Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

SNAPSHOT 1

Users get file and block in one unified array

EDITOR’S NOTE / CASTAGNA

The wide, wild world of storage media

BACKUP SUITES

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

STORAGE REVOLUTION / TOIGO

Want to save money on storage? Try data management

STORAGE

NOVEMBER 2014, VOL. 13, NO. 9

SNAPSHOT 2

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

HOT SPOTS / McCLURE

Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

WAN OPTIMIZATION

Accelerate storage pipelines for DR and cloud links

READ-WRITE / MATCHETT

How much does that flash storage really cost?

MANAGING THE INFORMATION THAT DRIVES THE ENTERPRISE

Storage paysThe IT landscape is undergoing big changes,

but storage expertise still commands respect and high salaries.

www.storagedecisions.com

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 3

CHOICE IS GOOD, right? Whether you’re making small decisions like what kind of cereal to buy or bigger ones like who to vote for in the next election, it’s nice to have a variety of options. Usually, the more alternatives you have, the better you feel about making a selection. At the very least, you feel as if you’re exercising your free will.

But having more choices can also mean there’s a greater chance that you’ll end up making the wrong decision. So you can play it safe and limit yourself to a couple of options, or you can gamble a bit by exploring more possi-bilities. It’s kind of like betting on black or red in roulette vs. plunking your chips down on a single number. The former choice is a safe 50-50 proposition, but the latter can pay off big time.

I’ll refrain from some major metaphor mangling by equating a roulette table with storage media choices, but considering the wide—and ever-growing—range of devices on which you can park your company’s data, the business of picking the right media for that data has be-come nothing less than a critical task.

MORE MEDIA CHOICES THAN EVER

Just a few years ago, storage media buyers had only a hand-ful of choices: fast-spinning disks vs. slower, more capa-cious ones, and tape. That might be simplifying it a bit, but the point is that storage purchasers and architects didn’t have a lot to choose from media-wise, so the focus typically shifted to other speed-and-feed specs like throughput. After that, storage administrators got under the hood to do some serious tinkering such as short-stroking scads of disks to satisfy performance-hungry apps.

Today’s storage media landscape has been radically revamped with new technologies and extensions to older techs. These days, few shops will even consider the costly alternative of short-stroking, opting instead to add some high-performance solid-state storage to the mix. But de-ciding on a flash storage pick-me-up has become a pretty complex process in itself, with a dizzying array (pardon the pun) of flash types and implementations to choose from. You’ll have to decide between hybrid and all-flash

EDITOR’S LETTER RICH CASTAGNA

The wide, wild world of storage mediaIf you thought flash would nudge other storage media out, think again; we’re en-tering a new age of media specialization.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 4

arrays, and whether you’ll use flash for caching or per-sistent storage. Even if you decide to take what might seem like a simple approach by plugging the flash directly into a server, you’ll still have to sift through a number of choices: PCIe-based solid-state storage, SAS/SATA form factors or flash that fits into a server’s memory DIMM slots.

OLDER TECHS REVIVED, REVISED AND REPURPOSED

If you’re expecting to get some respite from decision-mak-ing in the hard disk drive (HDD) world, think again. Even being stuck in a rotational speed time warp of 15K rpm since 2000, disk manufacturers have managed to create hard disks with a range of performance characteristics by making better use of a disk’s embedded DRAM or aug-menting it by tossing in a bit of flash for snappier reads.

Interestingly, as they become overshadowed by flash on the performance front, HDDs are becoming more and more specialized as their capacities steadily increase. Western Digital’s HGST division recently released a new drive that combines shingled magnetic recording (SMR) and its HelioSeal technology that replaces the plain-old air in the drive with helium to achieve a mind-boggling 8 TB capacity. HGST has positioned these new HDDs for cold, or archive, storage to make the best use of their spacious-ness and relatively poky performance. The company even went as far as racking a bunch of these drives in a box they call an Active Archive.

Even tape continues its inexorable march toward higher capacities and throughputs and, in doing so, its use cases have veered sharply from backup to archive, big data and

streaming media applications. The LTO consortium of HP, IBM and Quantum recently extended its roadmap that leads from the current LTO-6 spec all the way out to LTO-9 and LTO-10. The group says LTO-9 will have a 25 TB capacity and LTO-10 will trump that with a jaw-drop-ping 48 TB capacity. Data transfer rates will get jacked up significantly too, further enhancing LTO’s place in the archiving ecosphere. With capacities on that scale, maybe LTFS will finally take off and further fuel the revival of tape as a serious storage media alternative.

MEDIA WITH A MEANING

This is all pretty good stuff, even though it makes the once simple process of configuring storage a thornier task with more variables than ever. On the plus side, as storage me-dia get more specialized, there should be less need to force fit kludgey configurations that never quite fill the bill. You can effectively match high-performance apps with equally highly performing storage, less critical apps with hard drives that perform adequately, and apps that can stand a little latency with extreme capacity disks or tape.

On the minus side, besides the additional work you’ll have to do up front, you’re likely to forfeit some deploy-ment flexibility. With media tailored to fill certain roles, repurposing them later might not be possible.

Good or bad, the rapidly expanding world of storage media will make purchasing decisions a little more com-plex, so some pre-purchase preparation is in order. n

RICH CASTAGNA is TechTarget’s VP of Editorial/Storage Media Group.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 5

THE NOISE AROUND data storage these days seems to focus rather myopically on capacity and performance, and maybe in certain cases on value-added features such as inline deduplication and array-to-array replication and mirroring. Despite the just-passed—and in some cases on-going—crunch in corporate IT funding, cost-contain-ment measures such as data management or hardware independence don’t appear to be priorities.

Data management would address storage cost strategi-cally—head on, in fact—by attacking the root cause: using expensive gear to store countless billions of bits that are never accessed. Archive the 40% of data that has become inert, but that you need to save anyway, and you buy back space you already own to store your active data. Clean

house and delete the 30% of data that is, in technical terms, crapollah, and you can defer additional spending on storage by reclaiming that space too.

SMARTER STORAGE PRODUCTS

I was encouraged recently when I saw announcements from storage newcomer DataGravity Inc., which seeks to combine in its “data-aware storage” play a storage container with software intended to facilitate search, governance and protection of data by effectively tracking the history of file activity and providing some pretty good tools for file usage analysis. That sounded pretty neat, though I have yet to test the company’s gear. I hope it isn’t just another data roach motel, where data checks in but can’t check out.

At the same time, I’m keeping my eyes on the latest evo-lution of CommVault’s Simpana software, which delivers a lot of the DataGravity functionality without the hardware kit or rather without a lock-in to any specific hardware platform. That approach kind of bridges the gap between two desirables: data management and hardware indepen-dence. Simpana, as the CommVault evangelists love to tell me, provides a single console for managing data distrib-uted all over: on centralized SANs, edge NAS or even on cobbles of direct-attached VSANs. A nice combo is using Simpana with DataCore Software’s virtualized storage

STORAGE REVOLUTION JON TOIGO

Declare storage hardware independenceIf you want to exercise some cost containment, forget the hardware for a moment and focus on data management.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 6

infrastructure, something I’m trying out right now in my labs. The DataCore contribution is positioned to neutral-ize hardware vendor lock-in, while Simpana adds data management and centralized control—an elegant combo.

