Understanding The Management of Your Storage Infrastructure
By Varsha. B
Introduction
Storage Infrastructure Management defines the management and monitoring of storage devices in data centers. The three main areas of management are capacity, performance and availability. These three areas can easily be summed up as good storage management, which is ensuring that storage is always available, always has enough space, and is fast in terms of performance. Good storage management requires robust processes, policies and tools.
Components of Storage Infrastructure
The key components of storage infrastructure are servers, storage systems, and storage area networks (SANs). These components can be physical or virtual and are used to provide services to users. Storage infrastructure management includes all of the storage infrastructure functions required to manage infrastructure components and services and maintain data throughout its lifecycle. These functions help IT organizations align storage operations and services with their strategic business goals and service level requirements. They ensure that the storage infrastructure is optimally managed with the least number of resources required. They also guarantee better use of existing components, limiting the need for excessive investments in infrastructure.
Service oriented Storage Management for emerging Technologies
Storage management functions for next and next generation technologies are in many ways different from traditional management and have a set of distinguishing features.
Service-Focused Approach
Storage infrastructure management for emerging technologies such as big data and the cloud is service-oriented. It is linked to service requirements and service level agreements (SLAs). Service requirements cover the services to be created / updated, service characteristics, service levels and the infrastructure components that make up a service.
Software-defined infrastructure aware
In the cloud environment, more value is placed on managing software-defined infrastructure than on traditionally managing certain physical components. Management functions are increasingly being decoupled from the physical infrastructure and relocated to an external software controller.
End-to-end visibility
Cloud management and next-generation technologies provide end-to-end visibility into storage infrastructure components and distributed services. End-to-end visibility of the storage infrastructure enables comprehensive, centralized management.
Orchestrated Operations
Orchestration refers to the automated arrangement, coordination, and management of various system functions or components in a storage infrastructure. Unlike an automated activity, orchestration is not associated with a specific infrastructure component.
Storage Infrastructure Management Key Functions
Storage infrastructure management fulfils two key functions
Infrastructure discovery
Infrastructure discovery creates an inventory of the infrastructure components and provides information about the components, including their configuration, connectivity, functions, performance, capacity, availability, utilization and physical-virtual dependencies. Provides the transparency required to monitor and manage infrastructure components.
Operations management
Operational management includes ongoing management activities to maintain the storage infrastructure and the services provided; ensures that services and service levels are delivered as promised; Operations management encompasses various management processes; Ideally, operations management should be automated to ensure operational agility.
Conclusion
While the committee recognizes that the major changes suggested by the alternative scenarios are inappropriate for immediate implementation, the continuation and escalation of the identified trends, such as described in this report, may require radical changes in operations and remediation procedures. in the coming years. The three future scenarios presented in this report - (1) a centrally located project management organization, (2) outsourced OandM, and (3) federal funding and local execution - provide a basis for anticipating future trends and prepare for the future currency.
