NETWORK WORLD FUSION FOCUS: ANNE SKAMAROCK
on STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
12/12/00 - Today's Focus: Aggregation of storage

Dear Wincenty Kaminski,

In 
this issue:

* Two vendors' approaches to storage aggregation
* Experts Exchange
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* IT Job Spot(tm): Exclusive opportunities with hot companies.


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Today's Focus: Aggregation of storage
---------------------------------------------------------------
By Anne Skamarock

There are several ways vendors are allowing for aggregation of
storage, and even though they all use the word aggregation, the
word means different things to different companies.

The prospect of aggregating storage devices is intriguing, but
it raises several questions.  How much storage can I aggregate,
or logically collect, for ease of management, yet make it
available to my business applications with a performance
appropriate to the environment?  By the way, once I have all
this storage, how do I manage it easily?  And does all of the
storage have to be of the same type/class, or even from the
same vendor?

Also, in a perfect world, I would be able to define the quality
of service needed for my business application and data handling
and it would all just happen.  But we don't live in a perfect
world - yet.

One company selling the ability to aggregate storage is
XIOtech.  XIOtech's Magnitude storage subsystem allows
customers to aggregate disks on a volume basis.  What this
means is the server system attached to the Magnitude subsystem
will see the disk volume that is presented to it.  Using
virtualization, the disk volume that is presented to the world
looks like a normal disk volume when in fact it could be made
up of pieces of many different disks within the Magnitude
chassis or on many different Magnitude subsystems linked
together.  The software that allows for the virtual
presentation of volumes is located within the Magnitude
subsystem.

XIOtech has partnered with Veritas to gain high performance and
functionality on the server side, in growing these aggregations
of disk with no downtime to a business application.
Installation of the Magnitude subsystem requires an
administrator to answer two or three questions, and takes just
10 minutes.  XIOtech has a leg up on the competition in its
technology, but because this is a fairly new company with only
one base product, one size must fit all.  In reality, customers
need to be able to choose the appropriate price/performance
characteristics of their storage and match it with their
business applications.  And wouldn't it be nice to have only
one storage-management environment for the whole enterprise,
from very small to very large storage?

Last week, Tivoli announced a new initiative code-named Storage
Tank (where did they get that name?).  This initiative goes a
long way in addressing end-to-end storage management, if Tivoli
can pull it off.  While the Storage Tank initiative spans all
areas of storage-area network (SAN) management, aggregation is
a large part of this initiative as well. Within a SAN appliance
that would interoperate with agents located on server systems,
Tivoli plans to implement capabilities similar to what XIOtech
has today.  Again, using virtualization, the SAN appliance
would present storage groups (logical volumes) to the servers.

The one advantage this architecture has over storage subsystem-
based implementations is it is both server- and storage-vendor
"agnostic."  Theoretically, you can have many different storage
subsystems behind the virtualization layer to present to your
business applications, running on many heterogeneous servers as
you please.  You could, in effect, manage an entire
enterprise's storage from one place, obtaining storage that was
appropriate for the business need, when you need it.  This is
an admirable goal.

I think the road will be rocky for Tivoli for several reasons.
The interoperability testing for verifying that different
storage subsystems play well together is a huge task.  Ease of
installation, configuration and reconfiguration will be issues
as well.  Will current Tivoli agents need to be upgraded?  How
much will that cost?  Will I have to pay consultants every time
I want to trade out a subsystem for something new?  Even though
Storage Tank holds great promise, it is impossible to know if
it will live up to that promise because it is not available
today.

You will continue to hear the terms "aggregation" and
"virtualization" when talking with storage and storage
management vendors.  These concepts not only promise to make
managing the plethora of storage that is, or soon will be, part
of your enterprise much easier. But they also start to move
into the realm of business data and information management, the
true goal of businesses.

To contact Anne Skamarock:
-----------------------
Anne Skamarock is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates in Boulder, Colo., an analyst and market research
firm focusing exclusively on enterprise management. She can
be reached at mailto:askamarock@enterprisemanagement.com.

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FOR RELATED LINKS -- Click here for Network World's home page:
http://www.nwfusion.com
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Got a technical question related to new technology on your
corporate network? Post it at Experts Exchange on Fusion at
http://nwfusion.experts-exchange.com/. Another network
professional may have the solution to your problem.

XIOtech Web site:
http://www.xiotech.com

Veritas Web site:
http://www.veritas.com

Tivoli Web site:
http://www.tivoli.com

Virtualization and storage
Storage in the Enterprise newsletter, 11/06/00
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/stor/2000/1106stor1.html

WQuinn software looks after NT storage resources
Network World, 12/11/00
http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/2000/114133_12-11-2000.html

EMC box called NetApp killer
Network World, 12/04/00
http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2000/1204emc.html


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