EMC recently celebrated EMCWorld by announcing VPLEX, showing yet another vendor announcing a new layer to manage storage. If the traditional array was a purpose built computer dedicated to serve up storage, innovation soon demanded boxes that tinkered with this model. There have been many permutations of doing things differently, but with the same building blocks: CPU, memory, network and storage. As an example, EMC developed Centerra following an acquisition in 2001. Centerra customers would benefit from a system that automatically controls how data is stored and managed. Duplicate copies were eliminated, and storage managers would delegate the management into the Centerra itself.

Unified Storage

A term that now crops up frequently in the storage debate is Unified Storage. (This earlier post on HDS’ announcement). The idea behind the term is a combination of computing building blocks intended with a high degree of self-management. The result is that the intervention level of the IT professionals (Ie. the ability end even the desire to manage storage) has been moved further away from the core of the product. In other words, there is more code embedded which manages the product itself and the IT professional is free to do other things.

In addition to Unified Storage, another term called Federated Storage is currently being discussed by those who are curious about the promised potential benefits. Tedious chores should always be eradicated, so genuinely smart ways of achieving this have always been welcome. The current discussions revolve around the virtues of inserting new management layers and whether they warrant a new hardware layer to go with them. This debate coincides with debating the merits of cloud based solutions from which these discussions appear to be inseparable.

Will storage eventually become self-managed and autonomic?

Probably, since technology, processing power and embedded code all points towards built-in automation.

However some statements/truths prevail:

  • Old management tasks tend to be replaced by new ones. Ie. they don’t feel like they disappear.
  • IT professionals like to be in control and have choices in terms of how to cope with complexity. Ie. total automation is not necessarily desirable.
  • Vendors will launch new strategic initiatives, platforms, frameworks etc. and potential customers will take their time to evaluate and decide whether to adopt them. However, even if they may sound worthy and virtuous, they may not become commercial successes.
  • Simplicity rules over complexity. Especially where disparate computing platforms are being brought together under one management umbrella.
  • IT departments are complex organisations. Different groups have different goals and strategic preferences. Enterprise wide initiatives are difficult to agree and adopt.

Storage is a practice area that remains important exactly because information resides in this realm. Storage professionals not only serves up information, but also architects and executes strategies for the purpose of business continuity. Let a hundred arguments blossom in the debate towards a better world of storage.