More content generation drives a need for new storage systems STORAGE IS A FOUNDATION of IT, but as data centres become more complex, as more is expected with less and efficiency and resources decrease, the foundations of storage need to be overhauled to deal with these challenges. This was the message from the recent ITWeb Xiotech Intelligent Storage Forum in Johannesburg. Keynote speakers included industry leaders Steve Sicola, VP of Xiotech USA; Niall Kritzinger, regional systems engineer of VMware, and Stafford Masie, MD of Google SA.

The general theme running through these speakers` presentations was that storage systems need to be rebuilt to accommodate the increasing amounts of content being generated through emerging technologies. Masie noted that as cellphones increasingly become social computing devices and the internet moves in the direction of multimedia, storage systems are having trouble keeping up.

IS ISE THE SOLUTION?

According to Sicola, storage systems haven`t changed significantly in the past twenty years. "The foundations of storage haven`t kept pace with increased growth, protection and availability requirements of the modern data centre," he said. As a result, enterprises had reached a point of diminishing returns with current commodities. That was until the creation of the Intelligent Storage Elements (ISE), which he says, "represents a complete overhaul of the foundations of storage".

In his address, Sicola spoke about how ISE resolves the foundational issues of storage without collapsing systems in an enterprise. "As a storage enclosure that reads drive and control telemetry, performs true hard-drive detection, remanufactures drives-in-site and maps around bad surfaces to continue operating, this is built for the future," he said.

VIRTUALISATION AND STORAGE

Kritzinger looked at the value a virtualised solution could add to enterprises struggling with intelligent storage systems. "Virtualisation can close the massive gap that exists between what IT delivers and business expects. It`s about business driving business and having a dynamic IT infrastructure in place to keep up with growth," he said.

With effective virtualisation solutions in place, storage can become more efficient. "Fundamental to what we do with virtualisation is increase flexibility, speed of change, scalability while maintaining predictability and control and ensuring all other components of the business are kept in place," he explained.

Kritzinger said it was possible to turn 300 servers, operating on physical machines, into eight servers on one rack, operating through a virtualised machine. But, the success of some of virtual solutions is completely dependant on storage systems. "The live migration of virtual machines is 100% dependant on shared storage. In order for benefits such as zero downtime and continued service availability to be experienced, effective storage systems need to be in place," Kritzinger said.

GOOGLE IT

For Google SA, effective storage has become necessary now more than ever. According to Masie: "Google has the largest data centre in the world and we constantly require capacity. Our Google search, maps and video are rated number one in SA. The popularity of YouTube has turned storage into a headache for Google."

Masie highlighted the growing number of people who are capturing content and the need for that content to "live" somewhere and to be accessible to millions more people. He said standards needed to be developed and adopted to deal with this challenge. "As consumers generate the greatest amount of content, storage will become the biggest and most important standard," he explained.

Sicola set out the standards that storage systems need to aspire to. "This new foundation needs to target failure avoidance, focus on efficiency, balanced performed storage and automation of systems management," he said.