Another reason Simpana is on my radar is that its data protection technology supports different hardware stacks without a lot of hassles. Imagine you have a data center environment that features some VMware, a little Micro-soft Hyper-V and maybe other virtualization products, but also a few physical servers that are running their workload hypervisor-free. That kind of mix is increasingly the case in most data centers. A lot of the data protection products for backup, snapshot, mirroring and replication are joined at the hip to one stack but don’t support the others. Will you need multiple data protection products based on the application, hypervisor and hardware you’re using? Sim-pana claims it can unify and centralize data protection measures provided and controlled entirely via its software suite. That sounds like a real benefit I’m looking forward to trying out.

OPEN-E MAY OPEN EYES

Another way to build robust storage infrastructure, but without paying a premium for some stylized three-letter logo on your gear, is to try products from Open-E Inc. Its Open-E DSS V7 software turns a basic “white-box” hard-ware kit into an “enterprise-class” storage rig.

What is enterprise class? For the most part, the term is pure marketecture, but in proper use it refers to a storage platform with, minimally, two-port access to every drive

in the storage array (SAS or Fibre Channel) and perhaps some high-availability or active-active clustering function-ality enabled. Open-E can basically turn a shared JBOD array and a 1U rack server into a fully capable dual-ported Fibre Channel or iSCSI storage array. Plus, the company recently announced support for Syncro RAID controllers

from Avago Technologies (formerly LSI) that enable ar-ray-to-array, active-active clustering with failover for a fraction of the cost of doing it the brand-name way.

From my recent briefing with Open-E, I learned that the latest Linux-based DSS V7 builds on the experience of more than 30,000 installations worldwide. I first tried Open-E when it came in the form of a USB fob that could be placed on any Linux server to convert it into a managed array or NAS. Basically, you chose the flavor of storage you wanted by using one USB key or another.

Today, Open-E installs as a Linux and ZFS-based op-erating and file system. It’s fully compatible with a hy-pervisor or physical technology stack, and can be used to build virtually any kind of storage infrastructure. And, of course, all the hot-button storage controller functions—from thin provisioning, compression and deduplication

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

SOME ALTERNATIVES TO THE BIG BRAND NAMES DO EXIST AND CAN BE LEVERAGED TO PROVIDE GOOD STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 7

to active-active failover with synchronous data replica-tion—are provided in the software. I’m using it to convert some of my single-app servers, decommissioned as part of a virtualization test, into high-performance storage heads.

While I’m not trying to shill for any of the above-men-tioned companies, I thought it was important to note that some alternatives to the big brand names do exist and can be leveraged to provide good storage infrastructure. In my next column, I’ll write about a virtual SAN alterna-tive from StarWind Software Inc. that seems to provide a better storage fit for smaller firms and multi-hypervisor

environments than the expensive VSANs and storage clus-ters from the brand names. Plus, I’m keeping close tabs on Seagate, which has reclaimed the floor space previously parsed out to SNIA and now appears to be ramping up to deliver to market some of its own branded array products rather than just OEMing to brand names. It looks like interesting times are ahead. n

JON WILLIAM TOIGO is a 30-year IT veteran, CEO and managing principal of Toigo Partners International, and chairman of the Data Management Institute.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 8

PAYCHECKS FOR DATA storage professionals are holding steady, according to the results of our twelfth annual Storage magazine Salary Survey, which also revealed that storage pros are spending an increasing amount of time in the application and networking space, taking control of projects that span several IT disciplines.

Our 2014 respondents displayed a combination of apti-tude and attitude—a roll-up-your-sleeves type of technical grit—that keeps them at the center of the action. “At the moment, we are implementing VDI … and are in the middle of scaling to 1,000 users,” explained one partic-ipant. “We are halfway through, and the issues we have encountered have been both fascinating and frustrating.”

More than 23% of those surveyed said the lines dividing IT teams at their companies had “blurred significantly,” and another 22% reported working more closely with other IT teams than they ever have before.

Storage pros who completed our survey expressed a relentless enthusiasm for new technology, and the ability to create real change within their respective verticals. “We get to actually bring in and test out new technology that is promising … and may improve our processes,” said one respondent. Others cited the power of some of the newest technologies, saying it has changed how they do their jobs. “Flash is changing how we work,” wrote another. “If you’re not on the train, then we’re leaving you at the station.”

Storage salaries flat, but still high

Our twelfth annual storage salary survey shows that in a changing IT landscape,

storage expertise is still valued.BY ELLEN O’BRIEN

HOMETOPP YIMGRIMM/THINKSTOCK

SALARY SURVEY

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 9

Base salary, bonuses and expectations

OUR 2014 GROUP reported an average annual salary of $97,788; that’s $240 dollars less than the average salary reported by our 2013 respondents. But this year’s respondents did enjoy a de-cent jump in pay—6.2%—when they compared their 2014 salaries with the year prior.

Viewed regionally, Mid-Atlantic storage professionals reported the highest average annual salary: $116,736. That number put the Mid-Atlantic region back on top, after it fell from first in 2012 to fourth last year.

At a low of $85,375, Canadians trailed their counterparts in all U.S. regions. But respondents from Canada expect the biggest boost in 2015—an 11% salary bump vs. the Mid-Atlantic’s modest 4.3% increase and New England’s 3%.

AVERAGE 2014 SALARY BY REGION

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

BIG PICTURE

Storage pros in the Midwest region predict the largest average annual bonus—a generous $12,775.

q

SPOTLIGHT

Nearly 36% of respon-dents said the location of an employer was the most important factor in choosing a job.

q

FINE LINE

Last year’s top salary winner, the Pacific region, had an average salary approximately $5,000 higher than this year’s Mid-Atlantic winner.

$92,000Southeast

$116,736Mid Atlantic

$113,600New England

$107,004Pacific

$115,500Northwest

$85,375Canada

$102,242Southwest

$88,214Mountain

$91,402Midwest

HAWAII IS INCLUDED IN THE PACIFIC DATA; DATA FOR ALASKA IS INCLUDED WITH THE NORTHWEST

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 10

Capacity surges boost pay

JUST 7% OF our respondents were able to avoid demands for greater storage capacity in the past year. Twenty-seven percent saw their storage capacities grow between 11% and 20%, while one-fifth of respondents experienced more than 40% capacity growth last year.

At the same time that data storage demands intensified for nearly all our survey takers, data storage budgets were cited again and again as chief reasons for dissatisfaction on the job. “[We are] understaffed and there is resistance to increasing budget for disaster recovery,” wrote one respondent. Limited budgets, inflexible budgets and mysterious budgets were all cited as reasons data storage pros were frustrated with their jobs.

