Its a well-known fact that data is exploding, and enterprises of all sizes are struggling to manage the data growth and storage requirements. Data volumes are growing exponentially. Each day, companies gather and store more information to meet business and regulatory requirements. It all adds up to exploding data growth thus, persistent storage problems. Historically, smaller and mid-sized organizations have met the data challenge simply by buying additional servers with attached disk storage. Large organizations have deployed storage area networks (SANs), and started to propagate their data centers with monolithic dedicated storage systems. While this stopgap approach solves immediate storage needs, it delays the long term solution. It leaves one with islands of storage, each dedicated to different applications

Virtualize to Succeed
One of the biggest advantages virtualization brings to the table is manageability. Since data is a dynamic entity, storage systems have to match up to the growth. Hence, scalability is one important aspect that is also a challenge area for many storage administrators. For instance, for running the mail server alone many large enterprises face numerous storage issues. So by adopting a combination of virtualization, interconnects and topping it with best of the breed polices will secure a unified storage regime that can cope with the growing storage needs.

Experts say that storage virtualization is the key technology that enables large scale consolidation of heterogeneous storage environments. Scalability to the petabyte range is combined with operational consolidation and depth of storage based services deliverables to a wide range of applications and operational environments. Today, heterogeneous IT environments are a reality, and everybody has to offer a degree of openness in their solution so that a seamless ecosystem can be arrived from plural IT assets. Moreover, enterprise can optimize only if they bridge heterogeneous assets, and get a single unified view of things.

However, the road to virtualization has its share of challenges. Hence, a CIO must put a comprehensive plan of action in place that involves the current storage operating environment and the enterprises state of readiness to adopt new technologies that will take it to the next level of storage management. Moreover, organizations must realize that only a progressive IT policy will make new technologies work, and must be prepared for the enterprise wide impact that such concepts create, and be prepared for the initial technological shock and transition pangsfrom relative chaos to a managed model. But for organizations that are governed by rigid and conventional IT polices, end up paying more by doing things in a traditional way. Experts say that for most businesses, this legacy IT strategy is not only costly, its unsustainable. Clearly, a new approach is needed. In the storage area that new approach is storage virtualization. It allows enterprises to meet the challenge of exponential data growth in a manner that reduces operational costs, improves efficiency, gives an expanded choice of hardware vendors, and extends the life of existing storage assets. Storage virtualization is a practical and effective way to manage the increasing complexity of data and the growing demands for high availability storage. With the right solutions in place, storage virtualization can help you respond to exponential data growth in a manner that cuts operational costs, improves efficiency, and increases returns on your investments.

Informed Approach
Starting the pre-virtualizsation strategy in storage must factor in the likely benefits and goal setting on a practical timeline. CIOs need to convince the stakeholders and the management that virtualization is a technology and not a magic wand. It needs a lot of best practices to succeed. So getting a sense of post deployment benefits will help. But as a bottomline look at vendors who can offer a way out of the heterogeneity mess. So look at vendors who have the ability to provide a true heterogeneous data migration, replication, and management services through a storage-controller based virtualization approach, regardless of the manufacturer of the storage system.

The second important factor that CIOs must look into is provisioning capabilities of the virtualization solution that is to be deployed. Hence, they have to look at real life instances and the vendors ability to address those specific challenges. Look at the kind of provisioning solutions the vendors offer. Provisioning software enables one to allocate virtual disk storage based on anticipated future needs without having to dedicate physical disk storage up front. If the need for additional physical disk arises, one can purchase capacity at a later time. Implementation occurs transparently, without disruption to mission-critical applications. When one consolidates storage into a single virtual pool, deploy thin provisioning with the appropriate software and tier the storage devices, this will secure higher utilization. One can drive utilization rates up to 85%, according to industry analysts. This can be compared to rates as low as 35% in some companies. Other deliverables CIOs must look for in a successful virtualization are aspects like tiered storage, resource management, dynamic provisioning, lower TCO, and simplified management.

Shrikanth G
shrikanthg@cybermedia.co.in