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Storage Network Solution: The Right Approach

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Voice&Data Bureau
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What kind of homework should an enterprise do before
deciding on any network storage solution?

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Owais Khan, business manager, storage products, Compaq India

An enterprise needs to take into consideration its long-term
growth projection, and arrive at data generation and storage requirements. This
would vary from enterprise to enterprise. Scalability and inter-operability of
hardware and software from multiple vendors should be the most important
criterion for enterprises, with rapidly growing storage requirements.

Additionally, data-intensive enterprises like ISPs and ASPs
require storage solutions that are high on availability, manageability and
resource sharing capabilities. Businesses should also take possible space
constraints into account while planning for network storage solution. However,
with the recent availability of density-optimized servers in the market,
enterprises with massive data storage requirements can overcome space
constraints.

T Srinivasan, country manager, EMC

The homework an enterprise should do is to identify the
problem area in the existing traditional information setup. These problems could
be:

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  • Storage capacity management of server

  • Backup and retrieval problems

  • Application unavailability for schedule and unscheduled
    downtime

  • Servers, operating systems and storage consolidating
    issues

  • Delay in developmental cycles due to the non-availability
    of information

  • Project schedules do not match business requirements

  • Cost objectives are difficult to achieve

  • IT finds itself reactive, not proactive. The ability to
    manage change is therefore limited

Support for cross-organizational business processes is
difficult, at best.

Once these problems have been identified, the operational and
cost-benefit for consolidated enterprise storage solution becomes obvious.

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Avijit Basu, marketing manager, (NSSO) business customer sales
organization, HP

  • From the backup point of view: how much data capacity,
    backup and restore window, existing network bandwidth, applications,
    frequency of backup, type of backup-full, differential, incremental. Are
    they looking at backup consolidation? Are they looking at backup over a
    network consolidation? Are they looking at automation in tape?

  • From the data spread over the enterprise: Are you looking
    at business continuity, is outage a problem? If your applications are
    mission-critical, you cannot afford any downtime. Is managing data a
    problem? The storage is distributed, no one knows where free storage is
    available. The unpredictability of data growth is the name of the game. How
    does one manage the growth from multiple physical devices from a single
    logical management point? Is data so critical? Are you looking at disaster
    recovery system? Is bandwidth an issue?

Basu Hurkadli, country manager, system sales, IBM India

Customers today realize the importance of corporate
information for their businesses and are looking for a solution that can address
their total storage needs, which will help them in becoming a zero latency
organization–one that enables free and immediate exchange of information.
Today’s best optimal solution requires a mix of all storage networking options
and technologies. Network storage centralizes storage management and also
automates operation, thereby reducing IT operational costs and staffing
requirements.

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Enterprises need to evaluate their storage needs on obvious
criteria, such as organizational objectives, current storage infrastructure, and
what the alternatives are available to store and value their organization’s
data more effectively.

Sharad Srivastava, country manager, Seagate India

Firstly, an enterprise needs to understand whether the demand
for storage is high or low. If the storage requirement is doubling every six
months, then the enterprise needs to have a good strategy in managing the
storage requirement. Next step is to know the nature of the application, whether
it is more towards file-sharing or storage-space sharing or both. Is the
scalability critical? An enterprise should go through a checklist and review
whether they should go into networked storage solution. The key task is to
identify the problem in the IT environment or potential problem in the future,
then establish a strategy to handle it. In some cases, a consultant may be able
to assist them in providing a good picture.

SV Ramana, vice president, systems engineering, Cisco

  • Capacity: The storage system must be able to
    handle an appropriate quantity of data. Be aware of the organization’s
    current data storage needs and the expected rate of growth. You cannot plan
    a storage strategy without a detailed knowledge of the quantities of data
    involved.

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  • Scalability: The type of storage technology must
    be well-matched to the overall size of the organization’s data needs, and
    must be able to outpace its expected growth. Storage strategies implemented
    when an organization’s network was relatively small, often cannot be
    expanded beyond a certain point. Storage technologies designed for
    large-scale enterprise networks may be burdensome for a departmental LAN.
    The storage systems on the network must be designed from the beginning to
    scale to larger data capacities, without major upheavals. Avoid disruption
    and costs associated with redeploying a whole new data storage system as you
    outgrow the previous system. Rather, choose a system that will continue to
    grow as your data needs grow.

  • Costs: Select the least-costly approach that
    effectively meets the objectives. Many cost issues must be considered–initial
    purchase cost of the hardware, productivity costs related to network
    downtime, and ongoing hardware and software maintenance, for example. Do not
    ignore personnel costs associated with each storage technology option. More
    complex solutions will demand time and attention of network administrators,
    technicians and operators. Simpler approaches should require less ongoing
    support.

  • Performance: Storage technologies must be able to
    deliver information to the user rapidly. Fortunately, many current systems
    have very high performance capabilities. Designing a storage solution to
    service a relatively small number of users, can be fairly straightforward.
    But a network with an extremely large user population will challenge the
    network architect to design a system that can handle an extremely high rate
    of simultaneous activity, and still deliver rapid access.