In general, as terabytes were added to storage environments, salaries for storage managers grew as well. Storage pros who saw a greater than 50% storage growth last year averaged the highest salaries at $114,741. But there was an upset in the trend; storage pros who experienced between 31% and 40% storage growth saw their salaries dip instead compared to last year.

AVERAGE 2014 SALARY BY STORAGE CAPACITY GROWTH

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

BIG PICTURE

Twenty-five percent of our survey takers manage more than 500 TB of storage.

q

SPOTLIGHT

Nearly 42% said their company’s storage budget was less than $500,000.

q

FINE LINE

Fifteen percent of respondents said they didn’t know how much their company allocates to storage.

$79,971$87,088

$99,574 $100,180$89,567

$109,175$114,741

No increase

1% to 10%

11% to 20%

21% to 30%

31% to 40%

41% to 50%

More than 50%

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 11

$91,358

$88,538

$92,183

$105,500

$110,203

$110,118

$112,622

Less than $50 million

$51 million to $100 million

$101 million to $500 million

$501 million to $1 billion

$1.1 billion to $5 billion

$5.1 billion to 10 billion

More than $10 billion

Company revenue and industry verticals matter

OUR SALARY SURVEY respondents are employed at more than a dozen industry verticals, including financial services, education and healthcare. But it was the wholesale/retail industry that beat out all the others, with those working in storage at those companies topping the charts with an average salary of $128,500.

No matter the vertical, data storage pros interviewing for new jobs might be wise to in-vestigate company revenue. Our survey showed that paychecks tend to swell with corporate revenue—once revenue reaches the pivotal $501 million mark. Before that, company revenue apparently has little impact on salary.

That $501 million mark also served as a turning point when looking at dedicated storage teams. Once that mark was reached, the chances of having a team dedicated to managing the company’s storage grew pretty steadily, peaking at companies with revenue between $5.1 bil-lion and $10 billion, where 76% had dedicated storage teams. For companies of various sizes that hadn’t reached the $501 million mark, approximately 20% had a dedicated storage team.

AVERAGE 2014 SALARY AS IT RELATES TO COMPANY REVENUE

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

BIG PICTURE

Thirty-two percent of respondents said they are part of a dedicated storage team.

q

SPOTLIGHT

More than one-third (39%) said they’re part of a systems group at their companies.

q

FINE LINE

Nineteen percent of sal-ary survey participants reported that their companies increased their use of consultants and/or outsourced per-sonnel last year.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 12

BIG PICTURE

Sixty-one percent said they’ll leverage their time spent managing storage to take their careers in another direction.

q

SPOTLIGHT

Twenty-two percent of our respondents hold a master’s degree or Ph.D.

q

FINE LINE

In for the long haul: 52% have more than 20 years of IT experience on their resumes.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

$55,375

$70,036

$89,557

$99,298

$105,813

One year to five years

Six years to 10 years

11 years to 15 years

16 years to 20 years

More than 20 years

Degrees, pedigrees and personal plans

HOW MUCH DOES college count toward earning? When looking at survey respondents who were dedicated solely to storage for more than a decade, a master’s or a doctorate degree carried the most weight, bringing in an annual salary of $117,796—those who listed “junior college” fared almost as well, with an average salary of $114,667. Those candidates with a decade of ex-perience and no college experience at all averaged the lowest salaries in the group ($79,250).

This year’s survey won’t help settle the long-running debate about whether certifications translate into raises. While the highest salaries were awarded to those with the most certifi-cations (five or more), the rest of the data didn’t show that a professional with three certifi-cations would earn any more than a peer who had none. Still, 34% said they felt certifications had “definitely” helped their career.

AVERAGE 2014 SALARY IN RELATION TO YEARS IN IT

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 13

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

My benefits did not change

My benefits package was reduced

My benefits package was improved

Benefits, perks and privileges

NEARLY 30% OF respondents said their benefits package was reduced last year, while 58% said their offerings remained the same. Thirteen percent said their benefits were beefed up com-pared to last year.

When rating their existing benefits, satisfaction in all areas—health, dental, flex time—was high. When considering health benefits, for example, 74% of respondents rated their benefits as good (28%), very good (23%) or excellent (23%).

When it came to flex time, 31% of respondents rated that benefit as excellent. Working at home was rated less well. Thirteen percent said the perk was not offered by their employer, while another 14% rated this benefit as “poor” at their company.

HAVE YOUR BENEFITS CHANGED SINCE LAST YEAR?

BIG PICTURE

For 89%, stock options weren’t part of their compensation package.

q

SPOTLIGHT

The number of respon-dents whose benefit packages were cut grew approximately 7% vs. 2013.

q

FINE LINE

Job responsibility and career advancement placed ahead of salary as chief factors in job choice.

29% 13%58%

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 14

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

Thumbs up, thumbs down

EACH YEAR, WE ask storage pros to tell us what they like best—and least—about their jobs. Here are the highlights from the class of 2014. WHAT DOES A HIGH-PAID

STORAGE PROFESSIONAL LOOK LIKE?

We compiled data from our twelfth annual Stor-age magazine Salary Survey to get a clear pic-ture of what it would take to be the highest paid storage pro around:

n From the Mid-Atlantic

n Works in wholesale/retail

n Manages 500+ TB

n Manages between 21 and 50 people

n Manages a budget of $5.1 million to $10 million

n Saw 50% storage growth last year

n Holds more than five professional certifications

n Holds a Ph.D.

n Has more than 10 years of dedicated storage experience

n Company revenue exceeds $500 millionELLEN O’BRIEN is the Associate Editorial Director of TechTarget’s Storage Media Group.

BRAGGING RIGHTS

w �Flexible work schedule, great bosses—and great pay

w �Diversity and challenge of learning each day

w ��I can influence direction and strategy

w �Getting to use the latest technologies; direct reports are fantastic

w ���Healthcare needs a jumpstart in IT—fun to see changes happening

COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT

t�The politics and struggles from different management teams inside IT

t�Always in crisis mode: poor vision, no roadmap

t�Lack of career advancement, flat salary

t�Unwillingness to embrace new technology for fear it might break something

t�Budget is not formalized and planning is difficult to do

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 15

D What are the top 3 drivers for your new unified array purchase?

Snapshot 1Users opt for unified arrays to fill diverse needs

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

D What type of data will your new unified array be used for?

* RESPONDENTS COULD MAKE MULTIPLE SELECTIONS

59%

39%

30%

28%

26%

24%

15%

24%

11%

69+22+9+s 69%

9%

22%

D What applications will you deploy on your new unified array?*

Need more capacity

Improve app performance

Support virtual servers better

Replacing old hardware

Adding new storage tier

New storage for new app

For use as a backup target

For branch office

Archive repository

Relatively evenly

split between

file and block

Primarily block

Primarily file

17%

67% Databases

59% Web and app serving

52% Support for virtual servers

50% File data (e.g., user shares)

41% Virtual desktop

28% Apps that stream large files

22% Big data apps

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 16

ENTERPRISE-CLASS BACKUP applications have evolved from backup and restore utilities to comprehensive data man-agement and protection suites. Today, these platforms offer hardware- and software-based snapshot and repli-cation management, virtual server data protection, cloud integration and more.

