Network Storage : Network Rug Sack

The immense growth of data is creating a huge brouhaha in the storage
division. Enterprises are looking at newer ways to reduce the expenditure on
storage and vendors are coming out with better techniques to help them do the
same. Incidentally, after the roll out of 3G, the scenario will never be the
same again. Vendors have already started moving towards what is broadly called
virtualization.

Depending on business needs, every organization is finetuning its storage
strategy according to the industry segment in which it has a presence.
Therefore, network storage and continuity is one of the focus areas for CIOs.
Network storage has great potential for growth keeping in mind benefits such as
reduction in complexity, and total cost of operation. It also helps in
optimizing utilization of storage. Consolidation is another factor that has made
it big into the market, and convergence has played a key role in pulling down
costs.

Convergence in Consolidation

The merging of platforms has become a key area for both vendors and
operators. Unlike last year, when all was about SAN and NAS separately, the
focus has shifted to convergence. But are deployments really being made is a
million dollar question.

Storage consolidation has risen as a logical fallout of NAS and SAN
convergence. While SAN shares storage resources through a common network, NAS
shares files through an IP network.

Enterprises have started looking at NAS gateways which are connected to SAN
storage arrays in the backend via fibre network. NAS head can be a disk-less
system where all the LUNs which are created on the SAN box can be exported.
There has been storage consolidation at different levels helping organizations
improve their storage capacity planning. Storage consolidation leads to
companies having to support fewer storage devices, with fewer instances of
manual interventions being required. Over time, software functions promise
hands-off, policy-based, automated storage. Consolidated storage systems reduce
other indirect costs by taking up less space at facilities and improving data
access and distribution.

Convergence has led to better business processes.

Away from the Real

Apart from consolidation and convergence another vital tool that is driving
the storage market is 'virtualization'. This is another technology which has
come in quite handy in improving the utilization of assets, like servers. Most
customers had excess computing power in their data centers and were looking at
using virtualization to improve the utilization.

Server virtualization helps in running multiple software and applications
over a single hardware platform thus increasing the utilization of existing
hardware. This not only reduces the capex but also the opex, in terms of space,
power, cooling needs, etc. This would again lead to another expected area of
innovation in the storage industry, now popularly known as cloud computing.
Cloud computing will perhaps be the biggest trend in the coming two to three
years, believe industry experts.

Ironically, even at this time when the the enterprise segment is reeling
under economic crisis, firms dealing in storage have definitely not fared badly.
Perhaps the only reason being increased use of data. Be it mobile, FMCG or the
hospital industry, everywhere there is a burst of data. Things just might see a
rapid change once 3G comes out in full swing.

Experts panel

Rajesh Janey, VP, Enterprise Business, India & SAARC, EMC Hanif Sohrab, head, ITSM, HCL Comnet Manoj Suvarna, country head, Storage Works Division, HP Ramachandran Narayanaswamy, VP & head, Storage and Servers Industry, MindTree Surajit Sen, director, Channels, Alliances & Market, NetApp Sumit Mukhija, national sales manager, Datacenter, Cisco India & SAARC Ramkaran Rudravaram, GM, Technology Services, Sify Technologies Anand Naik, director, Systems Engineering, Symantec Corporation Amol Pathak, global head, Network Storage, Tech Mahindra Rajeev Singhal, CIO, Datacentres, Reliance Communications Abhijit Talwalkar, president and CEO, LSI Corporation

The 3G Wave

The wave has been around for over a year, though 3G has not materialized so
far in India. Telecom operators are gearing up for the deployment of
technologies like 3G and WiMax by bolstering their IT infrastructure, especially
their storage components.

Streaming videos, MMS, gaming services and other data intensive applications
will impose greater storage requirements on telecom providers. Service levels
will also create a demand for high-performance tiered storage solutions.

As more services are added, the billing operations will also increase in
complexity. ILM allows operators to consolidate their storage into a single
tiered storage infrastructure.

Few Modern Trends

Apart from the major changes there have been quite a few smaller areas of
play. Here are few of the most noticeable trends:

Data De-duplication: Data de-duplication will allow users to optimize and
create bandwidth-friendly backup and recovery solutions. De-duplication can
reduce network bandwidth and backup storage by a factor of 300. The original
file is saved and backed up just once to a central server. De-duplication also
helps in checking for common blocks across all files and across the entire user
data considered for backup. The best reason an enterprise might need this is
because it also helps in driving down the cost by a large measure.

IP-based Storage Networking: IP has made strong inroads into storage
networking, first through iSCSI and then through FCoE. Customers can now
potentially have a common IP based network to service all their networking
requirements. With performance getting closer to SAN storage, while still
maintaining all the manageability, and recoverability features, they make an
ideal choice for most requirements.

FCoE (Fiber Channel over Ethernet): FCoE maps fiber channel natively over
Ethernet while being independent of the Ethernet forwarding scheme. This allows
a seamless integration with existing fiber channel networks and management
software.

Green Storage: Each component of a storage system has power and cooling
requirements which can be affected by rotational speed of disks and use of
appropriate RAID levels. Cost benefits in power and cooling can be a driver to
opt for Green storage.

The Coming Year

With the demand increasing day by day, the need of new storage
infrastructure is coming up. With new massive users of storage like oil and gas,
healthcare, retail and the manufacturing industry, the business of network
storage will definitely grow. Healthcare is under pressure to implement stricter
regulations like HIPPA/JCHAO which is compelling usage of a more sophisticated
data management systems and corresponding storage use. And last but not the
least, with 3G coming into the picture the data burst would invariably happen
soon.

Primary growth drivers would still be the ongoing data explosion, regulatory
compliance and innovative solutions. Apart from that, the other areas of growth
is visualized by the SMB segment, particularly in India. Storage is a largely
untapped market in this segment.

Sunny Sen

sunnys@cybermedia.co.in