The 7 Deadly Sins of Storage
Management
Bob Zimmerman
Director, Storage Research
Giga Information Group
Agenda
• The Original 7
• Walking through the Abuse of Storage
• Contrary Virtues
• Techniques and Savings
• Summary
The Original 7
•
•
•
•
Gluttony
Anger
Envy
Greed
Lust
Pride
Sloth
Gluttony . . . or why can’t I keep
it all
• Inordinate desire to consume more than required
• The sys admin who had 9 OS generations on disk
• The user who kept every file he ever touched
• My inbox
• Solution: Strict life-cycle management
Anger…it’s all your fault
• Manifested by an individual who ignores
life’s positives and opts instead for fury
• User complaining about response time
• “What do you mean my data isn’t
recoverable”
• Solution: Managed Service Level
Agreements
Envy…I deserve it all
• Desire for another’s position/possession
• Why does her work get priority
• How come I’m here in the data center
24x7
• Solution: Automated policy management
with exception handling
Greed…need it or not, its mine
• Desire for material advantage
• Every dot-com that’s come and gone
• I want everything in my data warehouse
• Take over my departmental system, but. . .
• Solution: Enterprise-wide, consolidated IT
Lust…just give me the latest &
greatest
• Inordinate craving for the toys of life
• Who gets the sleek new laptop
• Why do the network gurus get the 10Gbs links
• Solution: Manage storage for business ROI, not
overhead cost
Pride…I’d rather do it
myself
• Excessive belief in one's own abilities
• The manual?, who needs directions
• ‘tar’ and ‘cpio’ are everything you need
• I ran the 1st pre-beta on my block
• Solution: Get rid of the “wild ducks”
Sloth…let the other guy do it
• Avoiding physical or ethereal work
• Keeping documentation current
• Testing all those DR backups
• I need 2 TB for that new app…tomorrow!
• Solution: Treat IT, especially storage, as a
business asset, with measurable, reportable ROI
The Contrary Virtues
•
•
•
•
Denial
Patience
Kindness
Sharing
Charity
Humility
Diligence
Typical Storage Admin
Workloads
• Mainframe 5 - 10TB FTE
– Really 1.5 FTEs shop
– DFSMS fully implemented
• Consolidated open systems
– 750GB – 3TB FTE
– Well known dot-com 100TB FTE
• LAN based DAS
Tip
– 200GB – 500GB FTE
– ~25% of LAN administrator
Policy-based, Exception
Management
• Information life-cycle
– Pre-define end-of-life
– Manage performance
• hsm
– Archive/delete
Best Practice
• Automate data integrity processing
– Backups & Disaster Recovery
– Build-in encryption standards
– RAID may not be enough
Use Technology to Manage
Technology
• Networked storage
– SAN & NAS support snapshot/remote copy
– NDMP can use SAN hooks
– SAN -> SAM
Best Practice
– Virtualization
• SRM will become RSM
– Real-time Storage Management
– Application focused reporting
– Automatic capacity provisioning
14
Summary
• Storage is an enterprise resource
• There are no silver bullets
• Tools & technologies almost keep up
• Reinforce the business value of storage
Questions?
Bob Zimmerman
Director, Storage Research
Giga Information Group