Castagna: look before you leap into Cloud storage

toigo: an adult Conversation about software- defined storage

mcClure: miCrosoft’s smb offers storage alternative for vms

matChett: storage is getting friendlier with apps

snapshot: what tools do you use to manage your storage?

Reality check: tools to make suRe youR DR plan will Really woRk

Big stoRage solutions foR Big Data heaDaches

november 2013 vol. 12 | no. 9

StorageManaging the information that drives the enterprise

Storage ProS reaP rewardSThe work has gotten tougher and the pressure hasn’t eased, but managing storage systems has its monetary rewards.

www.storagedecisions.com

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

A lot of Smart people who know an aw-ful lot about storage have been telling us that the days of companies actually buying their own storage and manag-ing it are numbered. Everything will

move into the cloud, they say, and typically they make their case for the end-of-the-data-center-as-we-know-it scenario based on economics.

And they can paint a pretty persuasive picture at times. After all, nobody needs a lot of convincing if the al-ternative promises equal or better service than what you have, while providing relief from fluctuating capacity and workload requirements. All that (and more) for less than what you’re currently paying for storage gear and mainte-nance. Maybe even a lot less if launching your data into the cloud also means that your requirements for on-site

expertise are reduced.Just think: No more nerve-racking RAID rebuilds,

weekends spent migrating data from an old rig to a newer one or backups that seem to end just before they need to run again. Cloud storage and cloud computing can cure all those ills—some neat legerdemain that allows you to shed the unpleasant chores that have always been among the most vexing for storage managers.

It’s especially compelling when you consider how much data we’re keeping these days. In our latest Stor-age Purchasing Intentions Survey, respondents told us they’re maintaining an average of 1.5 petabytes of data on all types of media, including disk, tape, flash, optical and cloud. That’s a lot of stuff to manage. Sure, a lot of that is probably on tape or other media gathering dust on a shelf in a cave somewhere, but those same respondents report

Caveat emptor comes to the cloudA big cloud storage service stumbles and everyone gets just a wee bit nervous—but there are lessons to be learned.

EDITORIAL  |  RICH CASTAGNA

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an adult Conversation about software-defined

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storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

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big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

EDITORIAL  |  RICH CASTAGNA

they have an average of more than 300 TB of active disk capacity; and that number shoots up near petabyte terri-tory (860 TB) for the enterprise-scale companies in our survey (with annual revenues greater than $1 billion).

Some companies look to the cloud because they no longer have the physical space or electrical power to support additional storage systems. And if you think the capacity situation will improve now that some stor-age vendors have finally shaken their compression and dedupe technologies loose and integrated them into pri-mary storage systems, you’re a lot more optimistic than I am. Add all the big data stuff to the mix and you’ve got companies stashing away digital matter at unprecedented rates. In some situations it may seem as if cloud storage is the only reasonable solution.

You probably know where all this is going. All of the above are good and compelling reasons to consider park-ing at least some of your company’s data with a cloud storage service provider. And the more transparent you can make the linkages from your data center to the cloud the better—think of cloud storage as a tier.

But what if something goes wrong? Really, really wrong. Like a major cloud storage provider vaporizes. Like Nirvanix. By now you know that Nirvanix, a ma-jor player in the cloud storage market with products and services that addressed all implementation options—pri-vate, public and hybrid—bit the dust recently. If that isn’t unnerving enough, the company gave its customers just

a few weeks to reclaim their data and vacate the premises.For most companies, that meant downloading every-

thing they had stored in Nirvanix’s cloud back to their data centers while they shopped for another cloud ser-vice. Since so many users turned to the cloud because

they lacked the capacity to accommodate all the data they needed to retain, there were probably some pretty desper-ate moments as storage managers searched for places to put the data that had resided in the cloud.

And if we believe Nirvanix’s own PR, some of their customers were real heavyweights that ostensibly had many terabytes of data on Nirvanix storage. This wasn’t some fly-by-night outfit—in a December 2012 report (Critical Capabilities for Public Cloud Storage Services), Gartner rated a number of cloud storage services based on six criteria and Nirvanix came out second only to Amazon Simple Storage Service.

Cloud storage is still a relatively new alternative, even if it’s kind of an old idea that’s been kicking around for 20

in a December 2012 report, gartnerrated a number of cloud storageservices based on six criteria andnirvanix came out second only toamazon simple storage service.

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an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

EDITORIAL  |  RICH CASTAGNA

years or so. Most storage pros know what to look for and what to ask when considering a cloud storage service, in-cluding such key criteria as uptime and data protection. But few users anticipate the “poof” scenario in which a cloud service simply disappears. When those rare events do occur, most companies aren’t prepared to take correc-tive actions—at least not in only two weeks.

My point here is not to knock cloud storage services or discourage their use. Cloud storage could and prob-ably should play a part in most storage environments, for backup, archive and even near-line storage in some cases. But the sinking of the Nirvanix ship is a harsh les-son for its customers, as well as a cautionary tale for us-ers of other services and those who are contemplating the cloud.

It’s more than likely you have contingency plans for the data stored on your in-house storage systems. You probably replicate or copy to tape so that if one array gives up the ghost, you can at least recover the data that had been stored on it—maybe just a bit here and there for

now, and the rest later when the array is repaired or re-placed—but you have the data safely in hand. You really don’t want to ship data off into the cloud without some similar accommodation for unforeseen circumstances. A while back, Nasuni added a data migration feature to its on-premises Nasuni Filer that integrates with cloud stor-age services. Since Nasuni taps into existing cloud stor-age services, they make it possible to move data from one service to another without having to restore it to the data center first.

It’s likely other cloud storage products support similar migration features and, given the Nirvanix debacle, it’s a feature that should be on your short list when shopping for a cloud storage provider. I’m sure that in time we, and all the cloud storage vendors, will find out a lot more about Nirvanix’s demise and there will likely be plenty to learn from its missteps. n

Rich castagna is editorial director of TechTarget’s Storage Media Group.

6 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

Can we have an adult conversation about storage?All this talk about software-defined storage seems to be missing the point.

STORAGE REVOLUTION  |  JON TOIGO

Idon’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of all the marketing taglines and buzz-phrases that are being used as substitutes for technical descriptions of storage products and services. The one that has been grating on my nerves even before this fall’s con-

ference season is “software-defined storage.” (Actually, software-defined anything irks me—infrastructure, net-works and so on—but since this is a storage-focused pub-lication, I’ll vent my bile on that topic.)

