What Is On The Horizon?

current hot storage technologies enable users to achieve what they aim
for, but also at the same time enable them to reduce operational cost and
increase storage efficiency

Even in the current times, where budgets are under increased scrutiny due to
the economic situation, the storage industry is not standing still. New
technologies are constantly developed, and companies need to decide which
technologies will be of benefit to them in the long run. This article looks at
some of the storage technologies that will shape storage strategies today and
tomorrow.

What's hot today?

In the current economic climate, storage managers are particularly
interested in expanding storage capacity as data continues to grow unabated,
enhancing disaster recovery plans, and improving storage performance to service
the business users better, according to IDC's 2009 Annual European storage
survey ('Understanding user needs in a changing economic climate').

However, these initiatives typically increase the operational cost of the
storage infrastructure. Adding storage capacity to cope with data growth is a
very short-term strategy, which will lead to complexity and management
nightmares, and ultimately, higher operational cost. Achieving a viable disaster
recovery plan can also turn into a costly undertaking, if not well thought
through. Finally, improving storage performance is often achieved through
methods that result in low utilization rates. This, in turn, drives the storage
capacity expansion and operational costs higher.

With the above in mind, it should not be surprising that the current hot
storage technologies enable users to achieve what they aim for, but at the same
time enable them to reduce operational cost and increase storage efficiency. The
timing couldn't be better, since it has become clear that storage is reaching a
new phase of maturity. This new phase is one where storage resources need to be
used as efficiently as possible, and where old strategies of just increasing
capacity without addressing operational cost or underutilization of storage are
no longer viable. This is even true for those that have put such efficiencies
aside to achieve increased performance. This is a trend that will continue
beyond 2009, as it ushers in a new phase where returning to previous levels of
wasted storage capacity is not an option.

There are a multitude of technologies out there, which help to tame data
growth and support, solving the storage efficiency challenge. Data
de-duplication, for example, has been the hot topic of the summer, as it helps
to buck with the data growth trend. But this is hardly the only new and exciting
storage technology addressing the industries new problems. Other technologies
like thin provisioning and storage virtualization provide greater storage
utilization and cost-efficient DR (respectively) are also in high demand.
Storage management software is seeing increased interest because it enables
users to manage across storage silos, whereas archiving is seen as a means to
reduce primary data by off-loading to an archive.

The shapers for tomorrow's storage strategies

Cloud storage is shaping up as the future architecture for storage
deployment, and storage-as-a-service is the first step in this direction. Cloud
storage is essentially a way of planning and designing storage infrastructure by
using standard building blocks, in which management is automated to a large
degree and efficiency is paramount.

File-based technologies like file virtualization will see increased demand as
well, as most of the data growth comes from the unstructured side. The before
mentioned survey has shown for several years in a row, that e-mail and
file-related applications are driving data and storage growth.

SSD is a technology much talked about, but still with very limited adoption,
as it is currently more than 10-times more expensive than traditional disk
storage. As storage administrators are evaluating this technology, they need to
keep in mind that it is just a point solution, which actually emphasizes the
need for intelligent storage tiering.

With another storage tier available (tier-0) at a high cost, storage
administrators will not be able to resort to the good old 'keep everything on
primary storage' approach. By having a robust software layer in place to manage
storage tiering, ILM can finally be implemented and its benefits (lower cost and
better data management) can be achieved.

SSD will most likely drive in mixed environments, where a limited number of
SSDs is in the same enclosure as a large number of SATA drives bundled with
automated storage tiering software.

Be prepared for the future

In order to architect a future-proof storage environment, good old
management principles still apply. Consolidate and standardize your storage
infrastructure, deploy storage virtualization software for cost effective DR and
invest in a solid storage management layer to simplify and automate management.
Thus, you can take advantage of new innovative technologies, which most likely
will be point solutions to start with, and maintain a solid management layer.