Storage used to be thought of as a straightforward subject, where the only points of contention were the capacity of the media and the read/write speed of the drives. But storage is now at the heart of the crucial management issues that surround the Internet and electronic business.

Products both physical and digital are being sold over the Web. Efficient management and delivery of either the products themselves or information about them is now a business-critical function.

That is why a growing number of storage management products and services are becoming available. Some of the more recent developments can be categorised under storage area networks (SANs), while on the services front the latest trend is for storage service providers (SSPs).

SANs physically separate data from its attendant servers, giving IT managers greater freedom and choice, but there are still interoperability problems with offerings of different vendors. SSPs offer IT managers the opportunity to outsource disk capacity provision, allowing them to rent what they need -- but there could be security-based management issues to resolve.

Net pushes storage to fore

The growth of the Internet has led to storage assuming an increasingly vital role in the enterprise. Storage management has become an important discipline and an integral part of a typical e-business platform.

The development of the Internet from a geeks' playground into an important business tool has been both swift and unnerving in its management implications. It has forced organisations to review the way they manage and control business processes, and in most cases this has led to storage assuming an increasingly vital role in the enterprise.

E-businesses generate vast amounts of information that they need to store and access. But while the direct relationship that has existed for many years between a computer and its associated storage may still have a role, it is now by no means sacrosanct.

Internet topology

Internet topology has changed the way that systems in an enterprise network are linked, so as to guarantee the widespread availability and dissemination of information. And this in turn has led to big changes in the way that storage is managed within the enterprise.

The distributed Internet topology has removed the direct relationship between the data and the processor. Not only can data reside anywhere on the network ­ and that can mean anywhere in the world ­ but it no longer has to be in a specific format geared to the needs of a specific processor architecture or application file format.

This has the potential to liberate IT managers from the restrictions of any one systems architecture, where the choice of operating system, processor type and application file format is limited. In the case of data storage that liberation can now be seen in the move towards storage area networks (SANs). SANs break the tie between processor and data, allowing the latter to be stored in ways that are both convenient ­ such as large disk farms ­ and efficient in terms of fast access.

SAN technology also gives IT managers a much greater choice of server system, for it is geared to working with heterogeneous environments. This means that an IT manager can select the most appropriate server for a particular task, rather than a system decreed by the operating system or file format selected.

It also allows far more flexibility in the type of storage device selected. The trend now is for storage systems vendors to provide hardware environments that allow individual storage components to be swapped in or out as required. This means that units such as disk drives can be replaced as and when necessary, without stopping operations. It also allows IT managers to choose where more expensive high-performance units are required and where the slower, cheaper devices can be used.

Storage management has become an important discipline and is an integral part of the wider set of management components that underpin a typical e-business platform.

These management components include such functions as transaction management, because every action on the Web is a form of transaction. Another is directory services, as it will be important to know who is connected at any one time, and what resources are available. The server end of client services will be important, as many new client devices will be used to access enterprise Web sites and conduct business. There will also be a need for analysis tools that track and manage transactions taking place on the site.

Finally, document management will play a vital role. Here, the term 'document' applies to anything that can be digitised and stored, such as music, videos, graphics and voice messages. Traditional text documents will still be a part of this mix, but when it comes to online products or services, they are likely to be only a minor element from now on.

Efficiency and reliability

An e-commerce system will need to not only know where each document is stored, but also be able to retrieve and deliver them to customers as quickly and efficiently as possible. And, above all, the system, and its management, must be reliable.

That is why storage management has now graduated from being an esoteric subset of server technology to being one of the key components of e-business.

The increasingly central role of storage in the enterprise and the need for flexibility is leading to a new market in externally managed storage. A new breed of storage service providers is now emerging that will manage storage requirements on behalf of a company and scale up capacity as needed. In today's rapidly growing environment, it will become increasingly difficult for an IT department to accurately predict long-term requirements.

