New management solutions untangle storage networks
By Bob Violino, contributing editor -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 5/1/2005 12:00:00 AM
As the amount of business data grows, many IT executives face a daunting challenge: how to manage and provision a complex assortment of storage systems.
Some are finding storage resource management software is the answer.
Such systems lend assistance to storage capacity planning, managing physical space, storage asset record keeping, and storage policy management. They do so by collecting data about storage resources and putting that information in a central database. The data can be examined to track usage trends and manage physical and logical storage assets.
Storage resource management systems also can alert managers when storage thresholds are reached. Some systems can be configured to automatically execute an action that resolves a storage-related problem, or prevents it from happening in the first place.
Several enterprises that have deployed storage resource management solutions say the biggest benefit is having a central point from which to control what in many cases has become an unruly network of incompatible storage devices.
While these may seem like strictly IT issues, most users say these systems address real business problems.
"[Without storage management] it's hard to predict when you will have [capacity] problems that will bring projects to a standstill because you can't save files," says Bart Lezwijn, manager of storage and processing in the Domestic Appliances & Personal Care division of Royal Philips Electronics in the Netherlands.
The division has been using TotalStorage Productivity Center for Data from IBM since early 2004. The system manages and provisions roughly two terabytes of storage capacity in a Windows-based environment.
TotalStorage, a Web-based system, supports heterogeneous environments and most leading databases. It also allows IT centers to charge individual departments for the amount of storage they actually use.
Lezwijn says the system has been especially helpful in reducing the loss of CAD files generated during product development. He also believes its ability to intelligently provision storage space will result in fewer disk hardware purchases.
Contributing factors
The growing market for storage resource management is being fueled by several business and technology trends.
"We are finally seeing a pretty sizable [increase] in adoption of these solutions," says Nancy Hurley, senior analyst at research firm Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass. "SANs [storage area networks] had to mature to the point where there were real management issues. Four years ago—when storage management started hitting the market—only 10 percent of all storage was networked. We've seen incredible growth in SANs and networked storage [with enterprises sharing storage across multiple departments]. There's a real need to better manage how things are being used and who has access."
The sheer volume of stored data is another obvious contributing factor.
"There has been extraordinary data growth," says Jim Franklin, product marketing manager, Enterprise Software Group, at storage vendor EMC. "Almost all our customers are growing at an enormous rate [in terms of data storage]. Many are trying to control costs while achieving high service levels, and looking to software to help them manage storage assets."
Sales of storage management products have been "brisk," he adds, and the manufacturing industry is a prime target for the solutions because manufacturers are outpacing most other companies in terms of the volume of data they are generating.
"We've seen a significant increase in the storage capacities customers are buying, and they need a deep analysis of what they have, where the capacity is not being fully utilized, and where they can consolidate," claims Jamie Gruener, market manager for TotalStorage Productivity Center at IBM. Storage resource management gives enterprises this knowledge and enables them to more cost-effectively control storage resources, Gruener says.
Gruener adds that government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley—with requirements for retaining data, including financial reports—are forcing some enterprises to gain greater control over storage environments. "Customers must have a full understanding of where data is, and the condition of it," he says.
All new products
The storage resource management market is continuing to evolve, Gruener says, with vendors focusing on providing broader views of multivendor enterprise storage resources.
"Customers have gotten tired of the point products they get with storage systems and networks, and trying to manage [systems when] so many don't talk to each other well," he says. "We're starting to see storage management do broad device management and SAN management. We're all in the same footrace to get functions integrated so asset provisioning and capacity management are all in the same tool."
Industry standards will help, Hurley says. In particular, the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S), developed by the Storage Networking Industry Association, is a standard management interface that eases management of multivendor SAN environments. SMI-S is based on existing standards such as the Common Information Model.
Meantime, vendors are delivering a range of storage resource management products.
In February, Hewlett-Packard (HP) introduced HP Storage Essentials, a standards-based suite that provides heterogeneous SAN management, provisioning, and application infrastructure monitoring. Storage Essentials automatically maps a company's storage network topology. It also automates administrative tasks such as identifying and upgrading out-of-date firmware, and identifying resources with unallocated capacity that can be reached by an application or host.
HP says Storage Essentials is the first product of a relationship between HP's StorageWorks Division and partner AppIQ. The long-term agreement calls for HP to embed AppIQ's Storage Authority Enterprise Edition product line into Storage Essentials.
EMC offers ControlCenter, a product family for large enterprises. ControlCenter functions include Monitoring & Reporting and Planning & Provisioning.
Monitoring & Reporting automates end-to-end discovery and mapping of a multivendor networked storage environment, including storage system health, utilization, and performance alerts for managers. It also captures data on arrays, switches, hosts, files, and databases. Planning & Provisioning lets companies design multivendor storage environments, delivering centralized SAN management and policy-based provisioning of storage capacity.
Veritas Software has an enterprise-class product called CommandCentral Storage, which combines Veritas' heterogeneous SAN management software (SANPoint Control) and traditional storage resource management (Storage Reporter) in a single system.
H20 management: some helpful resources
09/03/2009The Internet is more than an add-on
05/31/2001
