11
enhanced provisioning time. limitations and challenges of environments face. China’s
Secondary benefits, such as traditional storage provisioning relatively new venture into the
ANAL
“liquidity”—or motion—have methods (ESG Report, Thin world of IT is such that the
positive effects ranging from Provisioning, April 2006). More infrastructure “sprawl” issue
YSIS MANA
dynamic system migrations to than half reported that others have spent 50 years
high-availability and improved between 31% and 50% of their dealing with is something that
disaster recovery; all without purchased capacity was Chinese IT has yet to face and,
the normal disruptions stranded and unused, while as such, can stay focused on
traditionally experienced by the 80% felt that storage the cause: the data itself.
business. provisioning had a significant Most of us are not so lucky.
negative impact on IT time and
Server and storage layer resources. In other words, This realization helped
consolidation has the same traditional storage provisioning crystallize the situation: if IT
obvious effects. Consolidating methods were placing a strain can put itself back into a
GEMENT
more physical components into on capital and operating position to treat every decision
fewer physical or virtual budgets. from the perspective of the
management elements data itself—and not simply the
simplifies the entire Consolidation for operational infrastructure—our efficiencies
infrastructure stack, which in benefit is obvious, but the and effectiveness could be
turn simplifies everything incremental value gained by optimized.
operationally connected with doing so with secondary
that stack. Less is easier to enabling technologies, such as If data growth is the inevitable
manage and operate than virtualization, can magnify cause of our problems, then
more. those efficiency gains well logically, we do ourselves a
beyond the initial cost savings. disservice by simply treating
Leveraging virtualization Less equipment means less the symptoms—or the
technologies from within and power and cooling, less people results—of those problems. By
across infrastructure elements to support and manage it, and treating the causes or sources
can enable dynamic movement higher levels of utilization— of the problem directly, we can
for tactical, error prone, and which leads directly to lower dramatically enhance or
time consuming functions that operating costs and higher eliminate the efficiency issues
normally require significant operating efficiency. that arise “downstream.”
planning and operating People often overlook this
attention. Data and system Data Virtualization: basic fact.
migrations that can be done Attacking the Problem
virtually mitigate a significant at the Source Data virtualization—a virtual
amount of risk and business While attending a “Green IT” instance of data instead of a
disruption. “Thin conference in China recently, I physical one—is not often
provisioning” in storage and spoke with a senior official categorized, but is perhaps the
server virtualization—the responsible for China’s global most interesting means of
concept of showing an economic analysis. He asked, gaining efficiency throughout
application a virtual (large) “Why do you focus on the the entire spectrum of IT
representation of “allocated” symptom (meaning operations. Deduplication,
resources, but in reality only infrastructure) before the cause thin provisioning, and
supplying that application (meaning data)?” It was a snapshots are examples of
what it actually requires— great question. Most techniques that dramatically
provides huge utilization commercial Chinese IT reduce or eliminate the true
improvements and clear cost operations are relatively new— physical issues associated with
advantages. ESG conducted a unburdened by many of the data itself while continuing to
survey of storage long term historical issues provide unfettered “virtual”
administrators focused on the European and North American access.
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM MAR/APR 09
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