Data Centre Optimisation A 2e2 Solution Offering Enabled by EMC s Unified Storage White paper by 2e2 June 27 2011
Contents 1 What is the situation for IT organisations today? 2 What challenges does this present to IT? 3 What 2e2 recommends 4 Why choose 2e2 for Unified Storage? 1 2 3-4 5-6
1 What is the situation for IT organisations today? Explosion in growth of data IT organisations of all sizes are struggling to deal with the tremendous growth in data of all types, especially file-based, unstructured data. What do we mean by unstructured data? Structured data is typically found in data bases like SQL, formatted in rows and columns. Unstructured data has no identifiable structure. Unstructured data typically includes bitmap images/objects, text and other data types that are not part of a database. Most enterprise data today can actually be considered unstructured. An email is considered unstructured data. Even though the email messages themselves are organized in a database, such as Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes, the body of the message is really freeform text without any structure at all -- the data is considered raw. Documents, bitmap images are other examples of unstructured data. Although a Word document has some formatting attached to it, the content of the document is completely free form Even in difficult economic times, the number of digital applications and the amount of data they create continue to grow at a rapid pace. IDC forecasts that the amount of external disk capacity shipped will grow by 50% a year and that more than 75% of all new disk storage capacity shipped will be consumed by file-based, unstructured data in 2012. What is driving this huge growth? Digital images used in healthcare and entertainment. Not only are there more images but the file sizes are increasing with higher definition images. Compliance and archiving organisations need to keep more copies of files and retain data for longer, sometimes 5-10 years. Video based applications such as surveillance create files 24 hours a day Collaborative applications such as email and SharePoint create more files needing to be shared and restored. Web 2.0 applications in business used as productivity tools. According to IDC, IT Managers know that over 80% of the data stored on file servers and dedicated NAS systems never changes and is rarely accessed after the first 90 days. However, they often keep the data on high performance/high cost storage devices. 1
2 What challenges does this present to IT? Rising Storage Costs: IDC reports that data storage accounts for as much as 15 to 20 percent of IT capital spending in large enterprises. Despite the fact that the relative cost of computer data storage media per unit volume has fallen 63 percent since 1998, the overwhelming data volume growth is causing storage costs to grow rapidly. In addition to the costs of the storage devices there are issues with land, build time and energy costs. Data centre growth is paralleled with increasing costs and decreasing availability in energy. Energy costs and carbon taxes are considered important data centre considerations by 65% of companies, and a lack of reliable energy supply in the UK will represent a data centre issue for 50% of companies until at least 2013. Stringent planning restrictions also indicate that UK data space demand outstrips availability 17-fold. Budgets are not rising in line with storage demands; therefore organisations must consolidate and make efficiency improvements. Increased Complexity and shortage of skills: Today s IT organisations are supporting a growing array of data intensive applications and content rich applications. Block data is typically managed by an application but files are generally considered unstructured data. The management of unstructured data is left to the users who created the data. Many organisations don t know how much data they have, who created it, where and how many times it is stored. Storage management has historically been a specialist skill. Many large companies have dedicated teams of skilled storage administrators, who spend their working lives keeping these systems tuned, formulating strategies to reduce the storage footprint and orchestrating back-ups that will enable the business to keep running in the event of a systems failure or natural disaster. But in a medium sized organisation, the person in charge of managing and supporting storage is typically an IT generalist - someone with limited IT knowledge and experience, and often no specialist storage skills, whose primary focus is simply maintaining mission-critical applications. Most IT organisations don t have the time or the resources to manually manage their storage infrastructure. Staffing levels remain flat or cut and there is a shortage of skills - good storage managers command a premium salary, and spend most of their time fire fighting. IT departments have problems releasing their skilled people to work on the much needed transformational programmes. The implication of these problems is that IT Managers cannot meet their SLAs, control their capital spend on storage or reduce complexity without change. 2