SNAPSHOT MANAGEMENT

Most of the major backup vendors have started using snapshots as a mechanism to allow fast recovery of file data, and in some cases entire virtual machines (VMs). Although some vendors have offered snapshot integration for many years, snapshot support (especially array-level snapshots) is only now becoming a standard capability for various backup vendors.

Symantec NetBackup, for example, is designed to work with a variety of different hardware- and software-based snapshot methods. Symantec also provides a component called NetBackup Replication Director that maintains control over the snapshot replication process, and allows for individual files to be recovered from a snapshot with-out having to actually mount the snapshot. Snapshots are

The big backup suites

Today’s backup suites offer a lot more than just backup, with snapshot and replication management, virtual server protection,

cloud integration and more. BY BRIEN POSEY

BACKUP SUITES

HOMESLYVERARTS/THINKSTOCK

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 17

treated as a first-class part of the backup process, mean-ing they can be managed directly through NetBackup’s interface.

Like Symantec, Hewlett-Packard (HP) also supports snapshot integration and instant recovery in Data Protec-tor 9. The company has supported array-based snapshot management for quite some time, but its latest snap-shot-related offerings focus on data and applications. The HP 3PAR StoreServ environment allows for instant recovery of file systems, and Oracle, SAP and Microsoft applications.

IBM has introduced a couple of new snapshot-related capabilities. FlashCopy Manager 4.1 supports hard-ware-based snapshots, while FlashCopy Manager creates application backups of servers and storage pools in VM-ware environments thanks to vSphere API integration. As part of Tivoli Storage Manager 7.1, IBM has introduced HTTPS support for NetApp snapshot-assisted progressive incremental backup processing.

EMC has long supported snapshots for block-based EMC storage arrays, but NetWorker 8.2 offers some new functionality. It’s now possible to create file-based snapshots for EMC VNX, EMC Isilon and NetApp. Like Symantec, EMC NetWorker 8.2 can create and manage NAS-based snapshots.

NetWorker also has the ability to utilize native snap-shots previously created by storage administrators. This allows backup administrators to perform a rollover of a native snapshot to a Data Domain system.

CommVault also provides control over hardware-level snapshots. However, the CommVault approach is different

because it is focused on snapshot unification. The latest version of Simpana uses IntelliSnap technology to provide a single management framework for multivendor environ-ments. The software supports a variety of applications, operating systems, hypervisors and storage array vendors.

ENHANCED VIRTUALIZATION SUPPORT

Major enterprise-class backup applications have sup-ported server virtualization on some level for several years. Even so, most of the major backup application ven-dors continue to introduce new virtual machine backup features.

Symantec’s latest enhancement to its existing virtu-alization support now provides unified protection for physical and virtual machines. Symantec NetBackup with V-Ray offers a standardized view of physical and virtual resources. The company claims this makes management easier by eliminating redundant storage pools and simpli-fying deduplication.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

MAJOR ENTERPRISE-CLASS BACKUP APPLICATIONS HAVE SUPPORTED SERVER VIRTUAL-IZATION FOR SEVERAL YEARS, BUT MOST OF THE VENDORS CONTINUE TO INTRODUCE NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE BACKUP FEATURES.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 18

HP takes a similar approach to its virtualization strat-egy. HP Data Protector lets users manage both physical and virtual server backups through the HP Data Protector console.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager 7.1 (VMware Edition) is focused on instant recovery for VMware virtual machines. Users can create copies of VMs for test/dev and also per-form object-level restorations within SQL Server and

Exchange Server. In addition, IBM’s FlashCopy Manager 4.1 provides instant recovery of the Tivoli Storage Man-ager data store and is designed to coexist with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

EMC NetWorker 8.2 offers VMDK-level backup and restoration and VMware Instant Access. However, the most significant change to EMC’s VM backup software is support for Microsoft Hyper-V.

One of CommVault’s most significant new capabilities is the ability to automatically protect VMs by creating a series of discovery rules. CommVault says this ensures newly created VMs will be protected without manually adding them to the backup. CommVault also allows VM owners to perform self-service backup and recovery of VMs through a Web console.

CLOUD SUPPORT

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that most of the big backup vendors have been adding cloud functionality to their products, but the actual features and capabilities being introduced vary from one vendor to the next.

CommVault offers a tool called Virtualize Me that examines the physical server’s hardware configuration and builds a VM that mimics its hardware. Once the VM has been created, an ongoing replication process keeps the standby VM’s contents current. The overall goal is to provide customers with a way to fail over to a secondary site or to a public cloud without having to invest in hard-ware that mirrors the hardware found in the primary data center.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

Vendor nichesHewlett-Packard (HP) Data Protector 9 is a great

example of a product with a niche feature set.

Pretty much every enterprise-grade backup appli-

cation contains a reporting engine, but HP takes

it to the next level by offering real-time analytic

capabilities. The HP Backup Navigator (a compan-

ion product to HP Data Protector) provides rich

analysis of resource consumption with a focus on

optimizing Capex and Opex spending. The soft-

ware allows an administrator to detect and ad-

dress issues before they can become problematic.

CommVault Simpana’s niche strength is its data

lifecycle management capabilities. Simpana can

automatically archive aging backup data. Comm-

Vault also provides rich search, e-discovery and

legal hold capabilities. n

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 19

Symantec has created a centralized management console for NetBackup servers and domains across the enterprise from a single location. The company also introduced seamless support for various cloud storage providers, along with mechanisms for moving data from local to cloud storage.

IBM, on the other hand, added support for vCloud Di-rector as a part of Tivoli Storage Manager 7.1. This allows automated support for vCloud Director to back up virtual applications (vApps).

NetWorker 8.2’s new cloud functionality centers on Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Virtual Machine Manager allows for the creation and management of VMs, as well as private and hybrid clouds. EMC now allows fabric, tenant and cloud administrators to manage the recovery of data within the scope of their own management role.

CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT

As distributed and replicated backup systems have become more common, a pressing need has evolved for centralized control over the backup process. Many of the big name backup vendors have introduced management consoles that are designed to simplify the backup and recovery process. In some cases, these consoles allow for operations to be performed across multiple data centers. In other cases, the consoles allow physical and virtual resources to be managed in a uniform way.

As previously mentioned, Symantec has created a cen-tralized management console for NetBackup. One of the

reasons why Symantec created this console was to enable remote disaster recovery. NetBackup with V-Ray allows data to be protected and recovered anywhere.

HP’s offerings are similar to those of Symantec. The Data Protector console allows for centralized manage-ment of backup and recovery (and replication) operations across a variety of environments. Operations can span physical and virtual environments, sites and data centers.

