Chapter 3. The Software Spectrum

Across nearly all aspects of enterprise technology, purchasing processes have shifted from hardware-centric decision making to identifying best platforms for software and applications. Servers have essentially become commodity-driven compute engines, amassed in such volume and density that they simply become processing power enclosures. Networking equipment can easily be strung together, but only the effective monitoring and management of that information highway can tap the potential of its capabilities. Similarly with storage ”while having ample space always makes solving storage problems easier, effective use of storage resources requires sophisticated organizational monitoring and management systems.

Chapter 2, "The Storage Architectural Landscape," covered the benefits of networked storage architectures from a hardware perspective and the means to deploy effective infrastructure to accommodate torrents of corporate data. This underlying equipment, however, also must be shaped with effective organizational systems that allow data managers to minimize their ongoing administration of the infrastructure and maximize the utilization and efficiency of the overall system. Storage management software helps IT professionals accomplish this task and is the focus of Chapter 3.

With ongoing administration and operation costs far exceeding acquisition costs for storage infrastructure, IT decision makers must account for this imbalance while charting their storage networking roadmap. Careful examination of storage software components can help identify crucial costs early in the deployment phases, resulting in long- term savings. While the concepts of storage management may seem foreign at first, the underlying mechanisms boil down to simplifying organizational and administrative tasks related to storage. Keep in mind that data storage space is just another corporate asset that requires efficient mechanisms to realize maximum returns. As the overall amount of data storage increases , and the ability to assign dedicated personnel decreases, effective software tools emerge as the only viable means for corporations to gain control of their information assets.

3.1 Framework for Storage Management Software

The end-to-end equation for storage management software involves numerous components , functions, and product categories. This seemingly complex spectrum of terminology and definitions often leads to unnecessary confusion about the role and objectives of storage management software. Business and technical professionals alike will be well served by a breakdown of storage management categories into a coherent framework, as presented in the following sections. By starting with the basic functional needs and translating those into required actions (as assisted by software applications), IT professionals can create effective storage software deployment strategies.

3.1.1 The Need for Storage Management Software

Businesses face an increasing array of challenges to manage storage infrastructures . First, IT professionals must manage a dazzling array of hardware and networking components that provide the underlying platform for storage. The sheer number of devices far outstrips the capacity of a single individual or group to keep track of them. Second, storage professionals must provide capacity and associated services across a variety of applications, from databases, to email, to transaction processing. Again, keeping track of these requirements and the business fluctuations requires some degree of automated assistance. Finally, all of this must take place with 24/7/365 availability and the capability for immediate recovery in the event of any failure.

These business requirements mandate the automation of the storage management process. Using software tools, storage professionals can effectively manage and monitor their infrastructure, provide capacity and services for application requirements, and guarantee uptime through high-availability configurations with built-in disaster recovery mechanisms. These are the core components of storage management software.

3.1.2 User View of Storage Management Software Components

To accomplish their objectives, storage professionals require assistance in three primary areas for effective storage management ”infrastructure management, transaction management, and recovery management ”outlined in Figure 3-1. Infrastructure management provides visibility to the entire architecture and the ability to make adjustments to the underlying platforms. As storage moves from direct-attached to networked models, an administrator's visibility extends far beyond the traditional purview. Software tools for SAN management and storage resource management provide visibility and reach across the entire infrastructure.

Figure 3-1. Core components of storage management.

graphics/03fig01.jpg

Transaction management represents the application focus storage administrators must maintain to effectively serve the organization. Tools for data coordination, such as volume management or NAS file services, help implement storage resources for applications. Once in place, storage policy management helps ensure that resources are appropriately dedicated, monitored , and managed in a dynamic storage environment.

The availability focus comes in the form of disaster recovery management through data protection. Whether through backup applications or sophisticated real-time replication, storage professionals can guarantee uptime through the use of these software applications.

Virtualization touches several aspects of the storage management infrastructure. The core principal of virtualization separates physical and logical storage, allowing for a variety of infrastructure, transaction, and recovery functions. The physical placement of virtualization in Figure 3-2 symbolizes that virtualization in and of itself provides limited functionality. However, that functionality facilitates many higher level processes outlined in the model. These are more specifically detailed in Section 3.8, "Virtualization."