THERE IS MORE TO STORAGE THAN TECHNOLOGY ALONE
THERE IS MORE TO STORAGE THAN TECHNOLOGY ALONE
In principle, things are clear enough about storage efficiency. F, for example, cut through a lot of the rhetoric about Green IT in general, and Green Storage in particular, and we see a picture of reducing power, cutting costs and removing operational overheads. In some ways it was ever thus, but from San Diego to London’s Docklands, data centres are coming up against some hard stops. The problem has been building up for a while: “There’s no point in such-and-such vendor coming and telling me about their latest blade servers,” said one CIO to me a year or so ago, “when I can’t even get enough power into the room to run the things. I’ve tried to tell them but they won’t listen.”
The message is loud and clear. Having in many cases run out of capacity, IT needs efficient servers and efficient storage, and vendors are queuing up to demonstrate their own credentials. For a start, we are seeing a most welcome level of competition between vendors in terms of the cost- effectiveness and power efficiency of their base kit. In addition, there are a number of specific technologies that are enabling better use of storage hardware – we expect spin-down of disks to become a more general feature of the larger arrays for example, and solid state disks will likely also play a part in the storage architecture.
But there is far more to efficiency than a power-optimised hardware platform. Making the best, most efficient use of storage assets, needs software that can manage both the hardware platform, and the data that resides there. There are a plethora of options, from data classification, migration, archiving, indexing and de-duplication, all of which play their part. We also have storage virtualisation – this has seen limited success thus far, but looks set to achieve wider adoption over the next couple of years; we also expect more widespread use of provisioning technologies, such that storage can be allocated as it is required from the a wider pool of capacity.
Such technologies are all well and good – but what’s preventing organisations from adopting them? This is very much a carrot and stick question. When a business case for a new technology is being put together, either one must present a compelling explanation of business gains (the carrot), or an equally compelling reason why the procurement is unavoidable (the stick). Despite best intentions and long-term benefits, efficiency- oriented technologies must fight for priority with all the other possible procurements an organisation might wish to consider at any given pointmoment. And even if an efficiency-related technology may look attractive in principle, it then needs to be deployed in what is unlikely to be a green field (i.e. brand new) site.
On this last point, it has repeatedly been shown that without the right people and processes in place, even the best technology in the world can go to waste. This is not just about getting it right at the top: the rank and file have a major role to play when it comes to efficiency improvements (and furthermore, there is generally the will from front line staff to embrace such changesdo so, particularly if there is a perceived Green benefit). Where organisations sometimes fall down is in ensuring that employees are fully appraised of what is planned, at which point the front linestaff can feel ignored, and may offer up avoidable, unnecessary resistance as a result.
All in all, of course it is worth looking into what technical innovations exist that may make for a more efficient storage architecture. But there is more to storage than technology alone. By considering efficient storage within the wider context of more efficient IT service delivery, organisations are more likely to reap its benefits.
Jon Collins, Service Director, Freeform Dynamics leads a panel on Architecting for Effectiveness and Efficiency at Storage Expo 2008 www.storage-expo.com