Storage Budget Strategies
Develop a better approach to reining in expanding storage needs without draining your coffers.
Talk about fighting a tough battle. As data center managers continue to seek ways to work within increasingly shrinking budgets...
...the data entering their environments continues to expand. Short of closing up shop altogether, there’s no way to stop that data from pouring into the data center, regardless of the storage budget’s size.
“Most data center managers consider storage to be their most critical asset,” says Mike Smith, vice president of product marketing at Solarflare Communications (www.solarflare.com). “In many cases, the business runs on data, so protecting it and making sure users have access to it is almost always a top priority. As a result, data center managers are very conservative with storage relative to other areas of the data center. At the same time, performance and cost effectiveness can provide competitive advantages, so these can’t be ignored.”
Making the most of your storage budget doesn’t necessarily require fancy tricks or creative manipulations of investments or hardware. Instead, experts advise to step back and look at the bigger picture before plowing forward with changes.
Inside Knowledge
The first step to optimizing your storage budget and making smart investments is gathering a better understanding of your specific storage pain points, explains Bradley Brodkin, president of HighVail Systems (www.highvail.com). If you’re looking to buy new equipment, you should have a good idea of what you already have, how new systems compare to your existing equipment, and what might be missing in your current environment. This approach can help you improve your storage efficiency without burdening your budget with unnecessary costs.
“While storage demands are increasing, data center and IT managers shouldn’t just buy new equipment,” Brodkin says. “They must also look outside of the box and consider new and alternative technologies like virtualization, deduplication, and thin provisioning and how they can help them do more with less. Also, by understanding their total cost of ownership—and not simply the [dollars per terabyte]—for storage tiers and analyzing work patterns, they can focus their storage dollars where they make the most sense for the business.”
However, managers should still be cautious when considering the move to a new technology. Kelly Lipp, CTO of STORServer (www.storserver.com), recommends determining your business requirements before looking at any storage technology because it’s easy to become enamored with something new and forget that you’re trying to solve a business problem. Although technology companies introduce new products and change existing products often (and for good reason), it’s not in a data center manager’s best interest to simply follow every trend. Instead, be wary, Lipp says.
Smart Scaling
When existing equipment (or changes to that equipment) won’t suffice for increasing storage demands, managers must determine how best to add to their storage architectures. Scalability remains a big part of storage budgeting, and Brace Rennels, project manager at Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), notes that disk space is cheap and that you should forecast your storage requirements for the next two to three years. A successful forecast depends on your ability to accurately gauge the scalability of your current hardware.
“You must also consider if another disk array can be added to the existing one, if the size of the drives can be updated to a larger capacity, and if there is enough power and/or Ethernet or SCSI connectors available in the rack to expand,” Rennels says. “Part of the capacity planning should include future storage requirements and also determining if the required infrastructure is in place to accommodate that future expansion.”
Extend Your Storage Strategy
Getting a better handle on your storage budget shouldn’t be a one-shot deal, but instead an evolution that rolls with the changes of your storage architecture. Because your storage needs can change throughout the year, it’s wise to track those changes to ensure you are making the right investments that can accommodate increased storage needs when necessary without overshooting your budget. One way to track your storage is through auditing, which can identify opportunities for improvements where needed.
“Data center and IT managers should have data classification initiatives to audit their systems and allow the right placement of data,” says Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “Organizations need to ‘right-size’ their storage environment. Data can be moved to less-expensive SATA or tape storage. . . . Improvements can often be made by knowing what has to be backed up to the most expensive disk files and removing or cleaning up what is currently considered lower-tiered data.”
Finally, don’t disregard perhaps the ultimate budget-saver when it comes to storage: the DELETE key. “The cheapest storage is that which we don’t actually consume,” Lipp says. “If [data] has no value to the organization, get rid of it. Storage bloat is probably the No. 1 problem in data centers today. In many cases, we capitulate to the notion that it is just too expensive to find and remove data that we don’t require. This may be true for those with unlimited budgets, but for the rest of us, it probably isn’t.”
by Christian Perry
Note: to view this article in its original state, go to http://tinyurl.com/29rjgxv
» view all articles
» print friendly version
Talk about fighting a tough battle. As data center managers continue to seek ways to work within increasingly shrinking budgets...
