Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Access "Dell VP on virtualization, EMC and support"
This article is part of the Vol. 6 No. 11 January 2008 issue of A report on storage standards: SMI-S, XAM, encryption key management and FAIS
DARREN THOMAS, Dell's VP and general manager, enterprise storage, spoke to us about dealing with the complexities of virtualized storage, the future of Fibre Channel and Gigabit Ethernet, his company's relationship with EMC, and why some users say they're disappointed with Dell's storage product support. (Note: This interview took place before Dell announced its acquisition of EqualLogic.) Q: How do you manage the additional complexity that virtualization brings to the storage environment? Thomas: It's hard. Virtualization just means you can create abstraction layers above the hardware and set divisions not limited by sheet metal. But by creating one big storage pool out of a bunch of different vendor products that all have different capabilities--one can replicate, another can't, one has a limited number of snapshots--being able to keep track of all this convolution is hard. Now you get down to having to manage things by their capabilities. We had the ability to virtualize storage a long, long time ago. We could add and subtract LUNs--something that servers... Access >>>
Access TechTarget
Premium Content for Free.
What's Inside
Features
-
- Ediscovery gets XML lift by Ellen O'Brien
- Snapshot: Some users skeptical about data dedupe
-
Unlimited storage
Clemson University has big plans as it upgrades its data center—and those plans call for lots and lots of storage. Their new IT infrastructure is being built along the lines of the National Science Foundation's Cyberinfrastructure initiative. Clemson expects its new world-class facility to attract a new crop of young faculty who will find the storage, bandwidth and CPU resources needed to support their research efforts.
- Dell VP on virtualization, EMC and support by Rich Friedman
- Vendors set sights on SMBs
-
Video focuses on storage
by Alan Radding
In the not-so-distant past, IT barely noticed conventional video surveillance. But with digital video on the rise in enterprises, storage teams will need to play a key role in accommodating the petabytes of data generated by video surveillance systems.
-
- High-performance systems boost backup
- 8Gb/sec Fibre Channel widens lane for SAN traffic
-
Taming storage virtualization
Where storage virtualization should reside and how it should be applied depends on the size of the storage infrastructure, the type of applications running in it, and the levels of control and visibility required by administrators. We look at the leading storage virtualization products and help you decide which technology may be best for your storage shop.
-
Storage standards: A progress report
by Rick Cook
The Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S), eXtensible Access Method (XAM), encryption key management and the Fabric Application Interface Standard (FAIS) are four standards that could radically change the way you manage storage systems and protect data. We look at the status of each of these standards and where they're headed.
- Log data deluge
- Survey says: Bonuses vary widely
-
Columns
-
Editorial: Welcome to archiving hell
Welcome to archiving hell
-
Hot Spots: New Year's resolution: Get my storage organized
by Bob Laliberte
Storage resource management (SRM) software can be one of the most effective ways to optimize your storage environment. But when it comes to SRM, you'd better look before you leap.
-
Best Practices: Unraveling tape encryption
With the emergence of new generations of tape drives featuring onboard hardware encryption, companies are revisiting their tape security practices in the hope that this new technology will solve security concerns at an affordable price.
-
Storage Bin 2.0: Ringing in a new storage market
by Tony Asaro
The world of storage is complicated and diverse. But sophisticated users, armed with better research and networking tools than ever before, are finding they don't need one-stop shopping for storage technology.
-
Editorial: Welcome to archiving hell
More Premium Content Accessible For Free
How to improve your virtual server storage setups
E-Zine
One of the biggest challenges of building a virtual server infrastructure is fine-tuning the storage that supports the virtual machines. Having ...
Rethinking the way storage architectures are packaged and presented
E-Zine
Cloud storage, virtualization and the growth of unstructured data have contributed to the way storage architectures are built and used. Virtual ...
Archiving stays active with LTFS and the cloud
E-Handbook
While the concept of data archiving has existed for decades, archiving practices that were once considered standard are becoming inadequate. Factors ...