By Sixto Ortiz Jr.

Published by the IEEE Computer Society / November 2008

Organizations are generating increasing volumes of information and distributing it among disparate servers. Consequently, storage has evolved into a complex, networked technology that plays a crucial role in ensuring that computer systems and their applications work properly and comply with government regulations regarding data security and preservation.

This requires companies to better manage storage than in the past.

Administrators must know how much storage is available, how much is being used, which applications access storage, what service levels each application requires, and how fast storage needs are growing.

This information helps increase utilization, assist in provisioning, and improve the performance of storage networks. Organizations use this data to help automate storage management, set systemwide storage policies, and manage events such as server- or storage-system malfunctions, noted John Haight, manager of solutions delivery for the Forsythe Technology consultancy.

Previous storage-management tools haven't been advanced enough to handle such complex tasks.

Now, though, many professionals are turning to new storage-resource-management tools, said Tony Hampel, director of product management for the Data Center Infrastructure Division at data-center networking vendor Brocade.

In essence, SRM products collect information from multiple storage platforms on a network, provide it to administrators, and automatically work with the platforms and their data. They thus let organizations more efficiently and effectively use their storage systems. They also help with provisioning and improve networked-storage performance.

SRM provides visibility into the storage environment and shows how applications connect to specific storage systems and network components by providing a view of the system topology, explained Noemi Greyzdorf, research manager at market-analysis firm IDC.

"The ability to quickly and accurately ascertain what you have and how it is being used simplifies the storage administrator's job," she said.

While users are increasingly adopting SRM, the technology still faces hurdles. Lior Blik, president and CEO of IT services company Network Infrastructure Technologies, said these include complexity, interoperability, and cost.

STORAGE'S CHANGING NEEDS

Traditionally, organizations have stored data on local servers, with users having access via direct connections to the machines. Increasingly, though, organizations store data on disparate servers, with users gaining access via network connections. The principal technologies are storage-area networks (SANs) and network-attached storage (NAS) devices, which utilize connectivity approaches such as Fibre Channel and the Internet Small Computers Systems Interface (iSCSI).

Networking has made storage more configurable, flexible, and useful. However, it has also added huge amounts of data and made storage more complex and more difficult to manage, understand, and utilize efficiently.

A decade ago, storage management primarily involved the low-level provisioning, allocation, measurement, and utilization of available resources, as well as basic reporting.

Several years ago, systems added basic SAN and storage-device-management capabilities. But because of the number of disparate, vendor-specific products and the lack of applicable standards, integrating these capabilities into storage-management systems was complex and difficult.

Moreover, said Stefan Kochishan, director of product marketing for mainframe solutions at IT-management vendor CA Inc., "device management wasn't fully implemented for various reasons, including a lack of clear standards and the unwillingness of hardware vendors to openly share confidential information with others."

Figure 1. Symantec's CommandCentral Storage product, like typical SRM applications, uses a three-tier architecture. Agents installed in storage devices collect detailed information about the resources and send it to the primary SRM database, located in the management server. The management server retains data from storage systems, sets and monitors organizational storage policies, and manages devices. Administrators use the Web console to query the server for information about storage resources and to implement management-related activities. The system communicates with the different types of storage resources via Internet Protocol or Fibre Channel technologies.

Meanwhile, as organizations gathered more data, storage systems began consuming large amounts of power. This caused companies to look for storage approaches that would decrease energy usage, noted Kevin Gray, product marketing manager in the Resource Management Software Group at EMC, an information-infrastructure technology developer.

And companies found that they weren't utilizing their existing capacity efficiently, which wasted resources and energy. The average organization has a storage-utilization rate of only between 30 and 40 percent, said Symantec senior product marketing manager Mike Reynolds.

INSIDE SRM

SRM software offers more functions and more detailed information than previous storage-management products.

In essence, SRM can give users a consolidated, bird's-eye view of enterprise storage assets, explained CA's Kochishan. Users can then drill down as desired.

How it works

SRM systems typically consist of storage-resource-management software running on its own server.

They also include a management console and a database that stores the information the system collects and also allows for queries, analysis, and reporting, as Figure 1 shows.

Functionality

SRM products offer various functions, including the collection and retention of data about the storage system. They use the information for performance analysis, such as pinpointing storage bottlenecks in SANs or reporting when systems approach designated capacity.

In addition, the products use the information to handle, automatically in many cases, tasks often previously done manually, such as storage provisioning, the forecasting of future needs, and network-expansion management said Kalyan Ramanathan, Hewlett-Packard's director of product marketing for storage automation. They can also handle storage-system monitoring and reporting, and the analysis of issues such as system availability, noted Patrick Conway, Forsythe's advisory practice manager. Moreover, SRM products can integrate with backup, business-continuity, and disaster-recovery systems. This lets the tools perform tasks such as monitoring backup operations and automatically retrying unsuccessful attempts, as well as collecting information about database control files associated with recovery operations. Some SRM tools, such as IBM's TotalStorage Productivity Center, capture current device configurations for help with recovery if a storage resource crashes, noted John Foley, TotalStorage productivity-center market manager for IBM's Software Group.

And today's systems offer full SAN and device management.

They also recognize storage-system virtualization and monitor and report on virtualized assets, as well as physical ones.

Generally, said Ramanathan, SRM tools automatically recognize newly added storage resources and perform topology mapping to better let administrators visualize and understand how the overall system works.