Summary

• The growth of the Internet is taking storage management beyond the traditional relationship of one disk system for one server.
• Storage can now be used more creatively to deliver information effectively and rapidly.
• Storage management has become a core component of all e-business environments.

SANs ready for take off

IBM believes that storage area networks will take off this year. They are now able to work with a variety of host servers on a heterogeneous network, but there are still a number of technological hurdles to be overcome

A storage area network (SAN) pools an enterprise's data and allows access to it over a Fibre Channel network running parallel to the LAN. However, there is still a gap between the theory of SANs and the reality. Although there are already many solutions on the market, there is still plenty of room for improvement in interoperability.

But 2000 could be the year that SANs take off. That is certainly what IBM and market research firm IDC believe. The two companies teamed up to survey enterprise IT managers and found that the majority have adopted, or are planning to adopt, SAN technology.

Some 90 percent thought SANs offered improved data manageability and easier options for expanding storage capacity. About the same number felt that SANs were a credible solution for improving data sharing and data access. A smaller number thought the technology would also reduce costs and lead to better exploitation of existing server and storage investments.

Ready for take-off

The results suggest that the adoption rate for SANs is rising. In another survey conducted three months previously, 30 percent of respondents were considering deploying the technology. In the later survey the proportion considering deployment had risen to 45 percent.

SAN technology offers users the chance to build data storage environments where multiple servers running different applications can access information held anywhere on a network.

Advances in management software mean that SAN systems are able to work with different incompatible host servers on a heterogeneous network. There are still technological hurdles yet to be overcome, but IBM believes these problems will be solved within the year.

The biggest problem seems to be in getting the different interpretations of Fibre Channel to work together. Suppliers have come together to thrash out a solution, but it will be some time before their work bears fruit. Despite IBM's assertion that the solution is now in place, the reality is that there can still be incompatible versions of what would initially appear to be the same technology.

Fibre Channel is not the only area of incompatibility. Vendors are still trying to resolve compatibility issues with switch ports, multiple switch fabrics, name services and registered state-change notification. All of these and more stand in the way of achieving what would, in effect, be an industry standard SAN architecture that all vendors could use.

Meanwhile, most packaged SAN solutions fail to meet every requirement, leaving IT managers with the task of selecting components from different vendors.

To assist in this, US firm McData has created a testing programme called FabricReady, which tests the hardware and software offerings from more than a dozen vendors. FabricReady tests for integration capabilities and interoperability so that the company can then offer a range of proven SAN solutions. With a range of offerings, the company should be able to match most enterprise requirements and budgets. It already has a package available that provides a LAN-free backup and tape consolidation bundle, and plans to launch packages later this year that are configured for groupware, database and clustering applications.

McData also plans to provide details of compatible products for any application via its Web site.

Practical answers

Until true interoperability is achieved, McData's approach seems to be the only practical way of resolving SAN compatibility issues. By working with the major SAN components suppliers at one end, and the major service providers at the other, McData is assuming the important but potentially risky role of middleman between vendors and IT managers.

Testing is currently the only practical answer to interoperability questions, and therefore more and more of the major SAN suppliers are setting up testing laboratories. Among the latest to do this are Compaq and Hewlett-Packard.

Compaq is following the lead set by McData with the launch of its Open SAN initiative. It has opened the doors of a new $6m testing laboratory to any and all vendors, with the aim of creating a worldwide unified SAN standard.

Interestingly, unlike IBM, Compaq does not see the standards issues being resolved until the middle of 2001 at the earliest.

Summary

• IBM says 2000 will be the year of the SAN, but other suppliers believe the technology will not take off until next year.
• The lack of interoperability between SAN products remains a barrier to adoption.
• Compaq has launched the Open SAN Initiative to address the interoperability problem.
• McData has a testing programme to test integration between SAN offerings from different vendors so it can offer a range of proven SAN solutions.