Let’s start with the obvious question: Hasn’t software always defined properly constructed IT infrastructure? When I entered IT (back when it was data processing, not bring your own device or cloud or agile computing or mo-bile computing …), we were taught to build infrastruc-ture “purposefully,” meaning after careful consideration of what the hosted application workload required for the

best possible performance.Purpose-built infrastructure provided the necessary

processing power, networking bandwidth, access paths, storage capacity and performance required for an applica-tion to deliver its business value. In short, software always defined good infrastructure.

Admittedly, in the 1990s, the idea of purpose-built was conflated with the problem of “isolated islands of automa-tion” in the minds of many smart practitioners. Standing up applications on unique purpose-built platforms, critics argued, created inefficiencies from an integration and in-vestment standpoint. Purpose-built infrastructure tended to share some components in common, like storage, so maybe it would make sense to build those common ele-ments as a “horizontal infrastructure” that could be lever-aged by many applications. SANs and network-attached

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

STORAGE REVOLUTION  |  JON TOIGO

using one vendor’s technology, from the application layer and the hypervisor layer right down to the network and storage layers, is the only way to bring performance, agil-ity and economy back into the reality of IT. To some, software-defined storage is a synonym for private stor-age clouds, which was a synonym for Storage as a Service, which was a synonym for managed storage.

Storage hardware vendors and server hypervisor ven-dors don’t seem eager to talk about managed storage be-cause doing so would (1) run contrary to their desire to sell proprietary and segregationist wares, and (2) poten-tially force them to admit that they never truly delivered SANs in the first place. Had they done so, we would have collections of JBODs with their special services hosted like so many shared applications in a common control-ler environment. That way, if an application required a certain set of value-add functions to support its workload (continuous data protection, deduplication, encryption, mirroring, replication and so on), a virtual volume would

storage were manifestations of this idea of shared infra-structure in the storage realm, though both were techni-cally still direct-attached storage if you delved deeper into their architecture.

So we spent a decade cobbling together all our stor-age islands into an interconnected storage network that wasn’t technically a “network” by any accepted scientific definition of the term. Standards (that weren’t actually standards) were created around the Fibre Channel fabric interconnect, and while they facilitated the attachment of massive numbers of disk drives, they provided no in-line management of the resulting fabric and enabled two or more vendors to create standards-compliant switches that wouldn’t work with each other to save their lives.

Truth be told, sharing a common storage infrastruc-ture didn’t prove to be as business-savvy as vendors origi-nally suggested. For one thing, it took an extraordinarily long time for port costs to fall, especially when compared to Ethernet. For another, lack of coherent management meant experts were required to deploy and maintain stor-age infrastructure (increasing labor costs), and it opened the door to vendors who fielded arrays into the fabric that proffered expensive value-add functionality and on-array managers that resisted common or fabric-wide manage-ment—so much for economies of scale.

Bottom line: The reason why some folks now pine for a return to the purpose-built storage of yesteryear—so-called software-defined storage—is that they believe

to some, software-defined storageis a synonym for private storageclouds, which was a synonym forstorage as a service, which wasa synonym for managed storage.

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

STORAGE REVOLUTION  |  JON TOIGO

about software-defined storage that does little to illumi-nate a true architectural model, let alone move us any closer to advancement in computer science. I had hoped that the financial constraints imposed by a recessionary economy would force a gut check so we could have an adult conversation about storage. But as yet that does not seem to have happened. Bummer. n

Jon William toigo is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data Management Institute.

be created from raw disk and the necessary service func-tions would be associated with it on the fly. The volume would then be presented to the workload simply and effi-ciently, with its performance and capacity monitored and managed via a universal methodology like REST from the World Wide Web Consortium.

While we have the capability to deliver such a SAN to-day, which would effectively mitigate both the Capex and Opex costs of storage, the industry chooses not to and us-ers choose not to compel them to do so.

So we’re stuck with meaningless industry banter

9 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

new Storage tecHnologieS and a greater role in designing business architectures were among the many reasons data storage professionals who participated in our eleventh annual Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Salary Survey gave for loving their work.

Our 2013 Salary Survey shows that storage pros are be-ing challenged to work with IT teams and technologies beyond storage as new technologies blur traditional IT boundaries. But difficulty explaining technology choices to management and endless to-do lists with limited re-sources ranked high on the list of reasons some storage pros may be hunting for new jobs next year.

The average annual salary for the 171 respondents was $98,028, a 4.1% increase over the prior year, although re-spondents last year saw a bigger bump (5.3%) versus 2011.

Fifty-five percent plan to leverage their careers in stor-age and work in another IT area, while 45% plan to con-tinue working in storage-related roles.

By Ellen O’Brien

SALARy SURVEy

salaries for storage pros Continue to ClimbThe heavy workloads remain, but the pay is a little better and the benefits are a plus. Our eleventh annual storage Salary Survey paints a pretty favorable picture.

10 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

SALARy SURVEy

Year over YearAverage salaries in the IT services

sector dropped to $94,950 from

$112,697 in 2012.

q

HigHs and lowsStorage pros in the Midwest averaged $10,000 below the overall respondent average, but were expecting bonuses of $9,000 in 2013.

q

Talking poinTs“Doubled our

storage capacity and updated all virtual infrastructures to

accommodate additional

virtualization demand.”

pacific Region takes top honorsstorage pros in the Pacific region had the highest average salary at $121,400, beating new englanders’ average salary of $112,529. The southwest was third at $101,063. The mid-at-lantic region, which topped our regional rankings last year at $112,939, dropped this year to fourth with an average salary of $100,972. respondents from Canada managed to better their average by $10,000 vs. 2012, but their average storage salary of $89,929 ranked be-hind almost all the U.s. regions in this year’s survey.

For 2014, those surveyed anticipate another 4% increase. salary respondents represented 13 verticals; the utilities industry topped the charts with an average salary of $109,286, fol-lowed by the financial services sector at $107,510.

aveRage 2013 salaRy By Region

$121,400 Pacific

$89,929 Canada

$101,063 southwest

$112,529 new england

$100,972 mid-atlantic

$95,330 southeast

$93,250 mountain

$88,156 midwest

$91,107 northwest

11 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

Year over YearHigh school graduates

averaged nearly 30% higher salaries in this year’s survey

than in 2012.

q

HigHs and lowsNearly 70% of those surveyed said they

believe storage-related certifications helped their career.

q

Talking poinTsOne respondent’s

dream job: “Room for growth, an honest and

practical budget, salary commensurate

with talent—and a good challenge.”

time on front lines, certifications boost salariesIf you’re a relative newbie and planning a career in storage, there’s reason to be optimistic: our 2013 survey showed salaries going up steadily for respondents with more than a de-cade’s worth of experience, rising to an average of $107,322 for IT pros with more than 20 years on the job. some managed to better that number, of course, depending on their title and level of education.

all college graduates, regardless of how many years they worked specifically on storage, earned an average of $100,772, while advanced degree holders earned an average $106,662. but our data revealed that time spent in storage-specific jobs helped to influence larger salaries. The highest average salary between the two groups (college and graduate de-grees)—$133,656—went to college graduates with more than 10 years of hands-on storage experience.

