Making the move to utility storage: overcoming the crisis of complexity.

The premise sounds great: Enterprise storage so simple that it works just like any other utility. Like flipping a light switch, storage is to be accessed on demand while you only pay for the capacity actually used. But is it really possible?

Increasing pressures to decrease costs and improve efficiency within data centers have meant that IT executives must find alternatives to traditional storage solutions. CIOs are looking for a path forward, but concrete examples of companies making the move to a utility-like environment are difficult to find.

The good news: To gain a competitive advantage, many innovative companies have already implemented successful Utility Storage solutions, realizing tangible benefits from vastly simplified and consolidated storage environments that are highly scalable and easy to manage.

Utility Storage solutions are ideal for storage consolidation, utility computing and performance-intensive application environments. Utility Storage is the storage cornerstone of utility computing, which leverages server and storage virtualization technologies to dramatically improve efficiency and utilization.

The Problem with Traditional Solutions

A crisis of complexity: Not all virtualized environments are created equal. In an effort to utilize information more effectively, organizations are pursing physical and logical storage consolidation. In the process, they often add extra layers of hardware and software to their storage architectures. This add-on functionality is often located on hosts, switches, or separate appliances. Examples include non-array-based volume management, storage resource management, information lifecycle management (ILM) and virtualization software. Other examples include separate storage array architectures for different quality of service solutions, multiple storage arrays within each class of service, and continually sprawling switch fabrics. The result is a seething crisis of complexity.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Underutilization: Compounding this crisis is the problem of underutilization. For example, for any unique data that an organization possesses, the amount of storage capacity that has to be purchased to store, share and protect that data is often much greater than necessary. As a 2003 industry study by Glasshouse Technologies demonstrates, the average utilization rate of storage environments is approximately 25%. Table 1 illustrates the potential effects of this inherent inefficiency.

Unfortunately, the inefficiencies in traditional storage arrays do not stop at resource utilization. They extend to IT operations as well, including storage administration.

Operational Inefficiency

Today, basic tasks associated with storage administration include:

* Preconfiguration of storage array capacity

* Initial storage provisioning that includes multiple steps within the array, in the network and on host servers

* Subsequent volume expansion

* Ongoing storage-related performance management and optimization

* Backup, restore and recovery to and from tape

* Storage capacity planning and monitoring

Most of these tasks can take hours or even days of administrators' time and may require weeks of training to develop the specialized skills required. This restricts the ability of IT to quickly and flexibly address new organizational demands that could create a substantial return on investment.

There Has to Be a Better Way

In effect, organizations choosing traditional storage arrays are purchasing four times as much usable capacity--up to eight times as much raw storage capacity--as is necessary to support the unique data created and written by applications and end users. The inefficiencies seen within many of today's enterprise storage solutions have been mirrored more broadly across the overall IT environment. Examples include the under-utilization and management overhead associated with server resources. Clearly, it's time for a new, simpler way. This is where Utility Storage comes in.

Utility Storage: A New Approach

Utility Storage takes the best of modular storage array design and enables it to scale massively, beyond today's high-end monolithic arrays, without performance degradation or management overhead. It adds "in-system" fine-grain virtualization such as thin provisioning and centralized volume management to eliminate poor resource utilization and operational inefficiencies. Finally, it adds granular instrumentation to provide accurate usage assessment and chargeback. It allows organizations to manage storage without thinking about it; to get as much as they need, only when they need it; and pay only for what they use, when they use it.

Making it Simple: Thinking Thin

Thin provisioning is a key Utility Storage feature that eliminates the inefficiencies producing poor utilization results within traditional storage arrays. Thin provisioning is based on dedicate-on-write technology, as opposed to the traditional dedicate-on-allocation approach. This means that, during the initial provisioning activity, an administrator can allocate as much storage as an application is likely to consume over its lifetime. However, the thin provisioning approach only allocates physical storage capacity to a specific volume as an application actually writes data to it. As the application continues to write data, the system will continue to draw additional storage capacity from the common free space pool to service the volume. This dedicate-on-write approach drives up utilization efficiency to nearly 100% (Figure 1).

Table 2 also demonstrates the greater efficiency of a Utility Storage solution that utilizes thin provisioning techniques. Despite the use of snapshot versus full copy technology and RAID-5 instead of RAID-1, the Utility Storage solution in this example still delivers an equivalent or better Quality of Service (QoS) for all applications.

For the same 1 TB of unique data capacity, the Utility Storage solution requires only 3.75 TB (Table 2) versus 24 TB required with traditional storage arrays (Table 1), an 84% reduction in required storage capacity.

Figure 2 shows how some of today's most common disk arrays compared when their dynamic volume expansion capabilities were evaluated by Gartner Research. According to Gartner, systems that featured thin provisioning capabilities proved to be the most flexible and simplest to administer.

Real World Examples A Simple Solution

The Allant Group illustrates the crisis of complexity and how it can be overcome using Utility Storage. A marketing optimization solution provider with storage growth exceeding 30% per year. Allant was finding it increasingly difficult and time consuming to scale its environment using modular arrays and traditional SAN solutions. Before implementing Utility Storage, growth and interoperability issues were stressing operations by consuming more and more administrative time.

