As a whole, you need a rule of thumb that allows you to determine how many storage administrators you'll need in a year. But, are you asking the wrong questions? Storage administrators spend their time focused on user requests - not on bytes. Their workload depends not on the number of terabytes they manage, but on the number of applications using this storage. Each application - or user - demands a certain configuration and level of service. LUNs need to be configured and presented, performance needs to be analyzed and systems need to be monitored for faults.
So, what does this have to do with vendor independence? In order to increase the number of users an administrator can support, you must minimize the complexity of their work. Each distinct storage technology and each product is managed and configured in a different manner, us
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ing different tools. Vendors use different terms to describe the same concepts, and each implementation is distinct as well.
It's unrealistic to expect a storage administrator to be proficient with two brands of switches, three different storage arrays and the variety of replication, backup, volume management, operating systems and applications using this infrastructure. In addition, most shops still rely on part-time storage administrators, and vendor independence seems doomed. A single vendor could simplify management and allow fewer storage administrators to meet the requirements of many more applications.
New protocols such as CIM/Bluefin and EMC's WideSky promise to ease the burden of managing heterogeneous environments. Time will tell if the applications utilizing these protocols will enable the same interface to manage an EMC Symmetrix or IBM Shark. More importantly, these applications have to liberate administrators from the complexities of different storage products, creating a truly heterogeneous storage area network (SAN).
Utilizing vendor independence
The increasingly popular notion of organizing storage as an internal utility brings with it a way to balance easy administration with some of the benefits of having multiple vendors. The basic unit of trade for the internal storage utility is the storage offering, which is defined by their technical attributes rather than specifying a certain hardware model. Therefore, vendor independence can be achieved in one of two ways:
A multisource enterprise-class offering might use EMC's Symmetrix, Hitachi Data System's 9900, and IBM's Shark storage arrays, guaranteeing vendors would compete directly and frequently for this business.
The downside of the multisource approach is that advanced storage technology is quite vendor-dependent, making it difficult to find competitive products that have the same feature set, let alone management interface. Storage buyers should strive to look at alternatives, even though they may not immediately appear to be the equivalent. For example, EMC's Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) and Hitachi Data Systems' Extended Remote Copy (XRC) are quite different in implementation, but both replicate data between storage arrays. If similar management software was available for both, perhaps a replication offering could be created to utilize these two different technologies.
The tiered approach puts different vendors' products into different storage offerings. In this model, an enterprise offering might use EMC's Symmetrix solely, while a midrange offering might use HP/Compaq's StorageWorks or IBM's FAStT instead. This allows the specification of advanced features as part of an offering, but doesn't allow a single vendor to control the entire range. The downside is that it might force an improper product decision, for example, refusing to specify Symmetrix at the high-end because Clariion is already used in the middle. This goes against the technophile's love of using the right tool for the job, regardless of political issues.
Even if a single vendor does provide all of the storage equipment in an organization, many of the benefits of vendor independence can still be realized. The key isn't to create a complex storage environment for the sake of independence, but rather to maintain independence from the hardware and software vendors themselves. Each time a distinctly new storage offering is needed for your internal users, invite a number of vendors in for proposals. Assess the products' strong and weak points objectively, and decide if your organization can absorb a different technology. Let the vendors know they're competing, and make a change if needed.
