Fast Guide: Storage Management
Managing your storage infrastructure has never been harder. Complex systems, unbelievable data growth rates and squabbling vendors are just a few of the issues hampering your ability to manage storage. This Fast Guide to storage management has everything you need to learn how to plan your storage environment, make sure it's running smoothly and stay on top of the trends fueling the next generation of storage management.
Managing your storage infrastructure has never been harder. Complex systems, unbelievable data growth rates and squabbling vendors are just a few of the issues hampering your ability to manage storage. This Fast Guide to storage management has everything you need to learn how to plan your storage environment, makes sure it's running smoothly and stay on top of the trends fueling the next generation of storage management. Also included in this guide: A closer look at storage management tools, new developments in automation and SRM. Drop me an e-mail to let me know what other learning guides you'd like to see on SearchStorage.com.
Mark Lewis, Managing Editor.
  Storage Management School |
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Table of Contents
Lesson one: Storage planning: Where on earth do I begin?
Lesson two: Best practices: Storage management operations
Lesson three: Managing growth: How to stop the bleeding
Lesson four: Taming the e-mail beast
Lesson five: Tiered storage, the next wave
Lesson six: Services architecture, a new approach to an old concept
Lesson seven: Building a storage group
Test what you've learned in the lessons above with our challenging storage management quizzes...
Quiz one: Lessons 1 & 2
Quiz two: Lessons 3-5
Quiz three: Lessons 6 & 7
Also, take a look at Glasshouse Technologies' Stephen Foskett's Storage Management School presentation from Storage Decisions (Fall) 2004.
| Planning and Strategy |
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- The best practices of storage management
Do often you find yourself tempted to try the "latest" storage technologies? If so, is your organization mature enough to handle them? According to author Stephen Foskett, keeping up with the latest storage technologies won't matter if your organization isn't ready for new products and services. So whether you want to implement new products, or simply improve service, the time has come for reorganization. This tip shows you how to reorganize and suggests key areas to focus when doing so. - Tip: Defining critical storage management functions
According to storage management expert Brett Cooper, a company needs to know what its goals are first in order to pick the best hardware and software tools for a good management solution. In this Ask the Expert tip, Brett lists several areas critical to managing the day-to-day environment and highlights a few improvements of current processes. - Webcast break: Learning the business side of storage management
SPEAKER: Norbert Haag, Independent Storage Consultant
Join Norbert Haag, our newest SearchStorage.com expert on storage management, as he describes the fundamental business steps and processes you need to follow to prepare your staff and infrastructure for using high-powered storage management features. - Article: Set strategic storage management policies
- Article: Why you need to care about standards In this tip, Jamie Gruener discusses the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) standard, what it means to the storage professional, and what you should ask storage vendors about their support of SMI-S.
- Tip: RFPs create savings
One way to get a better grip on the RFP process is to break it down into four chronological phases. Following these phases will put you, the storage buyer, at an advantage in acquiring new storage technology. - Webcast break: Building a Storage Management Group
SPEAKER: Stephen Foskett, GlassHouse Technologies
Stephen Foskett of GlassHouse Technologies discusses what it takes to set up an effective storage managament department.
Author Stephen Foskett believes that storage management policies are the internal laws of an organization. And although some policies are unique to a particular organization, Foskett says most policies are universal and fit into three categories -- each described here.
| Best practices and procedures |
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- Expert advice: Top 10 tips on storage management
Our columnist finishes up his tenure at SearchStorage.com by providing you with some tips he's picked up from watching the storage market over the last few years.
- Expert advice: How to isolate and solve performance bottlenecks This tip shows you how to determine whether your subsystem or application is the cause of I/O wait states -- and what to do about the problem.
- Webcast break: Improve your actual storage utilization
SPEAKER: Stephen Foskett, GlassHouse Technologies
View this webcast with Stephen Foskett for an overview of the current tools and best practices for measuring and improving storage utilization. The best way to move data, part one Jerome Wendt states his case -- with four good reasons -- for using host-based technologies for data migration. He warns, however, that before selecting any product, you need to understand the pros and cons.
And read part two on "Pros, cons of host-based technology for data migration".
- Expert advice: How many admins does it take to manage a terabyte?
- Webcast break: A blueprint for tiered storage
SPEAKER: Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Storage Group
Steve Duplessie, Senior Analyst for the Enterprise Storage Group, provides a blueprint for building a tiered storage strategy within your environment. - Tip: How to troubleshoot SANs using WWN zoning
Identifying devices by their World Wide Name (WWN) when setting up zones on a SAN makes configuration easier, but it also provides some maintenance and troubleshooting advantages over tying devices to specific ports on the SAN switch.
| Storage Management Software/SRM |
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- Tip: Make sense of SAN management software
- Commentary: Five questions for your SRM vendor
- Hands-on review: Veritas CommandCentral Storage 4.0
Storage pro Darryl Brooks kicks the proverbial Veritas CommandCentral Storage 4.0 tires. - First Look: Storability's GSM 4.0
Seeking to help large organizations better understand and manage their storage resources, Storability Software Inc., Southborough, MA, is adding new business analytics, administration and storage management and backup capabilities to its Global Storage Management (GSM) product. - Review: Onaro SANscreen
Onaro Inc.'s SANscreen v. 2.5.2 is a predictive change management application. It allows different groups to use the same real-time information to collaborate on SAN changes before, during and after the changes are made. - News: StorageTek throws lifeline to Storability
Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) has scooped up storage resource management (SRM) company Storability Software Inc. to further its information lifecycle management (ILM) strategy. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. - Article: Finding SRM tools
How can you figure out what the best storage resource management tools are for my environment? This tip is a good start. - Article: Ease capacity planning pain with SRM
Selecting the right software to manage your SAN takes some study and careful evaluation of your needs. How should you go about that?
As with any technology investment, a careful requirement assessment and detailed product evaluations are absolutely critical. To ensure that you choose the right software solution to meet your company's unique requirements, here are five questions you should ask every SRM vendor during your evaluation process.
There are a number of key questions you should ask vendors about their SRM products -- this tip has them all.
| Storage management tools |
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- Article: Do SAN management tools help?
- Tools Matrix: Storage management
- Expert advice: Where is the industry going with storage management tools?
- Article: Brocade users get free SAN checkup
- Article: Managing user quotas, a touchy subject
What are some of the tools used to manage user quotas and management? Storage Resource Management(SRM) tools have some of the best features when it comes to managing user quotas. - Expert advice: Using SRM tools
It's a nightmare trying to find old files that are no longer used on a file server. Our servers are starting to reach capacity just six months after expansion. We have thousands of old files and many that aren't so old but that also aren't used. What tools are currently available to resolve this problem? - Expert advice: Using provisioning tools
My problem is that I have to manage SAN environments where I've got Sun Solaris, Windows NT/2000 and IBM AIX. Is there a storage management tool that can help me manage and provision?
What you will learn from this tip: The specific cases in which SAN management tools are useful, plusses and minuses for current tools and what the future of SAN management tools will bring.
Need a breakdown of all the storage management tools available? This is an easy to read chart on many of the most pervasive tools on the market.
Where are storage management tools headed? Our expert has the answers.
Free health tool assesses the status of Brocade fabrics. But watch out for the diagnosis -- you may want a second opinion.
| Additional resources |
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- Storage management tips
- Data management info center
Do you see anything missing in this guide? E-mail us your comments and suggestions.
