be very expensive as Fibre channel technology tends to be costly and maintenance requires a high degree of skill. The lack of available SAN product vendors contributes to the high costs to implement SAN into business operations. Leveraging existing technology investments can be quite difficult. The lack of SAN-building skills has greatly reduced the deployment of original SANs. Management of SAN systems has proven to be difficult. Some say having a SAN storage facility is a waste of valuable resources. Dispersed arrangement is inexpensive to implement but the costs associated with backing up data is quite high in terms of machine time. The server needs to execute certain routines, which utilizes LAN bandwidth. This process will slow down other operations on the network.
Evaluate the issues raised from the Carlson SAN mixing equipment from a number of vendors and determine the management options for dealing with this type of situation. Carlson Companies will have operational issues by using a multi-vendor approach for its SAN network. The operational issues are: the level of interoperability among different vendors solutions, training and availability of skilled staff to manage equipment from different vendors, network management, and support escalation. The solution to the issues mentioned involves a systematic approach to architecture design and implementation, following network management best practices. There are a number of opportunities and tools available to management to ensure that the organization, more specifically the IT department, is knowledgeable and prepared for situations that might arise from use of different equipment for multiple vendors. Justify the reduction of administration and management of storage networking through Carlson’s IP SAN. Through Carlson's IP SAN there is the reduction of administration and management of storage networking. Like mentioned earlier, Carlson’s IP SAN helps reduce the ongoing administration and management of storage networking by taking advantage of well-established and well-understood IP networking technologies. In addition, putting storage data over IP facilitates integration of more efficient storage services for Carlson’s enterprise-wide network; including centralized backup of remote sites to the data center SAN. By networking storage devices together and providing centralized storage management, a single administrator has the ability to manage a greater amount of storage from a single console. All of the required storage function, such as backups, archiving and consolidation, can be initiated via centralized software functions. Storage networks help IT professionals deal with growing storage capacity and management requirements. The functionality of a storage network and the ability to automate many of the standard software functions help IT management deal with staffing issues such as turnover and difficulty hiring new staff members.
Assess how cloud computing could be used by Carlson instead of a SAN. Cloud computing can be used to increase capacity and/or add capabilities without having to invest in a new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. With cloud computing, organizations can eliminate hassles by not having to manage hardware and software. With shared infrastructure you only pay for what you need for your organization, upgrades are automatic, scalability is simple. Cloud-based apps are inexpensive and easy to setup. Some examples of these applications are accounting, CRM (customer relationship management), and HR are being utilized by various organizations in their day-to-day business operations. Carlson could utilize cloud-based products, applications and services to eliminate the management of the hardware and software. Figure 1.1 – Cloud computing illustration

References
Stallings, W. (2009). Business Data Communications, Sixth Edition (Custom Edition). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall

Welcome to the World of Carlson. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.carlson.com/

Vacca, J. (2002). The essential guide to storage area networks. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.