Seven storage truths

Thanks to virtualization and a host of other technologies, storage has left its silo. Its performance affects the whole computing shebang. Fortunately, new technologies that cross the boundaries of storage, management and compliance are smoothing over performance issues and easing the pain (and expense). But you've got to be in the know to make use of them. Here are seven storage truths that every IT person should understand.

You might be spending too much money on storage and still not getting performance gains. Optimizing storage isn't about buying new stuff, says Mark Diamond, CEO at storage-consulting firm Contoural. It's about determining whether the data you've created is stored in the right place. This discussion goes beyond the basic concept of using inexpensive disk to store data and delves into how the disk is configured, especially when it comes to replication and mirroring.

"We typically see that 60 percent of the data is overprotected and overspent, while 10 percent of the data is underprotected -- and therefore not in compliance with SLAs [service-level agreements]," Diamond says. "Often, we can dramatically change the cost structure of how customers store data and their SLAs, using the same disk but just configuring it differently for each class of data."

Application-centric monitoring tools can help boost SAN performance. Users who get great performance out of their storage-area networks have discovered application-centered monitoring for storage performance.

For instance, the Affinion Group is testing a combination of Onaro's Application Insight and SANscreen Foundation monitoring tool. "We could be alerted in real time of any performance spikes and hopefully be informed of any issues that could cause an outage, before someone calls from the business line," says storage specialist Raul Robledo.

"We wouldn't need to get inquiries or notification from individuals. We would get those right from a product that's monitoring our environment."

A host of other products have entered the category of storage optimization, too.

Green storage technologies can cut energy bills without sacrificing performance. Storage isn't the biggest energy hog in the data center, but new technologies can still help cut back on its power consumption by as much as 20 percent, users say. Even using storage space more efficiently can cut down on wasted capacity, experts say. This means spending less on storage in the long run.

At San Diego Supercomputer Center, Don Thorp, manager of operations, looked to Copan Systems, one of a handful of relatively new, smaller green storage vendors. He reports that storage consumption is down by 10 percent to 20 percent since switching to Copan Systems last July. Many more such vendors are entering the market.

Advanced backup-management tools ease auditing and compliance. Over the last several years, numerous vendors have taken backups from boring to remarkable by rolling out fancy backup-management tools.

Spun off from the broader storage-resource management market, these tools, of course, monitor and report on backups of products from multiple vendors. But they also give IT administrators an at-a-glance picture from a single console, in real time and historically. They can ease the auditing process and help create chargeback programs verify internal service-level agreements for backups.