A useful discipline every now and then is to sit down and imagine what would happen if your storage budget was cut to zero. I'll allow you to keep your staff and ongoing maintenance costs but you can spend no more money on 'stuff'! The business is going to continue and you need to support business growth.
So what do you do? Where do you start? Doing nothing is not really an option so make a list of the things that you can do.
First thing you need to know is what capacity you've got where. You need to look at what is actually used as opposed to what is allocated. You also need to identify where storage is 'reserved' for projects which never came to fruition.
That array which only ever got partially migrated because it was too hard to finish. Or circumstances changed and the plan changed.
The DR disk for that application which doesn't exist any more.
How many switch ports you've got reserved to support expansion which is never going to happen.
Identifying multiple copies of the same data-set; I've come across places where there have been more than a dozen copies of production databases; full-size copies. There's the production copy, a reporting database copy, a DR copy, a back-up copy, a production support copy and the multitude of development copies. Perhaps it's time to speak to the developers about their requirements; do they really need full-sized copies?
Sure it is easier to take a full-sized copy but you should be data-cleansing your production databases before they go anywhere near development and perhaps as part of the data-cleanse, an extract as opposed to a full-sized copy can be taken.
Look at your RAID levels; are they really appropriate? How easy is it to change them?
And then ask yourself, how long could I really go without spending any money on storage? The answer may surprise you…if it's a matter of weeks, you can pat yourself on your back…it's more than six months, maybe a year; you really ought to consider doing something with nothing.
Even if you only spend a couple of hours on this thought exercise, I promise you it'll be worthwhile.
I think it was Chris Evans a while back that did the graph showing where the capacity goes between RAW and Used. Dave Merrill drew his as stacked cans, but the message was the same. NetApp, and EMC have been talking about storage efficiency as well. Practically all the vendors are; it’s a message that resonates given the economy. That doesn’t mean that all the vendors are in lockstep. Each one has it’s own view of what storage efficiency is and how their specific product features can help.
HDS and “switch it on”. That was a nice gesture to help customers get value from their virtualization.
NetApp and free block level De-dupe to include primary storage, thin provisioning, flexclones, etc. not to mention the virtualization guarantees…
Vmware’s round thing announcement (why did it have to be called VSphere?, seriously looks good though) and their virtualization guarantee as well.
EMC file level de-dupe/compression on Clariion, improved thin provisioning on V-MAX today and the FAST slideware vision materializing at an e-theatre near you soon…
3PAR, Compellent, IBM, hp, all of us.
We’re all working on it. I seriously doubt that any one of us is the “right” answer for “every” customer situation (although I do have a large bias as to who I think provides the best value in most situations of course :-)). I do think that what’s going on in the industry is putting the focus really back on solving the customer’s problems, and that’s a good thing.
John
John, I don’t disagree that the industry vendors are beginning to really focus on efficiency and how to better sweat assets.
I think that customers also have to become more serious about this, the profligacy cannot just be laid at the door of the vendors. We also need to challenge vendors when they come in and make claims; of course NetApp point to their guarantees but they are nicely caveated and are not really great stretches. They are great nudges to point us customers at what we should be doing.
I, also, think that there are some great new technologies which will mean that the next generation of arrays will be a step-change in efficiency and effectiveness.
Dedupe, automated storage tiering, thin-provisioning all bring new tools to the toolbox but we can probably use our current tools better before investing in the new tools.
Users and vendors need stop patting each other on the back and get on making things better!!!
Absolutely,
From the customer perspective consider your situation right now. What tools are at your disposal? How can you effectively use those tools to improve your situation? What is your vendor doing to help? The first step is about leveraging your current investment without spending more.
Once you exhaust that, then you have no choice but to start looking elsewhere.