IBM provides centralized management capabilities through its Tivoli Storage Manager Operations Center. The software simplifies management tasks such as the pro-visioning of new clients in environments that use multiple Tivoli Storage Manager servers.

Like the other vendors that have been discussed, EMC provides centralized management capabilities through its NetWorker Management Console. However, EMC pro-vides some additional capabilities. For example, the Net-Worker 8.2 Management Console provides visualization for VMware vCenter. This should go a long way toward simplifying the protection of VMware environments. In addition, EMC provides mobile support (iOS and An-droid) for EMC Backup and Recovery Manager.

CommVault provides a centralized management con-sole similar in scope to what the other backup vendors offer. As mentioned previously, CommVault provides a Web console that can be used by authorized users as a self-service portal. n

BRIEN POSEY is a Microsoft MVP with two decades of IT experience. Previously, Brien was CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

Snapshot 2

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 20

High-end features and lots of capacity top unified arrays wish lists

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

D Approximately how much installed capacity will you require in your new

unified array?

D Most critical features when selecting a unified array*

Scale performance/capacity separately

File system size

Multipathing

NFS, CIFS (SMB 3.0) support

Number of hosts supported

10 Gig Ethernet support

Clustering support

Fibre Channel (FC)/FCoE support (for FC SANs)

Number of LUNs supported

40%

31%

20%

20%

18%

18%

18%

9%

7%

101 TB to 200 TB

201 TB to 300 TB

301 TB to

500 TB

More than 500 TB

Less than 10 TB

11 TB to 50 TB

51 TB to 100 TB

Anticipated year-over-year capacity growth for new unified arrays: 18%

13+20+13+13+13+11+17+z Average capacity in terabytes of

planned unified array purchase:

243

13%

13%

11%

17%

13%

20%

13%

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

*RESPONDENTS COULD MAKE TWO SELECTIONS

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 21

WAN optimization still key for DR and

cloud accessModern apps, the cloud and massive amounts of data

make WAN optimization more important than ever.BY JACOB GSOEDL

READING AND WRITING data across wide-area networks (WANs) introduces challenges that don’t exist when ac-cessing data between systems in the same data center: limited bandwidth, increased and varying latency that rises proportional with the distance between devices, and lessened network reliability resulting in diminished per-formance and user experience.

BANK BATTLES BANDWIDTH

Eagle Bank, a regional bank in Everett, Mass., was con-fronted with the reality of bandwidth limitations when it decided to move a backup EqualLogic array to a disaster recovery (DR) data center 10 miles from its primary Dell EqualLogic SAN. Testing revealed that replication times would soar to 10 days, far exceeding the bank’s recovery point objective of eight hours.

The obvious remedy would have been to add bandwidth to the bank’s existing WAN circuits, which would have cost an additional $2,500 per month. Instead, the bank’s IT manager looked at ways to mitigate the detrimental effects of wide-area networking and maximize existing bandwidth by adding WAN optimization to the existing

WAN OPTIMIZATION

HOMEPIXSOOZ/THINKSTOCK

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 22

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

networking infrastructure. Eagle Bank ended up deploy-ing Silver Peak WAN optimization controllers (WOC) in both data centers with stunning results: replication times dropped to 5.5 hours and average WAN throughput increased from 10 Mbps to 52 Mbps at a fraction of the cost of getting bigger pipes.

NO LONGER JUST HARDWARE

Since its emergence as a distinct market segment in the late 1990s, WAN optimization has expanded beyond ded-icated WAN optimization controllers into applications and infrastructure components that depend on WAN connectivity. For instance, some backup applications,

The benefits of WAN optimization techniques

OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUE BENEFIT

Protocol-specific optimizations reduce chattiness and optimize

protocol-specific characteristics, such as increasing the TCP window size

Application-specific optimizations through application proxies

Error correction on the receiving end to correct transmission errors,

such as dropped packets

Compression

Source-side deduplication

Caching

Quality of service (QoS) and the ability to prioritize traffic

Traffic shaping to keep traffic within a predefined traffic profile

Rate limiting and bandwidth throttling

WAN path control that enables sending traffic through the best path

Link load balancing

Reduces impact of latency

Reduces impact of latency

Reduces impact of latency

Increases WAN throughput

Increases WAN throughput

Increases WAN throughput

Network optimization

Network optimization

Network optimization

Network optimization

Network optimization

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 23

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

replication products and storage systems now incorpo-rate WAN optimization techniques. While WOCs are still the Swiss Army knives of WAN optimization, supporting the widest range of WAN optimization techniques, WAN optimization in applications and storage systems is more limited to big impact features like compression, dedupli-cation and bandwidth throttling. These implementations are less likely to support protocol optimization, traffic shaping and quality of service (QoS) features that are common in WAN optimization controllers. Finally, some networking vendors are incorporating WAN optimization into their routers, eliminating the need to support yet another device and vendor.

WAN OPTIMIZATION CONTROLLERS

STILL MOST VERSATILE

WOCs are still the most versatile method of adding WAN optimization to a storage infrastructure to improve throughput, reduce the effects of latency and increase net-work reliability. They’re usually deployed symmetrically with a WOC on both ends of the connection; they’re also available as hardware appliances and virtual appliances with virtual machine (VM) images that can be down-loaded and deployed to supported hypervisor hosts.

One of the primary use cases of WOCs is data center-to-data center replication to maximize the use of available bandwidth of circuits between the data centers. Data reduction techniques like compression and deduplica-tion virtually increase the available WAN bandwidth by many multiples, maximizing the return on investment of

expensive WAN circuits. The other relevant use case for WOCs is branch office-to-data center data and application access acceleration. That implementation enables users in satellite offices to access remote data and applications with a user experience similar to accessing them locally. It reduces the need to deploy and support storage systems in smaller branch offices resulting in substantial cost savings. Protocol optimization, traffic shaping, QoS, controlling traffic across multiple networks, caching, deduplication and compression are some of the techniques employed by WOCs to overcome latency and limited bandwidth, and to speed up access to remote data and applications.

The list of vendors offering WOC products has grown since early devices first emerged. Among the leading ven-dors are Riverbed, Cisco, Silver Peak Systems, Citrix and Blue Coat Systems. According to a Gartner report, River-bed leads the WOC market with its SteelHead and Steel-Fusion (formerly Granite) physical and virtual appliances, offering a broad set of capabilities and a large number of application proxies that include MAPI and SQL. Silver

PROTOCOL OPTIMIZATION, TRAFFIC SHAPING, QoS, CONTROLLING TRAFFIC ACROSS MULTIPLE NETWORKS, CACHING, DEDUPE AND COM-PRESSION ARE AMONG THE TECHNIQUES USED BY WOCs.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 24

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

Peak, with its NX physical appliances and VX/VRX virtual appliances, stands out for data center-to-data center data replication use cases, and is used by many corporations to accelerate branch office-to-data center application and data access. Cisco delivers wide-area application services (WAAS) in its Integrated Services Router (ISR) for branch offices and Aggregation Services Router (ASR) for WAN aggregation in centralized data centers.

