Storage Virtualization - Week of 06/08/2006 (Analyst Views/Publisher)

Storage Virtualization - Week of 06/08/2006
The amount of data which organizations are now required to save is growing exponentially. According to a recent IDC report, "Enterprises need to store more information, and more types of information, for longer periods of time than ever before. They need to ensure that this information is safely retained in the near term for rapid recovery and over the long term for enhanced corporate governance." Though this need for data has increased recently, fuelled largely by compliance mandates, companies have other reasons for storing more and for longer periods of time. Nowadays there is frequently just more to store; companies introducing RFID into their game plan realize this. In addition, the introduction of advanced data-mining and business intelligence tools are proving to companies that their data is worth holding on to, as it can be leveraged for advanced business decision making. Of course it all comes at a cost, and the cost of holding data is realized in the price of more storage capacity. The fact that storage in general is dropping in price may leave the impression that merely adding more storage is an acceptable policy. However, many are now seeing limitations to this practice.
It seems simple enough on the surface to add capacity in the form of hardware as the needs of the enterprise call for it; but while solving the problem in the short-term this adds challenges in the long run. Storage systems which add capacity in this manner risk running into several issues; at the top of the list is hardware compatibility. When it comes time to add, or replace, storage hardware, the best option may be one that is offered by a vendor other than that which supplied previous hardware; the best option may be incompatible with the network or at least make its inclusion a challenge to the system. Though it is possible, and some enterprises will continue to require, that all storage hardware be from the same vendor, it is difficult for it all to be the same version; by the time more capacity is needed older models may be discontinued. Here again, though to a lesser degree compatibility rears it head. Further, merely adding hardware, compatible or not, as the network grows avoids the reality that in many enterprises it is not the capacity that is an issue, but the management of it. IT departments are seeing a heightened need for an enterprise-wide solution to the challenges of both capacity and its management; one solution gaining serious momentum is storage virtualization. As IDC puts it, "With the growing use of large pools of diverse servers and storage systems within a storage area network (SAN), IT managers are starting to ask for volume virtualization solutions that provide a single set of virtual volumes that extend across multiple storage systems."
Storage virtualization allows for capacity to be drawn from a storage pool on an as-needed basis; capacity is not allotted to a group or process in a static fashion. The storage is managed by an interface tool for which IDC has adopted the term networked controller (NC). Such a system has many benefits; a recent article in Manufacturing Computer Solutions sums several of them up well. "Think of it this way: there are five important cost-reduction and productivity benefits. First, disk utilisation is maximised since all free space remains in the storage pool. Second, applications only occupy space they are really using. Third, critical applications run undisturbed as their capacity requirements climb. Fourth, data protection can be applied as needed, And fifth, IT personnel need no longer spend time responding to disk re-allocation and resizing requests. Remember, time is money." There are other benefits as well. Since storage virtualization allows for great distances between the storage facility and the application or process using it, ranging from another state to another country, it poses benefits for areas which may foresee the need for disaster recovery; version and vendor compatibility are much more easily circumvented in a network with virtual storage; and in such networks nondisruptive migration of data to different storage systems is said to be far less painful. Clearly such benefits are being noticed.
2005 marked the first year, "in which most major storage systems suppliers had one or more network-based volume virtualization solutions in their product portfolio;" the nascence of the technology was reflected in the market's revenue which was just $138.2 million. Though these two points may seem to indicate that the technology has yet to make its mark, the next year is expected to show otherwise. The market revenue in 2005 represents over a 300 percent increase from 2004; and though only eight percent of companies surveyed by IDC were currently deploying storage virtualization solutions, 30 percent of companies with over 1,000 employees plan to begin using these in the next 12 months. In fact, IDC believes that, NCs have the potential to challenge the current storage ecosystem, "Over the next five years, networked controllers and the software that runs on them will emerge as a critical competitive battleground in the storage industry. They will drive changes in storage systems architectures, will spur significant investments in storage software, and have the potential to disrupt the current competitive environment."
As more IT departments look to storage virtualization, suppliers such as IBM and Hitachi who have an existing customer base will be well positioned. More recent entrants into the arena, IDC suggests, will be better off capitalizing on existing interests and selling the general idea of virtual storage than over-emphasizing technological differences between solutions, as, "The scale and scope of storage that most companies plan to 'virtualize' are well within the capabilities of current systems, and starting a 'technological war' will only limit ones' own customer uptake." IDC says further that, "Effective capacity planning, performance management, and root-cause analysis are some of the areas where virtualization can make the management task more difficult for IT administrators using current tools," this will need to be overcome by all players in the market. All involved will also need to deal with the opposition from within IT departments, as adopting a new system may have the old guard up in arms, or as Manufacturing Computer Solutions puts it, "Data centre managers likewise will find it difficult to persuade their organisations to give up traditions in return for flexibility."