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Product category: Manufacturing communication infrastructure
News Release from: QLogic | Subject: SANs
Edited by the Manufacturingtalk Editorial Team on 13 January 2006

Never too small for Storage Area
Networking

Information, and therefore storage decisions, are at the heart of every IT infrastructure in every small to medium sized business in the UK today.

Information, and therefore storage decisions, are at the heart of every IT infrastructure in every small to medium sized business in the UK today Companies in this space must start taking a holistic view of data management, argues Bob Aitchison, Senior Regional Manager, EMEA, QLogic Corporation, and that means taking a fresh look at Storage Area Networking

Eight million businesses in the UK today are categorised as small to medium businesses (SMB), according to the analyst house IDC.

These businesses have been defined in many different ways recently with some as businesses with under 100 employees and other definitions of them being between 1-49 employees.

Talk to any number of IT vendors and I am convinced that you will get a host of different answers and definitions.

And this is at the heart of why so many companies in this space will tell you that they are deluged with conflicting information and vendor hype that cutting through the FUD is a never ending challenge.

But there is help at hand.

An alternative - and perhaps more simplistic explanation - is if you think of your business in terms of the number of servers you have.

Data and the way it is stored is after all at the heart of your business.

If that no longer exists then it is arguable you may not have a viable business left.

Some industry analysts, such as the world recognised IDC, have defined the best way of thinking of an SMB as having between four and seven servers.

Is this a profile you recognise as you read this.

If so read on! Business - and therefore data - growth is the most common reason behind the major increases we have seen in recent years in IT spending.

Industry and financial analysts alike often cite the impact of data growth behind the spectacular growth experienced by some storage vendors.

Less than a year or two ago storage networking was viewed almost exclusively as an enterprise level technology solution.

The so-called SAN was seen as expenses, complex and needing a near army of tech specialists just to keep it going.

For the SMB in turn there was a pervading view that their storage requirements were easily being met without recourse to a SAN.

But times are changing and fast and small firms are now facing a range of storage challenges.

Enormous data growth: today the average SMB is managing between 3 to 6 terabytes of data with a compound growth of some 60% to 100% growth according to research on SearchStorage.com.

This is a major headache if you do not have a technology expert employed, especially if you are trying to put in place backup and recovery strategies.

The regulatory environment: no matter what your company does the chances are that you have seen an increase in the regulatory burden in recent years.

No more so than in financial services, healthcare and life sciences.

Laws and new regulations - whether from Europe or from the UK government itself or indeed international regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, all mandate storage controls and records management and retention.

These have an immediate impact on the storage environment, no matter what size your company.

Security, security, security: never forget that when your data is spread out over a host of differing servers, IT administrators then have to implement numerous physical and technical security management procedures.

This is not only time consuming, it is expensive and error-prone.

Cost: as an SMB you will be more than aware that budgets are still small and any solution that could automate and cut operational costs must be considered.

Taken together is it any wonder that there is a move toward adopting SAN based solutions and if the USA is anything to go by the trend that they are seeing there is almost bound to jump the pond in the very near future.

Looking at research conducted by a highly regarded State-side analyst house, The Enterprise Strategy Group, the trend is overwhelming.

Of the 200 companies it researched this year, it found that 35% of SMB' have already installed a networked storage solution, 13% are actively researching now and a further 25% are already considering it.

And the size of the companies interviewed - well over 50% were under 100 employees and 34% sat in the 100 to 499 employee space.

By any definition this is the elusive SMB space.

The research findings from The Enterprise Storage Group point the way.

ESG asked SMB respondents with SANs to identify the objectives their organisations' achieved since implementing a networked storage infrastructure.

Over half of them pointed to the need to improve data availability as well as the urgent need to deliver a centralised backup and recovery solution, 47% stated that they had improved storage utilisation; while 46% claimed they had reduced backup/recovery time.

The data points to two different types of storage networking implementation.

Nearly half of those responding claim they use storage networks for "All applications," while 46% use SANs for specific applications like database/OLTP, e-mail/messaging or business intelligence/data warehousing.

Some small organisations are deploying SANs selectively, while others believe consolidating information on storage networks has universal benefits.

It's safe to say that SMBs looking to implement storage networks in the next few years will have far more choices than their leading edge peers who have already adopted SAN based systems.

There are many new, complex computing and storage technology options to choose from.

To avoid confusion, you'll need to do a lot of preparation.

So where should you start? I believe that small companies must consider all the options, research and stay on the side of caution.

But here are some of the key issues you should consider when implementing a SAN solution.

Do not forget disaster recovery.

Distributed storage makes business continuity and DR planning an operational nightmare, but you do gain some protection because you don't have all your eggs in one basket.

With consolidated storage, losing an entire SAN's worth of data could have devastating consequences.

Smart storage managers will recognise this risk and make sure to scope BC/DR issues in parallel with storage network planning and implementation.

Classify your data.

No one likes doing this, but it delivers real benefits, including improved security and storage flexibility.

At the very least segregate the most business-critical and confidential data as you develop aggregation strategies for distributed storage.

This Tier 1 data set should be targeted at the highest performance, tightest security and most stringent BC/DR policies.

Investigate all storage networking technology options.

Those who actively love storage networking shouldn't rule out any alternatives before fully understanding and evaluating the costs, technology futures and internal fit associated with each choice.

While Fibre Channel is almost the default for enterprise storage networking, smaller organizations may be best served by other systems such as NAS or iSCSI based storage systems.

This decision should be based on business requirements and storage knowledge, not just a personal love of one kind of technology over another.

Think it through.

This may not be an immediate need because most SMBs start with relatively small storage networks.

Nevertheless, it's worth considering how you'll make HBAs, switches and networked devices work together as SANs inevitably scale and require more management.

At the very least, when vendors come by to show off their latest products, ask questions to get a good picture of each product's management capabilities.

Don't forget to consider services.

Even though the storage service provider market has been promising to be the "next big thing" for years, there are viable service choices today for storage capacity, file distribution and backup.

Explore this option with an open mind and a cautious eye.

If you do opt for this alternative, make sure your services partner has a combination of storage skills, a high-availability infrastructure and financial viability.

This is just a brief list, but all too often companies skip them, go into excited ranges over the latest technology and end up dealing with expensive post-implementation horrors for years.

This is truly an instance where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure! Storage networks are no longer just the playground of the digital elite.

While many small organisations have deployed SANs and achieved measurable benefits, many others are just now planning their implementation strategies.

Before jumping into the storage networking pool, I believe every SMB should plan carefully, consider the SAN environment and not just the technology, and contemplate all of the options.

This advice may not sound like much fun, but it sure beats cleaning up a storage networking mess later.

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