Related White Paper

Best Practices for the Replication of Oracle Storage Area Network

What else will happen in the world of storage?  Here some more ideas continued from Part One:

6. SAN Inclusion - this is a concept we came up with that is conjoined with iSCSI.  The general idea is to use iSCSI as a way to include departmental and workgroup servers into the SAN within the data center.  This was one of the big promises of iSCSI and we feel that now that the technology has entered the early mainstream the market is ready for SAN Inclusion in a big way.  There is a ton of value to be gained by storing all of your data on networked storage. But we still have failed to do so to a large extent.  We intend to bang the drum more loudly on SAN Inclusion.

7. Persistent Data.  This is a term that a number of vendors have embraced.  I like it as well.  We focus on transactional data but up until now didn't have a strong term for data that doesn't change very often, if ever at all.  While Persistent Data has always existed there is now greater awareness and products targeted specifically for it.  Many companies still use a one size fits all approach to storage and keep all of their data on their most expensive systems.  This is crazy since anywhere between 65% to 85% of your data is never or rarely accessed again soon after its creation.  Move the persistent data off of primary storage onto a lower tier. 

8. More Fun with FAN.  This is file-based storage virtualization.  It makes a ton of sense - see my blog for more on FAN (Fun with FAN).  This technology should be integrated into any environment that has lots of files. 

9. Power and Cooling.  Expect to see EVERY single storage system vendor talking about how their technology helps you manage power and cooling.  Some of it is true and makes sense.  Others will be stretching things just a bit.  There are architectural design elements that can make a difference in power and cooling.  There are also some technologies that can make an impact such as capacity optimization (data de-duplication and other techniques), thin provisioning, writable snapshots and spinning down drives. 

10. Clustered Storage.  This is a form of virtualization that the majority of people just don't get.  I think its a no-brainer.  Why clustered storage?  It provides just-in-time scalability.  Don't buy extra head room but grow as needed.  What?  You don't need scalability?  Clustered storage has another advantage over traditional dual node midrange storage systems.  If one of the controller nodes goes down with a dual node system you are at 50% performance (awed by my mathematical genius?).  With a three node storage cluster you would be at 67%; four nodes at 75%; five nodes at 80% and so on. The name of the game isn't just performance when everything is going well but also in case something bad happens.  Will you still be able to conduct business?  Sure a dual node system would still "work" but will it be sufficient or will response times and your users/customers productivity tank?  One of the reasons you pay so much money for storage is for high availablity.  But in my book your data isn't available if response times are so slow that you can't get anything done.  

I am anxious to see how the storage IPO market impacts the emerging vendors.  If companies like Riverbed and Isilon sustain their success this bodes well for other storage players.  Some will go public and others will get attractive buy outs.  The momentum will trickle down and the VCs will smell money and begin to invest again in startup storage companies and more innovation will be funded.  And maybe, just maybe being a storage wonk might become cool.  Maybe I could be interesting at parties.  Maybe I will get invited to parties.  I could have friends that like me and want to hear what I have to say.  I could get my own byline in the Wall Street Journal.  And...