Is time running out for traditional storage?

Last year was witness to virtualisation continuing its rise to prominence across many sectors of the market and 2008 is set to be an even bigger year for a technology dubbed by some as the defining development of the recent IT landscape.

The advantages of virtualisation are many, including ease of use, energy efficiency and cost savings. You could be forgiven for thinking that virtualisation is a near unstoppable force, set to revolutionise many aspects of the IT industry. However it is by no means a one
size fits all technology, especially when considering storage virtualisation compared with traditional storage methods.

According to IDC’s recent end-user survey for Asia-Pacific, despite virtualisation’s success in the server environment, storage virtualisation adoption is slow.

“Virtualisation is a technology that is believed to reduce complexity and cost, improve utilisation levels and help control the server and storage sprawling within enterprises,” said Graham Penn, associate vice president of IDC’s Asia-Pacific storage. “However, while we have seen a lot of interest and excitement in the server virtualisation world, that same enthusiasm has been slower to appear in the storage side.”

IDC found that the modern data centres have considerable physical complexity, which had made the management of devices and data very difficult for IT managers. The research house suggested that the solution to the complexity is to introduce virtualisation technology at the server, networking, and the storage layer within the infrastructure fabric. This is expected to occur over the next two to four years so that a “utility capability” becomes available, eliminating silos. The goal is to enable easy management of the overall environment so as to provide better access to information and to have applications delivered as if they were a utility at a level of performance that the users have requested.

“By adding storage virtualisation on top of the heterogeneous storage systems, IT managers can provide a consistent interface for all storage applications, enabling a single set of storage applications, rather than multiple applications, supporting the same functions. This is also true for tasks such as data migration and consolidation, making these otherwise disruptive tasks far less disruptive to the storage enterprise,”
added Graham.

Dr. Kevin McIsaac, an advisor at analyst IBRS, said: “Server virtualisation will continue to be one of the most important IT infrastructures trends for the next few years. However, the same cannot be said of storage virtualisation, which is poorly defined, poorly understood and not widely used.

“Infrastructure managers must understand the realities of storage virtualisation, learn to separate vendor hype from facts, and discover where it can be applied to give real benefits.”

McIsaac said that over the next two years, network-based storage virtualisation will remain a niche, while thin provisioning will enjoy rapid adoption and become the storage virtualisation technique most talked about.

“The next major step forward in storage virtualisation is “thin provisioning”. This is a provisioning mechanism for allocating storage capacity on a just-in-time basis from a single shared capacity,” said McIsaac. “In this approach the physical storage is only allocated when it is used, not when it is provisioned. This avoids the poor utilisation rates that can occur with traditional provisioning where large volumes of storage capacity
are allocated to individual applications, but often remain unused.”

McIsaac advised storage administrators to review and define the key storage technologies and vendors; generally avoid using network-based storage virtualisation and instead minimise the number of array vendors deployed in the SAN or NAS; investigate the benefits, costs and risks of thin provisioning; and appropriately employ thin provisioning to drive up storage utilisation rates and reduce administration workload.

Research house Gartner recently stated in Sydney that virtualisation will be the most important technology in IT infrastructures and operations up to 2010, dramatically changing how IT departments manage, buy, deploy, plan and charge for their services.

At last year’s Gartner Infrastructure, Operations and Data Centre Summit in Sydney, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Thomas Bittman said that virtualisation was no longer only about server and storage consolidation and cost saving.

“It is now less about the technology and more about process change and cultural change within organisations,” said Bittman. “Virtualisation enables alternative delivery models for services. Each virtualised layer can be managed relatively independently or even owned by someone else, for example, streamed applications or employee-owned PCs. This can require major cultural changes for organisations.”

The total number of virtual machines deployed worldwide is expected to increase from 540,000 at the end of 2006 to more than four million by 2009, according to Gartner, but this is still only a fraction of the potential market.

“Several things will make virtualisation critical to most enterprises in the next few years: the need to consolidate space, power, installation and integration, and providing server resources which are capable of responding to unpredictable workloads,” said Bittman. “Virtual machine hypervisor technology will become almost free, embedded in servers by hardware manufacturers and in operating systems by software vendors, further accelerating adoption.”

In his keynote presentation, Bittman said that the gap between well-managed and badly managed IT infrastructure is growing. A November 2006 survey of 700 Gartner clients showed that most organisations are in the very early stages of their infrastructure and operations maturity.

