Storage has lived up to analysts` over-hyped predictions. In fact, storage growth has been sluggish lately, due to budget constraints and a lack of provisioning.
Dion Gerrans, brand manager for storage at Computer Associates Africa, looks at how companies can still get the most out of their storage infrastructures - achieving storage efficiency without the necessary capital outlay.
Lately, we`ve been hearing from all fronts how poorly utilised most data centre infrastructures are. Servers that are running at 10% utilisation and storage at 30% have become the norm.
The problem is that the times have changed. In the days when budgets were unlimited, over-provisioning was the standard operating practice.
Now, rapid storage growth has slowed down and cost control has become critical, which makes efficiency the only viable mantra.
Improving storage efficiency offers cost-sensitive IT one of its best chances to reduce operations costs, while at the same time getting the most out of companies` storage infrastructures.
Done right, storage efficiency can enable improved business agility, while also providing a unified view of companies` operations and systems.
Basically, storage efficiency is an attribute of data centre operations analogous to quality of service, meaning the right amount, at the right time, in the right place.
The power of storage efficiency is achieved through process automation of storage operations not just through automating storage services such as backup or replication.
Storage resource management (SRM) is the first step in achieving storage efficiency. Through SRM you can monitor and profile disk capacity and then make and sustain significant improvement in capacity utilisation.
Indeed, SRM will help you determine what is business-critical and what is not. It breaks down the data clogging and assists companies to more clearly define their business processes - what you need and how long it will take you to get it.
Subsequently you`ll be able to move less important data to older devices, while making the availability of critical data automated and readily available.
Next is storage automation. Dubbed by many analyst firms as the "next big thing", it realises significant benefits. However, beware of vendor hype - claims of more than 200% improvement in storage utilisation simply lack credibility.
Storage automation allows you to set measurable goals, quantifiably improve the process to achieve these goals and enforce compliance with the policies that appropriate service levels.
Storage managers must, however, make sure they focus on realistic goals - the vision of "lights-out operations" will not become a reality soon.
After you`ve established an automation strategy it is also important to look at SAN (storage area network) management. What is crucial to remember is that a sound SAN management strategy requires a balanced approach that is not only driven by automation tools, but provisioning as well.
Taking this balanced approach will minimise exposure to common SAN deployment risk. Also, a balanced approach maximises ROI (return on investment) and ensures scalability, flexibility and availability of data.
This brings us to another element of storage efficiency - achieving a unified view of your infrastructure.
According to research authority Aberdeen Group, today`s enterprises need to interconnect their networked, heterogeneous storage so that information can be transported and processed when and where needed, by various applications to provide a business advantage.
Our CA BrightStor Portal lets enterprises display all these application to storage to storage administrators via the Web. It offers consolidated reporting and visualisation capabilities in order to move administrators toward the point of being able to view all of the storage assets in the enterprise.
Says Aberdeen: "CA`s BrightStor Portal gets enterprises closer to viewing and monitoring their storage assets as integrated whole, with flexible, appropriate-level management exposure."
So, if you take all the abovementioned elements to heart, you`ll have clear path to storage efficiency that is driven by careful planning and key technologies rather than massive expenditure.
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