Quoting Australian IT

ORGANISATIONS must base storage infrastructure investment decisions on business requirements rather than particular technologies, or risk wastage and unnecessary complexity, according to a senior industry analyst.

IBRS technology analyst Kevin McIsaac says organisations are facing rising demand for storage resources, and need to ensure they adopt a structured approach when dealing with the challenge.

"Depending on the type of data you are talking about, companies are experiencing growth in their demand for storage of anything between 30 and 200 per cent a year," McIsaac says.

"The problem is how to deal with this sort of demand."

One solution, adopted by many companies, is to make ad hoc purchases of storage capacity as different business operations demand it. While such a firefighting approach can work, the result is far from ideal.

"The companies find that, as fast as they throw a new box at the problem, they outgrow it," McIsaac says.

"What they end up with is a mish-mash of equipment and an environment that is very costly and very difficult to manage."

Some organisations tend to be led by technology rather than business. Lured by the promises of the latest developments or offerings from vendors, they invest without a clear idea of how it is going to relate to their underlying business needs.

One example is storage area networks, which are often seen as a panacea for a variety of storage problems in organisations.

"They have an expectation that if they install one it will make everything simpler and cheaper," McIsaac says. "It might give you new capabilities but it might not necessarily be the best approach in all situations."

Organisations should go to their storage vendors with a prepared outline of their business requirements and ask how that vendor's equipment and services will map to it, McIsaac says.

"They need to be able to help you with storage architecture, not just sell you a box," he says.

"They have to be prepared to start at a very high level and then work their way down to the detail. They need to be able to explain how they can provide you with a complete architecture."

Critical to this process is an understanding of the value of the data being stored. Different types of data require different levels of performance and security, and this should be reflected in any overall architecture.

For example, high-value transaction data will need to be stored on high-performance storage systems, while low-value data such as archived emails can be kept on cheaper platforms.

"Giving a vendor an idea of how valuable your data is to your operation is very important," he says. "This will ensure you don't end up paying for high-performance storage resources when they are not needed."

Hewlett-Packard StorageWorks division general manager Bob Schultz says these are the messages he hears from customers all the time.

"Customers tell us they need things to be simple to install and manage and simple to grow as they grow," he says. "This is exactly what we are focused on delivering."

Schultz says the dramatic growth in demand for storage shows no sign of abating and so adopting a strategic, structured approach to its use will continue to be critical.

"As an industry, we sold 2 million terabytes of storage capacity in 2006," he says. "Estimates show that, by 2010, this will be up to 12 million terabytes, representing compound annual growth of 56 per cent.

"In the Asia-Pacific region it is even faster."

Schultz says HP has always adopted an architectural approach to its storage offerings.

By ensuring that all types of hardware work together as a cohesive whole, costs can be kept down and management complexity reduced.

"It's not just about a box, software and hardware," he says. "It is about making the flow of information more seamless.

"This covers how we store it, how we back it up and how we make it available to the business as and when it is needed."

Schultz agrees it is important for businesses to understand the value of their information and then select the appropriate storage equipment for it.

HP's portfolio of storage products has been designed with this in mind.

"Companies want to be able to focus on what they do rather than having to be a systems integrator to get their storage facilities to work effectively," he says.

Hitachi Data Systems marketing manager Tim Smith says his company approaches the challenge by adopting an application optimisation storage strategy.

"Applications drive a business, and so by aligning your applications with your storage you are aligning IT with the business," he says.

Virtualisation technology is a key element of this strategy, allowing storage resources to respond to changing application demands, he says.

If a particular application requires top-tier storage for a certain time, the necessary data can be migrated there but held on a low-cost resource for the rest of the time.

"Automating this process using virtualisation allows best use to be made of available storage resources in a business," Smith says.

HDS's network storage controller allows easy management of all storage resources in an organisation, even if that storage has come from another vendor.

"A customer can have no Hitachi drives in the equation at all," he says. "They implement the network storage controller and then all third-party storage arrays are behind that and appear as a single storage pool."

EMC marketing director Clive Gold says his company is strongly behind the storage virtualisation push as it helps customers to extract more value from their investments.

"The way EMC approaches virtualisation is not by adding another layer but by using intelligence in the switching layer," he says. "This means we are not changing the management model or adding any more complexity."

Using this architecture ensures that companies are able to provide the amount of storage required by particular applications and business processes, Gold says.

However IBRS's McIsaac cautions companies, saying they should not be entranced by the technology but continue to measure it against their specific business requirements.

"Virtualisation means different things to different people," he says. "It is not as successful or as broadly used as people would think.

"I'm not seeing anyone using virtualisation to tie heterogeneous storage together to make it appear homogenous," he says.

"Taking arrays from different places and hiding them under a virtualisation layer is a difficult thing to do."

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