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STORAGE MANAGEMENT/ SMART SHOPPER: What to Ask and What to Avoid in Provisioning Tools

In the evolving landscape of storage management, choosing the right provisioning tools is crucial for efficiency. This guide by Yankee Group's Senior Analyst, Stephanie Balaouras, addresses the core issues in storage provisioning, the interplay with other management tools, and where to initiate tool selection. Learn about the architectural options, the essential features that should be prioritized, and potential pitfalls during the evaluation process. With insights on balancing automation needs and understanding the complexities of provisioning, this guide equips organizations to make informed decisions.

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STORAGE MANAGEMENT/ SMART SHOPPER: What to Ask and What to Avoid in Provisioning Tools

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  1. STORAGE MANAGEMENT/SMART SHOPPER:What to Ask and What to Avoid in Provisioning Tools Stephanie Balaouras Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group sbalaouras@yankeegroup.com

  2. Agenda • Introduction • The problem storage provisioning tries to solve • How provisioning plays with other mgmt. tools • Where to start: What are the options? • Key architectures to consider • Provisioning tools “nice-to-haves” and “must haves” • 5 “gotchas” to consider during selection process • Final recommendations

  3. Introduction • Caution important in selecting provisioning tools • This is an early market with immature products • Ongoing concern about how standards will be embraced in these tools • Customers that have a significant need to reduce time dealing with storage provisioning should consider it • Automated provisioning is still not quite here • Provisioning is one element of a larger policy-based management strategy

  4. Problems provisioning solves • Time • One of the top time-consuming tasks is allocating storage • It involves storage administrator, SAN administrator, systems administrator and others • Requires specialized storage expertise per vendor array • Policy definition and process automation • Helps to formalize the provisioning process by creating common policies for how storage is provisioned • Prepares for future automation • Efficiency • Used in conjunction with capacity planning, cuts down on guesswork and over provisioning

  5. What is storage provisioning? • Involves the tasks necessary for allocating additional storage to an application * • Is generally focused on larger storage system requirements today • Is one of a number of tasks toward increased automation of storage management *Remember throughout the presentation that it’s all about allocating storage ultimately to applications. Today's tools predominantly only provision storage between the storage systems and servers

  6. SAN 1 SAN 2 Servers Servers Switch/Director Switch/Director Storage Systems Storage Systems How complicated is it today? PLANNING DEFINE RAID GROUPS CREATE LUNs ASSIGN/MAP LUNs to PORTS UPDATE LUNMASKING

  7. SAN 1 SAN 2 Servers Servers Switch/Director Switch/Director Storage Systems Storage Systems How complicated is it today? (2) CREATE OR UPDATE ZONES UPDATEMULTIPATHING

  8. SAN 1 SAN 2 Servers Servers Switch/Director Switch/Director Storage Systems Storage Systems How complicated is it today? (3) CREATE/UPDATE VOLUME MANAGEMENT CREATE/UPDATE FILE SYSTEM

  9. SAN 1 SAN 2 Servers Servers Switch/Director Switch/Director Storage Systems Storage Systems How complicated is it today? (4) UPDATE APPLICATIONS SETUP LOCAL SNAPSHOTS/ REPLICAS UPDATE BACKUPS UPDATE REMOTE MIRRORING

  10. How people do it today Source:Yankee Group Survey, 289 Respondents, 2003 Percentage of Respondents

  11. How provisioning works with other tools

  12. How provisioning works with other tools (2)

  13. How provisioning works with other tools (3) • Thus generally purchasing integrated provisioning tools with most products today • SNIA SMI-S will change this over next 12-24 months

  14. Where to start: What are the options? • Data path management tools • Predominantly provision only data path between server and storage • Extension to management consoles • Provisioning tools that are add-on modules to SAN management tools and storage resource management • Sometimes integrated with device/element management tools • Storage automation tools • Still require the the underlying integration of other tools but add a work flow engine

  15. Provisioning tools:Must haves, nice-to-haves • Heterogeneous support – Must have • Must support heterogeneous storage systems, fabric devices, HBAs • Tight integration with SAN management tool • Wizards – Must have • It needs to be easy to set up • Use of a professional services division is a red flag • Testing and validation – Must have • Ways to test and validate provisioning before committing to production

  16. Provisioning tools:Must haves, nice-to-haves (2) • Workflow – Nice to have • Workflow engines that allow for multiple person approvals • Integration with volume managers – Nice to have

  17. 5 gotchas/questions to consider • Pricing: What’s it going to cost me overall? TCO • Check the fine print on maintenance and patches • Heterogeneous support • Must support all the storage systems, fabric devices and HBAs in your infrastructure • Product roadmap and integration • Next most important integration points are: • Snapshot/replica awareness • Backup application awareness and integration • Volume management integration • Application and database integration

  18. Final recommendations • Determine if storage allocation is a significantly time consuming task for your enterprise • Today’s tools only provision from LUN to server HBA. Still need to update volume groups, file systems and databases and applications etc.. • Determine if a provisioning tool could ease the workloads of your most experienced storage administrators

  19. Final recommendations (2) • Consider vendors with heterogeneous support and native SAN management capabilities or extremely tight integration with SAN management tools • Consider vendors with long-range integration goals. Snapshot/Replica awareness • Buyer beware: Look for ways to validate vendor claims with real trial deployments or extensive demos

  20. Questions? • sbalaouras@yankeegroup.com

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