“We believe that WAN optimization services shouldn’t be a separate product but should be part of edge rout-ers,” said Michael Dickman, Cisco’s director of product management for enterprise WAN. Delivering WAN optimization as part of an edge router is generally more cost-effective than deploying WOCs in addition to routers in branch offices, and it results in simpler and easier to manage networks.

WAN OPTIMIZATION FOR THE CLOUD

The growing adoption of cloud storage and computing ser-vices by enterprises requires WAN optimization products that support data and applications in the cloud. Today, companies leverage the cloud for two primary use cases, with each requiring a slightly different wide-area service acceleration approach:

n Software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS)

n Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

SaaS and PaaS. An increasing number of companies favor

running certain applications in the cloud rather than on the premises. Salesforce.com for customer relationship management, ServiceNow for IT and enterprise service management and Workday for human resources are

prime examples where running these application in the cloud rather than on the premises is often preferred. Ad-ditionally, some of these vendors, namely Salesforce.com and ServiceNow, provide PaaS capabilities that enable customers to develop new applications on their cloud platforms. Protocol optimization of both HTTP and SSL, bandwidth management and WAN path controllers that send traffic through the optimal path are key techniques to speed up access to cloud applications. Since deploying an acceleration appliance at a SaaS vendor may not be an option, cloud application acceleration devices are usually deployed in asymmetric fashion.

IaaS. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and VMware vCloud Air are the leading IaaS offerings, enabling companies to run their infrastructure in the cloud. WAN acceleration to

THE GROWING USE OF CLOUD STORAGE AND COMPUTING REQUIRES WAN OPTIMIZATION PRODUCTS THAT SUPPORT DATA AND APPS IN THE CLOUD.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 25

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

infrastructure in the cloud can be accomplished in a couple of ways. To start with, WOC vendors are offering virtual appliances that run on the cloud infrastructure of IaaS vendors. For instance, the Cisco Cloud Services Router (CSR) supports all major IaaS vendors and is able to extend on-premises ISR and ASR wide-area application services. Similarly, Silver Peak VX software instances can be deployed in AWS to build the Silver Peak Unity intelli-gent WAN fabric, which unifies the enterprise WAN with the Internet and public cloud.

The other way to accelerate access of IaaS environments is via a gateway that’s placed on the customer’s premises. Most of these gateways focus on accessing cloud storage and are offered by both IaaS vendors and third-party ven-dors. For instance, the AWS Storage Gateway connects an on-premises software appliance with cloud-based storage to provide seamless, secure and accelerated integration between an organization’s on-premises IT environment

and AWS’s storage infrastructure. Microsoft StorSimple Hybrid Cloud Storage enables keeping active data on the premises while it deduplicates and compresses data that’s moved into the cloud. Riverbed’s SteelStore (formerly Whitewater) and Nasuni are among the third-party ven-dors offering cloud gateways.

WAN OPTIMIZATION IN STORAGE

AND DATA PROTECTION PRODUCTS

WAN optimization can be found in data replication prod-ucts and replication components of storage systems. Data reduction techniques such as deduplication and compres-sion, as well as bandwidth throttling, are the prevailing techniques used by replication products to maximize available WAN bandwidth and minimize the impact of replication traffic on users and other applications.

EMC RecoverPoint is an example of a replication solution with WAN optimization that enables users to replicate production data from a storage system in one site to a different storage system at another site over IP. Replication features in high-end storage systems like Symmetric Remote Data Facility (SRDF) for EMC VMAX and NetApp’s SnapMirror for asynchronous replication, and NetApp MetroCluster for synchronous replication in-clude WAN optimization features that reduce the impact of limited bandwidth and high latency. EMC Vplex uses a range of network optimization techniques, including advanced caching to minimize the effect of latency, and distributed cache coherence to deliver virtual storage that spans multiple data centers.

More about WAN optimizationn WAN optimization products to

improve your disaster recovery efforts

n Use a WAN optimizer to address VDI

challenges

n Silver Peak WAN optimization boxes

help with replication

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 26

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

Most major data protection products implement WAN optimization techniques to minimize the impact of backup jobs on the network. Source-side deduplication—deduplicating data at the source before it is sent across the network—has become a must-have feature in contempo-rary backup solutions. Data protection products differ in the scope of deduplication; some vendors deduplicate across all data in the repository, while others limit the deduplication scope.

“Our source-side deduplication is per backup job, and a single backup job could include many [virtual machines] VMs,” said Doug Hazelman, vice president of product strategy at Veeam.

WAN OPTIMIZATION CAN OFFER SOLID ROI

Global corporations and an increasingly distributed ap-

plication and data landscape make fast and reliable WAN and Internet connectivity prerequisites for doing business. WAN optimization products that maximize available bandwidth, reduce the impact of latency and increase net-work reliability are becoming enablers. Money saved on bigger network connections, and productivity gains from users enabled to work more efficiently, make the ROI of WAN optimization products relatively straightforward.

The effectiveness of WAN optimization products depends on your application and system landscape, as well as your user distribution and profiles, so evaluation, measurement and planning are instrumental in selecting the right product and deployment model to maximize the benefits of WAN optimization. n

JACOB N. GSOEDL is a freelance writer and corporate VP of IT Business Solutions. He can be reached at jacobslab@live.com.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 27

UNIFIED STORAGE HAS been a data storage industry buzzword for years. When NetApp coined the term years ago, the in-tention was to describe a single approach for storage oper-ation and management, no matter the size of the platform or the protocols required (which at the time were pretty much NFS, CIFS and Fibre Channel). NetApp used the term to contrast its products with EMC’s multiplatform, multi-operating system, multisiloed approach.

Over time, the definition has evolved. Now, unified storage means supporting both file and block data within the same array, eliminating the need to create a separate silo for each one. But with new technologies like object storage and Hadoop steadily making their way into the data center, expect a new definition for unified storage to come into play. We’ll call it unified storage 2.0 for now,

though some vendors have already adopted the term en-terprise data lake. And while that sounds like marketing fluff and vendor posturing, the concept itself is solid and can benefit users in a number of ways.

MARKET CHALLENGES

Managing unstructured data continues to be a challenge for enterprise IT. When Enterprise Strategy Group surveys IT managers about their biggest overall storage challenges, growth and management of unstructured data often comes out at or near the top of the list.

