ENTERPRISE EQUIPMENT NETWORK STORAGE: Consolidate, Automate...

Organizations in India have traditionally tended to invest in direct attached

storage (DAS). Today, Indian enterprises are increasingly shifting from DAS to

automated network storage (ANS). Hence, organizations are moving away from a

stovepiped architecture to creating a robust ANS infrastructure that is

server-independent.

Industry analysts forecast that by 2005, nearly 70 percent of all information

storage will be networked. It is ANS that allows organizations to reduce the

total cost of ownership through consolidation, control, capacity utilization and

centralized management. Doing away with information silos not only lowers

management complexity, but it also makes information more accessible across the

enterprise. The three dominant trends for the storage market that will drive

both the available technology options as well as influence strategic buying

decisions are

• Storage consolidation and networked storage
• Increasing demand for tools to manage information
• The rising complexity of IT, meeting service levels and ensuring business
  
  continuity

Technology Trends



l NAS-SAN Convergence: The

NAS-SAN debate is gradually subsiding as both Indian enterprises and storage

vendors recognize the overall advantages of a networked storage model where NAS

and SAN complement each other. NAS provides high-speed file services to

networked clients, while SAN provides high-speed storage services to servers at

the block level on a neutral server platform. The fusion of NAS and SAN is an

emerging trend in Indian enterprises. The back end, which is an array of disks,

remains the same, and it can be used by both the technologies. The front-end can

be NAS or SAN. Hence, there is no need to replicate the disk array twice as the

array can be common for both NAS and SAN. This means cost savings and easier

management. The convergence of NAS and SAN would lead to better storage

solutions for enterprise customers. The fusion would remove misconceptions about

these technologies from the users’ minds. Together, they cater to possibly all

kinds of performance requirements an enterprise may have.

l Storage Consolidation: Today,

there are islands of information in organizations and managing them is a major

problem. Networked storage can consolidate not only the storage infrastructure,

but also the entire IT infrastructure. With industry analysts forecasting that

by 2005 nearly 70 percent of all information storage will be networked,

consolidation is set to become the buzzword in storage parlance. Organizations

are going for centralized automated backup and storage consolidation. It can

help in remote management, not changing media so often, lesser data loss

concerns and low total cost of ownership (TCO). Storage consolidation is a

logical fallout of NAS and SAN convergence. While SAN shares storage resources

through a common network, NAS shares files through an IP network. By uniting the

two, files can be accessed through NAS and delivered through SAN thus providing

a new topology–consolidation or shared storage.

l Storage Virtualization: One

of the most important trends in the storage space is that customers will see

more and more of their storage assets being virtualized. This trend towards

virtualization will result in an overall lower cost of managed storage for the

customers. There will be a gradual blurring of the lines between storage

virtualization and server virtualization. Multiple OSs will run simultaneously

and independently on the same Intel-based server or workstation. These ‘virtual

machines’ integrate seamlessly into existing physical infrastructures and

management frameworks, allowing users to see resources as if they were dedicated

to them, while CIOs manage and optimize those resources globally across the

enterprise.

Over time, virtualization will not be seen as a specific product; it will be

seen as a set of underlying storage capabilities: layered functionality at each

level that helps management tools do a better job of managing. Operating system

management (OSM) will combine underlying functionality with lower-level

abstractions that simplify the management of complex storage environments. An

OSM infrastructure will be able to harness functionality at each level and make

the user-visible storage management tools even more powerful.

l Enterprise Storage

Automation: Storage management is managing storage assets with an eye

towards maximizing application availability, service levels, speed, and

flexibility. Storage management practices encompass the policies, user

activities, system processes, and workflow by which one delivers information

management services across the storage network. Automation improves the quality,

consistency, and responsiveness of storage infrastructure.

Enterprises are leveraging storage management tools in order to reduce costs

through enhanced operational efficiency. A single view of all information

resources fosters revenue creation and inspires operational efficiency, in turn

driving the business forward. Significant efficiencies are gained through

greater integration of hardware and software. For many Indian enterprises,

capacity utilization is typically poor, leaving a large percentage of storage

resources unutilized. If effectively used, storage management tools can help

keep track of capacity utilization and enable organizations to take relevant

decisions on future acquisitions of storage requirements.

