Storage Management: A Holistic Process

"Excel spreadsheets," says Pilafas, who manages two physical data centers that act as one logical storage-area network (SAN) handling 25 TB. "Nevertheless, I would get a lot of questions from my controller and CFO. They would say, 'You just asked me for $1 million last quarter.' It wasn't a question of my integrity. It was more a question of, 'How do we really know that we are using what we have?'"

That illustrates a common problem: Many storage administrators don't know how much storage they really have or whether they are using it efficiently. "When you talk to IT customers and ask them what tools they use to manage and control server and storage assets, the No. 1 answer is Excel spreadsheets and Visio sheets," says Michael Peterson, president and senior analyst at Strategic Research. "Isn't that bizarre? Here we are in 2003 and that is a true statement. It's ridiculous."

That's why vendors are flocking to storage-management software as their next revenue source. But if you think storage-resource management (SRM),and the much-talked-about virtualization,are the only tools needed to help managers demystify their storage systems, think again. Customers and analysts say many layers of storage management still need to be addressed. In fact, Strategic Research, Carpinteria, Calif., coined the umbrella term "storage operations management" to identify several layers of management, which not only entails SRM, but elements like storage-network management, storage performance, storage services and security.

What vendors finally may be conceding is that storage is not an isolated island,or a group of isolated islands,but part of a holistic management domain. Management software has become the new frontier in storage, and plenty of vendors have jumped into the storage-software market this past year. What VARs need to know is that only some will emerge as players with a complete storage-management product.

Peterson points to a handful of companies to watch closely, among them AppIQ, Computer Associates, CreekPath Systems and EMC. CA, for instance, launched a BrightStor storage portal that links separate management tools and, more recently, SAN Manager, which performs tasks such as mapping, automation and monitoring the health and welfare of a system. Then there's EMC and its much-publicized WideSky middleware, which works as the main translator between devices and competing software.

Like EMC and CA, CreekPath has built its Application Intelligent Management (AIM) suite by focusing on the infrastructure first and then adding the database-application modules. AppIQ, meantime, is working on a suite that is application-centric,meaning the products discover the application along with its logical and resource paths.

"[All of these companies] are in different places and on different pages," Peterson says. "You can argue both ways are valid. It's just how fast you get to market. I happen to think CreekPath has the richest product [on the market right now]."

That's why VARs should look at CreekPath's offering more closely. Founded in December 1999, CreekPath is banking on a trend that goes beyond SRM and virtualization.

"SRM kind of opened up your eyes to [see] what you really had," says Scott Hansbury, vice president of marketing at CreekPath, which has raised $36.8 million in funding. "That just led to the progression of, 'OK, I can see what I have, but how do I actually manage it for efficiency for delivering quality of service?' And that entails a ton of things outside of SRM."

Time To Visualize

This holistic storage-management trend indicates that some vendors finally are acknowledging that storage should become part of the network. Just take a look at how CreekPath has embraced this concept and is delivering a product to back it up.

CreekPath's AIM software has about 10 categories that comprise a slew of capabilities and features. It has the standard discovery feature that graphically identifies the devices in a direct-attached storage model as well as a SAN. But an IT manager can also use another category, called Visualization, which is "the ability to visualize graphically on a screen what a customer's topology looks like and be able to give them specific information about their environment," Hansbury says.

An example is a feature within visualization called "managed element properties." With this, managers can see all the pieces in their environment, how it's all connected and know all the asset information, firmware levels and manufacturer,with a few clicks of a mouse. If an IT manager clicks on the "shared applications by element" feature, he or she can drill down to a switch or an array to find all the applications using that device. And by using the "application to spindle" feature, IT managers can see which application is linked to a specific spindle. They can also dive deeper into performance management by finding out what class of service that application is demanding. "[IT managers can see] that four applications are all requesting this particular high level of quality of service. They also know they are fighting for it because they all sit on the same spindle," Hansbury explains.

AIM's "fabric and array control" feature enables storage administrators not only to visualize the devices, but to create logical unit numbers (LUNs), allocate storage or create zone sets. Another feature, called "application to volume," shows which applications are tied to which volumes, "whether it is a virtual volume or the actual physical volume," Hansbury says.

Within AIM's Monitor category, the "thresholds" feature can be used to establish set policies, so if a device or application hits that danger level, storage managers can take action based on e-mail, scripts and SNMP. What kind of thresholds? If a file system or database is filling up and getting close to its threshold and more space needs to be allocated, it can be done automatically so the application is never down.

Another AIM highlight is in the configuration-management category. One feature is called "current and historical snapshots," where IT managers can get an audit trail of the systems. So when something is not working, they can easily track the cause of the glitch. That can be a useful tool because when so many people touch the system, it is hard to keep track of who did what. Storage managers can go back to a snapshot and compare it to what they currently have. "They may see that on this server, on this location, somebody changed the firmware on that HBA," Hansbury says. "It's extremely powerful to be able to monitor and track what is going on within their environment."

It's no coincidence, Hansbury says, that many of these features and capabilities overlap. "Most of these shops have all these point products that don't connect and don't overlap," he says. "That is the problem: There is no correlation of all the data across the environment."

At United, Pilafas considered several storage vendors' products before deciding on CreekPath's last November. "They came in and turned on the discovery mechanism," Pilafas recalls. "I called my director and said, 'Hey, we are done.' He said, 'Oh, you are going to lunch?' I said, 'No, we are done. The whole thing is discovered.' It told me everything, from the subsystem level to the fabric level."

The AIM suite has been a huge time-saver for Pilafas. "It not only brought lower TCO and ROI, it improved my quality of life," he says. "I have more time to architect systems and storage. Now, when I get a call from my vice president asking for how much storage we have, I can just print those off, fax them or e-mail them."

CreekPath's solution was the only one Pilafas found that satisfied the demands of three separate groups within his company: the storage team, systems team and management team, like CFOs, vice presidents and controllers.

"There are products out there that, on a good day, might get two of them," he says. "People are getting smarter because there is less money to spend."