“Virtualisation without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualisation in the first place,” said Bittman. “Automation is the critical next step to help organisations stop ‘virtualisation sprawl’, which is not much better than server sprawl.”
Gartner recommends that organisations develop a vision for their own infrastructure and build a plan to get there. “Nothing beats infrastructure and operations when it comes to the ability to impact IT spending, staffing and business performance. Despite all the talk, IT infrastructure has not become a commodity. As technology vendors battle for control over your IT infrastructure, having a vision of your own will help you stay in control,” added Bittman.

The Australian market is certainly not shying away from a shift towards a virtual environment. Virtualisation vendor VMware last year found that Australian companies are embracing virtualisation, with more than 91 percent of organisation surveyed being familiar with virtualisation technology, and more than 59 percent already deploying or currently implementing a virtualisation solution.

An interesting note from the survey is that server consolidation and server utilisation are the major drivers for the deployment of virtualisation technology within firms’ organisation. Disaster recovery (DR) was also a key factor in the decision to implement a virtualisation solution, with up to 62 percent of surveyed organisations listing improved DR capabilities among the top five benefits sought from server virtualisation.

There is no mention of storage virtualisation and VMware was quick to set the record straight on its direction. Paul Harapin, A/NZ managing director of VMware, told CRN: “The first thing I’d like to say is that we’re not a storage virtualisation company, we virtualise the desktop and
server environment.

“However, storage resellers are some of our better partners as the SAN technology is a critical component in our technology. Our business is a channel business, and we work with OEM partners, system integrators and the reseller community. We have around 400 partners.”

It is encouraging for storage resellers to hear that one of virtualisation’s chief pioneers values their background. This opens the door for any storage resellers who are concerned about a shift away from traditional means, as their skills can be utilised to provide virtualisation’s many benefits.

“Using a virtualisation infrastructure offers a number of benefits including business agility as you don’t have a static environment and are not locked into a physical infrastructure,” said Harapin. “With a virtual environment you are able to react better to changes in your IT infrastructure. A new application doesn’t need procurement, you just provision a virtual machine and have a new server up and running in 10 minutes.”

Harapin said a couple of years ago the market attitude was ‘we know about virtualisation, but we are not sure about it’, but now people are thinking that if they are not using virtualisation they are under business pressure from their competition.

“Virtualisation is the direction of the market and is a “must have” moving forward. I would be surprised in the coming years if it does not become a must have for any firm with more than one server,” added Harapin.

Mark Nielsen, product marketing manager at HP, still believes there is a market for traditional storage means, despite the strong and growing demand for virtual storage.

“There is still a case for traditional storage such as when you put in an application which is mission critical and requires dedicated storage. The traditional storage approach is used more by larger companies such as banks,” he said.

“I think customers have become more aware of the benefits of virtualisation. If you look at virtualisation, HP has been delivering storage virtualisation for quite a long time. I think we are going to see a lot more virtual storage deployed by our customers during 2008.”

Nielsen said the many advantages of storage virtualisation is driving the adoption as customers can pool their resources together as their business requires it. “Customers [when using virtualisation] are more agile and can adapt to business changes, but with traditional storage you have to plan out how you are going to support new applications.

“We are seeing a lot of virtualisation from a tape perspective. We get asked if tape is dead and we say absolutely not. It is able to meet backup requirements and customers are asking how quickly can I get the data I have to backup? Virtual data helps with these restore times. Tape is now more of an archive solution,” added Nielsen.

Scott Morris, director of partner and public sector sales for A/NZ at NetApp, said the vendor is experiencing a strong shift in the market to virtualised storage.

“With budgets decreasing across the board and data volumes continuing to rise, IT departments are under enormous pressure to provide a low-cost alternative to traditional storage, whilst at the same time ensuring their company data is safe, secure and available,” said Morris. “Virtualised storage offers a significant list of business benefits which result in more effective IT systems and a healthier bottom line.”

Morris said that the dramatic increase in VMware uptake is a reflection of the business need for simpler, consolidated IT environments.

“The channel community is moving towards virtual storage options, but the key factor partners need to remember is that they can provide the highest value to customers by gaining a true understanding of customers’ business processes and taking those capabilities into a virtualised platform,” said Morris. “Resellers selling virtualised storage need to adopt a consulting focus and sell virtualised storage as a business change process. That way, they can go into new accounts and offer customers the full benefit of virtualised storage, not just the products or the thin veneer of the first layer of the sale.”

Bruce Coulthard, A/NZ systems engineer at storage vendor Quantum, said: “Virtualisation is one of the hottest technologies being discussed and implemented across diverse sections of the market. Traditionally positioned at server classification and consolidation, virtualisation is providing a direct benefit on tiered storage, but currently there is a definite focus on
backup storage.