The value of certifications in the IT industry is often debated, but this year our survey showed average salaries increasing from $94,754 for those without any certifications to $121,750 for those holding four certifications. after that, the figure dropped to $115,084 for those storage pros with five or more certifications, giving weight to conventional wisdom that says certifications can help you land a job and get raises, but not indefinitely.

aveRage 2013 salaRy in Relation to yeaRs in it

SALARy SURVEy

one year to five years

six years to 10 years

11 years to 15 years

16 years to 20 years

more than 20 years

$79,400 $73,429$88,251 $95,211

$107,322

12 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

Year over YearIn 2012, 17%

reported storage budgets made up more than 20% of the total IT budget. This year,

10% said so.

q

HigHs and lowsSixty-nine percent of the 2013 Salary

Survey respondents said their chief

responsibility was oversight of a data

center.

q

Talking poinTs“Our storage group is

too small (two people), so this means I need to wear many hats—technician, architect, project manager—but

I’m not viewed or paid as an architect in my organization.”

Big revenues may not mean big salariesHow seriously does your company take storage? some respondents told us they were in-volved in key business decisions, while others felt sidelined and only called into action for user emergencies. more than half of our respondents, 56%, work at companies with dedi-cated storage teams; with one exception (in the $101 million to $500 million range) compa-nies were more likely to have dedicated storage teams as their revenues grew.

For example, 69% of respondents whose employers recorded revenues greater than $5 bil-lion work on dedicated storage teams compared to 41% of respondents on dedicated stor-age teams at companies with revenues in the $51 million to $100 million range.

While working at a larger company has its benefits, our survey found that it doesn’t always mean a larger paycheck. Companies with revenues between $5.1 billion and $10 billion pay the highest average storage salaries ($121,422), but storage pros at companies with reve-nues lower than $50 million recorded an average salary of $89,626—beating out their peers working at companies in the next two highest revenue categories.

aveRage 2013 salaRy as it Relates to company Revenue

SALARy SURVEy

Less than $50 million$51 million to $100 million

$101 million to $500 million$501 million to $1 billion

$1.1 billion to $5 billion$5.1 billion to $10 billion

more than $10 billion

$89,626$87,659

$84,714$105,857

$101,772$121,422

$109,053

#1 #2

13 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

Year over YearIn the last year, 26%

of those surveyed saw storage grow

11% to 20%.

q

HigHs and lowsThe highest salary

average in any category ($145,429) was for storage pros

whose budgets exceeded $10

million.

q

Talking poinTs“We moved from

a scheduled asynchronous

replication solution to a real-time

semi-synchronous solution, all on a $0 budget.”

Big budget managers earn big bucks, toomany storage pros this year reported ambitious projects, and while a small percentage of respondents stated budget woes as a reason for working in maintenance mode, many more reported major undertakings. some even shared their pain: “Total loss of a backup device that needed to be rebuilt from a replicated source.”

no matter the scope of their projects or size of their budgets, 95% of this year’s respondents have something in common: their data grew in 2013. However, as terabytes multiplied, salaries didn’t always keep pace. Those managing more than 500 Tb had the highest aver-age salary at $114,035. but those managing less than 1 Tb had average annual salaries of $89,333, which was more than their counterparts at shops with between 10 Tb and 99 Tb (where the average salary was $85,955).

When salary was measured against the number of people managed, paychecks grew in relation to staff size—at least to a point. once salaries reached $127,556 for data stor-age professionals managing between 21 and 50 people, it tapered off to $98,500 for those managing teams larger than 50 people. before that point, it seems storage pros willing to manage teams do reap the benefits. managers overseeing small teams, between one and five people, earned an average of $94,617; salaries climbed steadily to $95,300 for groups between six and 10, and again to $111,450 for teams with 11 to 20 members.

aveRage 2013 salaRy By BuDget manageD

SALARy SURVEy

noneLess than $500,000

$500,000 to $1 million$1.1 million to $5 million

$5.1 million to $10 millionmore than $10 million

$84,766$86,370

$102,146$113,500

$123,750$145,429

#1 #2

14 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

#1 #2

Year over YearThis year, only 6%

of those surveyed saw their overall benefits

package improve compared to 12%

last year.

q

HigHs and lowsTwo percent of

respondents say flex time isn’t available, and 8% say working

at home isn’t an option.

q

Talking poinTsDream job?

“Excellent benefits, including retirement

contributions, plus flexible work

hours.”

high marks for health, vacation benefitsbenefits, including flexible work hours and work-at-home options, always rank as crucial job satisfaction factors. nearly 70% of respondents saw no major changes to their benefits packages, while 23% saw them reduced this year. overall satisfaction with benefits was high again this year, although there were pockets of discontent. When it came to health benefits, 31% rated their plans as “acceptable” and 62% viewed their benefits as “excellent,” “very good” or “good.” slightly more than 6% rated their health packages as “Poor.”

storage managers are known for putting in long hours, and salaried positions typically don’t accrue overtime pay. Fourteen percent of respondents reported receiving company stock as part of their overall compensation. but without huge salary bumps or extensive stock op-tions, storage pros place a lot of value on the ability to take requested vacation days or time for personal commitments. many respondents cited flexibility as a reason they like their current jobs. vacation benefits were viewed very favorably with an impressive 84% of those surveyed rating them as “excellent,” “very good” or “good.”

When it came to rating flex time and working at home, the results were less sunny but still favorable. approximately 76% say their flex time options range from “excellent” to “very good” to “good,” but 12% consider them “Poor.”

SALARy SURVEy

27% excellent

27% very good

2% not offered

22% good

10% acceptable

12% Poor

Rating the Quality of company Benefits: flex time

15 sTorage n november 2013

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an adult Conversation about software-defined

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storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

dream job?

qBase salary of at least $100,000

qAt least three weeks

of vacation

qShort commute

(less than 15 minutes)

qWork-from- home option

qGood benefits plan

qThe opportunity

to learn the latest technologies

what i love/hate about my jobeach year we ask storage pros what they like best and least about their current jobs to get a better understanding of their day-to-day workload. below is a sampling of this year’s comments.