And that challenge isn’t going away. Data growth is ac-celerating, driven by a number of factors, such as:

n Bigger, richer files. Those super-slow motion videos we enjoy during sporting events are shot at 1,000 frames per second with 2 MB frames. That means 2 GB of capacity is required for every second of super-slow motion video cap-tured. And it’s not all about media and entertainment; think about industry-specific use cases that leverage some type of imaging, such as healthcare, insurance, construc-tion, gaming and anyone using video surveillance.

n More data capture devices. More people are generating more data than ever before. The original Samsung Galaxy S smartphone had a 5 megapixel camera, so each image

HOT SPOTS TERRI McCLURE

Unified storage 2.0How unified storage needs to develop to support new apps and new data center environments.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 28

consumed 1.5 MB of space compressed (JPEG) or 15 MB raw. The latest Samsung smartphone takes 16 megapixel images, consuming 4.8 MB compressed/48 MB raw stor-age—a 3x increase in only four years.

n The Internet of Things. We now have to deal with sensor data generated by everything. Farmers are putting health sensors on livestock so they can detect issues early on, get treatment and stop illness from spreading. They’re putting sensors in their fields to understand how much fertilizer or water to use, and where. Everything from your refriger-ator to your thermostat will be generating actionable data in the not too distant future.

These are just a few examples, but you get the point. Data was growing fast before, but it’s growing faster now. But now that we have all that data, what do we do with it?

HERE COMES HADOOP

Analytics have long provided valuable business insight, but it’s been too time consuming and expensive for mass adoption. The process of extracting data, transforming it into something that fits operational needs, loading it into a data mart and conducting analysis can take weeks. Data is growing too fast, the potential insights too valuable and competition too fierce for IT to have multi-week wait times to perform analytics. That’s driving the development of new solutions, such as near real-time analytics based on Hadoop. However, we still have the data problem. How do we get data into these systems in a timely manner?

Traditional analytics data-loading processes don’t just take too long, they create lots of new, redundant and ex-pensive data silos that significantly increase the amount of unstructured data you need to manage.

WHAT ABOUT OBJECT STORAGE?

Object storage operates differently from standard file-sys-tem storage. With a standard storage infrastructure, con-tent is managed through a hierarchical file system using an index table that points to the physical storage location of each file, and tracks only simple metadata. This approach limits the number of files that can be managed in a single directory. And files are accessed via standard access pro-tocols such as NFS and CIFS.

Object storage data is organized into containers of flex-ible sizes (objects). Each object has a unique ID instead of a filename, with metadata that can include detailed attributes. This metadata can be used to set up automatic storage policies such as migrating aging data from high performance to more cost-efficient capacity-based disk or the deletion of data when it expires. Object storage offers a simpler design and greater scalability, easily managing billions of individual objects. The scalability and manage-ability of object stores make them a natural back end for cloud deployments, and indeed much of the early adop-tion of the technology has been by cloud service providers.

The challenge for enterprises is that objects are ad-dressed via proprietary APIs using RESTful interfaces, and each vendor has its own API set. As a result, object storage has been slow to be adopted by enterprise IT

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 29

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

because of the disruption and lock-in created by writing to proprietary APIs. The good news on that front is that there’s some standardization emerging and many vendors are adopting API sets from Amazon or OpenStack Swift.

A number of object storage vendors are beginning to support standards-based interfaces like CIFS and NFS, providing a “best of both worlds” approach that allows IT to scale and manage storage easier but also plug into existing workflows and applications. However, this mul-tiprotocol approach is more like unified storage 1.5 than unified storage 2.0. Getting to 2.0 takes a bit more.

UNIFIED STORAGE 2.0

Object storage is off to a great start, but unified storage 2.0 means sharing not just the storage pool, but the files or objects themselves between applications. How do we get there? It’s all about sharing nicely. We need:

n A shared data store that’s accessible to all your applica-tions. That means instead of creating silos for your new file, mobile, cloud and Hadoop workflows, and copies of data in support of analytics operations or to feed other business processes, you would have just one, single pool of data shareable across everything.

n A shared-access model so that each bit of data would be simultaneously accessible in multiple formats: as a CIFS or NFS file, a RESTful object, a Hadoop object or whatever comes next. This would eliminate the extract, transform and load process and allow for things like data-in-place

analytics and accelerated workflow support between dis-parate applications.

n Access from any device—a tablet, smartphone, laptop, desktop or phablet—to support today’s mobile workforce.

n Some level of quality of service. This would provide some way to securely isolate consolidated workflows in their own zones within the system for safeguarding or perfor-mance. Sharing is good, but limits need to be put in place to ensure organizations don’t hurt important applications if there’s a spike in non-critical application activity.

There are other things that would be required, such as a scale-out architecture that grows with the data; some form of tiering so stale data is moved to slower, less ex-pensive media; high availability so multiple applications don’t go down when a storage component fails; and effi-ciency features such as erasure coding, compression and deduplication.

IT cannot afford to keep throwing hardware at the un-structured data problem. We’re at a breaking point. The first step is rationalization and consolidation. But we can’t consolidate on traditional platforms. We need something that scales and grows, is easy to manage and fully share-able. Only then, once we get our data under management and control, can we truly begin to harness the power of the information we have at hand. n

TERRI McCLURE is a senior storage analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, Milford, Mass.

AT TANEJA GROUP, we’re often told by hybrid and all-flash array vendors that their particular total cost of ownership (TCO) is effectively lower than the other guy’s. We’ve even heard vendors claim that by taking certain particulars into account, the per-gigabyte price of their flash solution is lower than that of spinning disk. Individually, the argu-ments sound compelling; but stack them side by side and you quickly run into apples-and-oranges issues.

Storage has a lot of factors that should be profiled and evaluated such as IOPS, latency, bandwidth, protection, reliability, consistency and so on, and these must match up with client workloads with unique read/write mixes, burstiness, data sizes, metadata overhead and quality of service/service-level agreement requirements. Standard benchmarks may be interesting, but the best way to

evaluate storage is to test it under your particular produc-tion workloads; a sophisticated load gen and modeling tool like that from Load DynamiX can help with that process.

But as analysts, when we try to make industry-level evaluations hoping to compare apples to apples, we run into a host of half-hidden factors we’d like to see made ex-plicitly transparent if not standardized across the industry. Let’s take a closer look.

FLASH IS FASTER

Byte for byte, flash provides better native performance than traditional storage. If extra spinning disks are used currently for short-stroking, then it’s fair to start a flash TCO comparison against that inflated hard disk drive (HDD) Capex. And all the wasted HDD capacity should be discounted in the equation too. Today, flash can obvi-ously improve on the density, footprint, power and other attributes in performance-challenged scenarios.

But the price argument we’re hearing is about ca-pacity—$/GB. Apparently, there aren’t enough perfor-mance-hungry, cost-is-no-object applications out there to keep all the flash vendors occupied. With the cost of flash itself dropping, and the bulk of enterprise data doing just fine being served at traditional storage speeds (for the moment at least), the argument turns to cost/capacity

READ/WRITE MIKE MATCHETT

Figuring out the real price of flashSometimes comparing the costs of flash arrays is an apples-to-oranges affair—it’s interesting, but not very helpful.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 30

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 31

comparisons. Could flash now even start replacing hard drives in more than the performance storage tier?

