Rajneesh De
A snapshot of storage implementations across India Inc. revealed that there
are three crucial issues where most CIOs usually falter. These include
undertaking a proper planning exercise before implementing the storage solution,
comparing different storage vendors across multiple parameters before deciding
on a particular one and finally to devise a few quantitative as well as
qualitative parameters to measure the effectiveness of the storage solution.
Each of these functions includes several micro issues; most CIOs concur that
broad compliance with several of these issues across all three functions spell
success for a storage implementation in an enterprise.
No Substitute for Planning
Planning for a proper storage solution involves a careful consideration
of four parameters-these include capacity planning, the type of application,
throughput generated and storage consolidation. Pramod Deshpande, vice
president, Information Technology, Central Depository Services (India) advises
on the necessity of performing a storage capacity audit based on the business
projections of the organization.
"In our case, we took into account capital market peaks, and planned for
three times the peak capacity for all our processes. Since it was extremely
difficult to predict on the networking requirements for the next three years,
the overall planning was done for one year only." Depending on the
criticality of the data stored and the type of organization, planning for three
times the peak capacity would be a good measure. A scalability factor of at
least 20 times the peak capacity would also be advisable for organizations like
banks and telcos that are witnessing an explosion of customer data.
The type of application and throughput generated are two other important
issues that most CIOs tend to overlook while planning for storage. It is very
crucial to factor in issues like permissible downtimes for the applications that
are running, as well as the sizes of the data stores generated. While
customer-driven organizations like banks and telcos might not be able to afford
a longer downtime, the case could be different for manufacturing organizations.
One effect of an increasing data mart could be reduction in throughput;
therefore, it is imperative for CIOs to consider this while planning for
storage. Deshpande informs that in CDSL's case, the decision taken at the
beginning was to change the server in order to increase the throughput.
In case data is being accessed from multiple sources, appropriate planning is
absolutely vital as otherwise this might lead to data replication, loss of data
integrity ultimately leading to loss in business revenues. Once CIOs had taken
into account all these four factors while planning for their overall storage
environment, they could plan differently for individual areas of storage.
Ishwar Jha, vice president, business technology, Zee Networks, advises that
CIOs should plan separately for their backup, nearline, online and even DR
strategies. Dataquest, through its interactions with different CIOs, have come
out with a matrix in this regard that could act as a rough guideline for all
enterprises embarking on storage adoption. (See box "Storage Modes: Guru
Speak".)
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