Capacity utilization

By integrating with file systems, SRM provides information about file location and data usage, said IDC's Greyzdorf. This identifies, for example, little-used data that organizations could archive in lower-priority, less-expensive storage facilities, she said.

The information also helps companies determine whether they have sufficient storage and don't need to buy more or whether they don't have enough and need to purchase additional capacity.

Capacity-utilization information also lets companies use and allocate their storage efficiently. "Ondemand allocation improves utilization, reducing the total number of disks used and the power consumed," says EMC's Gray.

Databases

SRM products have relational databases that act as repositories for information the tool discovers about the capacity, the performance, and other attributes of servers, SAN switches, storage arrays, and file systems. The databases also contain information about the relationships between these elements.

The products need these repositories to visualize a system's topology and architecture so that they can properly perform tasks such as resource provisioning and storage-environment reporting, explained Gray.

Collecting data

SRM products collect data from storage systems in different ways, noted Symantec's Reynolds. For example, they can gather information via systems' APIs or command-line interfaces, or via the Secure Shell or Telnet protocol.

Increasingly, SRM tools are working with the Storage Management Initiative Specification. SMIS provides common protocols and data models that storage vendors can use. This enables hardware and software interoperability among networked-storage products from different vendors.

To facilitate the data-collection process, an SRM product typically talks to networked-storage systems via their main communications technologies: Fibre Channel or iSCSI.

Coordination with data-center-management tools.

Many organizations want a single console to manage their entire data center, not just storage. Thus, some SRM products - such as EMC's ControlCenter and HP's Storage Essentials Storage Resource Management Standard Edition - can communicate with thirdparty system-management products via technologies such as the Simple Network Management Protocol or commercial integration packages, according to EMC's Gray.

Deployment approaches

Numerous products - like Estorian's LookingGlass and Monosphere's Storage Horizon-offer individual SRM features such as capacity management. These products are deployed as software run by a host system's CPU.

They are well-suited to users who don't need to buy full SRM products.

However, said HP's Ramanathan, this approach could require companies to use multiple tools from different vendors, which could increase system complexity.

Some vendors, such as HP and IBM, provide broad, integrated SRM functionality in a single product.

These systems, said Greg Schulz, founder of and senior analyst at market-research firm StorageIO, could enable turnkey deployment. However, he noted, they could also cost more; lead to vendor lock-in; and require complex customization, setup, and installation.

Agents or no agents

Broad SRM products are typically deployed on their own server and rely on agents installed throughout a storage system. The agents collect detailed information and send it to the primary SRM database and reporting engine. They can analyze each part of the storage system in depth, noted Network Infrastructure Technology's Blik.

The downside, he said, is that users must deploy agents on all storage- related equipment and update each one whenever system hardware or software is upgraded.

Some new SRM tools, such as Tek- Tools' Storage Profiler, are agentless. This approach is easier to manage because administrators don't have to install and maintain agents on every storage platform.

However, agentless tools function via a management interface, an API, or SMI-S, which don't analyze storage resources in depth and thus don't gather all the information that some administrators require.

Also, technologies such as APIs or SMI-S create communications overhead, which increases network traffic and complexity. Agents, on the other hand, talk directly to SRM systems.

HURD LES TO CLEAR

SRM technology faces several challenges. For example, said Storage IO's Schulz, some products can be expensive, complex, and difficult to install and configure out of the box.

Moreover, said Blik, not many storage experts are familiar with the technology yet.

Because the market is new, Forsythe's Haight said, the same types of products from different vendors don't always do the same things, causing marketplace inconsistency and uncertainty.

Interoperability is another challenge, added Forsythe solution architect Patrick Graham. SRM tools must talk to heterogeneous storage systems from multiple vendors. If a product cannot natively talk to a piece of equipment, it must rely on yet another piece of software that can enable communications, thereby adding complexity.

Because some SRM products are not compatible with all storagerelated technologies, they occasionally misinterpret the data they collect, according to Forsythe.

And scalability is an issue in large environments because of the customization that users must perform on SRM systems as they grow to handle increasing amounts of data.

During the next five years, Forsythe's Haight said, the SRM industry will become more consistent in product functionality, helping to stabilize the marketplace. He also predicted the technology will offer more functionality and also better support SMI-S and the interoperability it enables.

Additionally, he said, vendors will release more tools that offer just a few SRM functions, rather than broad-scope products, because some users want only certain capabilities. And, he noted, broad-scope products don't always provide specific capabilities as well as focused tools.

SRM's ability to eliminate the need to manually perform many functions could become an increasingly important part of data center automation.

And SRM use will grow as intelligent storage tools - which can better use the information that SRM gleans - and virtualization - which can increase data volumes and make storage more complex - become more popular, said NIT Connect's Blik. "

Any organization that needs to securely store, protect, and retrieve data and is concerned about [government information-security] regulations will find SRM most useful," he noted.

Therefore, he said, SRM will be most popular in fields such as finance, banking, insurance, academia, and healthcare.

However, he added, additional organizations will also turn to it as their data volumes grow.

And eventually, IDC's Greyzdorf said, as the technology's costs and complexity decrease, many other organizations will adopt SRM.

Sixto Ortiz Jr. is a freelance technology writer based in Spring, Texas. Contact him at sortiz1965@gmail.com.

Editor: Lee Garber, Computer;
             l.garber@computer.org

ERRATUM: The Industry Trends article in Computer's October issue ("High-Stakes Battle Rages in Graphics-Chip Marketplace," pp. 13-15) incorrectly identified Klaus Mueller as an assistant professor at Stony Brook University. He is an associate professor.