Top storage trends of 2008: Symantec

PUNE, INDIA: Presenting a perspective from Symantec on some of the leading trends in storage during 2009.

1. Windows Server 2008 Drives Upgrade, Compatibility Efforts: Microsoft’s long-awaited Windows OS was made available to users in early 2008 with new features for virtualization, security, and performance, but also creating the typical rush among vendors to offer compatible products for backup and recovery. Furthermore, the significant upgrade process created even more need for backup as users faced possible data loss during the upgrade.

2. Microsoft Hyper-V Creates Competition: Microsoft’s virtualization hypervisor, Hyper-V, ratcheted up the competition in the market with its open approach (as opposed to VMware’s more proprietary offering). As users continue to move virtualization into production, Symantec believes they will discover that traditional approaches (such as VMware) will limit the ability to maximize assets and reap the benefits of server virtualization.

3. Complexity Drives Backup Redesign Projects: According to a recent study by the InfoPro, backup redesign was the top storage initiative for data center managers in 2008 and beyond, followed by tiered storage, consolidation, and virtualization adoption. Backup design projects are driven by increasing complexity across the IT infrastructure, a proliferation of point tools to manage backup, and multiple management interfaces. Backup Redesign projects are also driven by a need for support for virtual environments.

4. Backup Moves to Service Model: Limitations in IT resources drove some end users to use SaaS models for some technologies, such as backup, reducing the burden of dealing with purchasing, configuring, and maintaining and on-premises solution.

5. Data Center Energy Crisis: According to McKinsey, the total estimated energy bill for data centers in 2010 will be $11.5 billion, up from 8.6 billion in 2007. In 2008, energy costs across all sectors drove IT to look at the cost savings and efficiencies they can achieve through ‘green’ data center solutions.

6. Disaster Recovery Testing Still Lacking: Despite making improvements in disaster recovery planning efforts in 2008, organizations are still coming up short when testing those plans. According to Symantec’s 2008 Disaster Recovery result, respondents indicated that 30 percent of tests fail to meet recovery time objectives, with top reasons for failure including human error and technology.

7. Thin Provisioning for Reclaiming Storage: As storage resources become scarce, users are turning to technologies like thin provisioning to make better use of existing storage. Thin provisioning gives organizations the ability to deploy ‘thin’ storage, reclaiming storage during online migrations and driving operational efficiency. The technology lets users allocate space to servers on a just-enough and just-in-time basis in order to make better use of existing resources.

8. Economy Impacts IT Priorities: As IT budgets are tightened due to the current economic conditions, many organizations are shifting their focus to finding more efficient technologies that manage complexity while reducing resources. There is some speculation that  implementing new and innovative technologies will be put on the back burner in favor of those that help IT make better use of resources.

9. Protecting and Managing Virtual Machines Comes Together: According to IDC’s first Worldwide Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, virtualization technologies have matured significantly over the past year. In fact, virtualization license shipments for the second quarter of 2008 increased 53 percent over the prior quarter and were up 72 percent over the same quarter last year. IT professionals recognize that successful virtualization initiatives utilize tools that manage both physical AND virtual machines together.