FLASH COST/CAPACITY FACTORS

When flash vendors compare their wares to each other’s, they often start with flaming about eMLC vs. cMLC vs. any other kind of xLC. If a certain type of flash is more expen-sive, it’s usually because of reliability issues. Violin Mem-ory (and soon Avalanche Technology) builds its own flash components up from chips to ensure top performance and reliability all the way down the stack. However, you’ll find vendors like Pure Storage arguing that their overall design allows for the use of cheaper consumer-grade solid-state drives, leading to a lower effective capacity cost. Be sure to consider the long-term costs: What’s the expected lifetime of the array? Is there an upgrade path? Are there guaran-tees and, if so, for how long and how much?

Next, we’re often presented with some low-level fea-tures relating to capacity optimization. For example, it’s possible to avoid reading and writing certain common I/O patterns like a page full of zeros, by essentially having your storage operating system simply point to a virtual zero page. For any storage system, not actually writing zero pages can save a ton of capacity footprint. And avoiding those zero writes in flash means a longer lifetime for the media.

A NAND-based flash cell can wear out if written to repeatedly. There are many schemes for wear leveling, including moving writes around the available free space and reserving space ahead of time to replace worn out

bits. Obviously, wear leveling effectiveness plays into the expected lifetime calculation. There’s certainly room for competition; for example, Hewlett-Packard (HP) touts its Adaptive Sparing feature that can net back 20% of system-reserved flash capacity for active use.

We also need to consider the impact on capacity due to the chosen data protection scheme. Across flash-based devices we see variations on replication, erasure coding

or RAID, each with varying factors of data redundancy that eat into available capacity, just as with HDD storage. There’s nothing surprising here, except it’s easier to dis-tribute data across flash nodes without worrying about rotational disk delays.

We need to look at thin provisioning features, specifi-cally how deep and effectively implemented those capa-bilities are. Do they include thin snaps, thin clones (or active snaps), thin replicates and/or thin copies? Keeping a volume thin throughout its lifecycle, and enabling con-version from thick to thin, saves a lot of space. For highly

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

WHILE NOT EVERY WORK- LOAD CAN BE DEDUPLICATED EFFECTIVELY, MOST NON-DATABASE WORKLOADS WILL DEDUPE AT DECENT RATIOS ANYWHERE FROM 2:1 TO 10:1 OR MORE.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 32

clone-able workloads like virtual desktop infrastructure, thin clones multiply the effective capacity of an array by orders of magnitude.

Consider the big reducers: deduplication and compres-sion. While not every workload can be deduplicated effec-tively, most non-database workloads will dedupe at decent ratios anywhere from 2:1 to 10:1 or more. Of course, your actual mileage will vary greatly. And there are varying levels of dedupe efficiency and consistency, depending on how well the vendor makes judicious use of excess CPU or leverages custom firmware. EMC’s XtremIO globally dedupes all I/O inline organically, while HP’s StoreServ leverages its embedded 3PAR ASIC workload by workload. IBM’s FlashSystem comes with real-time compression. And upstart Kaminario offers both global inline “select-able” dedupe and compression.

You might question whether or not flash is needed to implement some of these technologies, as these features are generally implemented in the controller, not on the media. In general, newer generation flash-ready storage architectures are intentionally built around these features to apply them at flash speeds. Because of the speed-up from flash underneath, optimizations like dedupe and compression can be done inline, and thus can be applied to all workload I/O that can make use of them.

IS FLASH THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING?

Thorough $/GB comparisons should include Opex, with flash showing big reductions in footprint, power/cooling,

and even justifications for lower management and admin costs.

There are other cost factors as well, like being able to start small and scale up as needed, additional storage software costs, investment protection/future-proofing and management overhead reductions.

Even so, we think an ideal pricing comparison should be based on $/application not $/GB, multiplied by factors accounting for the business benefits recognized from increased performance and service consistency. But bean counters being what they are, we’re probably stuck with making $/GB justifications.

Depending on your traditional storage baseline, many of today’s flash solutions are looking quite cost/capacity favorable. Some all-flash vendors are already claiming they can slide in well under $2/GB, with hybrids like Nimble and Tegile even lower. And if flash at that price works un-der your workloads, you might be fully migrating to flash faster than you thought possible. n

MIKE MATCHETT is a senior analyst and consultant at Taneja Group.

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us

SOME ALL-FLASH VENDORS CLAIM THEY CAN SLIDE IN WELL UNDER $2/GB, WITH HYBRIDS LIKE NIMBLE AND TEGILE EVEN LOWER.

STORAGE • NOVEMBER 2014 33

TechTarget Storage Media Group

STORAGE MAGAZINEVP EDITORIAL/STORAGE MEDIA GROUP Rich CastagnaSENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Kim HefnerASSOCIATE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Ellen O’BrienSENIOR SITE EDITOR Andrew BurtonCONTRIBUTING EDITORS James Damoulakis, Steve Duplessie, Jacob GsoedlDIRECTOR OF ONLINE DESIGN Linda Koury

SEARCHSTORAGE.COMSEARCHCLOUDSTORAGE.COM SEARCHVIRTUALSTORAGE.COMASSOCIATE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Ellen O’BrienSENIOR NEWS DIRECTOR Dave RaffoSENIOR NEWS WRITER Sonia R. LeliiSENIOR WRITER Carol SliwaSTAFF WRITER Garry KranzSENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Kim HefnerSITE EDITOR Sarah WilsonASSISTANT SITE EDITOR Erin Sullivan

SEARCHDATABACKUP.COM SEARCHDISASTERRECOVERY.COM SEARCHSMBSTORAGE.COM SEARCHSOLIDSTATESTORAGE.COMSENIOR SITE EDITOR Andrew BurtonMANAGING EDITOR Ed HannanSTAFF WRITER Garry Kranz

STORAGE DECISIONS TECHTARGET CONFERENCESEDITORIAL EVENTS ASSISTANT Erin Sullivan

SUBSCRIPTIONSwww.SearchStorage.com

STORAGE MAGAZINE275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466editor@storagemagazine.com

TECHTARGET INC. 275 Grove Street, Newton, MA 02466www.techtarget.com

©2014 TechTarget Inc. No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher. TechTarget reprints are available through The YGS Group.

About TechTarget: TechTarget publishes media for information technology professionals. More than 100 focused websites enable quick access to a deep store of news, advice and analysis about the technologies, products and processes crucial to your job. Our live and virtual events give you direct access to independent expert commentary and advice. At IT Knowledge Exchange, our social community, you can get advice and share solutions with peers and experts.

COVER IMAGE AND PAGE 8: TOPP YIMGRIMM/THINKSTOCK

Home

Castagna: The wide, wild world of storage media

Toigo: Want to save money on storage? Try data management

Annual Storage salary survey

Users get file and block in one unified array

Traditional backup apps get bigger, better

Roomy unified storage now offers enterprise features

WAN optimization: Key tech for DR and cloud

McClure: Share data not just space with unified storage 2.0

Matchett: How much does that flash storage really cost?

About us