3 What 2e2 recommends: Organisations need to do two things: Simplify their storage management Reduce costs by optimising storage Unified storage is one of the technologies that IT managers are using to improve their storage efficiency as well as to improve business flexibility and lower the total cost of storage. The benefits of unified storage include: 1. Reduce costs by improving efficiency by up to 50%. 25% is guaranteed by EMC. 2. Simplify: any data, file based or block based can be stored, using any protocol. 3. Speed: configure in seconds and set up hundreds of exchange mailboxes in minutes. 4. Usability: One of the major benefits of EMC s unified storage platform (VNX) is FAST. The ability to automate the movement of data both up and down the disk performance stack, so that data resides on the most appropriate storage tier without user intervention. Used correctly this can provide much increased storage efficiencies. As Villars of IDC points out, product usability in storage products is now a critical factor in data storage procurement decisions. Customers in small and medium sized companies, as well as IT teams in larger enterprises, are demanding major improvements in the usability of all IT products and storage systems in particular, he says. When talking to such organisations, he says, IDC analysts typically find that usability in data storage terms means three things. 3
1. Flexibility: embodied by systems that support both block-based and file-based storage network protocols, so that IT teams can use a single system while still using the best option for different applications - whether that s email, database transactions, or files. 2. Embedded data efficiency, including support for virtualisation technologies and data management services (such as automated provisioning and data deduplication) which ensure that the physical storage infrastructure is used as effectively as possible. 3. Simple capacity provisioning and data protection. No company wants to risk crippling mission-critical applications by provisioning inadequate storage space. We also recommend that organisations plan effectively for the future, and consider how they will manage object storage cloud storage. 2e2 is working with EMC to address this customer need. On the VNX road map for later this year is also the ability to add native object storage into the unified storage. VNX already supports the object protocols REST and SOAP. The Unified Storage message currently supports file storage (CIFS/NFS), Block storage (FC/iSCSI/FCoE) and Object Storage (REST/ SOAP). Access to object based storage will become increasingly important as we try to make greater efficiencies in storage and is already a key focus area for EMC with its ATMOS and CTA appliances. 4
4 Why choose 2e2 for Unified Storage? The diagram above outlines the journey through key stages of maturity; from a traditional infrastructure environment through to a Flexible Infrastructure environment, and eventually extending into an environment which may be topped-up with external service provision as and when bursts of demand dictate. 2e2 have developed the skills and experience to help accelerate your journey. 2e2 is well placed to help organisations at any stage along the journey to develop a flexible infrastructure. Unified Storage is one discrete activity organisations will undertake as part of the journey to the Private Cloud. As the industry moves rapidly towards converging servers, storage, networks and management under one infrastructure, so too does the need for a partner with a great breadth and depth of knowledge become clear. We believe 2e2 are unique in the UK for the following reasons: Proven methodology: We have developed a methodology that quickly identifies opportunities to drive maximum benefit in your infrastructure. We have a dedicated information management team who can provide an Unified Storage Impact Assessment. We can quickly establish where the efficiency savings are in your organsiation. Proven success: One of the main reasons 2e2 is the largest EMC Support Partner in the UK is that we have have the highest levels of vendor accreditation and have been delivering quality solutions to the same customers for over 10 years. 2e2 were delivers innovative technologies utilizing the latest technologies that allow our customers to maximise their flexibility and performance and minimise their costs. 5
True end to end Information Management capability: We are one of the very few independent organisations that have extensive capabilities in back up and de-duplication technologies so we are capable of understanding the entire data protection/retention/management scenario. We can provide you with a single point of accountability for all your ICT requirements. 2e2 security practice: More and more, organisations face the dual tasks of supporting an increasingly mobile workforce, and managing the complexity of enforcing corporate policy for data sovereignty. 2e2 is one of the few UK owned organisations who have a dedicated security practice. 2e2 s security practice can not only assess your needs but it can also deliver the entire range of technology solutions to ensure your data stays safe. Where have we done this before? Over the last few years 2e2 have evolved from being a best of breed supplier in Data Management solutions and Services to now being able to provide far reaching services and infrastructure in Networking, Virtualisation, Microsoft Services and all elements of Remote Monitoring and Managed Services. This broad portfolio allows 2e2 to be perfectly positioned to offer far reaching services from one specialised company, as recently demonstrated by the award of a large transformation project for the London Borough of Waltham Forest. This was for a fully hosted solution in 2e2 Data Centres. A large UK-based Retail Bank A UK Drinks Manufacturer A Global Investment Bank A large Global Oil Company A large UK Retailer 6