SALARy SURVEy

bragging rightsw Flexible work schedulew I get to work with lots of groups

within ITw I like the team spirit—and the

benefitsw We are very busy and constantly

adding new technologyw The ability to choose the technology

that I deem bestw ability to do the job without being

watched overw responsibility across different

service lines (storage, backup and recovery)

w People I work withw great home-to-work commute

w stable

complaints departmentt managing user needs and expectationst Decision makers don’t understand the

technologyt Increased expectations with no

increase in salaryt Little room for advancementt no work-from-home options and poor

retirement benefitst start and end timet salary needs to be $10K to $15K moret There is no budget for training on new

software that I am expected to manage and support

t IT group drastically reduced. We are being penny-wise and pound foolish

t Little influence in high-level decisions. Having to deal with unnecessary consequences caused by the bad decisions

ellen o’BRien is an executive editor in TechTarget’s storage media group.

16 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

DISASTER RECOVERy PLANNING

By George Crump

being able to recover from a disaster is consistently a top priority for IT managers. They’re constantly looking for ways to protect more applications, and to do it more economically and with less downtime. But even with sustained investment, there’s still an alarming lack of con-fidence in how well these processes will perform when a real disaster event occurs.

One of the most ambitious projects an IT department will ever embark on is the creation of a disaster recovery (DR) plan. But IT professionals need to understand that creating the plan is only the first step in the process. No matter how carefully crafted it is, a DR plan has no value if it doesn’t work when needed or if only a subset of the protected data can be recovered and recreated. It’s im-portant to understand that in addition to developing an adequate DR plan, a strictly adhered to change control process must be implemented so that changes in the en-vironment can be reflected in the plan. Yet the reality of

make sure your disaster reCovery plan will work Effective disaster recovery has always been tough, but now it’s even harder with ever-changing virtual environments. DR monitoring tools can help ensure that your DR plan will work.

17 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

DISASTER RECOVERy PLANNING

the modern data center is that change typically happens too fast for a change control process to keep up with it. Even if change control is adhered to most of the time, one small misstep or slip up can result in recovery failure.

tHe Proof iS in tHe teStingDisaster recovery plan testing is critical to identifying changes in the environment so that the plan can be up-dated or modified to include any new situations and to

accommodate any altered conditions. Despite the impor-tance of DR plan testing, full-scale tests can only be done periodically because they’re time consuming and often expensive to conduct. In reality, partial testing is more likely with a quarterly frequency at best; many businesses only do a full-scale test once a year.

Many businesses also have the added burden of mul-tiple disaster recovery locations typically driven by legal or compliance regulations that often require geographic

four disaster recovery monitoring must-haves1. environment awareness. Disaster recovery (Dr) monitoring tools must go beyond application awareness and

understand the environment so that changes to the application’s specific environment are detected and reported.

2. Hardware and software independence. Dr monitoring tools should work across a variety of applications and storage hardware to analyze for inconsistencies.

3. monitoring only. Dr monitoring tools don’t have to actually move data—there are numerous hardware and software vendor products that do that. Dr monitors should therefore complement those solutions, not compete with them.

4. work from a knowledgebase. Dr monitoring tools shouldn’t depend on collecting information from devices for their information. They should develop their own list of best practices that’s used to check for Dr gaps.

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whereby the DR infrastructure falls out of synch with the production environment. This is such a common prob-lem that industry analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group states that six out of 10 recovery operations fail due to configuration drift.

The configuration changes will typically be discovered during the next DR test and can be corrected then. But if a disaster occurs before the next scheduled test, data loss is likely to occur, as well as a failure to return the appli-cation to proper operation. In other words, every time a configuration change is made to an application, a DR test should be planned to make sure all the changes have been mapped into the DR process. In the real world, however, most IT budgets can’t support the expense of such fre-quent DR tests, and the IT staff is stretched far too thin to execute tests so frequently.

The issue of configuration drift is even more common in today’s highly virtualized data center. Thanks to ab-straction at the host, network and storage levels, change is very easy to implement and can easily go unnoticed.

Storage SyStemS track tHemSelveSStorage vendors may include configuration change track-ing with the monitoring software they sell alongside their hardware. But it’s too myopic, and typically only reports on their specific hardware, not the mixed environments common in enterprises. So they’ll likely fail to detect changes that could jeopardize an effective recovery.

distances between source and recovery sites. That means each DR data center should conduct its own standalone DR test, and can potentially make the gaps between vari-ous DR sites and the primary site even greater.

The problem is that in between DR tests, many config-uration changes take place in a typical data center, often happening very rapidly. As a result, IT planners are look-ing for ways to monitor and validate their disaster readi-ness in between full-scale tests. DR monitoring tools are able to audit processes such as clustering and replication to ensure these systems capture all the data they need and store the redundant data copies correctly.

configuration drift iS tHe root of tHe ProblemWhen a disaster recovery process like replication is first implemented, it’s installed into a known, static applica-tion state. The volumes have all been created and config-ured, and they can be easily identified by the replication application so that it can protect them. But as the appli-cation evolves, new volumes may be added so that more host servers can be supported. Or perhaps a volume gets moved to a different storage system so that performance can be improved, such as moving log files to an all-flash array. These additions or changes are often not reported to the IT personnel in charge of the disaster recovery pro-cess and, consequently, are left out of the protection pro-cess. This is a condition referred to as configuration drift,

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DISASTER RECOVERy PLANNING

conceal this from a manual check.In addition to confirming that the right data is rep-

licated to the remote location, DR monitoring tools can validate the equipment configurations at those lo-cations to ensure they’re compatible with the applica-tion they may have to support. DR monitoring tools can also detect how far out of sync the disaster recovery site is, measuring how well the recovery site duplicates the primary site’s data. Thresholds can be set by the IT team that would trigger an indication, for example, if the secondary site’s data copy is older than the primary site data. In such a case, IT would be notified of the problem.

knowledge iS PowerThe key to DR monitoring tools is their built-in knowl-edgebase. Instead of scanning hardware and hoping they provide accurate error detection, these applications are based on their own proprietary databases of best prac-tices and configurations. The tools use their database of information to verify various configurations for storage, networking and WAN segments. The capabilities of these knowledgebases are expanding to the point that part of their trouble-ticketing capability now includes the ability to provide root cause analysis. In other words, these prod-ucts can not only alert IT staff of a potential problem, they can provide specific advice as to how to best remedy the situation.

dr monitoring aPPS can cut teSting timeDR monitoring tools such as Continuity Software’s Re-coverGuard 4.0 and Symantec’s CommandCentral Di-saster Recovery Advisor can help close the gaps between configuration drift and DR readiness. These tools are software applications that conduct daily scans of the pro-duction environment to look for coverage gaps and other areas of potential exposure. The key is that they’re proac-tive watchdogs of the DR monitoring process, which is far more effective than quarterly or annual DR checks of a change management plan.

