The best of both worlds: high-end storage functionality meets low-end efficiency at the mid-range - Storage Networking

Computer Technology Review, Jan, 2003 by Bill Groth

Users and storage companies alike are currently striving to drive efficiencies up from the low-end and value-added features down from the high-end in order to identify and deploy new storage solutions that provide high-availability and real business value to the enterprise. As high-end features filter down to the mid-range and low-end efficiencies bubble up, mid-range systems are in the storage sweet spot reaping rewards of this evolution.

Low End: Economies of Scale

Low-end storage is driving increased efficiencies through volume production and sales such as decreased cost and decreased footprint are beginning to impact the shape of the mid-range storage industry. As a result, modular, stackable storage devices benefiting from these innovations are becoming more prevalent and popular than ever before.

Products that are able to scale modularly or by "stacking" and operating flawlessly as a single, cohesive storage system are growing in popularity as IT dollars are stretched to get the most bang-for-your-buck. For instance, it is much more feasible for an organization to approve the purchase of a storage array that meets its current needs today and then, add another, similar device at the same, if not lower cost as storage needs grow. Additionally it is becoming possible and more efficient for customers to scale modular storage devices into a complete storage system capable of managing security and health of the storage system from a single console.

At the same time, the computer industry is pushing chip performance up and cost down, the low-end storage industry is taking advantage of it by decreasing the cost and increasing the efficiency and performance of the storage devices through new disk drives and switching technologies. These technological and financial advancements are finding their way into the midrange storage industry and also, drastically cutting the cost of the devices.

High End: High-End Technology and Management Meets Mid-Range Storage

There are a multitude of value-added mid-range storage features that have already been pulled out of the high-end play-book. Services and support such as call-home and remote monitoring as well as scalability and serviceability are already widely available for customers who demand them. However, there are technologies, such as point-in-time copy, remote replication auto-migration of data for faster access and services, prioritization of bandwidth allocation and true predictive failure analysis that, as time passes, will become standard components of mid-range storage offerings--if they aren't already beginning to emerge by the time this story is published.

It truly is a race between vendors to see who can add the most value to a customers' infrastructure at the lowest total cost of ownership. Four key trends all geared towards enhancing the manageability, flexibility, reliability, serviceability and compatibility of mid-range storage offerings are emerging from the high-end above and into today's midrange storage offerings.

Lower Cost of Ownership Through Consolidation

There is no doubt that storage consolidation products and services are here today. The focus is how it is done and how companies will exploit the basic benefits of consolidation they are already receiving. Consolidation is about two things; 1) decreasing management costs and increasing storage utilization, and 2) realizing the true value of increased availability, manageability and serviceability once storage is consolidated. Consolidation, which can take several forms, simplifies control and management of these assets and delivers greater efficiency in the way each is utilized.

There are currently two approaches to consolidating storage:

Physical consolidation: Storage is moved from direct-attached devices on geographically dispersed servers to larger, shared devices attached to multiple servers.

Logical consolidation: The configurations take the form of a storage area network (SAN), which achieves better utilization and improved flexibility across multiple devices.

In either approach, a simple equation for understanding the benefits of consolidation would be: fewer devices to manage equals lower cost of management.

Virtualization and Storage Pooling

Virtualization removes the physical constraints from managing specific storage resources. With virtualization and pooling, administrators can efficiently manage large amounts of consolidated storage with fewer resources. So, in essence, once storage is consolidated, the next step is to take advantage of the consolidation and to manage it virtually.

A long-time member of the data center storage infrastructure, virtualization worked well across one monolithic, data-center-class storage system. The challenge with this approach was that, once the customer Outgrew one monolithic storage system, another was required to expand storage capacity--an expensive proposition. Now, with smaller mid-range storage systems all needing to be interconnected and managed as one, this feature is in high-demand for companies looking to reap more benefits from consolidation and efficient storage management.