Storage Networking
Industry Association’s (SNIA) survey identifies the main challenges facing
today’s storage environments.

SNIA conducted a survey in which Storage Networking World
conference attendees voiced their concerns and frustrations with implementing
storage technologies in their organizations. The survey was headed up by
Laurence Whittaker, vice chair of the Storage Networking Industry Association’s
(SNIA) End User Council (EUC). Whitaker and fellow EUC chair Rick Bauer
incorporated the survey’s results into a formal report entitled “Top Ten Pain Points Survey.”

The survey clearly indicates that end-users are struggling
to meet their companies’ cost containment objectives and to justify
expenditures to improve their storage infrastructures.

Surveying the storage landscape

Storage cost was identified as the top user pain point. As a
commodity, disk storage has become less expensive, driving the demand for
increased data storage. The supporting infrastructure and management tools are
still expensive. Usually the infrastructure is complex and interoperability
issues make storage networks difficult to scale to meet the increased demand.
Cost issues are compounded by the need for more highly skilled storage
professionals. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they had delayed storage
network purchases because of a factor related to cost. As a result, many
respondents said they were starting small and attempting to grow their storage
area networks while managing growth and capacity needs—the second biggest pain
point. This caused companies to have multiple SAN networks, management domains
and tools, leading to even more difficulty managing their storage
infrastructure.

The report goes on to say that the storage solutions that
are currently designed and implemented vary from customer to customer and
supplier to supplier. Many are well-designed and supported solutions. Some are
clearly over-provisioned, making them inefficient and difficult to scale,
thereby driving up costs.

Management challenges center on storage resource management
(SRM) and storage area network (SAN) management tools that are expensive,
difficult to justify, complex, and incomplete. End users are left using
multiple tools that don’t interoperate. Automated provisioning solutions are
still considered to be vaporware. Without these tools and solutions, SAN
performance and reliability issues are difficult to avoid, detect, diagnose,
and resolve.

The top ten pain points named in the survey were:

  • Cost
  • Managing
    growth and capacity
  • Infrastructure
    management
  • Lack
    of integrated or interoperable solutions
  • Increasing
    complexity of the storage infrastructure
  • Poor
    service and support
  • Lack
    of desired functions and features
  • Justifying
    expenditures
  • Undelivered
    promises
  • Lack
    of automation for provisioning

Contrary to the experiences of some Tech Republic members, Information
Life Cycle Management issues and regulatory compliance issues rated low in the
survey. (For more on regulatory compliance issues, see TechRepublic’s white
paper: Implementing
Identity and Access Management for Regulatory Compliance from RSA
Security.

The SNIA End User Council stated that the root cause of storage pain was
a lack of broad fundamental understanding of how to architect, provision, and
scale storage area networking technology solutions. To try and combat this problem,
the EUC proposed two main initiatives involving architectural standards and
education:

  • Simplify the
    technology with architectural standards to help reduce the cost and
    complexity and address negative perceptions regarding SANs and networked
    storage.
  • Accelerate
    education and certification of storage administrators, while
    simultaneously accelerating the adoption of standards and best practices.

Follow-up EUC discussions with attendees at October’s
Storage Networking World conference verified that the pain points indicated
that real solutions need to be implemented. Heading into 2005, simpler and more
effective SAN management is sure to be at the forefront of most IT managers’
concerns. But an even bigger concern may lie with finding the talent to manage their
infrastructures. Some IT managers state that there is currently a shortage of
qualified storage network professionals in their organizations. Add to this the
dissatisfaction with the quality of support, and you can see why storage
management concerns have grown in recent times.

According to the report, many customers have expressed
dissatisfaction with the quality of support, both pre- and post-sale.
Complaints range from a lack of product knowledge and technical “gotchas” to
technology over-hype. Customers who have the expertise on staff are using them
to verify technical solutions promised by vendors. This is work for which they
used to depend on pre-sales engineers.

These concerns have been captured into a second survey for
EUC members and the IT professional community titled, “Storage Management:
Where Are We Now?” Work on the next survey
is underway with results due at the Fall 2005 Storage Networking World
Conference.

The SNIA End User Council
will continue to collaborate with its partners, the SNIA, and
storagenetworking.org, to discover and promote architectural standards and best
practices that will simplify the management of networked storage solutions.

Follow up

More information on EUC surveys is available at http://advisorygroups.SNIA.org.

What do you think? Would these be your top ten storage
management pain points? Let us know by adding your comments to the discussion
following this article.