By Jennifer McAdams, ComputerWorld.com,
In 2008, almost every sector will continue the battle with data overload. Entertainment powerhouses - from television stations to big-name amusement parks - will struggle to house huge media files or to manage the data necessary to track customer spending trends. Universities will need extra capacity to spur e-learning and to hold more detailed data on students. Hospitals will cling to enhanced storage projects to avoid buckling under onerous regulations and the prospect of storing massive image files.
These are just a smattering of scenarios that point to a now-staggering need for space. In fact, respondents to Computerworld's most recent Vital Signs survey ranked storage-related initiatives as their No. 2 project priority this year, up from No. 4 last year.
According to Milford, Mass.-based analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., private-sector archive capacity will hit an eye-popping 27,000 petabytes by 2010. Skyrocketing rates of e-mail growth account for much of this figure.
For instance, the University of Pittsburgh now pegs monthly e-mail traffic at more than 30 million messages, vs. 17 million just one year ago.
Other new factors driving the need for capacity include the pervasiveness of large files, be they media-rich elements or specialized program data such as the computer-aided design drawings now used in building everything from cars to furniture. Cloned copies of the same information are also bogging down many corporate networks.
Ironically, the adoption of virtualization technology - billed as a way to centralize and simplify storage strategies - can also trigger an initial spike in data capacity demands.
Trim the Fat
To combat spiraling data overload, corporate IT leaders will scour the market for ways to centralize storage and they will pursue options such as clustered architectures and unified storage-area networks (SAN). Data-pruning techniques, including the use of thin provisioning and data de-duplication tools, will also be high on 2008 corporate storage wish lists, according to Forrester Research Inc. analyst Andrew Reichman.
Mounting interest in these approaches highlights a pronounced shift away from "big-iron storage" - traditional storage arrays typically composed of custom application-specific integrated circuits, RAID controllers, and fixed-disk and cache-scalability ceilings.
"The alternative is software-focused solutions that make more use of general-purpose hardware and advanced software," Reichman says.
In terms of specifics, he points to redoubled interest in software from vendors such as Network Appliance Inc., which threads a common operating system across product lines to facilitate storage at the software level. He also predicts that vendors offering building-block clustered software - such as Compellent Technologies Inc., LeftHand Networks Inc., Isilon Systems Inc. and EqualLogic Inc. - will enjoy more success in 2008 as they rush to accommodate the shift in storage challenges facing many companies.
"What is interesting now is the fact that there are so many different types of data files and that they vary so much in size," Reichman says. "Many of these files are associated with less mission-critical applications and are therefore not structured in the way that database files are. They are also scattered across departments. Many companies are now using tools to begin saving files centrally rather than having them floating around."
Get It Together
Indeed, IT executives from a variety of sectors agree that there's a need for storage centralization. Before pushing in that direction, the University of Pittsburgh had little control over capacity gobbled up by course management applications and scattered data warehouses.
"A decision was made to implement a new, centralized storage management solution and to move away from discrete storage for specific initiatives," says Jinx Walton, the school's director of computing services and systems development.
The university settled on an IBM storage infrastructure that will afford the institution 350TB of capacity and more flexibility through life-cycle management. "The centralized storage solution provides the ability to effectively allocate and remove storage to meet the needs of specific projects," Walton says.
Amusement park giant Six Flags Inc. also had no interest in maintaining a decentralized storage infrastructure. "We have re-engineered our environment over the past year and a half and have moved to a central storage farm at each facility, as opposed to having DAS [direct-attached storage] in each server," says Michael Israel, Six Flags' senior vice president of information services.
Israel also highlights his organization's rollout of a centralized e-mail platform, which doubles as a way to improve data replication and disaster recovery capabilities.
Six Flags had to examine storage issues surrounding a major new business intelligence push as well. "Providing internal users with marketing data related to sales trends, season pass holder information and inventory analysis are just three areas where we have required an increase in online storage," Israel says.
Each of the company's 26 theme parks now maintains independent systems composed of HP ProLiant DL360 servers outfitted with NetApp FAS3030 storage systems. Data protection is centralized, since Six Flags' corporate data center houses NetApp SnapMirror software.
Centralization also makes sense on a security level, according to Robert Gray, founder of market research and consulting firm RobertGrayDirect LLC in Newton, Mass. "2008 will see an expanding market as fear and security concerns converge, solution-level products abound and wire-speed performance come together," he notes.
In the health care industry, security concerns are naturally paramount.
"Information must have high availability and remain safe from evil-doers," says Mark Boggs, IT director at Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston, W.Va. To address these concerns, the facility is continuing to build out its SAN and will soon add a peer storage architecture, which packs thin-provisioning capabilities to help accommodate huge imaging files. For its storage architecture, Thomas Memorial tapped EqualLogic, which is being acquired by Dell Inc.
Other industries are also swimming in storage-hungry data. Capitol Broadcasting Co. (CBC), a Raleigh, N.C.-based operator of five TV stations and several radio assets, is grappling with a 120% growth in e-mail volume and a wealth of media-rich graphics, audio and video files that reside on its networks.
"While e-mail archiving was the catalyst to move beyond DAS, other looming IT challenges were also driving the need for more robust storage," explains Chris Welty, a CBC systems engineer. The company is moving to IBM's BladeCenter architecture and has purchased an IP SAN from StoneFly Inc. in Hayward, Calif., in a further effort to provide single-instance storage on file servers, Welty says.
Virtual Storage Realities
Because virtualization vendors, including VMware Inc., position virtualization as a way to jump-start centralization, in 2008 the technology will become more affordable and more pervasive. Virtualization often involves moving physical data to a central site and providing pointers or maps to the application in which the data is used. "We expect virtualization technologies - including but not limited to VMware - to be hot in 2008," said Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Heidi Biggar.
However, virtualization does have its issues, especially in the early stages of adoption, says Brian Matthews, computer user service specialist at the University of Texas. "Our storage demands initially increased because of virtualization," he says. "It becomes a matter of rethinking storage when virtualization is involved. Unified storage has always been the goal, and virtualization helps dramatically in this goal, but it does so at a very fast pace."
Naturally, virtualization offers short-term benefits as well. One of those relates to the technology's role in the new push for "green," or environmentally friendly, computing strategies. "Technologies such as server virtualization reduce the power and cooling footprint of the server infrastructure," says Nik Simpson, an analyst at Burton Group in Midvale, Utah.
Overall, it will be practical, incremental moves, such as cutting power consumption and emphasizing centralization, that will emerge as the biggest storage trends in 2008. More than anything, in the new year IT executives will show fortitude in the face of storage challenges and a willingness to try out the products that vendors have been hawking for a while.
McAdams is a freelance writer in Vienna, Va. Contact her at JMTechWriter@aol.com.
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