TRACK 3 (EXECUTIVE): Managing Storage -- A Plan of Attack

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TRACK 3 (EXECUTIVE)Managing Storage -- A Plan
of Attack

• Roles and Responsibilities in the Storage Group
• John Webster
• Senior Analyst and Founder
• Data Mobility Group

2
Agenda

• Storage Management a practice with multiple
  disciplines
• Business opportunity vs. business risk a
  balancing act
• The Disciplines
• The storage domain as a business entity
• Using storage to mitigate business risk
• Managing data the foundational discipline
• Management by Application (MbA) a thematic
  variation
• Where are the boundary lines drawn?
• Wrap up and QA

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Are you creating a separate storage management
group within the IT department?

1. Yes, been there, done that.
2. Yes, were in the process of doing that now.
3. Were evaluating whether or not we should do
   this.
4. Wed like to but dont have the resources.
5. No, bad idea.

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Complexity in Multiple Dimensions

• Fibre Channel fabric architectures
• Ethernet and IP
• Server clustering
• Data backup and restoration
• Wide- and metropolitan-area networking protocols
• Bridging, routing, and switching
• Host bus adapters and drivers

• Object modeling
• Long-term archiving
• Data traffic management
• Diagnostic and recovery technologies
• Enterprise management applications
• Database and file system architectures
• Security

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Managing Storage

• A good way to solve a complex problem Break it
  down into manageable pieces.
• Lets call the manageable pieces disciplines.
• Lets call storage management a practice built
  on storage management disciplines.

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Three Storage Management Disciplines (a proposal)

• Business Management
• Risk Management
• Data Management

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Storage Business Management

• Management of the storage domain as a business
  entity, complete with customers that must be kept
  happy, and a method for tracking and
  charging-back usage of capacity and services.

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Storage Business Management (2)

• Resurgence of the utility model Did the SSPs
  have it right?
• Do you think of them as storage users or storage
  customers?
• Riding herd on ROI has become critical
• Can you manage your customers with Service Level
  Agreements (SLAs)?
• On-demand capacity provisioning
• QoS

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Do you currently use SLAs for storage-related
services?

1. Yes.
2. We use SLAs for broader sets of IT services.
3. No.
4. Whats an SLA?

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SLA Implications

• SLAs imply that you can
• Measure, measure, measure
• (You cant manage what you cant measure.
  Computer Measurement Group)
• Identify performance problems and solve them
• Forecast

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Risk Management

• The use of the storage domain to mitigate
  corporate risk through the use of well
  established backup-and-recovery procedures,
  business continuance, disaster recovery and most
  recently, security functions.

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Risk Management

• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Backup and restore
• Security
• Compliance
• Are all of these purely within the storage
  domain?
• Are any of these under the purview of other
  corporate executives? (Examples Corporate
  Security Officer, Corporate Risk Manager,
  Corporate Compliance Officer, Corporate Legal
  Counsel.)

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Mapping IT Risk From the Viewpoint of a Financial
Risk Manager
Again, note the position of IT System Failure
Source Contingencies.org
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Managing Risk From the Viewpoint of a Financial
Risk Manager (2)
Note the position of IT System Failure
Source Contingencies.org
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Does senior executive management understand the
importance of IT continuance and recoverability?

1. Yes, they get it and give us the financial
   resources we need when we need them
2. Yes, they get it but we still have to fight for
   financial resources
3. No, they dont get it right now, but could in the
   future
4. No, they dont get it now and never will

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Data Management

• The management of data contained within the
  storage domain

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Data Management (2)

• Underpins or serves as a foundation for the other
  two discipline areas
• Potentially encompasses databases, file systems
  (including distributed or global file systems)
• Includes management of data copies and data
  migration techniques

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How many TB can one person manage?

1. 1
2. 10
3. 100
4. This is a silly question

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MBA A Thematic Variation

• Management By Application (MBA)
• Recognizes that applications, business policies
  and storage are not worlds apart from one another
• Starts at the application level, then works down
  the processing stack to the underlying storage
  environment
• Help is on the way
• Applications Aware Storage (Vendor-driven RD
  effort)
• Applications Optimized Storage (User-driven
  requirement)

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And, One Last Question

• Wheres the boundary between the storage group
  and systems/networks/database groups?

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Last Words

• Storage users are storage customers
• Risk Its about managing exposure
• MbA brings world unification

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ASK THE EXPERTin the Northeast Exhibit Hall

• MONDAY
• 5-6 PM
• TUESDAY
• 5-6 PM

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Please rate John Websters talk, Managing
Storage -- A Plan of Attack.

• Poor
• Fair
• Good
• Very Good
• Excellent
• jwebster_at_datamobilitygroup.com

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