Many organizations are moving toward cloud-based services and infrastructure as to provide on-demand services. Many enterprises now use cloud-based computing platforms that allow services and data to be accessed over the Internet (or via other networks). Infrastructure providers of these cloud-based computing platforms offer network-based processing systems that often support multiple enterprises (or tenants) using common computer hardware and data storage. This “cloud” computing model allows applications to be provided over the network “as a service” supplied by the infrastructure provider. The infrastructure provider typically abstracts the underlying hardware and other resources used to deliver an enterprise-developed application so that the enterprise no longer needs to operate and support dedicated server hardware. The cloud computing model can often deliver substantial cost savings to the enterprise over the life of the application because the enterprise no longer needs to provide dedicated network infrastructure, electrical and temperature controls, physical security and other logistics in support of dedicated server hardware.
A data center is a facility that centralizes an organization's IT operations and equipment, and where it stores, manages, and disseminates its data. A data center includes equipment, such as servers for IT operations and storage hardware for storage of an organization's data. Detecting failures of equipment that is used in such data centers is important to help ensure reliability.
Cloud applications increasingly depend on large volumes of data, which requires multiple tiers of storage. Multiple tiers of storage can differ in terms of their cost, capacity, latency, reliability, and power consumption characteristics. These tiers can include memory, flash memory, single disk storage, redundant array of independent disks (RAID) based storage, network-attached storage (NAS) devices, and storage area networks (SAN).
RAID storage is a data storage technology that provides a way of storing the same data redundantly in different places on multiple storage devices. These storage devices are typically hard disk drive storage devices or in some cases solid-state storage devices (SSDs). RAID storage can provide fault tolerance by combining multiple storage devices into a single logical unit, or array, so that data can be mirrored at each of the storage devices in the same array. This way, if one storage device fails the data is still preserved. RAID storage can also help improve overall performance, and increase storage capacity in a system. In a typical data center, RAID-based storage systems are indispensable due to their lower cost and higher volume.