These tools can monitor DR at the application level and understand when new volumes have been added to that application or when an application has had data moved to another volume. When the monitoring app de-tects one of these situations, it can alert storage adminis-trators via an email or even by opening a trouble ticket in their help desk software.

The tools have recently added support for virtual infrastructures as well. As noted earlier, the virtual layer makes it more difficult to recognize errant configurations because the abstraction hides the physical hardware from them. It also makes changes to the environment—like the addition of new servers—harder to detect. In other words, there’s no physical server being installed that a DR manager might notice. For example, many databases have a requirement to separate data files from log files on different disk volumes; a virtualized environment may

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DISASTER RECOVERy PLANNING

It’s important to ensure that the DR monitoring app you’re considering supports the crucial components in your environment. This means choices may be more lim-ited when upgrading to future hardware platforms since you’ll want the DR monitoring software to provide equal support. Finally, if your organization likes emerging tech-nology and wants to be on the cutting edge, then a knowl-edgebase-driven DR monitoring tool may not be the right fit as it’s unlikely the tool will support new products until they have an established customer base that justifies in-clusion into the knowledgebase.

bottom line on dr inSPection toolSDR planning is never a one-time event; it’s a constant process that has to keep up with evolving service-level agreements and changes in the environment. Given the realities of a rapidly changing data center, it’s almost im-possible for change control processes to keep up, and it’s equally difficult to conduct DR tests with enough fre-quency to be meaningful. As a result, most companies, especially large enterprises, should consider disaster re-covery monitoring tools that allow for the near-real-time analysis of the DR setup and processes. This includes the primary data center SAN and its reciprocal data center that will be counted on in the case of a disaster. n

geoRge cRump is president of Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm focused on storage and virtualization.

Companies like Continuity are leveraging their knowl-edgebase expertise to expand beyond DR monitoring into full SAN management. Where most products in the past have focused on performance diagnostics, Continuity fo-cuses on risk detection. This step into the SAN is also very complementary to DR monitoring; after all, if the SAN itself is misconfigured it will likely impact the disas-ter recovery plan downstream.

One of the downsides to a knowledgebase-driven product is that it has to support the specific applications, environments and physical hardware in the environment.

get more dr testing infocHeck out searchDisasterrecovery.com for comprehensive information on developing and testing disaster recovery plans. and be sure to download these articles:

●● guidelines for Dr testing today

●● Tips on implementing a disaster recovery plan

●● a guide to Dr and contingency planning.

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STORAGE fOR BIG DATA

By Eric Slack

storage for big data analytiCsThere are two basic types of big data analytics— synchronous and asynch— but both have big storage appetites and specialized needs.

tHe term big data analytics has crept into the IT vernacu-lar to represent our fixation on what might be called the “big data assumption”—the belief that the answers to all our questions are buried in piles of data. Somehow, if we can compare and cross-reference enough data points, we’ll gain insights that will help us beat the competition, catch all the crooks and save the world from the brink of disaster.

The problem is that all this analysis requires lots of data, and therein lies the challenge for IT: How do you capture, store, access and analyze enough data to garner those insights and justify the resources that have been committed to the task?

Big data analytics applications typically use informa-tion such as Web traffic, financial transactions and sensor data, instead of traditional forms of content. The value of the data is tied to comparing, associating or referencing it with other data sets. Analysis of big data usually deals

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STORAGE fOR BIG DATA

with a very large quantity of small data objects with a low tolerance for storage latency.

There are two primary use cases for big data analytics, and they’re distinguished by the way data is processed:

synchronously, in real-time or near real-time; or asynchronously, where data is captured first, recorded and then analyzed after the fact using a batch process.

SyncHronouS analyticSOne of the earliest examples of near real-time big data an-alytics is how supermarkets calculate your buying behav-ior and use it to print coupons with your register receipt. In reality, the buying behavior calculation was prob-ably done ahead of time and just referenced when you checked out, but the concept is the same. Other examples include the constant profiling social media sites perform using your preferences and online activity, which is then sold to advertisers to create the pop-up experience you get from these same sites.

In retailing, some large stores are starting to use facial recognition software to identify shoppers in the parking lot so their buying profiles can be accessed to generate promotional materials that are emailed or texted to them as they walk around the store. In real-time use cases like these, speed is a critical factor, so the big data storage in-frastructure must be designed to minimize latency.

Storage for SyncHronouS analyticSReal-time analytics applications are typically run on data-bases like NoSQL, which are massively scalable and can be supported with commodity hardware. Hadoop, on the other hand, is better suited for batch processing, the kind of work supporting asynchronous big data analytics. Since storage is a common source of latency, solid-state storage devices are popular options for real-time analytics.

Flash storage can be implemented in several ways: as a tier on a traditional disk array, as a network-attached storage (NAS) system or in the application server itself. This server-side flash implementation has gained popular-ity because it provides the lowest latency (storage is clos-est to the CPU) and offers a way to get started with only a few hundred gigabytes of capacity. SAS/SATA solid-state drives (SSDs) are an option, but PCI Express (PCIe) card-based solid-state is becoming the standard for perfor-mance applications like real-time analytics because that implementation offers the lowest latency.

Currently, a number of companies offer PCIe flash

in real-time use cases, speed is a critical factor, so the big data storage infrastructure mustbe designed to minimize latency.

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STORAGE fOR BIG DATA

Systems, Pure Storage, Tegile, Whiptail (to be acquired by Cisco Systems) and Violin Memory.

aSyncHronouS big data analyticSBig data analytics that involve asynchronous processing follows a capture-store-analyze workflow where data is recorded (by sensors, Web servers, point-of-sale termi-nals, mobile devices and so on) and then sent to a stor-age system before it’s subjected to analysis. Since these types of analytics are done using a traditional relational database management system (RDBMS), the data must be converted or transformed into a structure the RDBMS can use, such as rows and columns, and must be consis-tent with other data sets being analyzed.

This process is called extract, transform, load or ETL. It pulls (extracts) data from the source systems, normal-izes (transforms) the data sets and then sends the data to a warehouse (load) for storage until it’s analyzed. In tradi-tional database environments this ETL step was straight-forward because the analytics were fairly well-known financial reports, sales and marketing, enterprise re-source planning and so on. But with big data, ETL can become a complex process in which the transformation step is different for every data source and every data source itself is different.

When the analytics are run, data is pulled from the warehouse and fed into the RDBMS with the results used to generate reports or to support other business

storage, including Fusion-io, LSI, Micron Technology, SanDisk, sTec (now part of HGST, a division of Western Digital), Violin Memory and Virident (to be acquired by Western Digital). All the major server and storage ven-dors offer PCIe solutions as well, many through OEM agreements with these solid-state companies.

