ILM in action

In the new data center Only the beginning The life cycle of data

Chris Smith, senior manager of computer services for semiconductor maker PMC-Sierra, knows he can save money by making storage decisions based on the value and business criticality of the information stored in his data center. Working with business managers to determine importance, he stores the frequently accessed, most crucial data on expensive primary storage while relegating less important, infrequently accessed data to inexpensive secondary and tertiary storage. Like many, he is slowly gaining an understanding of a new form of data management that comes part and parcel with the move to the new data center.

Smith calls this new data management scheme "tiered storage," but it also is known as information life-cycle management (ILM) or data life-cycle management.

Whatever the name, this technique addresses how a company manages data from the point of its creation to its disposal. ILM consists of a number of methodologies, such as problem assessment, socialization - working with business partners to determine data's value - classification and review, says Nancy Marrone-Hurley, senior analyst for the Enterprise Storage Group (ESG).

"ILM is a process that enables you to move data down a path of storage resources, from a high-performance, high-capacity filer [or disk array] to a lower-end disk array, to a tape silo so it's near-line, and then finally to a permanent archival media," Smith says.

At PMC-Sierra, Smith reserves Tier 1 storage for the production data used most frequently. This type of data - information on semiconductor products still in use - accounts for most of the company's storage. Ninety percent of PMC-Sierra's stored data belongs in Tier 1, he says.

In Tier 2, he uses inexpensive Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) drives to store data that isn't as fresh or needed as often. In Tier 3, he uses tape to archive data that is accessed even less frequently.

In the new data center

For ILM to work within the new data center, companies need to consolidate their storage. They can do so by using virtualization or via an integrated core-to-edge director-class switch if they have storage-area networks.

Within the new data center, server capacity and storage resources are virtualized, data moves from one storage resource to the next based on a company's ILM policies, and storage and provisioning tools reallocate storage dynamically. Server and storage become inseparable (note EMC's acquisition of VMware for its server virtualization software, and Veritas' purchase of server automation vendor Jareva and application performance management company Precise Software Solutions). As these technologies take root, the result is far more flexible, efficient and cost-effective storage environments.

Jim Doedtman, technical planning manager for OSF Healthcare, a nonprofit healthcare corporation in Peoria, Ill., recently finished classifying data as part of an ILM program begun last year. Through this process, the firm found it could move about 70% of its transactional data from high-end EMC Symmetrix and Clariion Fibre Channel arrays to EMC's lower-cost Centera arrays. Fixed content data - medical images, patient registration forms, information that never changes - will reside on the Centera storage. "The other 30% is data we are keeping online based on frequency of use and age," Doedtman says.