Storage too complex, your customers say: listen to them

Computer Technology Review, August, 2004 by Michael Peterson

This means a whole new way of operating the datacenter based on the value of information. The intent is to ultimately "stop managing". We also need to stop managing storage to solve the storage complexity problem. Start working with this concept. Where to start? Begin with really solving your customer's top pain problems--but listen carefully.

Figure 2

COMPONENTS OF STORAGE COMPLEXITY

What is Storage Complexity?

                     Percent of Reported Problems, Multiple Responses

Other                                      4.8%
Disk Performance                           2.8%
Staff Shortages                            4.8%
TCO                                        4.8%
Flexibility                                6.0%
Data Mgmt. Services                        6.0%
Disk Mgmt.                                 6.4%
BU                                         9.2%
Maintenance                               17.1%
Process Complexity                        17.9%
Capacity Growth                           20.3%

Strategic Research Corp.

Note: Table made from bar graph.

www.sresearch.com

www.snia.org/dmf

RELATED ARTICLE: Figure 1

WHAT IS STORAGE COMPLEXITY?

Complexity means customers need a combination of solutions and professional services to solve a set of large scale problems related to their storage infrastructure and storage operations

* I work for a conglomeration that has a patchwork infrastructure and we spend too much time putting out fires.

* Many things, including server consolidation (minimize # of vendors and then ease the B/U situation, i.e. time for B/U), planning and executing DR plans, strategic planning for growth and archiving of data

* More efficient use of our storage, many pools of unused storage out there in different environments. Getting replication to work across data-centers reliably. It's not working the way it's purported to. $2M budgeted

* Management overload--with heterogenous storage, not able to take advantage of vertical storage sub-ports; wasting storage = poor capacity utilization, we bought more than we can use; B/U & restore, no consistent policy so we can't always recover with the SLA periods. $2-3M budgeted

Strategic Research Corp.

Michael Peterson is program director of SNIA's Data Management Forum, as well as president and senior analyst of Strategic Research Corp. (Santa Barbara, CA)