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Alok Shrivastava
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Provided by EMC Corporation
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Managing Storage: Trends, Challenges, and Options 1
1-800-843-8733 • www.learningtree.ca LEARNING TREE INTERNATIONAL White Paper
Table 1 – Most important activities/constraints identified 36% Designing and deploying emerging storage
as challenges by managers and professionals technologies (such as storage virtualization,
IP SAN, GRID, etc.)
Each of these activities is ongoing at various levels in each 31% Lack of skilled storage professionals
of the companies. Activities such as backup/recovery have
23% Compliance regulations
been in practice for decades; still the professionals believe
that they are not doing enough or not performing them
Table 2 – What keeps them awake;
well. The following table summarizes the input from pain points in order of priority identified by
managers and professionals. There is a strong synergy managers and individual contributors
between the managers and individual contributors as
they have identified exactly the same challenges in Explosive growth in storage requirements and the storage
similar priority order. professionals’ knowledge and skill gaps are the primary
reasons for not executing many of these activities to the
desired levels. These gaps are not necessarily due to lack
of competence, but to the fact that a comprehensive
storage technology education has not been available.
For example, colleges and universities have not, until 3.1 Storage Technology Segments
now, included storage technology in their courses.
Storage technology deployment and its importance to the
On the other hand, vendor training typically focuses
data center aligned with general market trends for each of
on their products covering deployment and usage
the storage technology segments.
rather than building skills and competency to architect, de-
sign, integrate, and manage entire infrastructure • Storage subsystems, by default, are the most important
and end-to-end information lifecycle. segment as they provide the backbone infrastructure,
We will learn the methodology by which most storage pro- storage capacity, reliability, availability, performance,
fessionals acquire knowledge and build skills to and connectivity.
carry out their assignments in section 4 of this paper. • Two segments, storage areas networks (SANs) and
backup/recovery (BR), were rated important by more
3. Complex Storage Environments than 75 percent of the storage professionals.
This study sought to determine the similarities and • Remote replication was considered important by 50–75
differences among storage infrastructures. The percent of storage professionals
responses reveal that data centers across the
• NAS and local replication are considered important by
Americas, Europe, and Asia have deployed very
25–50 percent of the professionals
similar storage solutions, including hardware and
software. The sizes vary based upon business • CAS, IP-SAN, and emerging technologies are considered
requirements, or in some cases, a particular vendor important by 10–25 percent of the professionals.
may have a stronger presence in a given environment,
but on the whole, the deployed technology and Each of the technology segments is unique, bringing its
challenges are very similar. own specific business or operational values. For example,
SAN and NAS provide connectivity options with unique
• Nearly 80 percent of the companies have multi-site functionality, while BR and replication technologies provide
data processing environments. options for information protection against planned and
• Nearly 80 percent of the companies are at various unplanned outages.
stages of storage consolidation.
• Nearly 45 percent of the companies have 100 TB
or more usable storage to manage.
• Average installed usable capacity is approximately
222 TB.
Over 1PB Over 1PB
15% 15%
500TB-1PB 500TB-1PB
10% 10%
Up to 100TB Up to 100TB
55% 55%
100-500TB 100-500TB
20% 20%
% Respondents
60%
requires unique skills to assess, plan, design, deploy,
and manage them effectively. Deploying specialized 40%
60%
Job titles and descriptions of dedicated storage
professionals are evolving. The following are the most 40%
common job functions being deployed by the studied
20%
organizations:
0%
SAN Backup/ NAS Repli- DAS IP-SAN CAS
• Storage Manager Manager of the formalized Recovery cation
storage team or used inter
changeably for Storage Figure 6 – Most common Storage technology
Administrator segments implemented
4.1 Responsibilities
Storage groups are responsible for the overall planning, The list includes various job functions, including storage
design, implementation, monitoring, managing, testing, administration, architects, DR admin., BR admin., etc.
and operating all components of the infrastructure. Percent time captured for each of the activities highlights
Interactions with IT and storage managers and the effort involved and possible importance of the tasks.
professionals resulted in the list of activities/tasks for This list could be used as a tool to define responsibilities
which they are responsible (Table 3). of the storage group and individuals.
• Troubleshooting 11.3%
Another equally important dimension of these responsi- The ratio of installed capacity to the number of
bilities is their alignment to different storage technology professionals in the storage team is high at lower
segments. Skills and processes are required to manage capacities and it reduces as the capacity increases.
these tasks against expected expertise inone or more If we count 100 percent dedicated storage profes-
assigned “specialty” or storage technology segments. sionals (if two individuals are spending 50 percent
of their time on storage-related activities, they are
Figure 8 illustrates the percent of time spent in the last
counted as one professional in this exercise), the
12 months by key technology segments implemented.
current ratio at 100 TB is 1:20 (one professional for
every 20 TB installed). In other words, five fulltime,
40%
dedicated professionals are managing a storage
% Time invested in last 12 months
20%
The ratio reached 1:40 at 500 TB, where approx.
12–13 professionals are managing 500 TB. In larger
storage infrastructures, the ratio continues to reduce.
Typically, 17 professionals are managing 1 PB of
0%
SAN Backup/ Storage NAS Remote Local CAS IP-SAN storage (ratio nearly 1:60).
