Top Storage Trends for 2009: EMC

1.Green IT

Green IT essentially translates to energy efficient IT infrastructure which in turn translates to cost savings for the end user. Green IT is gaining traction because of two key factors - cost savings and growing demand from customers for green products.

Cost Savings

While the IT industry has not been viewed as a conventional green house gas contributor, this perception too is changing with the rise in the number of data centers and the resulting rise in energy consumption. Data centers account for the bulk of the energy costs incurred by an organization with cooling and power requirements being the key components here. We cannot do away with data centers and so we need to find ways to increase efficiencies here and other areas of IT.

Customer Demand

Customers always want the most efficient products and with the rise in energy prices, they too have begun demanding energy efficient products.  Also, a rise in environmental consciousness has triggered a demand for green products.

EMC Data Storage systems, apart from the above cost control methods, has designed innovative methods in their storage systems like Reduced disk spindles using flash drives to address ultra high performance

Disk spin down on disk librariesLow power disks for backups and clones

2.Data Center Consolidation

Consolidating the data/information of the company also creates an opportunity to reduce the need for multiple hardware boxes and can leverage the option of doing ILM in a single storage box, thereby reducing datacenter footprint, power requirement, etc.

This drives towards effective utilization of IT resources and cost reduction

3.Information Lifecycle Management

Organizations can benefit hugely from an effective ILM strategy. ILM helps in maximum storage utilization, thus cutting costs. ILM does not require you to get rid of your existing applications, servers, networks, and storage investment. Instead, one of the greatest advantages of ILM is that it allows you to take advantage of and manage heterogeneous and diverse environments.

Compliance issue is also driving the adoption of ILM, strategies. ILM is an end to end strategy that can adequately protect an organization's data assets and reduce the risk of large fines or litigation.

4.Virtualization

Much of the current buzz is focused on server virtualization, but virtualization in storage and client devices is also moving rapidly. It is observed that the utilization of servers in the data centre is typically about 15%. Hence server virtualization helps in reducing the number of servers deployed in the data centre, thereby power, cooling and also management overheads.

Storage virtualization helps in utilizing the existing/older storage systems to host Clones that can be used for backups, reporting and testing functions. It reduces the high cost involved in provisioning storage capacity for the above mentioned functions in the Enterprise class storage.

Virtual provisioning enables the storage administrator to provision lesser physical capacity of storage for a given application/requirement than actually required by the application. The additional capacity required can be provided “on demand”.

5.De-duplication

De-duplication reduces the amount of data backup by a large extent. De-duplication stops runaway duplication by transforming data files into data segments that can be stored and re-used in multiple files. The original file is saved and backed up just once to a central server. Further, incremental backup is done only for the “changed segments /blocks” in the file and not the entire file. Deduplication also checks for common blocks across all the files and across the entire user data considered for backup. Cost control/reduction can also be achieved through deduplicated backups

This is a key technology initiative considering the huge volumes of data being archived by companies in all verticals. De-duplication can reduce network bandwidth and backup storage by a factor of 300.

6.NAS

Network Attached Storage has great potential for growth in the Indian commercial market. Some of the key factors that are driving the growth of NAS are as follows.

Reduce Complexity

Reduce Total Cost of Operation

Optimize utilization of storage

Migration

Effective information infrastructure management

Compliance

R&D Growth in Software

New offerings of Unified storage provide “all in one functionality” like SAN, NAS and iSCSI, which is gaining huge popularity among SMB customers.

7.Disks over Tapes

In the storage arena, we see a disk level approach taking hold when devising strategies to reduce the energy consumption. Disk spin down implemented by EMC definitely reduces the amount of power consumed, as the disk slips into a sleep mode after the backup is completed.

8.A move from hard drives to solid-state drives (SSDs)

SSDs weigh less and consume less energy than Hard disk drives that use rotating media. When compared to a 73GB HDD, SSD uses 30-40% less energy. SSDs provide ultra high performance that can eliminate the need for higher number of FC drives. Currently SSDs are very expensive as compared to the HDDs. As the cost of the SSDs reduces over a period of time, the energy savings will become increasingly significant. Ultra high performance and low energy consumption are the key advantages of SSDs.

9.Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a style of computing that characterizes a model in which providers deliver a variety of IT-enabled capabilities to consumers. They key characteristics of cloud computing are 1) delivery of capabilities “as a service,” 2) delivery of services in a highly scalable and elastic fashion, 3) using Internet technologies and techniques to develop and deliver the services, and 4) designing for delivery to external customers. Although cost is a potential benefit for small companies, the biggest benefits are the built-in elasticity and scalability, which not only reduce barriers to entry, but also enable these companies to grow quickly. As certain IT functions are industrializing and becoming less customized, there are more possibilities for larger organizations to benefit from cloud computing.

10.Advent of 8 Gbps Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is a proposed mapping of Fibre Channel frames over full duplex IEEE 802.3 networks. This allows Fibre Channel to leverage 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks while preserving the Fibre Channel protocol. The main application of FCoE is in data center storage area networks (SANs)