Chapter 1. Storage in a Wired World

As we race through the digital age, the natural byproduct of our high-speed journey accumulates at increasing rates that we have only begun to imagine. This byproduct, information, comes in all shapes and sizes ”from databases to emails, Web pages to imaging archives. It grows continuously with our push to electronic commerce, 24/7 availability, and our requirement, real or perceived, to record every last transaction in our business exchanges. In our direct interaction with computers over the last 20 years , we witnessed the information explosion as our data storage went from a single floppy disk drive at 1.44 Megabytes (MB) to hard disk drives with capacities at 100 Gigabytes (GB) ”a staggering 70-million fold increase. Applying growth of that magnitude to the business world virtually guarantees chaotic planning and mandates a radical restructuring to deal with an apparently uncontrollable byproduct.

The shift from a seemingly controllable to uncontrollable byproduct occurred as we began to network our computers. In the pre-Internet era, a significant amount of information exchanged in the business environment passed through human gatekeepers. Orders, inventory, customer support, and corporate correspondence, to name a few, typically flowed through an organization only as fast as a person could send or receive it. Today, the human gatekeepers no longer place artificial bottlenecks on the flow of information, and computers within and across organizations now generate communication and data at astronomical rates. Supply-chain management, real-time inventory tracking, automated monitoring systems of all types perpetually send data that must be tracked and ultimately stored.

Coupled with the sheer amount of information they generate, corporations face increasing pressure to accommodate, maintain, and protect it. Whether for customer relationship management software, electronic commerce Web sites, or corporate communications email infrastructure, today's business expectations place the utmost priority on data accessibility anytime , anywhere . Customers, partners , and employees demand that the information required for them to operate be there when they need it. The consequences of unavailable data quickly skyrocket to lost customers, disgruntled partners, and unproductive employees .

Behind the scenes of every corporation's mission-critical information technology (IT) operations, lies the foundation layer of data storage. Typically in the form of large disk subsystems and tape libraries, the media upon which the bits and bytes are stored empower the information flow. Couple this core with an effective software layer, the appropriate network interconnect, and precise administration, and you have the makings of a complete data storage system to drive organizational success.