The Sources of Storage Infrastructure Value

Storage infrastructure delivers value both as a function of its design or architecture and as a function of device capability and intelligence. Smart architects know that some value is derived from infrastructure design: The more you can truly network storage, the more you can enable other value-producing processes.

For example, creating a back-end network of storage devices sets the stage for capacity utilization efficiency via some sort of hierarchical storage management. Migrating less frequently accessed data to less expensive and less high performance storage repositories can yield considerable business value.

Back-end networking might also enable improved data sharing with less replication, or improved replication for disaster recovery purposes at a lower cost. This assumes of course that the arrays and other devices deployed in the back end are able to comprise a stable and interoperable whole.

The point is that networked storage does not deliver any of these capabilities by itself. It can, given careful attention to details such as manageability, interoperability, and security, provide an enabling infrastructure that other processes require to accomplish the goals that the architect has defined.

In addition to process enablement, the other source of value in storage infrastructure derives from the capabilities of the storage devices themselves . We all are aware that storage components offer various performance capabilities. Some offer additional features that elevate them from the status of dumb peripheral devices to active peers in data handling, control, and management.

Efforts are afoot within the industry today to "add value" to traditional storage peripherals by enhancing their "intelligence." In the case of SAN switches, for example, many vendors have struck up alliances with storage virtualization and storage management software developers to embed their software tools directly on the switch hardware. "Fatter" or more intelligent switches, according to advocates, will deliver advantages over server-based management software or virtualization software appliances such as single point of management, streamlined licensing, and so forth.

Similarly, within the realm of tape and optical peripherals, an industry initiative ^[1] has been launched to add value through the implementation of intelligence "modules" providing enhanced "network awareness" and " self-management " to the devices themselves. Network awareness translates to the capability to sense changes in bandwidth availability and the corresponding automatic adjustment of memory buffers so that tape drives in a library can operate at their rated speeds. Self-management means different things to different vendors in the coalition , but all vendors appear intent upon adding basic error condition sensing and process restart to their platforms, presumably offloading this task from storage managers except in the case of nonrecoverable faults.

In general, these efforts by vendors to enhance their products with new "intelligence" features are driven by several objectives. One is the desire to prolong the utility of tape and optical, technologies that are under substantial (and largely unmerited) pressure from new, inexpensive magnetic disk-based data replication and protection solutions. Another goal is to create product differentiation ”and potentially to lock customers into proprietary product technology ”in an increasingly commoditized market.

The worst-case outcome of some of these efforts is the creation of products (like WAP phones in the portable telephony market) that integrate so many functions that they perform no specific functions particularly well. The enhancements may also lead to the perpetuation of proprietary barriers to interoperability between the products of different vendors.

At best, the enhancements may contribute to the simplification of storage management or, at least, provide additional useful information for storage managers when troubleshooting problems in the infrastructure.

In the final analysis, intelligence is not an intrinsic attribute of contemporary storage products. Human planners must build intelligence into the storage infrastructure through the selection of the best component technologies organized in the most efficient topologies to meet the requirements of applications.

Interestingly, this architectural decision-making process increasingly begins at the level of the disk drive. Arguably the lowest common denominator of storage componentry, and a technology that has undergone substantial commoditization over its nearly 50-year history, the magnetic disk has been thrust into the forefront of storage design decision making by a combination of engineering and economic factors.