Industry standards usually help enterprises mix and match best-of-breed

storage management systems. Accordingly, organizations like the Storage

Networking Industry Association (SNIA) have come up with some standards like

Storage Management Interface Specifications. Though adequate standards to ensure

interoperability and management of heterogeneous software and hardware devices

are yet to be developed, significant initiatives have been taken through the

common information model (CIM) and Bluefin initiatives. CIM is an

object-oriented information model, which provides a conceptual framework for

describing the management data.

l iSCSI Standard: Suitable

interconnects like the iSCSI, which ensure smooth data accessibility and

availability are gaining momentum. The iSCSI specification has been frozen this

year and all vendors have been developing products around this technology. iSCSI

is still in the nascent stage of the introduction cycle. Many users do not yet

know whether it will be appropriate for their organizations. This cycle is

likely to continue for another 18 months to two years before adoption becomes

widespread. Enterprises will use iSCSI to consolidate backup from remote sites

and servers.

iSCSI SANs are most suitable for organizations with a need for streamlining

large amounts of data to store and transmit over the network such as ISPs,

organizations geographically distributed, and organizations that need remote

data replication and disaster recovery. There are a number of advantages of

using iSCSI for SAN. One is that fiber channel uses a host bus adapter (for

network interfacing), which is four times as costly as a network interface card.

iSCSI uses IP technology that is easily understood and widely deployed. Using

iSCSI, enterprises can do both file and block access over IP, that was not

possible earlier. Enterprise customers need not invest separately for file and

block access any longer. The other advantage of using IP is that enterprises can

connect at speeds up to 10 Gbps. Fiber channels cannot be used over long

distances and are limited to10 km.

l Information-lifecycle

Management: Many enterprises want greater ability to ‘virtualize’

storage devices and systems. They want to treat their storage as a single pool

of resources that can be allocated and reallocated as needed. They also want

better tools to automate the management of data from creation to deletion or

long-term storage. This has given rise to the concept of information-life-cycle

management (ILM). ILM–the notion that data should be stored accordingly as its

value changes over time–is the next phase of storage evolution. It begins with

tactical ILM–tiered, targeted implementations at ‘pain points’ such as

e-mail and large databases.

Information made available to the business, when the business needs it, helps

meet new archiving requirements, mitigate risks, realize operational cost

savings, improves data and application availability, and increases business

agility. Currently, these are issues faced by CIOs. The ILM strategy helps the

user to contain and reduce costs through the use of services, improved and

increased utilization of storage, reduced storage complexity and by leveraging

and protecting past hardware investments. ILM can help increase application

availability, reduce downtime and improve performance by dynamically managing

data throughout its lifecycle while simultaneously placing data in virtualized

storage pools to meet business and legal requirements.

l Asynchronous Replication: Another

upcoming trend is asynchronous replication, which dramatically reduces bandwidth

requirements. Instead of replicating the entire track, the technology enables

the replication of data at the sector level. As a result, if there is a change

only in a particular sector, only that will be replicated to the remote site

instead of the whole track. Copying at the smallest possible unit helps not only

in reduced bandwidth requirements, but also improves manageability.

l Content Addressed Storage (CAS):

The biggest need in the world of storage today, is of technology and

products to deal with ‘fixed storage’. According to a study by the

University of California at Berkeley, the world produces between 1—2 billion

GB of unique information annually, with three-quarters of that being archival

storage–content in its final form that should not be altered. Dealing with

this deluge of data, and extracting, protecting, and storing the information

contained within, is something that every CIO is learning today. That is because

archiving is only part of the problem. Archived data is not just stored and

ignored. Hospitals need to access their archived patient records, banks access

archived check records, and archived Internet content could be subject to

millions of accesses per day. Access, of course, provides opportunities for

hackers, and that makes archival storage, which has potential to be one of the

largest niche markets, a security nightmare.

This rapid accumulation of fixed content demands a new category of storage

designed for the secure, online storage and retrieval of such information for

years and years–content addressed storage (CAS). Rather than access a data

object by its file name at a physical location, a CAS device uses a content

address to store and retrieve the object. Because content often accumulates

without any upper limit, a CAS repository must be extremely easy to scale to

even a Petabyte (1,024 terabytes), while maintaining a sub-second access

performance.

l Fabric-attached Storage (FAS):

The cost considerations related to various storage architectures has led to FAS,

a more economical and efficient storage architecture. FAS is a combination of

SAN and NAS that can be utilized by plugging in a card into the server. The

server then communicates the storage through the fiber into the repository. The

biggest benefit of FAS is that it uses open protocols and is platform

independent. This allows easy interoperability. In the current market conditions

where most high-end SAN solutions are proprietary, FAS has a good chance of

emerging as a popular choice among Indian enterprises.

BUYING TIPS

BUYING TIPS



According to a survey by SoundView on the top storage purchase priorities,

the primary reasons that CIOs consider while enhancing their storage are:

• Support for new applications

• Capacity/refresh

• Disaster recovery (backup/replication)

• Archiving/compliance

• Storage management

If that is what is driving their purchase decisions, then

from an information infrastructure perspective, enterprises should identify a

storage solution based on how it can

• Boost productivity and growth without discarding previous
  
  investments

• Lower TCO

• Improve utilization of the network

• Elevate service levels

• Report back to business quickly to ensure best RoI

To help accomplish this, enterprises must focus their

attention on some critical qualities that ultimately drive the storage buying

strategies for enterprises.

l Lower Costs:

