Storage in utility computing: 7 critical questions for IT

Computer Technology Review, March, 2004 by E.P. Komarla

It is easy to understand why the concept of utility computing has become latest trend in Information Technology. Analogous to traditional public utilities such as electric or water service, utility computing comprehends an essentially demand-based business model for the full range of IT infrastructure capabilities including servers, storage, databases and network resources.

While the concept is a compelling one, utility computing will not become a practical reality until IT managers can find answers to some fundamental, and as yet unresolved, questions. As long as companies utilize IT infrastructures based on servers, storage devices and networking systems from multiple vendors, the question of interoper-ability will remain a potential stumbling block. The solution will require comprehensive industry standards to ensure that systems work reliably across the heterogeneous environments found in real-world enterprise datacenters.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

This article provides an overview of storage--one of the most important subsets of utility computing--including some important questions IT managers should ask before outsourcing their storage to a utility.

In Concept: Compelling Benefits

Within the utility computing model, the utility may provide services from the same infrastructure to multiple clients at the same time (Figure 1). According to its proponents, utility computing can provide customers with the cost benefits of a smoothly scalable 'pay-as-you-go' system that can meet changing business needs, without large capital expenditures. Subscriber companies can theoretically switch-on a given level of service, and then scale up or down, to meet their dynamically changing requirements.

All of this makes the promise of utility computing very compelling:

* Users would have unlimited access to computing resources across the globe

* Companies would pay only for the services they actually use, avoiding major up-front capital expenditures and eliminating the problem of under-utilized and non-productive resources

* Enterprises would have the ability to quickly scale their IT infrastructure to meet changing business requirements, while focusing on their core business processes and areas of competency

* In theory, subscribers would be able to flexibly meet dynamic shifts in demand for computing and storage, without additional investments in hardware, software and systems integration.

While the concept of utility computing has recently garnered a great deal of press attention, executing on the promise may be difficult. This is due to the fact that utility computing is considerably more complex than conventionally outsourced computing services.

7 Questions for IT

Because of the importance of mission-critical data in modern business, the ability to provide access to reliable and secure storage and to guarantee it with appropriate service-level agreements is a make-or-break proposition for utility computing. While the service-based utility concept is extremely promising in principle, IT managers are well advised to thoroughly investigate all the storage-related complexities of any proposed utility infrastructure before reaching for their checkbooks.

A great way to start is to ask some basic questions:

1. How will the utility organize and access the storage infrastructure?

2. Can the utility protect data integrity and ensure controlled access?

3. Does the utility have a unified framework for the management of servers, storage and network resources, and what about heterogeneous infrastructure environments?

4. How will the utility ensure fault-tolerant data access, archive and retrieval services, and disaster recovery?

5. How does the utility allocate storage resources to particular jobs?

6. How will the utility measure Quality of Service (QoS) for storage?

7. Can the utility provide users with dynamic billing?

Before making a decision to move forward, it is crucial for IT managers to thoroughly review the underlying organization and architecture of the utility's computing infrastructure. While many of today's utility computing vendors promote complete and ready-to-implement solutions, these may be point solutions that may not adequately address all the relevant issues of infrastructure organization, access, data integrity, unified resource management, fault tolerance, resource allocation, QoS or dynamic billing, not to mention to the question of cross-platform interoperability. When the utility is also a large hardware or software vendor, the infrastructure will in all likelihood be based on that vendor's vertical solutions. IT managers should carefully evaluate how the utility's infrastructure interfaces with their own unique systems and business process requirements.

Organization, Access and Cost

Networked storage infrastructure is designed to be largely transparent to the user, but how the storage infrastructure is organized can have an important bearing on the ultimate costs paid by utility subscribers. Storage virtualization is one of the fundamental concepts of utility computing because it provides users and service providers with a unified view of available storage resources. Virtualization means that physically disparate storage devices are treated as a single common pool of storage resources. This functional abstraction insulates users and applications from the underlying complexity of networked storage resources. It is typically achieved through Storage Area Networks (SANs) designed to optimize disk utilization and minimize costs.