The increased focus on data storage has broadened the
responsibilities of network managers, but the creation of
specialist roles in IT departments could help ease the
pressure
Never has IT change happened so quickly, for so many
organisations, in so many different industries. Small and large
companies alike are today facing a number of challenges that
weren't even on the horizon until a few years ago.
But along with the pressure to comply with new legislation,
share information across geographically dispersed offices and
protect critical data in spite of ever-decreasing back-up windows,
new technologies have come to the aid of the IT department. They
enable these professionals to support their organisations with the
most effective IT infrastructures.
In many cases the solution came in the shape of converged
technologies, such as voice and data a few years back and, more
recently, storage and data networking.
Although the intense attention might have somewhat softened, the
merger has continued and has led to new breeds of solutions.
In the case of storage and data networking, the need to share
and protect data has stretched the boundaries of both technologies
to create a convergence of methodologies and a new way of
distributing stored data to enable access, sharing and protection
over short, medium and long distances.
However, the steady path to convergence was not mirrored by the
convergence of the roles of system and network administrators. Even
today, in many organisations we find that it is either the former
(who understand applications and server/storage infrastructures but
are less familiar with networking) who have come to manage the
storage as well as the servers, or the latter (who are very
intimate with networking but need to learn the specific
implications of transporting storage traffic vs any other kind of
data) who have had to stretch their knowledge to storage
arrays.
It is easy to see why this happened. The computing
infrastructure includes three main elements: the
application/server, the storage device and the network that
connects the two.
In the past, all of these components were hosted within the same
system and were managed by system administrators. Since they all
belonged to a single system, the importance of the "network"
element was almost irrelevant. Over time the storage component
moved out of the box to get externally and directly connected to
the servers.
Meanwhile, organisations were generating more and more data and
their storage requirements grew at an astonishing rate. The need to
effectively store, protect and share this data led to the storage
devices being networked, thus leading us to network-attached
storage (NAS) and storage area networks (Sans).
Initially Sans were based on simple switches that enabled system
administrators to fan out large storage arrays and spread their
capacity across multiple servers. Subsequently, as they became
proper networks, they started to offer increased scalability and
flexibility.
As Sans grew in size and complexity, an ever-increasing number
of features was added to the switches, making them very similar to
their Lan counterparts.
This development created the need for individuals capable of
managing an infrastructure that looked very much like a Lan, but
which ran on a different protocol, Fibre Channel, and was dedicated
to storage.
This new environment created the opportunity for the system
administrators to develop their skills and for the network
administrators to apply their understanding of management, design
and troubleshooting of large networks to the storage realm. In
other words, the increased capabilities of San switches created the
need for a new figure: the San administrator.
Most IT departments today do not feature San administrators as
their function is fulfilled by either the system or the network
administrators. However, the increased focus on the storage side of
the IT infrastructure will soon lead to the creation of such a
role.
The presence of storage-specific protocols Fibre Channel and
iSCSI in Sans highlighted the fact that both system administrators
and network administrators had to learn about different aspects of
storage networking in order to manage Sans, although the similarity
between Sans and Lans has made it easier for network administrators
to understand and manage storage networks.
While traditional administrators might think of storage
networking as a daunting addition to their IT infrastructures,
resources such as Storage Networking Industry Association courses
are at hand to help professionals get the most out of their systems
and networks and improve current performance.
The SNIA Storage Networking Certification Program (SNCP)
provides a foundation of vendor-neutral, systems-level credentials
that integrate with and complement individual vendor
certifications.
Through evolving and enhancing the SNCP, the SNIA is
establishing a consistent standard by which individual knowledge
and skill sets can be judged.
So while Sans might at first look unappealing to both system and
network administrators, these professionals should expand their
skills to reap the benefits offered by years of technical
development and customer adoption to provide increased support to
their organisations.
Dante Malagrino is education committee chair of industry and
standards body the Storage Networking Industry Association
Europe
www.snia.org/education
Storage needs
- Convergence has led to new ways of distributing storage and
data
- System administrators are less familiar with networking
- Network administrators need to learn the specific implications
of transporting storage traffic