12.4 Chapter Summary

Perfecting the Storage Engine

• Technology improvements operate in a continuous cycle.

• Strategic and tactical goals can outlast innovation cycles.

• Technology patterns, even not fully defined, assist in the planning and deployment process.

Strategic Objectives

• Create defensive and offensive strategies.

• Investments in storage networking equipment appropriately selected and deployed can serve both objectives.

• Segment strategies with portfolio management.

• The dramatic size and scope of storage requirements mandate an evaluation and prioritization process.

12.2 Tactical Goals

• Adapt to infrastructure fluidity .

• More commoditized products based on server platforms means a greater variety of functionality across the end-to-end storage chain.

• Use distributed resources and intelligence.

• Network flexibility and infrastructure fluidity will push solutions to solve bottlenecks throughout the system.

• With storage as part of the IP landscape, the geographic reach for integration and consolidation will extend globally.

• Continually monitor organization structure and utility.

• The trend towards more automated storage administration will put policy administration in the hands of fewer individuals.

• Feedback processes incorporating storage customers provides one manner to measure effectiveness.

12.3 Storage Advances to Watch

• Tightly coupled interaction between applications and storage requirements (application-specific storage) enhances performance and functionality.

• Growth in data storage and reliability requirements mandate centralized storage automation.

• Manual administration will be augmented with pattern identification, independent decision processes, centralized automation, and new platforms.

• Current and future platforms will emerge based on data-usage patterns.

• The classification of storage as a separate component led to separation from an integrated system.

• Integrating storage networking with other system components will take place through improved communications, abstraction, and added intelligence.

• Ultimately, storage networking will merge back into mainstream computing functions.