...the data entering their environments continues to expand. Short of closing up shop altogether, there’s no way to stop that data from pouring into the data center, regardless of the storage budget’s size.
“Most data center managers consider storage to be their most critical asset,” says Mike Smith, vice president of product marketing at Solarflare Communications (www.solarflare.com). “In many cases, the business runs on data, so protecting it and making sure users have access to it is almost always a top priority. As a result, data center managers are very conservative with storage relative to other areas of the data center. At the same time, performance and cost effectiveness can provide competitive advantages, so these can’t be ignored.”
Making the most of your storage budget doesn’t necessarily require fancy tricks or creative manipulations of investments or hardware. Instead, experts advise to step back and look at the bigger picture before plowing forward with changes.
Inside Knowledge
The first step to optimizing your storage budget and making smart investments is gathering a better understanding of your specific storage pain points, explains Bradley Brodkin, president of HighVail Systems (www.highvail.com). If you’re looking to buy new equipment, you should have a good idea of what you already have, how new systems compare to your existing equipment, and what might be missing in your current environment. This approach can help you improve your storage efficiency without burdening your budget with unnecessary costs.
“While storage demands are increasing, data center and IT managers shouldn’t just buy new equipment,” Brodkin says. “They must also look outside of the box and consider new and alternative technologies like virtualization, deduplication, and thin provisioning and how they can help them do more with less. Also, by understanding their total cost of ownership—and not simply the [dollars per terabyte]—for storage tiers and analyzing work patterns, they can focus their storage dollars where they make the most sense for the business.”
However, managers should still be cautious when considering the move to a new technology. Kelly Lipp, CTO of STORServer (www.storserver.com), recommends determining your business requirements before looking at any storage technology because it’s easy to become enamored with something new and forget that you’re trying to solve a business problem. Although technology companies introduce new products and change existing products often (and for good reason), it’s not in a data center manager’s best interest to simply follow every trend. Instead, be wary, Lipp says.
Smart Scaling
When existing equipment (or changes to that equipment) won’t suffice for increasing storage demands, managers must determine how best to add to their storage architectures. Scalability remains a big part of storage budgeting, and Brace Rennels, project manager at Double-Take Software (www.doubletake.com), notes that disk space is cheap and that you should forecast your storage requirements for the next two to three years. A successful forecast depends on your ability to accurately gauge the scalability of your current hardware.
“You must also consider if another disk array can be added to the existing one, if the size of the drives can be updated to a larger capacity, and if there is enough power and/or Ethernet or SCSI connectors available in the rack to expand,” Rennels says. “Part of the capacity planning should include future storage requirements and also determining if the required infrastructure is in place to accommodate that future expansion.”
Extend Your Storage Strategy
Getting a better handle on your storage budget shouldn’t be a one-shot deal, but instead an evolution that rolls with the changes of your storage architecture. Because your storage needs can change throughout the year, it’s wise to track those changes to ensure you are making the right investments that can accommodate increased storage needs when necessary without overshooting your budget. One way to track your storage is through auditing, which can identify opportunities for improvements where needed.
“Data center and IT managers should have data classification initiatives to audit their systems and allow the right placement of data,” says Dr. Mickey S. Zandi, managing principal, consulting services, SunGard Availability Services (www.availability.sungard.com). “Organizations need to ‘right-size’ their storage environment. Data can be moved to less-expensive SATA or tape storage. . . . Improvements can often be made by knowing what has to be backed up to the most expensive disk files and removing or cleaning up what is currently considered lower-tiered data.”
Finally, don’t disregard perhaps the ultimate budget-saver when it comes to storage: the DELETE key. “The cheapest storage is that which we don’t actually consume,” Lipp says. “If [data] has no value to the organization, get rid of it. Storage bloat is probably the No. 1 problem in data centers today. In many cases, we capitulate to the notion that it is just too expensive to find and remove data that we don’t require. This may be true for those with unlimited budgets, but for the rest of us, it probably isn’t.”
by Christian Perry
Note: to view this article in its original state, go to http://tinyurl.com/29rjgxv
» view all articles
» print friendly version
