A Contributed Article by John McNelly, Product Senior Advisor for Performance Monitoring, Dell
Software
Traditional IT roles are beginning to
converge as organizations leverage more and more innovative technologies to
modernize the data center. Technicians are expanding their responsibilities
into new domains, which means that yesterday's "silo" administrator is quickly
becoming today's "infrastructure administrator." As part server administrator,
virtual environment manager, network engineer, and storage architect, this next
generation role requires a broad spectrum of knowledge across all of these multiple
domains. Today's infrastructure administrators need the skills to build,
maintain and manage high performing data center infrastructure solutions, with
the end goal of producing a flexible infrastructure where capacity can be
scaled up or down as business requirements change, while simultaneously
focusing on data center cost optimization.
To progress in your career, you need
to grow as your role evolves, and in today's world, that means mastering all
aspects of your role. To market yourself as an infrastructure administrator,
you need to be well-versed in the responsibilities of the virtual environment
manager, as well as the server administrator, network engineer and storage
architect. Since storage configuration is a foundational element of a modern
data center environment, it is becoming the most important aspect of an
administrator's role. Without storage, the virtual environment cannot operate,
since there would be no place for the machines to exist. At the same time, the
storage configuration can make or break infrastructure performance and
availability. Without a properly configured storage
infrastructure, a company's IT assets are wasted, and business services are
negatively affected, so it's important that configuration be right for
the virtual environment.
Even as more attention is focused on
storage, it remains a complex challenge for many organizations, making hiring
for the infrastructure administrator position even more difficult. If you're a virtualization administrator, you
are a potential infrastructure administrator, and if you are somewhat new to the
way storage can impact your virtual environment, it is essential that you gain the
comprehensive storage knowledge that will enable you to holistically manage the
virtual environment, and position yourself for consideration as the
infrastructure administrator.
To that end, there are nine basic
storage concepts you should familiarize yourself with ─ measuring the storage
environment; hard drive options and the differences between them; the
importance of solid state storage; array types on the market today; RAID levels
and their impacts; the role enterprise storage features, including
deduplication, encryption and thin provisioning, play in virtualization;
storage transport mechanisms; VMware
VAAI and Microsoft ODX, and why they're important; and Microsoft's contribution to the storage
arena, including new features added to
the operating system of Windows Server 2012.
As the virtualization administrator's
role edges more and more toward managing the infrastructure as a whole, a
working understanding of these nine storage concepts will give you the tools
you need to move into the role with ease. The virtualization environment
requires storage to operate, and the infrastructure's performance and
availability are closely tied to the storage configuration. While anyone eyeing
a move into the infrastructure manager's role needs a grasp of the duties of the
virtualization manager, server administrator and network engineer, a solid
background in all aspects of storage configuration will be the most beneficial.
Once you have mastered these storage infrastructure concepts and
no longer are a storage novice, you will be equipped to function as a
successful cross-domain infrastructure administrator who can manage a flexible,
scalable infrastructure, and optimize data center costs at the same time.
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About the Author
John McNelly serves
as the Product Senior Advisor for Performance Monitoring with Dell Software
Group. He is also a Cisco Certified Network Associate and Product Evangelist
for Dell Software Storage and Virtualization solutions. John has
specialized in working with organizations to tackle end-to-end system
management projects, and has specific focus on the evolving challenges of
virtualized infrastructures.