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  • Reliability: All storage systems rely on parts
    that will eventually break down. It is possible to develop a data storage
    environment with enough redundancy to ensure that no interruptions can
    occur, even if individual components fail or malfunction. Such
    high-availability comes at a price– both in terms of the cost of the
    equipment and in the complexity of its operation. Small-scale departmental
    networks may be satisfied with a data system that can potentially fail,
    provided that it can be restored with little or no data loss, within a
    reasonable time. It is relatively simple and inexpensive to build a storage
    system that is available 99 percent of the time. Eliminating that last 1 or
    2 percent of failure possibilities is complex and expensive.

  • Manageability: Once a storage system has been
    designed and implemented, the organization must maintain it. Aim for the
    system with the simplest operational concerns. As systems increase in
    complexity, it becomes increasingly important to be able to monitor their
    performance, preempt failures and manage storage media, with as little
    effort and interaction as possible. Also, this functionality must come
    without sacrificing the depth of management available to the administrator.

    • Owais Khan, business manager, storage products, Compaq India

    • High availability n Speed of deployment

    • Data integrity n Security

    • Scalability n Ability to integrate with existing
      legacy systems

    • Manageability n Interoperability

    • Acquisition cost n Total cost of ownership

    • Vendor reputation

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    The order of importance could vary depending on each
    enterprise and the nature of their businesses.

    T Srinivsan, country manager, EMC

    • Heterogeneous server and operating systems connectivity

    • Manage unpredictable and continuously expanding storage
      allocation demands

    • Data availability and integrity

    • Consolidation and movement of data without downtime

    • No schedule and unscheduled downtime for
      business-critical applications

    • Online backup from storage–server and network less
      backup

    • Enterprise-wide business continuity by disaster recovery
      by enterprise storage

    • Information sharing between different servers and
      operating systems

    • NAS and SAN support in the same storage for flexibility
      of future technology

    • Common management for storage infrastructure

    • Installed base of storage systems using selected servers
      and applications

    Avijit Basu, marketing manager, (NSSO) business customer sales
    organization, HP

    Today’s modern IT infrastructure has bigger challenges. The
    type of data is changing from simple application like e-mail text to rich media
    attachment. A two-hour normal NTSC video, 3D movie, a high-resolution color
    still photo or a two minute audio occupy from 20 MB to a few terabytes. Hence,
    data growth and managing is a big issue. Managing the infrastructure (which is
    growing tenfold) with the same people, is another challenge. How do you
    dynamically allocate data from one point of the infrastructure (where it is
    lying unutilized) to the other without changing the current environment? The
    customers are asking for Quality of Service, which means service level
    agreements have become more stringent. The distributed storage is making IT
    managers think of storage and backup consolidation. Staff shortage and the
    maintaining of trained staff are the other challenges that all CIOs/CTOs face
    today. Security is also a major issue, as people access more open networks.

    Basu Hurkadli, country manager, system sales, IBM India

    The most important feature is the vendor’s total product
    portfolio, as it helps you identify the best solution for your environment.
    Consider the vendor who provides all options customized to meet the customers
    application and environment, instead of opting for a vendor that provides only a
    product or a solution.

    • Opt only for open standard-based products

    • Vendors support strategy and SI expertise–look for
      vendors who have the expertise across multiple platforms–storage,
      networking and data management. This will ensure that you have no
      interoperability issues

    • Decisions must not be based on hardware performance
      alone. Instead, opt for companies that have interoperability testing, and
      support services to advise and work with you through the entire
      implementation period and beyond

    • Select the solution that offers investment protection for
      your existing infrastructure

    • Give due consideration to the scalability aspect of the
      solution. Access the vendors’ future storage visions

    • It is very important that the products you buy today,
      have a migration path to future generation technologies

    • Do not focus on the initial hardware price/MB, while
      ignoring software prices or ongoing software maintenance charges

    • Costs for future upgrades are sometimes not considered.
      The point is, be sure to focus on the total cost of ownership

    • Look into the installed base of customers

    • Predicting storage product performance before it is
      installed in an organization’s environment is rarely easy. Ask for a
      product demonstration or a site visit

    • Price of hardware

    • Vendors past experience

    George Thomas, country manager, Network Appliance India

    • Performance

    • Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

    • Interoperability in an open system environment. The
      primary driver for network storage is to ensure that customers are able to
      scale servers and storage, independently. The storage decision should not
      limit his choice of servers

    • Reliability n Ease of deployment

    • Application support n Scalability

    • Disaster-recovery solution

    Sharad Srivastava, country manager, Seagate India

    • Ease- of-use (which include flexibility in configuration,
      maintenance, etc)

    • Manageability n Scalability

    • Availability n Security

    • Performance n Ease of maintenance

    • Reliability n Investment protection

    • Return of investment

    Ravi Shekhar Pandey