Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
By Rick Cook
Concerned about installing a SAN? You're not alone. A recent survey by Enterprise Management Associates (Boulder, Colo.) showed that most of the companies surveyed had major concerns about deploying a SAN. Nearly 40 percent of those surveyed cited the high cost of implementation as the major concern. Almost as many cited the lack of staff and resources. About 30 percent cited lack of standards and the difficulty of building a business case for a SAN.
Based on their survey results, EMA cited SAN management as the key to success with SANS. "Finding an effective combination of technology and techniques which allow you to design, deploy, and then control an efficient storage environment is absolutely essential," the EMA report said.
While the report noted that vendors of both SAN equipment and general storage management software are beginning to provide the necessary software tools, this is still an area that needs to be carefully considered in implementing a SAN. One approach is to work backwards from the SAN management software. In other words, find SAN management software that meets your needs, and then select a SAN configuration that is effectively supported by that software.
In this context it's worth noting that the respondents to the EMC survey were about evenly divided between companies who were looking to storage management software companies such as Tivoli or Computer Associates for their SAN management software,
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and those who expect to get the management software from the hardware vendors.
Additional resources:
- The executive summary of the EMA SAN survey is available as an Adobe Acrobat Reader file (pdf format) on the company's Web site at: http://www.enterprisemanagement.com/prod-serv/vendor/study/1999/san1esu.html
- See the related Information Week article at: http://www.informationweek.com/bizint/biz781/81bzsto.htm
- For more SAN information, see the "General" section of our Storage Area Networks Editor's Picks page at: http://www.searchstorage.com/searchStorage_Editors_Picks_Page/0,1758,444,00.html
- For more on storage management issues, see our biweekly Storage Management newsletter published every other Tuesday. Back issues of Storage Management tips can be found at: http://www.searchstorage.com/searchStorage_Tips_Category_Page/0,1797,282545,00.html
About the author: Rick Cook has been writing about mass storage since the days when the term meant an 80K floppy disk. The computers he learned on used ferrite cores and magnetic drums. For the last twenty years he has been a freelance writer specializing in storage and other computer issues.
This was first published in September 2000
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