STORAGE MANAGEMENT/SMART SHOPPER: What to Ask and What to Avoid

in Provisioning Tools

Stephanie BalaourasSenior Analyst, The Yankee Groupsbalaouras@yankeegroup.com

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

IntroductionCaution 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

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

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

How complicated is it today?

DEFINE RAID GROUPS

PLANNING

CREATE LUNs

ASSIGN/MAPLUNs to PORTS

UPDATE LUNMASKING

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 1

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 2

How complicated is it today? (2)

CREATE OR UPDATE ZONES

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 1

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 2

UPDATEMULTIPATHING

How complicated is it today? (3)

CREATE/UPDATE VOLUME

MANAGEMENT

CREATE/UPDATE FILE SYSTEM

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 1

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 2

How complicated is it today? (4)

UPDATEAPPLICATIONS

SETUP LOCALSNAPSHOTS/

REPLICAS

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 1

Storage Systems

Switch/Director

Servers

SAN 2

UPDATEBACKUPS

UPDATE REMOTE

MIRRORING

How people do it today

41%

59%

25%

35%

4%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80%

Manually TouchEach Storage Array

Use CustomInhouse Scripts

Use Single FunctionProvisioning Tools

Use StorageVirtualization Tools

Other

Percentage of RespondentsSource:Yankee Group Survey,289 Respondents, 2003

How provisioning works with other tools

                                                                                                                   

How provisioning works with other tools (2)

Device/element management Necessary to configure RAID Groups

and LUNs within the array. This is

typically still a manual step

Assign LUNs/Volumes to Front End

Ports. This is where most Provisioning

tools begin.

SAN management Necessary to create and update zones

between server HBAs, fabric device

ports and front-end array ports. Good

integration available today.

Volume management Create/Update volume groups, logical

volumes, file systems. Little to no

integration available today

Capacity managementAssists in developing policies and

preventing over-under allocating storage.

Capacity Monitoring, Trend Analysis

Management consoles/dashboards Topology visualization, status, alerts

(especially for capacity)

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

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

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

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

5 gotchas/questions to considerPricing: 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

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

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

Questions?

sbalaouras@yankeegroup.com