AOS: the next big thing in storage

AOS: the next big thing in storage

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20060814/technology02.shtml

Application Optimised Storage is a strategy that aligns business and IT by optimising storage infrastructure and management with application requirements based on price, performance, availability and functionality. Vivekanand Venugopal tells you more

Issues like better corporate governance and compliance (whether Sarbanes-Oxley in the US that requires timely and accurate financial reporting, or Clause 49 in India) have taken centre stage. Enterprises are coming under increased pressure to reduce operational risks, increase business efficiency and create more value.

In this scenario, IT is required to get a real-time and integrated view of enterprise information, unlock information separated by transactional and inter-operability silos, and get accurate, timely information for compliance and operational efficiency. Enterprises increasingly look to consolidate the IT infrastructure (workstations, servers, storage, data centres, networks) to reduce costs and simplify operations. Increase in ROI through improved management, resource optimisation and process automation; business continuity and adoption of IT standards are some of the concerns for the CIO. While business needs may vary from a SOHO to an enterprise, companies of all sizes are deploying a growing variety of applications to meet evolving business needs.

Applications have become one of the most critical drivers of business processes and decision-making, impacting organisational growth, risk and profitability. However, every application has unique performance, access, protection and retention requirements, and places unique demands on the IT environment in terms of cost, capacity, performance and level of availability. It is therefore imperative that businesses optimise their storage infrastructure and management to address application requirements.

There is a logical thread between top-line business issues and storage. Application Optimised Storage (AOS) is a strategy that aligns business and IT by optimising storage infrastructure and management with application requirements based upon price, performance, availability and functionality. It can help companies achieve top performance, high quality of service, cost-efficient storage deployment, regulatory compliance, reduced downtime and quick recovery. The AOS concept is based on a utility model that allows you to charge business units and applications for specific usage and not at a flat rate. The concept of centralisation can be made practically possible with a large number of users utilising a common pool of storage resources economically. Integrated metering tools in AOS help monitor the utilisation of the available resources, and keep a track of under-utilised and over-utilised resources. The under-utilised resource can then be used to share the load of the over-utilised resource. Allocation of hardware, capacity and bandwidth takes place on an on-demand basis that facilitates optimum consumption of the available resources.

A typical IT environment in the enterprise collects, stores and analyses incremental volumes of information about products, customers and transactions. There is a growing reliance on e-mail, e-commerce systems and Web sites to communicate and conduct business. Digitising of records, images and other types of fixed content is increasingly happening to boost efficiency and comply with evolving government regulations.

An IDC survey conducted in the US among 270 IT executives in 2005 revealed that transactional applications (such as ERP, CRM and OLTP) were the single-largest consumer of capacity, accounting for 32.1 percent of capacity on average. File and print servers accounted for just 2.8 percent of the capacity, slightly less than that dedicated to supporting Web sites. Both of the application types were far exceeded in terms of capacity used by newer applications like e-mail and digital content. E-mail consumed 7.7 percent of capacity, and digital content 10.8 percent.

Accommodating a variety of information types while boosting business continuity goals poses a significant challenge for budget-conscious IT executives. Between 2005 and 2008, IDC forecasts that the total enterprise storage capacity deployed annually worldwide will increase 367 percent from 1,786 PB to 6,652 PB. Deploying storage optimised to meet the unique requirements of diverse applications is more than a theoretical concept.

Today, enterprises can build storage environments that enable application-optimised storage. Components of these solutions include

• a network-based storage controller architecture that allows storage managers to virtualise and create large, dynamic storage pools as well as finely tune the performance of key storage components (e.g. cache, network ports, volumes) optimised for specific applications.
• a range of storage systems that can be deployed with networked storage controllers to support tiers of storage to best meet application performance, capacity growth, availability levels, and cost requirements.
• an integrated suite of storage management software that automates the provisioning of capacity, the movement of data between tiers of heterogenous storage, and the reliable protection of data for rapid application recovery.
• a comprehensive portfolio of consulting and deployment services to ensure that organisations achieve timely and maximal returns on their storage investments.

The tangible benefits of AOS were seen in the case of the University of Utah Health Sciences Center. With over 200 percent annual storage growth rate and increased storage access requirements, there was a need to simplify infrastructure and management, increase utilisation, and enhance data replication and back-up.

AOS helped the University of Utah Health Sciences Center to reap 127 percent ROI over 14 months, reduced the number of employees required to manage the infrastructure, and improved overall system performance by nearly 100 percent

AOS helped the centre to reap 127 percent ROI over 14 months, reduced the number of employees required to manage the infrastructure, and improved overall system performance by nearly 100 percent. Deployment of tiered storage, which is a critical component of AOS, reduced the ongoing cost of ownership and extended the useful life of existing storage resources. AOS is recommended for every growing enterprise across verticals—BFSI or telecom or healthcare—reeling under the information explosion and which has the most demanding storage requirements.

Finally, AOS can reap the desired results only if IT departments implement effective storage consolidation, successfully migrate data to new systems, and change existing administrative policies and procedures. Effective implementation is especially critical when implementing solutions designed to boost the performance and reliability of enterprise applications. The choice of the right storage supplier would help CIOs prioritise applications, upgrade systems, provision new resources, and institute consistent replication and application recovery policies to get the maximum mileage from AOS deployment.

The author is Director, Software Solutions
APAC, Hitachi Data Systems.
He may be contacted at vivek.anand@hds.com