Are your servers bursting with months-old data that you dare not
delete? Is your basement bulging with old tapes? Karl Cushing looks
at options to ease the pain
Storing data is costing you three times what it cost to acquire
that data, according to Andrew Lament, head of infrastructure
architecture at KPMG Consulting. This means that organisations have
to increase the efficiency of how they deal with data by some 66%
each year just to stand still. Finding how to best to manage
storage and ensure recoverable, upgradable and testable data whilst
reducing total cost of ownership is a key requirement for every
organisation, regardless of size.
The great storage hopes, according to the pundits, were supposed to
be storage area networks (San) and network attached storage (Nas).
However, the fact remains that most storage is still attached
directly or via the server. A recent report from research and
consultancy firm Macarthur Stroud, found that just 30% of
organisations in Europe have adopted one or more fibre-based Sans.
"That needs to change over the next few years," warns Andrew Batty,
chairman of the Fibre Channel Industry Association Europe. He
predicts that direct-attached storage will become increasingly
problematic, very expensive and will require even more people to
manage it over the next three years.
John Mills, vice-president and European general manager for storage
firm Auspex Systems, is even more forthright. "Organisations that
still have direct-attached storage run a business risk," he says.
On top of the increasing costs and difficulties involved in
managing your data using this kind of storage, the key problems are
the lack of flexibility and the single points of failure. As Mills
points out, if a server goes down and some your storage is directly
attached to that server then you can't access that data.
Organisations also run the risk of getting locked in with
direct-attached storage, he says, as the only place you can buy
more capacity from is your server supplier and generally you will
have to upgrade your server as well. According to Mills, although
direct-attached storage is cheaper in terms of purchasing and
implementing it and the infrastructure needed, it is becoming
something of a false economy.
Daniel Sazbon, European manager of storage network solutions for
IBM, also warns that using direct-attached storage presents a very
real danger that you will not be able to back up and protect that
data effectively.
"The imperative is to network your storage," says Nigel Williams,
vice-president for software operations in Europe for Legato
Systems, which produces storage management software. "Yes, there's
an outlay but you'll save money in the long run." He says one of
the best ways of saving money is consolidation - bringing all your
storage into one place - and it is this goal that is currently
driving the San market.
The argument goes something like this. By consolidating your
storage environment and managing it from a central operations
console you can use fewer people and also less skilled - ie cheaper
- staff. Williams says that so far organisations have focused on
discs but they should also consider tape libraries, as several
major manufacturers offer large tape libraries for this purpose.
You also need to look at automation software. "That's where you can
realise some of the potential gains," he says. "Prioritise and
consolidate network storage so you can share it and then apply
automation software on top."
Batty agrees, "Consolidation and centralising your San will save
your business money through better management, with fewer people
needed to manage larger amounts of data."
The general idea is that you can utilise your storage capacity more
efficiently if you network it. Lament says that, whereas utilising
about 50% of storage capacity is a good figure for an organisation
with direct-attached storage, for an organisation using a San that
figure would reach about 75%.
But even here there is a real danger that your San will be getting
under-utilised. Mills says that research done by Auspex suggests
that most companies are under-utilising their San by about 30%,
with some analysts putting the figure even higher. Whilst storage
managers will naturally only want to use 70% of their storage
capacity to allow for slack space, he says, they are only using
about 70% of that 70%. This is where virtualisation software steps
in.
Virtualisation software suppliers promise yet more potential
efficiency gains from networked storage by allowing an organisation
to view and manage its different pools of data as a single entity.
Lament says virtualisation has replaced hierarchical storage
management, allocating space where required, prioritising data and
putting it in the most convenient place, and building on the
improved storage management abilities of the network storage model.
"Virtualisation allows you more flexibility with what to do with
your data," he says.
According to Batty, whereas Sans can increase the efficient
management of your data by six or seven times, with virtualisation
one person can manage 10 times more storage. Other spokesmen,
including Sazbon, believe that this figure can be much higher.
Another benefit is that you can work on copies and thus make
changes to your systems without taking them down. When you've
finished working on the copy you need only to allow for a few
minutes or even seconds of downtime to swap over, says Batty.
Not everyone is so convinced however. "All [virtualisation
software] is doing is giving an application view of the storage
instead of giving a physical view," says Williams. "It already
exists and has done for quite some time. Eventually it will just
become apart of storage networking."
Williams says people shouldn't wait for some kind of fancy
virtualisation product, they should be networking their storage -
and realising the benefits of doing so - today.
Return on investment can be swift. Sazbon says that, in his
experience, most Sans pay for themselves within the year. However,
when measuring total cost of ownership, it is important to factor
in elements such as downtime.
"What users have to do is examine the business and the extent that
it will be affected by the data not being available; look at the
cost of downtime and do a calculation based on the cost of
implementing a San or Nas," says Mills.
Cost is also one of the biggest inhibitors for companies
considering implementing a San as the initial costs are high. Sans
run on fibre channel technology which has no standard and is
expensive, although it is getting cheaper. There are developments
in the pipeline, however, that will make Sans cheaper and address
the issue of standardisation, which should bring down total cost of
ownership. The key technology here is ISCSI, a new networking
standard being developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force.
