About This Book

All of the above simply sets the stage for the chapters that follow. The storage technology business provides a backdrop that explains some of the confusion that keeps the emergence of a true storage infrastructure, one defined by common management and automated, policy-driven intelligence, a "holy grail."

In the following pages, you will learn of the technological trends that are forcing storage into networked topologies and the challenges and opportunities that are created by this shift. In particular, you will look at the state of disk-drive technology futures , the inevitable outcome of limits to growth in disk-based storage and the drivers that this provides for a networked storage paradigm.

You will further examine the claims of networked storage advocates and evaluate their applicability in the face of current technology capabilities and limitations. Much of the hyperbole around networked storage is patently false: pure "marketecture" that consumers need to see for what it is in order to avoid ill-advised or ill-fated buying decisions. (Marketecture is the author's coined phrase describing an otherwise valid technological concept or solution that has been placed in the hands of a vendor's marketing department.)

You will focus on practical examples, drawn from the real world, to demonstrate what of the burgeoning network storage technology works, what doesn't, and what's needed. And you will look at the application-storage nexus in detail to describe best practices for developing effective storage strategy. As of this writing, the network storage industry appears to have created confusion in many minds about the proper focus for data storage, its design, and its management. Given the primordial state of current SAN technology, it is obvious that storage management strategies that focus on managing storage device capacity utilization and component operations are inadequate to the task of storage management. The application must drive the management of storage since it provides the metric that is ultimately used to discern how well the storage infrastructure itself is managed.

Finally, you will look at fruitful new areas of storage technology development, emphasizing object-oriented schemes for data classification and lifecycle management as the sine qua non of storage management. Managing data in a networked storage setting is ultimately the only effective way to manage storage itself.

Bottom line: if you are looking for a primer about data storage component and platform technology, the author invites you to consult The Holy Grail of Data Storage Management , which is also available from this publisher. If you understand the components and you are ready to start becoming strategic about storage while solving immediate and evolving problems, those that contribute the lion's share of the cost to your constrained IT budgets , you are in the right place.