Although PCIe cards are now available with as much as 10 TB of flash capacity, a shared storage pool may still be needed. One solution is to use a technology like Viri-dent’s FlashMAX Connect software, which can pool flash capacity across PCIe cards and even among servers via In-finiBand. This can be very useful for extending the avail-able flash capacity, especially in servers with limited PCIe slot availability or to support VMware’s vSphere Stor-age vMotion. By pooling flash on multiple servers, these solutions can also provide failover and high-availability capabilities.

Another option is an all-flash array connected via In-finiBand, Fibre Channel or even PCIe. Capacities for these systems range from fewer than 10 TB to more than 100 TB for those with scalable, modular architectures. These high-end solutions offer performance up to 1 mil-lion IOPS and nominal latencies as low as a few hundred microseconds. Most of the major storage players have something in the all-flash category but, with the excep-tion of IBM’s Texas Memory acquisition, smaller compa-nies have more products to offer and longer track records. Those companies include Kaminario, Nimbus Data

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STORAGE fOR BIG DATA

of nodes, each with storage capacity and compute power, typically designed to process that data. Other nodes coordinate these processing jobs and manage the distributed storage pool, generally using the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), although other storage systems can work with Hadoop clusters as well.

But Hadoop, specifically HDFS, requires three copies of data be created to support the high-availability

intelligence applications. In keeping with the big data as-sumption, the raw data set is typically kept, as well as the transformed data, since it may need to be re-transformed for a future job.

Storage for aSyncHronouS big data analySiSThe storage challenges for asynchronous big data use cases concern capacity, scalability, predictable performance (at scale) and especially the cost to provide these capabilities. While data warehousing can generate very large data sets, the latency of tape-based storage may just be too great. In addition, traditional “scale-up” disk storage architectures aren’t usually cost-effective at these capacity points.

Scale-out storage. A scale-out storage architecture using modules or nodes that are clustered to act as a single storage pool, usually with a file-system interface, can provide an appealing solution for big data analytics. Some examples include Dell EqualLogic, EMC Isilon, Exablox (also object-based), Gridstore, HP StoreAll (formerly Ibrix) and IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS). Since each node contains processing power and disk storage, they can actually scale performance along with capacity.

Hadoop is also being used as a storage framework, enabling companies to construct their own highly scalable storage systems using low-cost hardware and providing maximum flexibility. Hadoop runs on a cluster

why hadoop mattersHadooP iS uSed extensively in big data applica-tions where its flexibility supports the dynamic nature of the extract, transform, load (eTL) cy-cle in a big data environment. Hadoop’s distrib-uted architecture, which puts the processing engine close to the storage, is well suited for batch processing jobs like eTL where the out-put goes directly to storage. Hadoop’s mapre-duce function allows a large ingest job to be broken into smaller pieces and sent to multiple nodes (map) and then combined (reduce) into the final dataset that is loaded into the data warehouse.

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STORAGE fOR BIG DATA

Some object storage systems, like Cleversafe’s, are even compatible with Hadoop. In those implementations, the Hadoop software components would run on the CPU in the object storage nodes and the object storage system would replace HDFS in the storage cluster.

bottom line for big data StorageBig data analytics may seem to be an IT “wonder drug” that more and more companies believe will bring them success. But as is often the case with new treatments, there’s usually a side effect—in this case, it’s the reality of current storage technology. Traditional storage systems can fall short for both real-time big data applications that need very low latency and data mining applications that can amass huge data warehouses. To keep the big data analytics beast fed, storage systems must be fast, scalable and cost-effective.

Flash storage solutions, implemented at the server level and with all-flash arrays, offer some interesting alternatives for high-performance, low-latency storage, from a few terabytes to a hundred terabytes or more in ca-pacity. Object-based, scale-out architectures with erasure coding can provide scalable storage systems that eschew traditional RAID and replication methods to achieve new levels of efficiency and lower per-gigabyte costs. n

eRic slack is an analyst at Storage Switzerland, an IT analyst firm focused on storage and virtualization.

environments it was designed for. That’s fine for data sets in the terabyte range, but when capacity is in the petabytes, HDFS can make storage very expensive. Even scale-out storage systems can suffer from the same issues, as many use RAID to provide data protection at the volume level and replication at the system level. Object-based storage technologies can provide a solution for larger environments that may run into this data redundancy problem.

object storage. Object-based storage architectures can greatly enhance the benefits of scale-out storage by replacing the hierarchical storage architecture that many use with flexible data objects and a simple index. This enables almost unlimited scaling and further improves performance. Object storage systems that include erasure coding don’t need to use RAID or replication for data protection, resulting in dramatic increases in storage efficiency.

Rather than creating two or three additional copies (200% to 300% capacity overhead), plus the overhead of the RAID scheme in use, object storage systems with era-sure coding can achieve even greater levels of data protec-tion with just 50% or 60% overhead. In big data storage environments, the cost savings in storage alone can be enormous. There are many object storage systems on the market, including Caringo, DataDirect Networks Web Object Scaler, NetApp StorageGRID, Quantum Lattus, and the open source OpenStack Swift and Ceph.

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THe ability to reduce both Capex and Opex, and the potential to deliver greater mobility and agility, has kept server vir-tualization atop IT priority lists: cited by 26% to 33% of respondents, ESG re-

search has ranked server virtualization first on those lists for three of the past four years. The challenge for many organizations, however, has been implementing virtual-ization with mission-critical, tier-one workloads. IT orga-nizations are concerned that the aggregation of multiple, dissimilar workloads—often called the “I/O blender ef-fect”—will create unpredictable, and therefore unreliable, application performance. And while cost reduction has risen in importance, reducing costs seldom outweighs the need for keeping tier-one production applications at peak performance.

The benefits of server virtualization initially come from reducing equipment and energy costs by consoli-dating multiple application servers as virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server. But to gain higher-level operational benefits, such as the ability to move workloads for load balancing, high availability and maxi-mum resource utilization, networked storage is a require-ment. For example, if you can move a VM from Server A to Server B non-disruptively, you can do maintenance on Server A and still retain data access and production up-time. Virtualization can make an organization more ag-ile and able to respond quickly to both opportunities and threats, but only if networked storage is in play.

There has been increased interest in using network-attached storage (NAS) to support virtualized environ-ments because it can be much easier to manage than SAN

HOT SPOTS  |  TERRI mcCLURE

microsoft’s smb 3.0 for virtualizationWith SMB 3.0 included in Windows Server 2012, using Windows file sharing for virtual environments is much faster, safer and easier.

