Searching for Holy Grails: Interview with Jon Toigo (Continued)

Storage Issues and Solutions
FTPOnline: Turning to the topic of storage, you have a new edition of The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management coming out soon. What are some of the new storage issues faced by IT managers? What are ongoing issues that still need to be addressed?

Jon Toigo: Wow. That would require a whole book to answer. The storage issues confronting IT managers come down to two: data protection and data management. We are still interpreting management as the management of devices and components and contextualizing storage as a repository—somewhere that data goes to sleep. We must now acknowledge that storage is a lot more dynamic than the von Neumann machine design envisioned. Data is constantly in motion and we need entirely new layers of management software to deal with dynamism. For example, we need a way to migrate data based on access frequency as well as other criteria that are associated with the data itself, and the application and business process that it supports. I suggest a way to do this in the book and I am sure that there are other approaches. As data files are increasingly treated as objects and as the data storage infrastructure becomes truly networked, all kinds of opportunities exist to optimize capacity so we only need to pay for what we actually use.

On the subject of data protection, current security techniques are still in their infancy. This will become a key issue area as more and more storage is networked. In general terms, the field of alternatives between tape and disk mirroring is expanding exponentially. IT managers confront the double burden of keeping informed about new techniques and sifting through the "marketecture" around the technologies that spews non-stop, like water from a cracked fire hydrant, from the vendor community and its mouthpieces at SNIA and the major research and analysis houses. Getting objective and actionable information about storage technology is becoming a very, very difficult task.

The biggest issue, perhaps, is getting those folks who are tasked with the administration of storage some visibility and credentials. There is no formal job description for a data manager. His job is narrowly conceived in most organizations as a maintenance droid assigned to keep arrays, switches, host bus adapters, and interconnects up and running. Yet, even in this task, he has little formal training. Think about it: we entrust our most critical non-human asset and our most expensive infrastructure component to folks who have absolutely no formal training in how to do the job. This needs to be addressed quickly and the role of data manager needs to be firmly established as a discipline within the IT field.

FTPOnline: One chapter in the new storage book is called "Final Word: Tape is Dead...Maybe." What are some of the new alternatives for data protection that fall between tape backup and disk mirroring?

Jon Toigo: They fall into a spectrum, some aimed at reducing the time required to take a backup, others focused on shortening "time-to-data"—also known as restore time. For a long while, the industry said we only had two options: mirror or backup. Now, we are discovering that alternative strategies do exist. Techniques like disk-to-disk-to-tape can abbreviate the backup process, while the new crop of "way back machines" (that reduce the need for mirror splits to create synchronous point-in-time recovery volumes) can shorten restore speeds while alleviating the expense of old-fashioned mirroring. There is some pretty interesting innovation going on in startup land, much less in established vendor shops.

FTPOnline: Why is it important to tailor storage solutions to the type of data being stored?

Jon Toigo: The simple answer is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Going with platforms hyped by vendors to be the last storage you will ever need to buy has created an unsustainable expense model for storage today. We utilize only about 20 to 30 percent of our storage efficiently, and we own three to eight times the storage we actually need. Plus, the storage is poorly instrumented for management, a major cost accelerator. Data characteristics, largely set by application requirements, should dictate the type of disk, interconnect, and platform architecture that are suited to its storage. It is just that straightforward: mom doesn't need a SAN to store recipes on her PC or to surf the Web. The application and its data determine the appropriate storage technology.

FTPOnline: What changes do you think we'll see in storage planning in the next year? The next five years?

Jon Toigo: The storage planning approach needs to become rational. Consumers need to join together to demand real standards to support real interoperability from the "Wild West" industry around storage. I am hopeful that economics will force IT managers to forget brands and to start buying technology based on its measurable benefits. We also need more discipline in the acquisition process and better training for those who manage storage for a living.

FTPOnline: Do you have any other advice about what IT architects and planners should be doing today to move their organizations ahead in both storage and disaster recovery?

Jon Toigo: Just this. You have a job to do in both cases that will never make you the most popular person in the company. Treat it like a sacred trust and don't expect to realize perfection. Both perfect storage and perfect resilience are holy grails.

Sample Chapters
Here are sample chapters from each of the Jon Toigo books mentioned in the interview.

"Data Recovery Planning", Chapter 4 of Disaster Recovery Planning: Preparing for the Unthinkable, 3/e.

"Final Word: Tape is Dead... Maybe", Chapter 9 of The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management.

Challenges and Costs

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