With networked storage, users can share from a common pool, resulting in

increased storage utilization while reducing the total amount of storage that

organizations need to buy and manage. Moreover, networked storage allows

consolidation of servers by reducing the amount of file servers and taking away

the need to buy more servers just to hold more disks. A study conducted by

McKinsey and Merrill Lynch points to 47 cents per MB TCO advantage for networked

storage over the traditional DAS approach.

l Protect IT

Investment: Using server-based storage means that the disks are likely to be

thrown out every time an upgrade is done. With networked storage, SMEs can

protect their investments by reassigning volumes as needs change. They can look

for modular networked storage systems that allow data-in-place upgrades without

disruption, so that users can update storage processors and interchange

components with data in place.

l Reduce

Backup/Restore Time: The ability to backup, store, access, and restore

information quickly and efficiently has a direct impact on the company’s daily

operations and ensuring business continuity.

l Speed

Application Testing and Data Migration: Application testing and data

migration are facts of corporate life, but these should not adversely affect

service levels. A consolidated information infrastructure makes information

instantly available, changeable, and easily shared throughout the organization.

Mirroring software allows users to run a number of operations in parallel for

testing without disrupting operations.

l Safeguard

Information: When a server goes down, its data goes with it. And, restoring

from tape can take hours or even days, halting important business functions.

Consolidation allows for one standard way of business continuity, instead of

multiple ways in a distributed environment.

l Modularity:

Robust modularity ensures that as innovative technology is developed, you can

update storage processors and interchange components with data in place.

Modularity guarantees that future software and hardware upgrades are compatible

between generations, allowing flexibility for the system to be deployed and

re-deployed, as the business needs change. EMC, for example, offers an option to

cost sensitive enterprises to migrate from a low-end solution to a high-end

product seamlessly when their information requirements grow.

l Automated

and Open Storage Management Software: Enterprises should select open storage

management software that work across multi-vendor environments to consolidate

storage and servers. Software can play a major part in reducing cost by

automating manual storage tasks so you can free up valuable IT resources and

labor to be deployed for more productive tasks.

l Interoperability:

Enterprises should select a reliable and open platform vendor. The

information infrastructure impacts every part of the IT environment, from

applications, servers to databases. It is important to ensure that every device

works well with the others. Enterprises must assess vendor claims, by finding

out how much the company spends on ensuring interoperability. And how good is

their service infrastructure and channel structure.

Market Information

According to IDC, the Indian storage (hardware) industry was pegged at

$119.6 million by end 2003, a growth of 14 percent over its size of $103.1

million in 2002. In terms of storage volumes, the market stood at 3762.2 TB by

the end of 2003, a growth of about 5 percent over 2239.4 TB in 2002.

The size of data is expected to grow at a CAGR of 63 percent

year-on-year for the 2002—07 time frame. The storage software market witnessed

a growth of 45 percent to end at $17 million in 2003 from $12 million in 2002.

On the other hand, the Garner report predicts that the overall storage systems

market will grow to $425.8 million in 2005–a CAGR of 26 percent. The report

also states that SAN will account for 49 percent and NAS for 32 percent of the

storage revenue pie in India by 2005.

Business Continuity: Driving Storage Demand

At the centerpiece of any disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity

management (BCM) plan lies the need to protect and fortify data in the event of

a disaster. This is because today data lies at the heart of any 24x7x365

operation, which is what BCM is all about. The role of a storage system becomes

more crucial in an organization when there is a need to protect information.

Starting from ‘simple backups’ to ‘faster restores’, to high

availability of data and application–storage systems have become a key

component in any DR/BCM planning.

The extra demand for storage is generated on account of replication of data

from the primary site to a remote location. A copy of production data is

constantly maintained at the secondary site and in the event of a disaster,

business operations are transferred to the secondary site. The first phase of

replication is that of data, after which comes replication of processing power

and the network.

In addition to the demand generated for more raw storage capacity, DR/BCM are

also driving the market for storage-based disaster recovery software, as well as

storage management software and storage services. Non-storage-based DR

implementations involve basic server-based file transfers to remote locations,

which is not really a foolproof way of implementing business-critical DR or

business continuity.

Both DR and BCM are going to drive the market for large high-end projects in

the storage segment. Increasingly, high-end projects, especially in SAN, will be

coming from BCM in the future. The involvement is much more in BCM and the

project implementation level is high. When you have to connect from one

environment to another and across the country, it has to be project-driven. This

growing trend will put an emphasis on service skills and not just on

box-selling. In such a scenario, it is the storage vendors who will evolve an

end-to-end robust storage solution. The quest for end-to-end capabilities will

further drive greater solutions inter-operatability and technology tie-ups.

While generally there is a time lag of around 1—2 years between setting up

of a primary data center and a secondary remote site, the coming year is going

to see customers who are planning to go for their secondary set-up along with

the setting up the primary site, which will further boost demand for storage.