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storage. At their core, VMs are files—so they can be man-aged more easily with a file-based protocol, without the multiple layers of management that block storage needs. A file system exported to a VM travels with that VM among physical servers, maintaining its relationships, and capacity can be added on-the-fly without downtime. It’s simple and fast. In contrast, SAN storage requires man-aging host bus adapters, LUNs and World Wide Names; carving out and assigning LUNs to each VM; establishing and managing switch ports and zones; configuring multi-pathing; cross-mounting LUNs to enable mobility … you get the picture. It’s a complex, error-prone and time-con-suming process, as well as a more expensive one. It’s no wonder IT organizations are looking for an alternative.

wHat iS Smb?Server Message Block (SMB) is a network file-sharing protocol that allows applications and end users to access files or resources from a remote file server. Microsoft ini-tially introduced SMB as a follow-on to the Common In-ternet File System (CIFS) with Windows Server 2008 and Vista. The latest version, SMB 3.0, is included with the Windows Server 2012 operating system and works with Windows 8 clients.

SMB 3.0 delivers significant improvements in per-formance, reliability and security. In particular, when combined with Windows Storage Spaces (a feature of Windows Server 2012 that virtualizes commodity disk

into a high-performance, high-availability storage solu-tion), SMB 3.0 can be used with cheap direct-attached storage (DAS), JBOD or RBOD to create a cost-effective alternative to purpose-built NAS appliances (and SAN arrays). As a result, IT organizations can gain enterprise-class features and simpler storage management without having to buy an expensive SAN. In addition, SMB 3.0 now supports applications such as Exchange and SQL Server that were formerly only supported with block storage.

enterPriSe-claSS featureSIt’s worth noting some of the key features of SMB 3.0 and how they deliver better availability, resiliency and perfor-mance. All features are simple to manage and need no ad-ditional software or administrative expertise.

●● Smb transparent failover. Enables clients to continue working despite a failure in an SMB file server cluster node. Information is preserved on the server side, with automatic client reconnection to the same shares and files on the surviving cluster nodes. Failover is trans-parent to the application.

●● Smb Scale out. Using Cluster Shared Volumes v2, SMB Scale Out enables an SMB share to be presented by all nodes in a cluster in an active-active configuration in a single namespace. Access to files is automatically and

HOT SPOTS  |  TERRI mcCLURE

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storage can now be leveraged for SMB file shares.

●● Smb directory leasing. Improves application response times in branch offices by limiting the number of ac-cesses required between server and client. The direc-tory structure is cached on the client, and clients are notified when directory information on the server changes to maintain cache coherency.

So, what does this mean in general for the IT indus-try? With SMB 3.0, IT organizations can use file stor-age for mission-critical, virtualized applications and get enterprise-class availability, performance and resiliency. If this simple, cost-effective solution provides a viable option to expensive and hard-to-manage SANs, the po-tential for marketplace disruption is real. While EMC and NetApp partially support SMB 3.0, it will take some time for most of the NAS community to fully support the complete feature set. This leaves a great opportunity for emerging storage vendors to increase market share, par-ticularly if they’re certified by Microsoft.

tHe big queStion: wHat will cuStomerS tHink?While this potential market disruption is intriguing, time and customer reactions will tell the tale. The stuff works—ESG Lab has completed performance testing and cost analyses that confirm Microsoft’s claims. But

transparently load balanced across all available cluster nodes. No additional set up or management is required.

●● Smb multichannel. Allows servers to use multiple net-work connections simultaneously to increase both per-formance and availability. Data is transmitted across multiple network connections on high-speed network adapters or across multiple network adapters to aggre-gate performance.

●● Smb direct. Enables the use of network adapters with Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA), which con-sumes fewer CPU cycles and lowers latency while in-creasing performance. Applications can access SMB storage shares at DAS-like speeds.

●● Smb encryption. Allows an administrator to encrypt data with a simple checkbox. SMB Encryption keys are derived from the existing session key, so no keys or cer-tificates are transmitted over the network. No client-side activity is required, and the encryption method is designed to take advantage of built-in acceleration in Core i5 and Core i7 processors.

●● volume Shadow copy Service for Smb Shares. Allows application-consistent snapshots of data volumes for backup and recovery. The same familiar interface that was previously available only for use with local block

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performance, and fear of aggregating workloads has kept many from virtualizing tier-one applications. Prior to Windows Server 2012, the primary option was an ex-pensive, complex SAN infrastructure or NAS (albeit with some challenges when it comes to clustering and failover), or inexpensive storage with no features that limited the server virtualization benefits organizations could realize because of lags in storage functionality. Now, Microsoft is offering a way to get enterprise-class features on low-cost, easy-to-manage file storage. Win-dows Server 2012 with SMB 3.0 might just disrupt the status quo of the storage market—and with native tiering and write-back caching in R2, the enterprise feature list expands. All that means storage pros should stay tuned, as things are getting interesting. n

teRRi mccluRe is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass.

Microsoft faces a few challenges. SMB 3.0 must be en-abled on both the server and client side, but it currently supports only Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. Most organizations refresh Windows Servers according to a standard three-year lifecycle, and since the OS includes a slew of other benefits (such as improvements to Hyper-V), the upgrade is appealing. But it’s common for organi-zations to have significant lag time before refreshing the client-side operating system, and since Windows 8 offers a substantial change in the user experience, they may be reluctant.

In addition, Microsoft has no reputation in the enter-prise storage arena. This isn’t insurmountable, but could contribute to a delay in implementation. Enterprise stor-age administrators are generally not inclined to risk the crown jewels on something new, especially if the vendor has no storage chops.

Businesses have little tolerance for slow application

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how storage will stack upIn the near future, storage won’t be a passive player as it integrates more closely with applications and workloads.

READ/wRITE  |  mIkE mATCHETT

In a PreviouS column, Arun Taneja wrote that the concept of LUNs is dead or at least dying as the pri-mary way storage will be managed in the future. This has become evident with the emergence and increased adoption of products offering advanced

virtual machine (VM)-centric storage. Shifting the focus from LUNs to VMs changes the storage game for VM ad-ministrators who can continue to work with constructs they understand directly, storage folks who have to ele-vate their service offerings, and even those pesky end us-ers who might benefit from increased performance and availability (and hopefully lower costs).

