Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

COMPUTING STORAGE RESEARCH -- WHAT'S IN, WHAT'S NEXT?

As reported by Chris Green: Computing research has profiled the storage technologies that are in favour and those in decline.Computing published the findings of the first stage of its research into storage trends, conducted in conjunction with independent storage and data management specialist Sagitta. That research, based on a number of focus group sessions, identified some important facts about corporate data storage needs, uses and purchasing decisions, as well as emerging trends among users in different industry sectors.Computing, in conjunction with Sagitta, has since continued this research,completing a second stage of more detailed surveys among a crosssection of readers with specific responsibility for data storage purchase and policy. The survey covered a diverse set of industries, including finance, media, manufacturing and the public sector.

STORAGE TECHNOLOGIES IN USE

We looked first at what storage technologies organisations are using, and this produced some surprises. Our survey group was asked to name all the technologies in widespread use in their organisations, and most gave multiple answers The runaway leader, in line with our expectations, was Raid, a storage technology that allows you to tie a collection of disks together to appear as a single repository. This was used by 84% of our survey group's companies. The figure is closely in line with our predictions, reflecting the falling cost of the IDE hard disks commonly used in smaller Raid storage resources, as well as the falling cost of Raid controllers.

Raid uptake has also been given a boost by the growing number of desktop PC motherboards which include it, and by the support for software-based Raid offered by Windows XP and Windows 2000, both on the desktop and the server. It is particularly heavily used by manufacturing and media organisations, or any others that require significant quantities of online storage for large files such as audio and video, CAD drawings and schematic data.

The technology in second place was direct attached storage (DAS), which accounted for 59% of organisations. This includes large hard drives and removable storage directly attached to machines at the desktop and workgroup level, as well as at the server. Again, DAS was most popular among media users, where audio, video and graphics work requires significant amounts of local and server storage.

One of the first surprises was that 56% of our users were still relying on the quaintly named Jbod, better known as 'just a bunch of disks'. These users continue to trust internal hard drives and a collection of relatively unmanaged disks stuffed in servers for enterprise file and data storage. Such disks have probably not been configured into a Raid cluster, and would not feature any data protection features such as mirroring.

We were also surprised to find that network attached storage (NAS) continues to be more popular than storage area networks (SAN). The former is used by 41% of our surveyed users, compared with 29% using San. The weakness of SAN usage can be explained partly by the shortage of San skills which appear to be restricting the deployment of new SAN solutions.

The speed of iSCSI growth has also been brisk, with more than a quarter of users having implemented iSCSI storage technology. This is an evolution of the SCSI hard disk and data interface technology, providing the same ability to daisy-chain and manage disks over IP, rather than directly attaching to SCSI cards mounted in servers. Our research showed that iSCSI is particularly popular in the public sector, perhaps as a result of IT staff's familiarity with SCSI technology on back-end systems.

Finally, only 2% of our survey group are still using tape. The figures are seriously depleted by the falling cost of disk storage, as well as of optical solutions such as CD-R. Disk and CD-R solutions are increasingly taking the place of lower-capacity tape.

BARRIERS TO SAN

Our research revealed a clear understanding of the benefits of a SAN infrastructure among many of the businesses currently relying on NAS, DAS or even Jbod. But it also showed that these users are being held back by a number of variables.The main ones are what they see as the high initial cost of deploying a SAN and porting data across to it, and the high cost of training and short supply of staff with the necessary skills to manage and maintain the network. One participant, working for a public sector organisation serving more than 5,000 employees, said: "We have a set budget to split between different projects and SAN would take up a large proportion of it. We have more and more users all the time and the internal disk capacity is not enough, unless we go for some intelligent archiving software."

"My preference would be for using both hand in hand. The other prohibitive factor is IT training. The concept of San is different from a simple NT server configuration, and would require substantial training of staff." Another participant, from a small manufacturing company with about 100, users cited cost and complexity, in other words the technical complexity of the implementation and the availability of technically trained staff.

However, not all users were deterred by the costs of a San implementation. Some were held back merely by their current workload and the difficulty of scheduling a window either to implement a solution or to research the available options. An interviewee from a finance sector company in the 200-499 employees category said: "Our chief problem is the lack of internal resources to investigate. We have a lot of software projects on the go at the moment, and we don't have the management resources available on a longer term basis. There are no barriers."

STORAGE MANAGEMENT

IT staff charged with managing storage are clearly facing growing demands on their expertise, with 97% saying they had seen clear growth in storage needs over the last three years. The scale of that growth was even more striking, with 29% having seen between 101 and 500% growth in storage demands. Across all sectors, the average was 165%, with figures of 182% in the public sector and 155% in manufacturing. Media organisations saw a 221% rise, which was fuelled by the transition to digital editing and content storage, and the move to digital audio and TV broadcasting.

