Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Storage SAN Upgrades:
SAN Upgrades
SANs keep growing not just in raw storage capacity, but in meeting demand for improved SAN performance with larger switches and enhanced HBAs. Storage resource management and capacity planning both play roles in SAN growth. This Buying Guide outines the criteria involved in upgrading a SAN.
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Capacity planning tools
For any storage organization, the trick is to match new capacity with actual storage needs. Buying excess storage capacity wastes money, while buying too little storage capacity can lead to application performance problems or stalled storage projects. Here's what you need to know to purchase dedicated capacity planning software.
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Enterprise switch upgrades
Switches segregate network traffic, ensuring that data on one network segment is only passed to the segment that leads to an intended destination. This helps to organize the network and reduce unneeded traffic. This Buying Guide will first focus on specific considerations for enterprise-class switches. After that, you'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors.
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Fibre Channel HBAs
In the Fibre Channel (FC) world, a host bus adapter (HBA) provides an interface that interconnects servers, switches and storage devices on the fabric. Today's HBAs support vastly improved intelligence and data handling capabilities, often implementing proprietary techniques to improve data streaming or use alternate channels to maintain optimum data accessibility. This Guide covers the specific considerations for Fibre Channel HBAs. You'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors.
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General SAN upgrade purchase considerations
With SAN upgrades, expanding raw capacity is just the beginning. Growth also means meeting the demand for improved SAN performance with larger switches and enhanced host bus adapters. Superior storage resource management and capacity planning both play an important role in SAN growth, allowing more efficient acquisition and utilization of enterprise storage. This Buying Guide is intended to help clarify the principle considerations involved in any SAN upgrade purchase and offers a set of product specifications that can help readers identify prospective new upgrade products.
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High-end storage arrays
Depending on the disk types and capacities used, high-end arrays may start around 500 disks with 100 TB of capacity, and spiral upwards to 2,400 disk behemouths with over 1,000 TB (1 PB) of space. However, capacity and disk count are not the only characteristics of a high-end array. Large arrays typically support high-end features that enhance usability such as snapshots, replication, tiered storage, and so on. An enterprise can generally meet the challenges posed by large storage systems, but the actual choice of product demands careful consideration. This Buying Guide focuses on specific considerations for high-end disk array systems. You'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors.
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Midrange storage arrays
Smaller organizations typically have lower overall storage requirements and fewer users, so the demand for capacity and performance are not so acute. Instead, the midsized storage enterprise favors attributes like cost and ease. Midrange storage arrays hold a limited number of disk drives and can be far less expensive than large enterprise-class behemoths -- often providing a modular footprint that can scale within the rack as storage needs grow. This Buying Guide focuses on specific considerations for midrange disk array systems. You'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors, including 3PARdata Inc., EqualLogic Inc., Hitachi Data Systems Inc. (HDS) and Sun Microsystems Inc.
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SRM tools-Storage Area Network Upgrades
Ultimately, choosing the right SRM tool can save unneeded storage expenditures and alleviates burdensome management time, but picking the right tool can be problematic. While the number of SRM tools is fairly limited, it's crucial to select a product that interoperates well in your environment, while providing the timely reporting and control features that you are looking for. This Buying Guide segment first focuses on specific considerations for SRM software. Following the considerations, you'll find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors