By Jerome Wendt, ComputerWorld.com,
There is often a stark contrast between how mainframe storage systems are managed versus how storage connected to distributed systems platforms such as UNIX and Windows are managed.
In the mainframe environments in which I have worked, everything was always planned for in advance. Capacity planners forecast storage growth based on current trends and performance. Storage engineers and architects understood the new storage systems that they currently used or brought in and it was just a given that everyone understood how applications would utilize the storage.
Contrast this with how distributed systems storage networks are often managed. Companies have a hard time of even keeping track of what servers they have attached to the storage network, much less quantifying what applications they have running on them or how they are using their assigned storage.
In spite of these broken configurations, storage vendors are now actively pushing new protocols such as iSCSI, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and even InfiniBand as a means to grant more LAN-attached servers that use direct attached storage (DAS) access to storage via low-cost corporate storage networks.
This is done under the guise that they will save money by implementing these new storage networks. On one level it is true that companies will resolve some of their storage connectivity and data migration costs. However on a larger scale companies may find they are ill-equipped to manage the new complexities that this wide-scale implementation of storage networks introduces.
Companies are never going to replace their distributed systems storage networks with mainframes storage networks - nor do I recommend it. But the sooner that companies figure out that their mainframe folks can help with the discipline and planning aspects of storage networking, the sooner companies will realize the benefits of today's storage networks and minimize many of their problems.
Jerome Wendt is the president and lead analyst at DCIG Inc. You may read his blogs at www.dciginc.com.
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