By deploying Utility Storage, Allant dramatically simplified its IT operations. In addition, Utility Storage allowed increased utilization while simplifying administration, enabling Allant's storage administrators to pursue higher-value activities. The results are greater responsiveness and availability for Allant's customers.

"Utility Storage enables us to be more efficient and more responsive at the same time. Our overall storage administration has been reduced by at least 50%. With thin provisioning, we expect to save over 25% in storage acquisition costs over the next three years. Lastly, we have experienced I/O improvements anywhere from 50% to 300%," said Bob Hroma, director of IT, The Allant Group.

Realizing the Benefits

With Utility Storage, each time-consuming, commonly performed storage management activity can either be eliminated or dramatically simplified. The improved operational efficiency that results can reduce storage administration time by 90% or more. Rather than focusing on managing existing infrastructure, administrators can focus on more flexibly supporting new business requirements. IT becomes more responsive to its own customers and can add significant value to the organization.

"Before deploying a Utility Storage solution, my storage administrator spent 70% of his time managing our storage. Now ongoing administration only takes 5% of his time. We initially considered going with a mid-range array from a brand leader, but chose a Utility Storage solution for better scalability, ease-of-use, and speed. With Utility Storage, we saved money immediately," said Ben Mullis, vice president of IT at UniquE Solutions.

With Utility Storage, organizations can obtain better service levels while reducing their Total Cost of Ownership of data. They can gain greater than 50% savings in capital expenditures and 90% savings in people-related operating expenditures as compared with enterprise storage solutions based on traditional storage arrays.

Making the Move

Key analysts agree that next-generation Utility Computing solutions that leverage Utility Storage infrastructures are now becoming a reality.

"Enterprises have long struggled with an inability to fully utilize data, but the next-generation services enabled by Utility Storage provide customers with the means to become service providers unto themselves and fully leverage information as a competitive advantage," maintains Stephanie Balaouras, Senior Analyst of the Yankee Group.

In the UK, global managed services provider SAVVIS Communications has already leveraged Utility Storage technology by integrating networking, hosting, storage and computing into one virtualized platform. Unlike the traditional service provider model (which forces users to pay for excess capacity) the utility provider approach that SAVVIS had taken charges customers only for the resources they use.

And there is more good news. Making the move to a Utility Storage environment can be gradual, and even painless. With a true Utility Storage solution, you can start small and grow over time. One way to making the move is to choose a single project such as disaster recovery. Research the current vendors to find a Utility Storage provider that offers an entry-level solution that integrates seamlessly into your existing SAN. The vendor you choose should not only offer a cost-effective way to meet the current needs of the project, but also the flexibility to scale over time. A true Utility Storage solution allows you to start small--with a single, affordable array--but think big, enabling you to grow over time. This gives you the freedom to gradually move over more and more of your environment as the organization's needs change. However, you should also keep in mind that the true test of any Utility Storage solution is whether it can deliver this flexibility and scalability non-disruptively, so that you can continue to grow without having to sacrifice your ability to respond quickly to new demands.

                             Cumulative TB  Explanation

Unique Data Capacity               1        Original Data
+ One local copy of data           2        A full copy for local
                                              backup, sharing etc.
+ One remote copy of data          3        A full copy for disaster
                                              recovery
+ Utilization rate overhead       12        Assume 25% (written)
                                              utilization in allocated
                                              volumes
+ RAID overhead                   24        Assume RAID 1 for
                                              performance with 100%
                                              overhead
Total Storage Capacity            24        Storage Efficiency Ratio is
                                              24:1

Table 1

                   Physical Drive     Logical-Volume
Not Supported      Concatenation      Concatenation

IBM Enterprise     Sun StorEdge 3000  EMC Symmetrix
Storage Server
                                      HP XP Series
Sun StorEdge 6000
                                      HDS Lightning
                                      HDS Thunder
                                      Sun StorEdge 9900
                                      EMC CLARiiON
                                      Dell/EMC CLARiion

Logical-Volume
Concatenation
Plus Re-stripe           Thin Provisioning

EqualLogic               3PAR InServ
Storage Array            Storage Server
HP EVA                   StorageTek V-
HP MSA 1000              Series
IBM FAStT
Network Appliance
FAS
StorageTek B
Series
StorageTek D
Series
Xiotech Magnitude

Source: Gartner Research (May 2004)

Figure 2

                             Cumulative TB  Explanation

Unique Data Capacity               1        Original Data
+ One local snapshot               1        A high Quality of Service,
                                              copy-on-write snapshot
+ One remote copy of data          2        A full copy for disaster
                                              recovery
+ Utilization rate overhead        2        ~100% utilization rate
                                              automatically
+ RAID overhead                    2.5      Use high Quality of Service
                                              RAID 50 (4+1)
+ Common buffer pool               3.75     50% for additional
                                              application writes/growth
Total Storage Capacity             3.75     Storage Efficiency Ratio is
                                              3.75:1

Table 2

Craig Nunes is senior director of marketing at 3PAR (Fremont, CA)

www.3par.com