ISCSI links data storage facilities by carrying SCSI commands over
IP networks. "I wouldn't wait for ISCSI though," says Lament. "For
companies that are reaching bursting point, getting a San
implemented now is a very good idea."
Companies should have at least one eye on the future though. Mills
stresses that organisations need to make sure they are buying from
a supplier whose roadmap allows the user to take advantage of these
technologies when they become available.
For smaller companies with limited storage needs, Nas, which is
relatively cheap to implement, might be a viable alternative to a
San. Batty says the file-based Nas model - as opposed to the
block-based San model - can be a good option for smaller companies,
acting like a file server except cheaper. "At entry level, it's a
quick and easy way to add storage space to network," Batty says.
"It'll be OK until you get to a certain size where management
starts to be an issue and you need to be operational 24 hours a
day, seven days a week."
Companies should consider going down the San route if they have six
or seven servers, need higher availability for some data or are
seriously considering formulating a disaster recovery plan, Batty
says. Another option is outsourcing. "There is still a case for
outsourcing storage to companies to remove the administrative
overheads that most companies are suffering from," says Lament. He
believes that this model is particularly useful for companies with
e-commerce operations.
Backing up - specifically the question of when to back up - is
another big storage management issue. Scheduled downtime is
becoming less and less acceptable so doing backing up during
downtime is becoming increasingly difficult.
The two most common methods for backing up data are to disc and
tape and the latter is still the most popular medium for archiving.
Although recovering data from tape is a lot slower than from other
media, it is useful for storing data that does not have to be
accessed often or must be kept to comply with regulations.
Some organisations take snapshots of their data to disc throughout
the day and use them to help back up more quickly overnight. Data
mirroring and replication are effective ways to back up and recover
data but are expensive. Organisations should use different methods
for backing up and storing data depending on the criticality of
that data, the organisation's availability requirements and the
length of time they are willing to wait to recover it. As Williams
puts it, "It's a case of matching technology to business need."
The important thing is to act now and start making your storage
strategy as efficient as possible, building a robust storage
infrastructure that is scalable, more efficient and leaves your
options open for the future. As Batty says, "If you bite the bullet
now you'll start making savings now." So don't delay, act today -
time is money and right now that's a commodity that is in very
short supply.
Five ways to achieve cheaper storage management
Jason
Phippen, European head of solutions marketing at Veritas, offers
the following top tips for managing storage:
1. Base your storage infrastructure on software rather than
hardware to ensure freedom of choice and avoid proprietary hardware
supplier lock-in. A good storage software infrastructure enables
more terabytes to be managed by each network administrator
2. Deploy the highest levels of automation so that manual
processes like tape archiving and duplication are automated. This
will reduce the number of skilled IT staff doing repetitive manual
tasks and improve recovery times
3. Leverage capabilities for application and back-up servers
by using technology such as bare metal restore. Bypassing operating
system re-installs and configuration can shave many hours from the
recovery process and so applications and servers can be restored
quicker
4. Avoid deploying high availability solutions from the
operating systems suppliers, which typically only deal with their
own operating systems. Adopting a common approach to high
availability brings many cost savings, ranging from reduced
training requirements, lower maintenance costs and hardware savings
to an overall increase in the availability of the company's
application services
5. Management of the storage network or San should be
considered as part of the infrastructure definition and planning
process and should not be an afterthought. This will enable quicker
and more effective storage network deployment.
Summary
- Don't be myopic: networking your storage might be expensive but
you will probably save money in the long term
- Sticking with direct-attached storage can be a false economy
and your organisation could run a business risk as it might not be
able to back up and protect data effectively
- There is a real danger of getting locked in to one supplier
with direct-attached storage
- Include tape libraries in consolidation plans as well as
disc-based storage
- Look at using automation software and virtualisation to
leverage the potential benefits of networked storage
- When measuring total cost of ownership, factor in elements such
as downtime and the potential costs to your organisation of data
not being available
- Match technology to business need: use different types of
storage depending on the criticality of the data in question
- Although you shouldn't wait for "fancy" virtualisation products
or developments in ISCSI, you should start networking your storage
today, make sure your network is scalable and flexible so you can
take advantage of these developments.
Guest editor's comment
When I worked in the legal
industry, it was the cost of the time to make decisions that was
the limiting factor. I found that, provided you had the basics
right, it was cheaper to use technology to keep all the data and
manage it than to ask the lawyers to spend the time away from
billable activities to decide what to keep and what to delete. So
everything was kept using a storage area network and a document
management system. But, as the cost of technology falls and the
cost of staff rises, I expect storage solutions will become
economically compelling in other business sectors.
Storage is a horizontal technology so businesses should be able to
gain benefits across the board by better storage management.
However, some businesses account for their technology in vertical
business units. In this case, it may not be as easy for companies
to reap the benefits because the cost of the time required to
reorganise internal cost allocation systems should be considered as
part of the cost of adopting such solutions. Other businesses run
distributed systems and the cost of adopting storage solutions may
involve considerable development costs. This may not be practical
in the short term, even if it is seen as desirable. There may, for
example, be some fear of putting all one's eggs in the same basket.
But planning can avoid this, especially if it falls in line with
cyclical investment in technology.
Owen Williams is head of IT at Knight Frank