Avoiding vendor lock-in by adopting open standards with management interfaces built around the storage management initiative specification (SMIS) model is one of five key actions IBM recommends for network storage in 2005.
"Ensuring storage systems conform to the SMIS model and storage networking industry association standards is important. It prevents customers being forced to buy from one or two vendors and avoids the associated cost and lack of flexibility," says David Baugh, IBM`s TotalStorage channel manager.
Baugh says organisations can realise greater flexibility and independence by implementing a single standard method for device configuration management, performance management and storage provisioning.
Eliminating unnecessary data is a second key objective. "Disk storage is still expensive, and considering most organisations are not using more than 50% of their storage capacity for valid data, it is important to categorise and analyse storage contents so that unnecessary data can be deleted," says Baugh.
After standardising management interfaces and removing redundant or inappropriate data from storage networks, Baugh advises storage administrators to enable what he calls a "variable cost infrastructure".
"Matching the business value of the data to the cost, performance and availability of disk is an effective way of reducing storage costs." Baugh advocates the use of Tier 1 for high performance with mirrored data, Tier 2 for high performance without mirroring, and Tier 3 for archive data with low performance, but high capacity.
Network storage administrators are also advised to enable a flexible, non-disruptive and simplified infrastructure. "Virtualisation at the disk level initially and eventually at the file system level enables exploitation of tiered storage to relocate data and replace disk systems as required without disrupting applications," he explains.
Enabling storage orchestration is the fifth key action recommended by Baugh. "Automating routine tasks easily translates into significant cost savings by freeing up administrators to concentrate on more important tasks," he says.
"Data categorisation, tiered storage, a flexible and simplified infrastructure, standardisation and automation of workflows are the five key areas of network storage around which decisions will need to be made this year to drive maximum business value."
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