Storage firms face take-over

As the growth of the Internet turns storage management into a core business issue, major business software suppliers are looking to acquire or form partnership deals with specialist storage management software firms.

The growth of Web-based e-business is turning storage management into one of the most important aspects of information systems management ­ one that is essential for ensuring that front-end and back-end e-business applications work effectively.

A measure of its growing importance is the fact that major business software suppliers are looking to snap up specialist storage management software firms. One such move is Computer Associates' purchase of Sterling Software for $4bn.

Acquisitions and partnerships

One of Sterling's specialities is managing the growing number of data repositories that the typical enterprise is now generating with e-business applications. The goal is for information managers to have a common view of the information stored on their systems, be they storage area networks (SANs), client PCs or mainframes. Sterling's SAMS:Vantage 4.02 system is one of the first systems available that can manage data storage across different storage systems. Through support for policy-based data management, the system allows users to automate the entire process of storage management, including file management. This becomes all the more necessary as the volume of data to be stored and managed grows. It is common for enterprises to generate many terabytes of data, and such volumes simply cannot be managed manually.

Other companies on the acquisition trail include storage equipment giant EMC, which recently acquired both Softworks and Terascape, specialist developers of storage management software.

In addition to full takeovers, partnership deals are growing more popular. Legato recently struck a deal with HighGround Systems, which will add the latter's Storage Resource Manager to Legato's Global Enterprise Management suite. This is designed to provide enterprise-wide backup facilities, with the HighGround component adding greater central management control by offering analysis, reports and forecasts about system disk capacity. The objective is to give IT managers better control over the planning of backup and recovery processes.

The Internet is also offering users an alternative to the practice of mirroring critical data on different storage systems that are geographically separated. This can improve data security, but until now it has been expensive because it required dedicated leased lines between sites, forcing IT managers to be circumspect over the number of mirror sites used and the amount of data selected to be mirrored.

EMC is offering mirrored data management that takes advantage of the reduced communication costs of the Internet. Working with Computer Network Technology (CNT) in the US, it has upgraded its Symmetrix Remote Data Facility to allow IT managers to perform mirroring between Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems over IP via virtual private networks (VPNs).

VPNs allow secure communication over a public network and are a widely used alternative to dedicated leased lines. However, IP is geared to small data packet transfers and random read/write activity, which runs counter to the way storage systems work. To overcome this, CNT has developed a storage transport protocol that will operate over IP networks. It includes a compression algorithm to convert leased-line data frames into standard IP packets.

Another problem with IP networks is that they tend to be slower than dedicated lines. The system could time out and declare incoming data invalid, while that data is still trying to make its way across the network. CNT has therefore slackened the time-out requirements, making more time for resolving network anomalies.

Tape storage

This development from EMC has been seen by some analysts as a move away from the mainframe and into the distributed systems arena. While that is important, the majority of large enterprises still rely to some extent on their legacy mainframe systems and on the wealth of data that has been generated by such systems over the years. And managing that data can become a problem over time.

For example, tape storage is still the most common method for archiving data. But tapes can take up a lot of space and rarely hold a full complement of data. They may be capable of holding 4GB, but in practice can sometimes contain only 3MB or less.

One way around this is to use IBM's virtual tape storage system. Here, data to be archived is first collected on a dedicated server with large disk cacheing capabilities. It can be cached so that virtual volumes are created and, when a volume is full, it is then recorded onto tape.

This ensures that all tapes used are filled to capacity, which reduces the number needed. It also keeps the latest data more readily available on the server, while reducing the number of tape mounts that need to be undertaken.

Summary

• The Net is making storage management a core business issue.
• Storage management firms are the target of takeover bids, as larger IT vendors try to offer complete storage portfolios.
• Knowing what data is stored and where will be more important than having it in one repository.
• VPNs are a cheaper alternative to leased lines for managing data across different sites.
• Tape storage remains the most used method for archiving data.

