Get it Right

Its a well-known fact that data is exploding, and enterprises of all sizes
are struggling to manage the data growth and storage requirements. Data volumes
are growing exponentially. Each day, companies gather and store more information
to meet business and regulatory requirements. It all adds up to exploding data
growth thus, persistent storage problems. Historically, smaller and mid-sized
organizations have met the data challenge simply by buying additional servers
with attached disk storage. Large organizations have deployed storage area
networks (SANs), and started to propagate their data centers with monolithic
dedicated storage systems. While this stopgap approach solves immediate storage
needs, it delays the long term solution. It leaves one with islands of storage,
each dedicated to different applications

Virtualize to Succeed

One of the biggest advantages virtualization brings to the table is
manageability. Since data is a dynamic entity, storage systems have to match up
to the growth. Hence, scalability is one important aspect that is also a
challenge area for many storage administrators. For instance, for running the
mail server alone many large enterprises face numerous storage issues. So by
adopting a combination of virtualization, interconnects and topping it with best
of the breed polices will secure a unified storage regime that can cope with the
growing storage needs.

Experts say that storage virtualization is the key technology that enables
large scale consolidation of heterogeneous storage environments. Scalability to
the petabyte range is combined with operational consolidation and depth of
storage based services deliverables to a wide range of applications and
operational environments. Today, heterogeneous IT environments are a reality,
and everybody has to offer a degree of openness in their solution so that a
seamless ecosystem can be arrived from plural IT assets. Moreover, enterprise
can optimize only if they bridge heterogeneous assets, and get a single unified
view of things.

However, the road to virtualization has its share of challenges. Hence, a CIO
must put a comprehensive plan of action in place that involves the current
storage operating environment and the enterprises state of readiness to adopt
new technologies that will take it to the next level of storage management.
Moreover, organizations must realize that only a progressive IT policy will make
new technologies work, and must be prepared for the enterprise wide impact that
such concepts create, and be prepared for the initial technological shock and
transition pangsfrom relative chaos to a managed model. But for organizations
that are governed by rigid and conventional IT polices, end up paying more by
doing things in a traditional way. Experts say that for most businesses, this
legacy IT strategy is not only costly, its unsustainable. Clearly, a new
approach is needed. In the storage area that new approach is storage
virtualization. It allows enterprises to meet the challenge of exponential data
growth in a manner that reduces operational costs, improves efficiency, gives an
expanded choice of hardware vendors, and extends the life of existing storage
assets. Storage virtualization is a practical and effective way to manage the
increasing complexity of data and the growing demands for high availability
storage. With the right solutions in place, storage virtualization can help you
respond to exponential data growth in a manner that cuts operational costs,
improves efficiency, and increases returns on your investments.

Informed Approach

Starting the pre-virtualizsation strategy in storage must factor in the
likely benefits and goal setting on a practical timeline. CIOs need to convince
the stakeholders and the management that virtualization is a technology and not
a magic wand. It needs a lot of best practices to succeed. So getting a sense of
post deployment benefits will help. But as a bottomline look at vendors who can
offer a way out of the heterogeneity mess. So look at vendors who have the
ability to provide a true heterogeneous data migration, replication, and
management services through a storage-controller based virtualization approach,
regardless of the manufacturer of the storage system.

The second important factor that CIOs must look into is provisioning
capabilities of the virtualization solution that is to be deployed. Hence, they
have to look at real life instances and the vendors ability to address those
specific challenges. Look at the kind of provisioning solutions the vendors
offer. Provisioning software enables one to allocate virtual disk storage based
on anticipated future needs without having to dedicate physical disk storage up
front. If the need for additional physical disk arises, one can purchase
capacity at a later time. Implementation occurs transparently, without
disruption to mission-critical applications. When one consolidates storage into
a single virtual pool, deploy thin provisioning with the appropriate software
and tier the storage devices, this will secure higher utilization. One can drive
utilization rates up to 85%, according to industry analysts. This can be
compared to rates as low as 35% in some companies. Other deliverables CIOs must
look for in a successful virtualization are aspects like tiered storage,
resource management, dynamic provisioning, lower TCO, and simplified management.

Shrikanth G

shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in