Recovery Sub- Repli. Repli.
systems
Figure 8 – Percent of time spent by storage professionals 4.3 Storage Group Skills and Performance
by storage technology segment (last 12 months)
Analysis of IT and storage managers’ assessment
of skill levels leads to the conclusion that about 35
4.2 Storage Group Size percent of their teams are properly skilled to carry out
The storage group consists of multiple roles that include their responsibilities, whereas the remaining nearly
storage architects, managers, and administrators. We two-thirds of their teams require additional skills,
continue to find a strong correlation between the number knowledge, and development.
of professionals engaged in storage-related activities and This is a key challenge for storage managers because
installed storage capacity. it underscores the very real skills gap in their teams.
Sub-optimal skills yield sub-optimal storage deploy-
1600
ment. On the other hand, a well-skilled team will
Installed Usable Storage Capacity (TB)
1400
lead to higher productivity, better deployment and
1200
management of technology, and optimization of
1000
800
the number of professionals required.
600
400
200
0
2 3 4 5 12 17 25
# Professionals dedicated to managing storage infrastructure
Figure 10 below illustrates the overall rating of the storage level of expertise within the overall storage team in the
teams against the identified tasks and responsibilities represented companies.
(Table 3). Strong, moderate, and weak bars indicate the
SAN
B/R
Subsystems
NAS
Remote Repl.
Local Repl.
CAS
IP SAN
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Figure 11 maps skill sets of the storage teams against the in relevant technology segment (from Figure 11) will
important technology segments. Skill levels of the teams paint a clear picture of the effective competence of the
in SAN, backup/recovery, and storage subsystems are storage group. Detailed assessment of each individual
rated high, while skills in NAS, remote replication, local within the group is required to ascertain strengths
replication, etc. are rated low. A correlation between ability and weaknesses for each task and related technology
to execute tasks (as shown in Figure 10) and competence segment.
BR Administrators 126%
Figure 13 shows the preferred hiring options. The majority hiring new employees. The next best alternative is to
of managers prefer to hire experienced professionals to hire well-trained and certified individuals.
reduce the learning period and reduce risks associated with
Hire Experienced
Hire Certified
Internal Appointment
Engage Consultants
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
% of Managers
With the shortage of skilled manpower in the industry— On-the-job-training, technology vendor training, and
capable, experienced, skilled individuals are usually self-development by reading manuals are preferred
not available for hiring. Major factors for this skills sources of storage training and development, followed
shortage include lack of storage technology education by training for certifications and training provided by
in the marketplace and in academia. EMC has taken independent IT training companies.
the lead and successfully introduced storage technology
On-the-job training, technology vendor training, and
curriculum (and certification) in several universities
self-development by reading manuals typically cover
as well as in the open market via public classes. A lot
usage and management of products and technology
more needs to be done to convert this industry-wide
that is either already implemented or is in the process
bottleneck into lucrative employment opportunities
of being implemented. In addition, there is a need for
for aspiring professionals.
wider and deeper training focusing on underlying
Given that there are very limited numbers of certified technology concepts, planning, designing and managing.
or well-skilled storage professionals in the market, This will enable the storage professionals to indepen-
managers frequently resort to internal recruitment. dently and more-efficiently design and deploy storage
Often the internal recruitment involves moving an infrastructures fully leveraging the capabilities
existing valuable employee who has a different expertise of all applicable storage technology segments.
(such as operating systems, databases, etc.), but has
very limited knowledge about storage technology.
On-the-job Training
Vendor Training
Self Development
Certification Training
IT Training Companies
In-house Training
4.5 Storage Group Skills Model Specialization: Advancements in technology and the
rapid introduction of highly sophisticated solutions have
Another important aspect to consider is breadth and
made it nearly impossible for “everyone in the team to be
depth of knowledge and skills required to perform the
expert at everything.”The number of individuals and their
storage-related functions effectively. There is a need for
specialties can be assigned based upon the assignment
a well-defined skills model which can be applied to both
requirements (such as storage administration and manage-
development and deployment of expertise in the group.
ment or planning and designing) and technology deployed
At the very least, three distinct requirements can be in the infrastructure (storage subsystems, SAN, NAS, CAS,
identified (represented as Skills Pyramid in Figure 15). replication, backup/recovery, etc.).
Foundations: Required for all members of the team. Formal specialization assignments also will help address
Strong understanding of underlying technical concepts the development needs for nearly two-thirds of the
across all storage technology segments is a must to be existing workforce.
able to:
Expertise Development: Depending upon deployed
1. Fully understand products and technology in each technology and application environments, a number of
segment; experts may be required in the storage group. Two distinct
2. Design and manage end-to-end lifecycle of focus areas can be identified for expertise development:
information/data from creation to archiving; and • Deeper knowledge of deployed products and technology
3. Make accurate technology decisions while designing will help maximize performance and availability.
information infrastructure for critical processing • Ability to integrate technology with applications
environments. (databases, e-mail systems, etc.) will help deploy well-
integrated solutions.
- Align to assignments
and responsibilities
- In-depth skills in selected
technology segment(s)
- Technology concepts
& principles
- All storage technology
segments