“Virtualisation is all about achieving more with less, and with the maturity of our DXi data de-duplication appliances, Quantum is seeing a huge interest in organisations wanting to virtualise their backup storage environments. The ability to protect and recover significantly more data (up to 50x) while using less physical storage capacity carries huge benefits to organisations; both financial and environmental.”

Coulthard explained that by storing more with less, de-duplication is a ‘green’ technology, and thanks to the world and local leaders for their focus and strategy on combating greenhouse and carbon emissions, ‘green’ technology is certainly attracting increasing attention.

“There is still a requirement for traditional backup storage, particularly for organisations that do not have an abundance of data and/or do not anticipate any data growth purely due to the nature of their business,” he said.

Coulthard said there has been a varying degree of take-up within the resellers. “As backup virtualisation, and particularly data de-duplication is fairly new, there has been a variety of resellers taking a more conservative approach than others; in some cases it simply boils down to the individuals involved.

“Virtualisation, is here, it is real, and it is technology to be reckoned with. It is not for everyone, but should be considered as part of any strategic business technology plan.”

Coulthard said the virtual server environments introduce two major challenges that can disrupt traditional backup and recovery processes. Foremost is that using a traditional “agent”-based backup strategy on virtual machines results in high levels of resource contention on a single physical server – prolonging backup windows and creating management headaches. Additionally there is a need to protect system files used to rebuild entire virtual server instances, he explained.

“As a result, organisations are often challenged by the need for a “mixed” data protection strategy that can address virtual and traditional storage environments,” added Coulthard.

Chris Casey, general manager for A/NZ and South-East Asia at vendor EqualLogic, said: “The biggest hype around virtualisation is server virtualisation, and that is where a lot of the focus has been. However there is also some noise around storage virtualisation, where there is a lot of hype and marketing going on, but a lot of actual customers don’t understand storage virtualisation.”

Casey said storage virtualisation is important to customers as they still want to be able to provision volumes at will. Virtualisation is easy for customers to use and they only need limited technical knowledge.

“There are resellers who have built a new business model around a virtualisation strategy by teaming up vendors such as VMware and ourselves. You have to get the customer to the mindset where virtualisation is something they are 100 percent confident with. Some customers are more against virtualisation, while others have moved very quickly to adopt virtualisation,” added Casey. “Some customers have traditional storage and are thinking ‘if it is not broken, we don’t need to fix’. So there is still a lot of development to take place in the virtualisation space. By 2010 I would say that most customers would be going for a virtual offering”

Ward Nash, regional sales manager at Wyse Technology, said: “The question is how big will my virtual machine get and how much storage will I need? Virtualisation is the latest term in IT and there is nobody who does not have a virtualisation story. If you want to be a virtualisation-focused reseller, you need to know about the SAN, desktop and server side of it.

“I hope we see resellers offering customers an end-to-end virtualisation solution, which includes desktop, server and storage virtualisation,” added Nash.

Thomas Fikentscher, sales manager for IBM enterprise solutions at distributor Ingram Micro, said if a reseller has a strong storage footprint in a large organisation, then they are in a position to provide storage virtualisation to them.

“Everyone is talking about virtualisation and that is moving into the data centre space, so you will need to understand the storage side. The early adopters [of storage virtualisation] are large organisations, but it will move into the SMB space,” said Fikentscher.

At the start of the year IDC outlined what it expects will sculpt the storage landscape during 2008 (see box-out). It found that demand for storage capacity continues to grow at a rate of nearly 60 percent per year and IDC believes that during 2008 the industry will see significant shifts in the way data is stored, managed, and protected. The overarching theme of storage efficiency will intensify throughout 2008 and increase the industry’s focus on virtualisation strategies and green initiatives as well as information consolidation techniques such as deduplication.

“In the past several years, storage trends have tended to be tactical and focused on developments in specific technologies,” said Benjamin Woo, vice president, enterprise storage systems at IDC. “2008 is likely to represent an inflection point in the way applications and storage will be interfaced.”
IDC’s research also added that virtual servers will emerge as the killer application for iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface).

It is fair to say that storage virtualisation has not swept traditional means aside overnight. Storage has too many different orifices and there are too many different types of customer demands and needs around storage. Demand for storage in general is set to continue its upward spiral, and virtual storage will have a part to play in that growth.

It was once said that diversity makes for a rich tapestry. Resellers would be well advised to ensure they have both traditional storage and virtual storage means on offer for customers. Going just for virtual could be deemed too narrow, but if resellers ignore it they could be left behind by more pro-active partners.

Is time running out for traditional storage means? It depends whose watch you are looking at, but virtual means cannot be ignored and traditional means cannot be forgotten.