For the last 15-20 years organizations have been stockpiling technology, with
multiple apps running on multiple stacks. An audit of most of the existing
infrastructure reveals problems of under-utilization, existence of too many
silos and too much complexity in managing it and backing up of even apps that
had become redundant long time back. Along with this is arising the issue of
information explosion. By 2020, information is said to shoot up by about 44
times but organizations won't be able to increase their IT budgets by
manifolds. So there is a pressing need to find ways to effectively manage this
spurt in information and also consolidate multiple silos into a single
repository and simplify things.
Developing and maintaining an efficient private cloud is all about
simplifying such IT infrastructure. Major steps to be taken to move to the cloud
include — increasing efficiency in current datacentre, driving quality of
service and driving IT as a service. Many organizations have already ventured
into virtualization and have been successfully bringing down the number of
physical servers. But most of the times, they are not followed by steps that
can maintain the same level of apps performance so that the end user does not
feel any difference in response time and performance. Two new technologies that
are resolving these are data de-duplication and data tiering. Here we look at
some such hot technologies.
Data de-duplication : This is a compelling technology that would make
sure that similar info doesn't get stored multiple number of times. It ensures
that one piece of info is stored very effectively in a way that it is optimally
made available. For example : A 10 terabyte can be de-duplicated to 1 or 2
terabyte. This technology drastically brings down the storage needs, reducing
the amount of data that has to be backed-up by, 95% and also leads to
significant cost saving.
Tiered Storage : A recent technology that enables maintenance of
storage of various performance characteristics within the same or across
multiple arrays. Tiered storage gives administrators the flexibility to utilize
their resources effectively by aligning high end storage technology to the
appropriate information value. For example highly active data can be placed on
high performing storage tiers like enterprise flash drives or 15 k rpm drives
that provides improved performance and user experience. This technology
automates the provisioning of hot or cold information across high, low and
lowest tiers of information storage based on application and business
perspective, eliminating the manual migration process.
Federation : Using federation technology multiple active data centres
can run applications simultaneously and seamlessly from anywhere from the world.
The key to Virtual Storage is the federation of distributed storage arrays,
which is a major component of the new VPLEX technology. Federation leads to
pooling of the resources of multiple storage systems locally and over distance,
allowing them to work together. This technology enables leveraging all assets
simultaneously and pool all the available storage and compute resources and
enables apps to utilize these resources in a dynamic manner.
Foundation for infrastructure behind cloud : VMWare, Cisco and and EMC
have collaborated together and are providing pre-engineered IT units called
Vblock that takes care of computing, storage and networking of
small/middle/large businesses as the selection of IT units depends on the number
of virtual machines. Vblock is said to provide the foundation for
infrastructure behind all cloud services. Where something like a Vblock 0 is
ideal for organization that need entry level configuration for small data
centers, remote locations etc, Vblock 1 delivers performance and virtualization
for mid and large size companies and Vblock 2 delivers high-performance and
large-scale virtualization. Levi Strauss has used Vblock to build SAP in their
organization and this led to cost saving and easy system management. Over the
old IT infrastructure a lot of savings were achieved and led to driving
enterprise efficiency.
“You may be interested in:”
1. What's in 'Store' for You?
http://tinyurl.com/yh3oe42
Managing information over years
http://tinyurl.com/3ye28l7