The five pieces of a storage management pie

• Michele Hope
• Published: 05 Nov 2001

The five pieces of a storage management pie
By Michele Hope, Site Editor

Enterprise Storage Group Senior Analyst Steve Duplessie came on SearchStorage to share his company's five-part framework about what storage management really means. Among other things, he said that he believed you must have all five of the following elements for a robust enterprise storage management model:

• Storage resource management
• Virtualization
• Data management
• Storage network management
• Policy engine

Do you know what's involved with each of these components and where your organization's storage management tools and methods fit into this model? If not, you might want to take a few minutes checking the slides associated with this session.

Judging by the good response from our readers, Duplessie hit a nerve with this topic as well. There were a number of questions posed by our audience. He took the time out to answer these in our Storage Management discussion forum. We've provided some highlights from his answers below.

Duplessie --> --> --> .ty1raYZMbRD^1@.ee83ce3/122!viewtype=threadDate&skip=&expand=>told one attendee that you are likely to see SRM tools coming from independent software vendors (ISVs) today, as opposed to hardware vendors, although he did mention that Sun (HighGround) and HP -- "who has something coming" -- were notable exceptions to this rule. "We prefer ISVs," he said, "As they have no ties, but as long as the software supports lots of hardware, and operating systems, (as it is with HighGround), you'll be okay."

Who did he think were the vendors with the best vision and position to such a comprehensive view of storage management in future? It's EMC, according to Duplessie. "EMC really is the king technology-wise right now," he said. "They have the best overall integrated architecture, and their stuff does what we want it to do. Traditionally it hasn't been talked about much, because it has been Symm-centric exclusively. EMC is making noise about really becoming an open systems software company, and so far they are living up to that mantra. Assuming they stay the course, they will be tough to beat. They own the market; they have the technology and tools; and their sales and support abilities are exceptional. We think everyone should be joining their E-Infostructure program (yes, even competitors) and latching on for the ride."

Although Duplessie noted EMC is winning in the race to a comprehensive storage management model, he cautions not to disregard some of the other heavy contenders, including Veritas, BMC and a number of good SRM and backup players. "You can't count out Veritas -- who owns data management and, to a degree, virtualization," he said.

About the author: Michele Hope is the site editor for searchStorage.com She can be reached for comment at mhope@techtarget.com.

Additional resources:

• View Steve's presentation slides. (This link may take some time to load. If you have difficulties, please try this second link to the slides.
• See Storage Management forum posts #122-142 to read more from Steve Duplessie on SRM, virtualization, terabytes per administrator and other good storage management issues.
• See our recent featured topic on Storage Management best practices, including a Webcast from Jon William Toigo, author of the Holy Grail of Data Storage Management.