The State of SAN
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The State of SAN Steve Terrill Manager of Systems Architecture Interstate National Insurance
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The State of SAN. Steve Terrill Manager of Systems Architecture Interstate National Insurance. Key Trends. External storage becoming SAN storage FC becoming the incumbent interconnect technology System integrators remaining a primary SAN channel Data replication use increasing in B/R & DR - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Transcript of The State of SAN
The State of SAN
Steve TerrillManager of Systems ArchitectureInterstate National Insurance
Key Trends
External storage becoming SAN storage
FC becoming the incumbent interconnect technology
System integrators remaining a primary SAN channel
Data replication use increasing in B/R & DR
Staff and skills shortages
Emphasis on ease of deployment and management
Key Trends
Pre-SAN Post-SAN
SNMP
Fragmented Storage View
Unified View
Internal
DAS
SAN Value to the Open System Environments
Storage consolidation
Better backup and recovery
Higher availability
Better scalability
Proprietary data sharing
Lower TCO Long-Term
Storage resource pooling
Standardized data sharing
The Current State of SANs
Hardware infrastructure is in ready state
• PCI to Fibre Channel HBAs
• Fibre Channel directors, switches and hubs
• Fibre Channel to host RAID controllers
• Robust storage enclosures
SAN management software evolving to vendor
definitions
• Competing MIB/API standards
• Vendor-defined storage/volume sharing
• Heterogeneous SAN management software is unlikely in
near future
Making the business Case
Making the business case to move to a
centralized storage scheme may not
necessarily be an easy one to make for
some organizations. • Often times businesses are more concerned with the
initial hard dollar cost, than the aggregate potential
savings.
• TCO
• ROI
• Must Look at all savings, hard and soft
What Strategies?
The key strategies necessary to achieve the best use of a centralized storage solution.1. Data Management strategy
2. Charge Back Strategy
3. Server Consolidation
4. Data Priority strategy
5. Disaster Recovery Strategy
With the combination of these strategies the savings in long term hard dollars, short and long term soft dollars and lower administration costs will surpass the initial hard dollar expenditure.
Pros and Cons?Pros:
Reduced Administration
Scalability
Centralized backups
Lower backup administration costs
Reduced backup windows
Open Systems Architecture
Better disaster recovery options
Easily expandable
Reduced response times
Faster data access
Cons:
Significant initial investment (basically pre-buying storage)
Learning curve
Difficult to manage without appropriate strategies
No standardization across vendors
Minimal skilled resources available
Summary
SAN Technology could ultimately benefit
many businesses with the capability to
easily manage and scale their storage.
Potentially reducing the overall IT costs
spent on additional storage and servers,
while improving the level and speed of
service to the business.
