Data growth is the largest data centre infrastructure challenge today, says Gartner, and storage solutions provider NetApp has unveiled an evolved portfolio to help address this challenge.
“There is a sense of urgency to move from a siloed infrastructure to a shared IT infrastructure that is more efficient and flexible in addressing today's rapidly evolving business requirements,” says NetApp.
It emphasises that a shared IT infrastructure allows the ability to support multiple workloads, both traditional and virtualised, as well as multiple user groups from a single IT infrastructure that is integrated with the major data centre components.
NetApp also says a shared IT infrastructure is the foundation for cloud computing and will enable IT to be an accelerator of businesses.
“There's a significant change under way, as CIOs look to better align IT to the speed of business and get IT budgets under control,” says Andreas K"onig, senior VP and GM EMEA at NetApp.
Gartner says its recent survey on data centres shows data growth to be the largest data centre infrastructure challenge, with 47% of survey respondents ranking data growth in their top three challenges.
Senior VP of global IT infrastructure services at SAP Wolfgang Krips agrees, saying the biggest challenge he currently has is getting storage under control.
“The biggest cost with regards to data centres now is the price of storage and backup, but we can cut down service delivery time with cloud computing and there is a massive automation of infrastructure, of which virtualisation is the basis.”
Compression is key
In light of this transition, NetApp says it released a revised product and technology portfolio that will deliver a storage platform for customers to build their shared IT infrastructure.
The company has introduced an OnCommand Management Software Suite that allows for unified storage, automation, and flexibility with an open application programming interface that integrates with a variety of third-party management products and hypervisors.
It has also released its unified architecture and systems portfolio, which includes Data ONTAP 8.
As a first for the industry, according to NetApp, this product supports all protocols through a single wire to help increase efficiency, improve performance, and simplify management.
In addition, it says new inline data compression can be used alone or with deduplication to help reduce the amount of storage needed.
Within the systems portfolio, NetApp has introduced new storage systems and solid state drives for customers who require consistently fast response times for mission-critical applications.
“As part of their ongoing collaboration, Cisco, NetApp, and VMware are offering a pre-sized, validated, standardised data centre architecture design that is available through select joint channel partners.”
NetApp explains that, as part of the architecture design, FlexPod for VMware helps customers accelerate their transformation to a virtualised, shared IT infrastructure and reduces risk.
Silo surrender
Gartner says high-ranking IT projects that will be employed to address the issue of data growth, according to its survey, are data security from internal, external or hacker risk; storage consolidation; storage management tools; and data reduction techniques.
It adds that network congestion and connectivity architecture were the third-biggest data centre infrastructure challenges, according to its survey.
“The new generation of servers with multicore processors demands significantly high input/output, and if these servers are virtualised, this requirement further goes up.”
It says increased reliance on WAN can be another trigger for network-related challenges as users are consolidating their IT systems, especially as individual users are increasingly working remotely or going mobile. Gartner advises vendors to help customers to be strategic with their network infrastructure rather than continue to take a silo approach.
The top three technologies that respondents plan to invest in through 2011 are server virtualisation (67%), application consolidation or rationalisation (56%) and blade servers (51%).
Eddy Navarro, computer systems manager for Storage at research company JCVI, says the amount of data that needs to be stored doubles every year.
“Facing the dual challenges of flat IT budgets and exploding data growth, IT organisations need to keep pace with the business requirements of today, yet also be ready to adapt and respond to the demands of tomorrow.
“The resulting urgency to employ more dynamic, flexible, and efficient IT approaches - including various cloud implementations - is being enabled by many new technologies that have matured,” says senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Mark Peters.
Gartner says its survey was conducted from June to August, with representatives from 1 004 large organisations across eight countries.
Local arm
VP of EMEA emerging markets at NetApp Remo Rossi says this gives the company new opportunities since it can offer this solution to 'global acting' companies in SA.
“We can try to help them by offering the right solution and giving them the possibility to grow.”
Rossi believes SA will double its size in terms of storage in the next one to two years. “But data growth is unpredictable and you can't stop it. It has to do with new regulations and new applications.”
He adds that take up of this solution may be hindered by hesitation to enter the cloud. “Security is one of the biggest barriers to clouding and virtualisation. People are afraid of losing control and power since they see outsourcing data as having the issue of no privacy.”
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