STORAGE MANAGEMENT/ SMART SHOPPER: What to Ask and What to Avoid in Provisioning Tools Stephanie Balaouras Senior Analyst, The Yankee Group

Agenda Introduction The problem storage provisioning tries to solve How provisioning plays with other mgmt. tools Where to start: What are the options? Key architectures to consider Provisioning tools “nice-to-haves” and “must haves” 5 “gotchas” to consider during selection process Final recommendations

Introduction Caution important in selecting provisioning tools This is an early market with immature products Ongoing concern about how standards will be embraced in these tools Customers that have a significant need to reduce time dealing with storage provisioning should consider it Automated provisioning is still not quite here Provisioning is one element of a larger policy- based management strategy

Problems provisioning solves Time One of the top time-consuming tasks is allocating storage  It involves storage administrator, SAN administrator, systems administrator and others  Requires specialized storage expertise per vendor array Policy definition and process automation Helps to formalize the provisioning process by creating common policies for how storage is provisioned Prepares for future automation Efficiency Used in conjunction with capacity planning, cuts down on guesswork and over provisioning

What is storage provisioning? Involves the tasks necessary for allocating additional storage to an application * Is generally focused on larger storage system requirements today Is one of a number of tasks toward increased automation of storage management *Remember throughout the presentation that it’s all about allocating storage ultimately to applications. Today's tools predominantly only provision storage between the storage systems and servers

How complicated is it today? DEFINE RAID GROUPS PLANNING CREATE LUNs ASSIGN/MAP LUNs to PORTS UPDATE LUN MASKING Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 1 Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 2

How complicated is it today? (2) CREATE OR UPDATE ZONES Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 1 Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 2 UPDATE MULTIPATHING

How complicated is it today? (3) CREATE/UPDATE VOLUME MANAGEMENT CREATE/UPDATE FILE SYSTEM Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 1 Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 2

How complicated is it today? (4) UPDATE APPLICATIONS SETUP LOCAL SNAPSHOTS/ REPLICAS Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 1 Storage Systems Switch/Director Servers SAN 2 UPDATE BACKUPS UPDATE REMOTE MIRRORING

How people do it today Percentage of Respondents Source: Yankee Group Survey, 289 Respondents, 2003

How provisioning works with other tools

How provisioning works with other tools (2) Device/element management Necessary to configure RAID Groups and LUNs within the array. This is typically still a manual step Assign LUNs/Volumes to Front End Ports. This is where most Provisioning tools begin. SAN management Necessary to create and update zones between server HBAs, fabric device ports and front-end array ports. Good integration available today. Volume management Create/Update volume groups, logical volumes, file systems. Little to no integration available today Capacity management Assists in developing policies and preventing over-under allocating storage. Capacity Monitoring, Trend Analysis Management consoles/dashboards Topology visualization, status, alerts (especially for capacity)

How provisioning works with other tools (3) Thus generally purchasing integrated provisioning tools with most products today SNIA SMI-S will change this over next months

Where to start: What are the options? Data path management tools Predominantly provision only data path between server and storage Extension to management consoles Provisioning tools that are add-on modules to SAN management tools and storage resource management Sometimes integrated with device/element management tools Storage automation tools Still require the the underlying integration of other tools but add a work flow engine

Provisioning tools: Must haves, nice-to-haves Heterogeneous support – Must have Must support heterogeneous storage systems, fabric devices, HBAs Tight integration with SAN management tool Wizards – Must have It needs to be easy to set up Use of a professional services division is a red flag Testing and validation – Must have Ways to test and validate provisioning before committing to production

Provisioning tools: Must haves, nice-to-haves (2) Workflow – Nice to have Workflow engines that allow for multiple person approvals Integration with volume managers – Nice to have

5 gotchas/questions to consider Pricing: What’s it going to cost me overall? TCO Check the fine print on maintenance and patches Heterogeneous support Must support all the storage systems, fabric devices and HBAs in your infrastructure Product roadmap and integration Next most important integration points are:  Snapshot/replica awareness  Backup application awareness and integration  Volume management integration  Application and database integration

Final recommendations Determine if storage allocation is a significantly time consuming task for your enterprise Today’s tools only provision from LUN to server HBA. Still need to update volume groups, file systems and databases and applications etc.. Determine if a provisioning tool could ease the workloads of your most experienced storage administrators

Final recommendations (2) Consider vendors with heterogeneous support and native SAN management capabilities or extremely tight integration with SAN management tools Consider vendors with long-range integration goals. Snapshot/Replica awareness Buyer beware: Look for ways to validate vendor claims with real trial deployments or extensive demos

Questions?