This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
5.5 Chapter Summary
Reaping Value from Storage Networks
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As an enabling platform, networked storage drives both cost and control of the overall storage infrastructure.
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In industries where storage availability and protection drive revenue-generating businesses, the networked storage budget grows as a function of the overall operating budget.
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To harness these costs, companies must apporach network storage with defensive and offensive approaches.
5.1 Balancing Offensive and Defensive Strategies
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Over the last several years, defensive strategies focused on data availability and protection-dominated storage deployments.
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Even in tight economic times, budgets existed for business continuity and disaster recovery applications.
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These deployments focus only on risk mitigation as opposed to including operational agility.
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Offensive strategies go beyond protection mechanisms to those focused on longer-term strategic storage deployment and TCO.
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Underlying SAN infrastructure enables defensive and offensive approaches.
5.2 Primary Defensive Strategies
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SANs provide redundancy for higher uptime and availability.
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SAN switches and directors include high-availability features for fabric resiliency.
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Core Fibre Channel directors or Gigabit Ethernet switches deliver scalable fabrics.
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SANs enable remote storage options for added protection and availability.
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Defensive strategies go beyond data risk to risks of dealing with human capital and trained storage professionals.
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SANs help reduce storage management costs by accomplishing more with less and reducing the number of administrators.
5.3 Primary Offensive Strategies
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Offensive strategies look beyond basic functions to exploiting competitive advantages.
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Merging of storage with networking fosters a new storage distribution mechanism.
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Offensive thinking harnesses methods to take advantage of the new IP distribution network.
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SANs provide for rapid addition of new storage capacity to meet unforeseen demand.
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SANs equalize the storage device playing field, providing more customer control of storage device choices.
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IP networks have served corporate LAN, MAN, WAN, and NAS applications for years and can now also apply to IP storage networks.
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Network consolidation on IP centralizes on a common technology resource.
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IP provides benefits of familiar and ubiquitous technology, enhanced functionality, and scalability in size, speed, and distance.
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Platform consolidation further supports long-term cost advantages.
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Introduction of an IP storage fabric for Fibre Channel and iSCSI uses common networking components.
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IS-NICs in servers allow for block-based and file-based storage access protocols from single interfaces to an IP storage fabric.
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IP storage networks can be integrated with corporate networks or kept separate via physical or logical segmentation.
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Multilayered storage fabrics provide for all end devices while maximizing use of the IP core.
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With an IP storage fabric, IP cores can be deployed across FC, iSCSI, and NAS platforms.
5.4 Measuring Returns
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Cost savings come from capital and operational expense reductions.
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Added revenue comes from new opportunities enabled by new technology.
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SANs lower capital costs by extending storage life, networking resources to require less hardware, and leaving room for servers to grow.
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SANs lower operational costs through storage management savings, reducing maintenance costs, and allowing administrators to do more with less.
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SANs reduce downtime through defensive strategies such as data availability and protection.
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SANs increase operational agility through flexible, scalable architectures.
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Successful IT groups will tie technology investments to business unit priorities.
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CEO oversight between IT groups and business units assures both strategic and operational links.
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With the hundred billion-dollar storage and networking markets converging, IP storage networking presents opportunities to develop sustainable competitive advantage.