Match Data Value To Storage Costs

General Information
July 7, 2006 • Vol.28 Issue 27
Page(s) 1 in print issue

It’s time that your small to midsized enterprise ties economic and strategic value to corporate data across your enterprise to shore up your enterprise storage spending. As data ages, its value to an organization often decreases, so why place old archival data in top-of-the-line storage mediums when it may rarely (if ever) be accessed? Instead, you could match your data value to your storage costs.

The Matching Game

At a recent customer conference, IBM’s Steven Rael advised attendees to “match the value of your data to the cost of your storage.” Rael is a storage consultant with the IBM Executive Briefing Center in Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Rael drives home the value of data. “Most data has [a] shelf life. Its value changes over time, usually decreasing. The question for a customer becomes why continue to store inactive, infrequently used, or obsolete data on the most expensive storage, such as high-end Fibre Channel or SCSI disk? As the value of data decreases or otherwise changes over time, it may be better to migrate it to a more appropriate container, such as less expensive SATA disk or tape. In this way the value of data as it changes over time can be matched to the cost of storage.”

Tiered Storage

Your data value should directly correlate with your storage costs. Rael suggests tiered storage as one approach. Tiered storage can segregate your data by value and frequency of usage. Typically, your most expensive disk sits at Tier 1, performing as your most reliable storage repository. Rael suggests either Fibre Channel or a SCSI disk as a Tier 1 storage device.

“As data sets age, and the data is accessed less frequently or not at all, it may be desirable to migrate the data to a Tier 2 repository, such as SATA disk,” says Rael. Your Tier 2 storage requirements should reflect the need for quick accessibility of the data for regulatory compliance requirements. However, Tier 2 data is rarely accessed, so the performance of a high-end disk is often not necessary.

As your data ages, it is eventually time to offload the data to tape backup. Tier 3 stores data for retention purposes only, making it the least expensive storage category.

How To Best Align Storage Spending

If your SME is relying on decentralized storage, you may see storage costs rise dramatically. Rael says, “These ‘silos’ of storage [usually direct-attached] can suffer from low utilization, inability to share capacity, inefficient backup procedures, no common management, application downtime for updates, and harried staff, all of which can contribute to greater costs.”

Decentralized storage environments run the risk of being unable to identify and produce data required for regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley or to assign chargebacks for actual storage usage. “Moving to centralized storage such as a SAN or NAS can provide a single view of storage, leading to easier management, higher utilization of assets, and a more efficient environment for backups, chargebacks, maintenance, and data retention for regulatory compliance,” Rael says.

Parting Advice

Take the time to analyze your enterprise storage options. Consolidated storage solutions such as SANs and especially NAS should be of particular appeal to cost-conscious SMEs. Rael says, “These solutions are more affordable than ever, and a company doesn’t have to be a huge enterprise to realize their benefits.”

Tiered storage offerings are an avenue for exploration. Rael recommends evaluating tiered storage offerings based upon the dynamic, online capabilities of your solutions and if modifications can be made to the storage infrastructure without interrupting the applications.

Tightening up your data management with a storage resource management solution is an option, viewing data information granularly by type/size/age of files, last access date for files, and the files consuming the most space.

Rael says, “Reduced cost, reduced risk, reduced stress on staff, and better quality of service to the users of storage are all benefits that can accrue from better methods of data and storage management.”

by Will Kelly

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