Analyzing storage architectures and risk

Nothing creates more risk for our systems than our storage. That should go without saying, but it has to be said. Storage is where we, as system administrators, have our greatest opportunity to make a difference, and it is the place where we are mostly likely to fail and fail spectacularly.

In order to address risks and opportunities in regard to storage, we must understand our entire storage stack and how every layer and component interact with each other. Storage can feel overwhelming, there are so many moving pieces and optional components.

We can mitigate some of the overwhelming feelings by providing design patterns for success and understanding when different patterns should be considered.

General storage architectures

There are two truly high-level axis in storage architecture: local versus remote, and standard versus replicated.

Of course, the natural assumption for most people is to jump immediately to believing that...