Storage models
Physical server with an IBM hard drive directly attached to it
Computers access storage through storage devices connected directly to the computer by using I/O ports and storage connected through a network.
The following diagram shows an example of a server with a hard drive:
Removable media, such as floppy disks, compact disks, flash memory cards, external storage devices, and USB flash drives can be modeled by using the BMC_DiskDrive class with the appropriate value set in the MediaTypeattribute (0).
NAS and SAN storage
The following are common storage architectures:
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)
- Storage Area Networks (SAN)
Server connected to a NAS device with logical disks
A NAS device, such as NetApp storage system, is modeled by using the following topology:
- BMC_ComputerSystem instance is modeled with PrimaryCapability=Storage
- Storage components are modeled by using BMC_LogicalDisk instances
For a NAS device, volumes are modeled by using BMC_StorageVolume instances.
Server connected to a SAN storage array through a SAN switch by using FC
SAN uses Fibre Channel (FC) protocol and FC switches to transfer data between computers and disk drives. Disk drives in a SAN are stored in a dedicated storage device called a disk array or SAN storage array. All servers connect to the storage device over a high speed network by using an FC protocol.
A SAN storage array is modeled by using a BMC_ComputerSystem class instance with PrimaryCapability=Storage. It has raw storage volumes and disks attached to it. Raw storage volumes are allocated to servers on SAN storage arrays. These are accessed through SAN switches, also modeled as BMC_ComputerSystem class instances with PrimaryCapability=SANSwitch.
