To say storage virtualsation was a part of the discussion at this
spring's Storage Networking World (SNW) would be an understatement
-- over the course of two days, users were treated to no less than
17 sessions on storage
virtualisation, including two keynote speeches.
Among the satisfied virtualsation users was keynote speaker Mark
Douglas, vice president technology for eHarmony.com, who said his
company has 10 terabytes (TB) of 3PARdata Inc. storage area network
(
SAN) storage deployed behind ONStor Inc. network attached
storage (NAS) gateways. Douglas said his company chose the 3PAR
array because it virtualises disks in the subsystem for easier
provisioning, and the NAS gateway because it doesn't require SAN
expertise to run the storage system.
"Storage virtualsation meant we can run our entire storage
environment with zero dedicated staff," he told the audience.
Another user-presenter, Alejandro Lopez, storage director,
technical support services information and communication services,
for the University of California Davis (UC-Davis) Medical Center,
said using Hitachi Data Systems' (HDS) Universal Storage Platform
(USP) to front IBM Enterprise Storage Service (ESS) and Fast-T
arrays allowed him to consolidate mainframe and open systems
storage. "This is important for (HIPAA) compliance," he told
attendees at his session. "We meet HIPAA security requirements in
part by centralizing management and access to storage."
However, attendees who had decided on, let alone implemented, a
specific storage virtualsation product were in the minority, though
many users said they had intensively evaluated products.
Karl Lewis, storage administrator for the University of
Michigan, College of Engineering, said he has used virtualsation to
some extent on separate NAS systems in his environment -- one an
ONStor clustered gateway in front of cheap disk and the other an
EMC Corp. Celerra box that is broken up into virtual file shares
for different departments.
Lewis said he had considered pooling his entire file storage
environment using Acopia Networks' Adaptive Resource (ARX) switch,
but said he walked away from the company's response to his RFP with
what he termed "sticker shock; it costs me less to continue to
manage two separate NAS environments than it would to implement an
Acopia switch to manage the whole thing," he said.
Cost was also a sticking point for a manager of systems and
networking infrastructure for a content delivery company based in
California, who preferred to remain anonymous because he is not
authorised to speak with the press. This user said he had
considered HDS' Tagmastore for virtualization, but with just under
500 TB of capacity under management, he said he balked at the
capacity-based licensing fees. "It's a single solution that could
integrate well with our existing systems," he said of Tagmastore.
"But the cost to us would be exorbitant."
Another storage administrator with a large company, who spoke on
condition of anonymity for legal reasons, said that his company
tested out StoreAge's Storage virtualsation Manager (SVM) product,
now owned by CA Inc., but said that testing revealed the product
wouldn't support his particular tiered storage migration scheme.
"We use primary storage only for I/O and mirror the data to
secondary storage almost immediately," he said. Further
complicating matters is the fact that some of the consistency
groups for production databases are over 2 TB in size in his
environment.
"We found it a good product, easy to use and the support was
excellent," he said. "But we could just never get it to work for
our particular needs."
Meanwhile, UC-Davis's Lopez said he's been happy with his
virtualsation approach and its cost because he has never expected
it to solve all or even most of his storage problems. Of 120 TB in
his environment, Lopez said, the HDS system is fronting just 22 TB.
He also told attendees at his session that if they're looking for
virtualsation as a silver bullet to solve complexity in a
disorganised environment, they'll be disappointed.
"I made sure I had a strong foundation and simplified my
environment in other ways before implementing virtualization," he
said, adding that he's found the right approach is to work his way
into virtualsation slowly and selectively.
"No matter what anyone tells you, virtualsation is a tool, not a
solution, and that's where I think some people get bogged down," he
said. "But in the end, you have to find a way to do it because
growth is pushing you. That's just a fact."