You could view the end of the LUN as a consequence of industry commoditization of low-level array functional-ity as storage vendors compete to offer better, higher-level products; or you might chalk it up to a highly competitive

marketplace where the most efficient and effective IT can help win the day. Either way, we think it’s inevitable that storage solutions will keep evolving up the stack. The big question is what comes next. What are the next valuable levels as one climbs the storage stack? Let’s start with fa-miliar storage types and work up to some possible future storage solutions.

block, file and object StorageI’m going to oversimplify a bit here, but at the foundation we might find our beloved block storage. Block storage is about bit handling—storing and protecting raw data. At scale, responsibility and focus separate often splitting into IT domains or silos. A storage manager takes care of storing and protecting whatever data is put into arbi-trary containers (LUNs), while the storage client is free to

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storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

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manipulate and arrange the data in any way needed. The SAN effectively offers disk virtualization. Performance can be high, but the service is basic and the client needs to deal with many low-level issues. Handoff at the LUN level ensures specific storage is defined and allocated, but there’s little ability for the storage manager to optimize any data-level services for his clients.

File systems add a layer of utility to block storage. In-stead of raw bit storage, the storage service delivers a “virtual” file system to its clients and keeps track of pre-determined metadata about the files put into the system. The storage manager can create, optimize and tune this file service to the client’s benefit while attempting to op-timize underlying infrastructure resources. At the same time, the client enjoys higher-level file services while re-linquishing lower-level control. Fundamentally, a big bur-den has been shifted from “many” clients back to a more efficient central storage service.

File systems are great for applications that don’t have extensive abilities to organize raw disk, but they still pres-ent a mainly human-oriented interface of directory hier-archies, ownerships, permissions and sharing facilities. Object storage is a more natural persistence target for au-tomation and programming with its simplified protocols to read and write arbitrary chunks of data and metadata. Object stores are famous for being able to independently manage their stored objects using metadata with policies, for example, to modify data protection levels as objects

age, ensure geo-location compliance and even delete objects past a retention period.

While most object stores are built internally on file system components, it can be argued that file systems can be built over object storage. However, we still think the evolution of object storage that provides for in-stor-age data management (e.g., automated lifecycle manage-ment) is effectively a step up the storage services stack.

aPPlication conStructSAs I’ve noted, one way up the stack from object storage is to engineer storage solutions for specific application data objects such as a VM or database. To avoid confusion with the well-used term object, I’ll call these things appli-cation “constructs.”

Storage intentionally designed for specific applica-tion constructs can not only be highly functional for cli-ent needs, but internally optimized to offer significant performance and cost/capacity advantages. For example, the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance is “application engi-neered” with the Oracle Database. It can store and unilat-erally apply storage-side processes to database data (e.g., in the Hybrid Columnar Compression format). It also supports a specific protocol that enables the database to directly tune storage-side parameters affecting applica-tion performance.

In Arun’s column, he noted that many VM-centric solutions, such as Tintri, work on VMs as the primary

32 sTorage n november 2013

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look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

READ/wRITE  |  mIkE mATCHETT

access to data or to run things like antivirus scans. If you think about virtual storage arrays that already run storage as a VM, the trend of converging compute and storage seems inevitable.

PleaSe define Software-defined StorageWe have three storage vendor approaches to future infra-structure. The first is converging unified storage. Some vendors may continue to accrete broad functionality onto a large core platform. The second approach is to create application-specific storage, designed and optimized for a specific application. We see many startups with focused visions in this category. And the third is programmable or software-definable storage that can be dynamically shaped as needed. Despite announcements by EMC ViPR and others, this category remains to be proven effective.

Which approach will win out? I think the next-gener-ation storage platform will have a powerful, general-pur-pose, scale-out core with application-specific templates available to dynamically program it to support various application constructs. This platform will have plenty of horsepower for data-centric compute tasks, and may look like a virtualized big data cluster when seen from above.

Inevitably storage will move up the stack and get more intelligent and closer to the applications that use it. n

mike matchett is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group.

construct. Going a bit further out, we might consider At-lantis ILIO as a focused storage service for virtual desktop infrastructure desktops. Actifio could be defined as a stor-age service aimed at managing “copy data” constructs. We might even think of something like Maginatics’ MagFS as delivering “file system” constructs where the primary client is provisioning file systems (“file systems as a ser-vice”), rather than end users accessing files.

In all those cases, the storage solution is application-aware. It has intimate knowledge of the application construct and can provide improved management, perfor-mance and efficiencies over application-blind storage.

wHicH way do we go?Looking farther out, I can see the next evolution where storage doesn’t embed just an application construct, its metadata and static policies, but specific dynamic behav-iors, programs or functions. Think of database-stored pro-cedures or object-oriented programming where methods can be “attached” to individual program objects. Cer-tainly, storage infrastructure is becoming more loaded with compute and memory power these days, and soon there could be abundant storage-side capacity to execute functions embedded in the data. In the future, data at rest might not be so easy to separate from the dynamic appli-cation, and might not actually ever come to rest.

At a larger scale, many vendors have toyed with run-ning VMs in their storage arrays to provide more direct

33 sTorage n november 2013

home

look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

16+43+41++pSNAPSHOT

array freebies are still tools of choicemanaging Storage keeps getting tougher, with virtual server environments to deal with and capacity that continues to grow. but our latest survey shows storage pros still rely mostly on the software that comes with their arrays to manage their systems. only 17% have opted for overarching storage resource management suites, but 38% use apps that address specific needs like provi-sioning. one of the most popular management tools ever—the excel spread-sheet—is still used by 18%. Whatever tool is used, 49% need help managing capacity, followed by performance management (31%) and configuration man-agement (25%). sixteen percent are completely satisfied with their tools, 43% rate them “usually effective” and 41% say they help but a lot of manual work is still needed. nearly half (49%) cite special needs related to virtual server or desktop environments, but only 9% have purchased special apps for that purpose; 12% rely on their hypervisors. The biggest shortcoming of management software is its price (30%); 20% say the apps don’t work with all their hardware and 16% be-lieve implementation is too complicated. —Rich Castagna

what aRe the key capaBilities that you ReQuiRe in youR stoRage management tools?*

16peRcent of

ResponDents have puRchaseD stoRage

management softwaRe anD then neveR useD it

how woulD you Rate the effectiveness of the management tools you’Re using?

41% Helpful,

but we still have many

manual processes

43% Usually

effective enough to meet

our needs

16% Completely

meets our

needs

0 25% 50%

Capacity managementPerformance management

Configuration managementmanaging storage used for virtual servers

operational monitoringsimplify complicated storage environment

ProvisioningCompliance management

* respondents were allowed to select two capabilities

49%

31%

25%

21%

18%

12%

10%

9%

34 sTorage n november 2013

home

look before you leap into Cloud storage

an adult Conversation about software-defined

storage

storage pros reap rewards

reality CheCk: tools to make sure your dr plan will

really work

big storage solutions for big data headaChes

miCrosoft’s smb offers storage

alternative for vms

storage is getting friendlier with apps

what tools do you use to manage your

storage?

TechTarget Storage Media Group

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