A friend of mine, who’s a CIO of a media company came to me the other day (at a StarTrek convention), asking me about all the hype he’s been hearing with regards to Storage Virtualization, and how it can help save his company’s money, save power, save space, and short of saving the world, save everything. He’s attended a lot of vendor pitches, but he still can’t put his on finger on the cost-savings bit, given that storage prices is dropping year-on-year.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation I’ve had with him, while I was adjusting my Tri-Corder settings.
Jim: “…. and I’ve been to all the storage-folks demos, but I still can’t understand how it can help me.”
Francis: “Perhaps if you start at the beginning, what exactly is the challenge you’re facing?”
Jim: “I run the IT Shop for my company’s Media Advertisement development. We’ve got Graphic Artists, Layout Designers, Script Directors, etc, all needing centralised and shared storage resources so that they can collaborate on a project. When the project is done, the media files are archived, but many a time, the graphics from previous projects are re-used in a follow-on project. In other words, our previous work can’t be put into tapes, it needs to be online, to be retrieved as and when it is needed. AND I don’t need them archived on fast-expensive gear. Only the current active projects need to be on those. With the current influx of 3D-LCD screens, there has been a surge in 3D requirements. As you can imagine, with all the new 3D advertisements that we’re working on now, my storage needs have grown tremendously. And that’s exactly my problem, my need for a scalable storage that is cost-efficient; storage that doesn’t run-out in a few years and requires me to do a fork-lift in/out for a new platform. And it needs to be intelligent, in that media/files that have not been touched after a few months can be relegated to tier-2 slower (and cheaper) storage, but still be available online and accessible.”
Francis: “Fascinating. I presume you have a Content/Library Management System, where you check-in/out the media files? The management systems these days are quite sophisticated; it allows you to track the check-out period, the content utilisation ratio, etc, and the content and usage logs are all stored in a centralised database, so you shouldn’t have to worry …”
Jim: ” … cough, cough <ahem> … Er, the company isn’t that advanced yet in the procurement of such platforms. All we have is Microsoft SharePoint to keep track of the media check-in/outs, and the content is stored in a centralised network file-storage system. We have scripted automation to put shortcuts on each user’s desktop, so that it will point to the right file-share for their work purposes.”
Francis: “… I see, and what have you been told by the vendors so far?”
Jim: “They’ve been showing me how storage virtualization can help in ensuring that my file servers will never fail, and how a VM can allocate a chunk of storage from a pool of huge storage for a particular user. But that’s not what I want. I just want to add more storage to my current setup, without throwing away my current storage investment. One vendor showed me a solution that is quite close to what I need but it requires me to change each user’s configuration and setup, which means downtime for the users.”
Francis: “… Ahh … I see where the issue is. You’ve been shown Block Virtualization platforms. What you really need is File Virtualization solutions.”
Jim: “I thought we were talking about Storage Virtualization??”
Francis: “We were. It just so happens that Storage Virtualization comes in 2 types, Block Virtualization and the File Virtualization. Block Virtualization is usually meant for computers/OS where block storage is the interface. For example, the VMs and OS deal with storage in the block manner. Block Virtualization optimises this storage access by spanning it across multiple devices. It also creates the illusion to the computers that its interfacing to a huge hard disk. A good example of Block Virtualization is RAID or JBOD middle-wares. With RAID, when one hard disk fails, before you can say it’s dead, Jim, the RAID kicks in and retrieves the block data from the other hard disks, creating a resilient storage.”
Jim: “Ok, Block Virtualization can help provide storage resiliency/scalability to the computers. But how does that help me?”
Francis: “It doesn’t, at least not economically. That’s why I said you need File Virtualization and not Block Virtualization. The key to File Virtualization is the concept of Global Namespace for files. This Global Namespace is the reference to the file content irrespective of where the file physically resides. Your users will use the Global Namespace when accessing the files, and the actual files can physically reside on a EMC NAS today, or it can reside on a separate Netapps NAS tomorrow. Think of it like the DNS for the Internet URLs where the DNS points to the physical webserver when given a URL. Your users will still use the same drive-mapping as per your script automation, and the file access couldn’t be any simpler than what they were used to. To scale up your storage needs, you just need to buy the next NAS that gives the most bang for storage value, and hook it up to the File Virtualisation engine. Your users won’t be any wiser.”
Jim: “That’s great. But how about the archiving to cheaper storage that I mentioned?”
Francis: “Most of the intelligent File Virtualization engines will allow you to move under-utilized files to a slower but more economical storage platform. If the files are used again in a new project, you can simply move the files back to the higher-speed storage. Your content files will practically live long and prosper in either storage mediums. AND Your users won’t need any down-time, their drive mappings will still work the same.”
Jim: “Wait a sec, No downtime? That’s not good. We need to throw in a couple of hours of downtime in the off-peak periods, so that our users will virtually think we are working hard ….”
Francis: “… er … Yes, perhaps you can schedule some needed downtime, otherwise your users won’t know you’re working hard … ”
Jim: “Yeah … its all about virtual perception these days ….”