Forecasts of future storage growth were equally large, with an average of 100% growth expected across all sectors in the next two years. Public sector IT staff expected to see a 15% rise in storage needs because of the increased use of IT in local government, the deployment of local and central government online services and more investment in IT for healthcare, the armed forces, emergency services and public services.

In line with expectations, an average of 12% of IT staff time was devoted to working on storage systems. Use of external consultants was high, with an average of 28% using them to manage and work on storage. The trend was particularly pronounced in the San area, with 42% of SAN-based companies relying on outside consultants and contractors to manage their storage. According to Sagitta, this outsourcing is mainly a result of skills shortages and is seen as a way of controlling IT support costs. Using consultants costs an average of GBP 791/head/day, according to 38% of those surveyed.

Asked about the strengths and weaknesses of their storage management policy, most companies placed disaster recovery near the top of their list of priorities. The events of 11 September contributed to the interest in disaster recovery as companies became more aware of the danger to critical data. However, this interest does not appear to have translated into implementation.

There are also few mechanisms in place to monitor the cost of downtime in lost business and productivity, as well as the cost of repairs. Nearly half our respondents had no method in place to measure downtime, nor do they have any plans to tackle this issue. Indeed, only 28% have any way of measuring storage downtime. Many companies measure downtime as part of their wider approach to quality of service or as part of service level agreements. It was a similar story with regard to upgrades: only 33% of companies are able to measure the cost of lost business and productivity caused by implementing an upgrade, such as swapping out a disk controller or installing new drives.

Overall, this stage of our research has shown that NAS remains popular with many businesses, particularly those driven by cost and immediate need. Those looking at the longer term recognise the benefits of San, but are put off by the perceived shortage of skills and the immediate costs of adoption. Cheap disks have ensured that Raid implementations and unmanaged collections of disk storage remain highly popular. Cheap disks have also diminished the use of tape, as companies concentrate on quicker recovery of documents from back-ups, or opt for mirroring to create backup copies when no backup window is available.

SUPPORTING THE CORPORATE INFRASTRUCTURE

One of the key reasons for investing in dedicated storage solutions or centralising storage is to support a company's server infrastructure. With servers running key business applications and producing increasing amounts of data, a single, centralised point of storage or backup is becoming more prudent as companies look to simplify management and improve their utilisation of available space.

We found the organisations we surveyed have an average of 10 to 20 servers, while some have as many as 300 or more. Our results also showed that 41% of organisations had between 10 and 20 servers, while 12% have between 21 and 30 servers in operation. At 11%, the number of companies with more than 300 servers represents the third largest percentage in the survey. It is representative of companies with many branch offices and locations such as retailers. The context of this data becomes clearer when it is viewed alongside the level of storage used in the same organisations. The average level of storage available to these servers was in the 100GB to 249GB bracket, with 21% of those surveyed falling into this category.

In second place with 16% were users with between 500GB and 999GB of storage, while 13% had more than 10 terabytes of storage. The falling cost of storage, with street prices in the region of GBP 1.50/MB, has made the option of implementing a new hard disk to avoid central or workgroup storage problems far more attractive. This is one of the reasons why the IT infrastructure of 41% of those surveyed had more than a terabyte of storage.

SENSIBLE USE OF SPACE

One of the biggest problems facing companies without a centralised storage solution is that of utilisation. In organisations with a distributed storage system, each component can run at varying levels of utilisation. High usage in some departments cannot be easily balanced out by low usage in others, sometimes leading to unnecessary spending on additional storage in one location while space goes unused elsewhere.

The overall capacity utilisation among our survey group was slightly better than expected at 55.8%, but that still represents a significant amount of unused, paid-for storage. It was also interesting that 15 per cent of our survey group still have less than 30% utilisation, highlighting poor storage management processes. More desirable utilisation levels of 61 to 80% accounted for 42% of the survey group, showing that more companies are benefiting from centralised storage solutions and tightly managed workgroup storage use.

Finally, only 2% claimed to have more than 90 per cent utilisation, with 6% in the 81 to 90% bracket. Our survey group expect their average utilisation to rise to 64.7% over the next two years, mainly as a result of increased data production and the growing size of client and server- side applications. Nine per cent expect to reach 90+% storage utilisation in that time.

FURTHER READING

www.sagitta-ps.co.uk.

• An independent storage specialist and the sponsor of Computing's storage research www.computing.co.uk/Features/1131759.
• An explanation of the technologies and acronyms used in storage area networking.

SUMMARY

• Most organisations are using a combination of storage technologies Public sector, finance and the media are big users of emerging technologies
• Just under one in five organisations are encountering problems with backups Storage requirements are set to double over the next two years.

chris_green@vnu.co.uk.