Building an e-Storage Infrastructure

This guide examines the way in which storage pays an increasingly important role throughout IT implementations and systems, and especially in the e-business world. It investigates the different types of storage, storage architectures and management techniques, and considers the factors that companies should consider when devising a storage strategy to meet their business needs. Soon, it is estimated that storage will account for between 65 and 75 percent of data centre hardware expenditure, more than double the 30 percent share it had a few years ago - and we have already passed the crossover point where storage purchases cost the same as the servers themselves. What is worse, for every pound spent on storage, around ten times that amount goes on management, support and associated software applications. Storage requirements are growing at compound rates of 30-40 percent per annum, driven largely by the needs of e-business and related new applications, including digital audio and video. And it is largely thanks to e-business that storage has to meet ever-growing demands for greater availability, reliability and performance. At the same time, IT departments are being called upon to manage these large volumes of storage with fewer staff and a lower budget. But even so, there simply are not going to be enough people with the right specialist skills to manage tomorrow's storage at today's manning levels. The information held on this storage is growing ever more valuable, as the realisation grows that data is an important corporate asset. Particularly in the e-business world, new entrants into a market can provide products and services that are little different to those offered by long-established incumbents - other than perhaps being cheaper - but what they do not have is years, or even decades, of valuable data on customers and their habits. These vast stores of data can be used to identify and retain profitable customers, to maximise the quality of customer service, and to exploit new technologies and techniques - but only if people can use it. Metcalf's Law states that the value of data increases proportionally with the number of people having access to it, so the traditional notion of a single island of data available only to specific geographically local departments is rapidly becoming obsolete. This sea change has major repercussions for how storage is organised, and how it is connected to the point where the data is used - the application server, or the end user's desktop system. Several recent and forthcoming initiatives have been introduced, aimed at bringing as much flexibility and versatility as possible to this situation, with the unfortunate consequence that there are now many and varied ways to interface with storage. Choosing the right storage architecture, and the best storage strategy, has never been more important - or more difficult.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Business Imperatives; Managing Your Storage Requirements; Types of Storage; Storage Architectures; Offline Storage; Devising a Storage Strategy; Appendix 1: Glossary; Appendix 3: Storage Network Protocols

About the Author :
Andrew Ward is a freelance journalist and writer, with ten years' experience as MD of a high-tech manufacturer, who specialises in writing about business and technology matters. He contributes to a wide range of business and IT journals as well as various national newspapers.