Data storage space for hirer

Rapidly rising demand for storage capacity has led to the emergence of storage service providers, which rent out capacity on demand. However, there are still doubts about what they offer and their data security status.

While there is a certain logic to the notion of outsourcing, deciding on the way to do it is still the big question facing many enterprises. The old way was to sell off the IT function to a specialist operator, but this method is no longer in vogue. More recently, organisations have had the option to rent service capability from a third party over the Internet, but this still raises the questions of what service to rent and from whom.

The rise of applications service providers (ASPs) has been rapidly followed by the emergence of storage service providers (SSPs) that specialise in offering data storage services.

The pace of growth in Internet-based activities among enterprises is dramatic. Accurately scaling future storage requirements in such a dynamic environment is impossible, yet failure to provide enough storage could result in a temporary halt in trading until more capacity is acquired and brought online. Being able to rent that extra capacity as required is an attractive solution to the problem, and it is this market that SSPs are targeting.

Security concerns

The appearance of the first firms in this market has, however, raised doubts about the efficacy of what they offer and the way they offer it. For example, concerns have been voiced by potential customers over security and data ownership. If the business-critical data of an enterprise is being held on the systems of a third party, which company owns that data? The third party certainly owns the disk drives, but doubts have been expressed about whether the SSP's customer owns its own data in all circumstances.

While the SSP remains in business, and the relationship between it and the user firm remains good, there should be no problem. But some potential customers already have fears about what would happen if, for example, the SSP got into financial difficulties. If the SSP went into receivership, could the receiver view the data held on the SSP's disk systems as an asset of the SSP, and dispose of it to the highest bidder? Similarly, could an SSP view the data it holds as a negotiating pawn or financial alternative should one of its customers default in some way, selling the data to a business rival?

On a wider front, there are those who question the need for SSPs at all. ASPs, not surprisingly, see SSPs as trying to take a potentially lucrative part of their business. There is a close relationship between applications and the data that they generate or use, so it could make more sense for an organisation to deal with one outsourcing service provider.

This raises a number of compatibility and availability issues. For example, there will be cases where firms need to view SSP services as an extension of the existing storage infrastructure on-site, so compatibility with the existing systems could be a pre-requisite. With availability, a rapid rise in storage requirements could result in a firm having to use the services of several different SSPs, regardless of whether or not it uses an ASP as well.

However, ASPs are likely to be the driving force of the service provision market if only because they are offering the all-important applications. Indeed the early signs are that the SSPs will end up supporting the larger service providers.

For example, SSP Centripetal has decided to target its services at Internet service providers (ISPs) and ASPs. Only in the longer term will it start selling through the reseller channel.

As might be expected, the disk system manufacturers are also eyeing the SSP marketplace as a new revenue source, due to the pressure on product margins and the resulting trend towards suppliers offering value-added services.

Partnership offerings

In January storage systems supplier EMC announced the Ecosystem for ASPs service. This provides enterprises with flexible storage capacity and is offered in partnership with IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Sun. The service is based upon EMC storage systems, with StorageNetworks acting as the SSP.

Disk systems vendor Hewlett-Packard is partnering with specialist Qwest Communications to offer storage paid for as needed. It has launched the Instant Capacity On Demand programme based around its XP256 SureStore E disk array. When an XP256 is sold, it is installed with as much disk capacity as the customer expects to use in that quarter. The deal then includes a capacity plan for the next few quarters. Every quarter, this can be modified, and paid for, as required.

There is little doubt that the pay-as-you-go model, coupled with the potential for instantly available capacity, has a future. The only question is whether enterprises will buy these services direct from SSPs or via some more market-oriented service provider, such as an ASP or value-added reseller.

Summary

• There is a growing market for storage service providers (SSPs), which rent out storage capacity on demand.
• These SSPs may not provide a business service direct to IT departments, but instead may assume a supporting role in the wider application service provider (ASP) market.
• Potential customers are anxious over the security issues of who might own the stored data.