Is it the network or the storage that's the problem?

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
09/08/05
Today's focus: Is it the network or the storage that's the
problem?

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* We need a single mgmt. tool capable of looking across both
  storage and fiber
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Tacit
Network World Executive Guide: Staying Focused on the Moving
Target that is Storage

Keeping pace with evolving storage strategies, architectures,
and trends is not unlike keeping pace with your organizations
underlying capacity needs. From ILM strategies to SAN management
to the threat of those USB memory sticks, this Network World
Executive Guide will help you stay focused on the moving target
that is Storage. Register now and get a free copy of Network
World's Storage Executive Guide.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112859
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Today's focus: Is it the network or the storage that's the
problem?

By Mike Karp

Midsize and larger businesses often find their IT topology has
become a complex mix of servers, networks and storage systems
that typically come from a variety of vendors. Many of these
companies also route long-haul traffic over fiber-based networks
- metropolitan-area networks, WANs and private optical networks.

The convergence of fiber-based long distance connectivity and
storage offers some interesting challenges. These are not
necessarily new challenges of course - fiber networks have been
moving traffic since at least the early 1980s - but because of
their complexity and also because of the distances involved,
such IT environments can challenge the best IT teams when
something goes wrong. And naturally, because of the
complexities, something almost always does.

Networking and storage people often don't spend much time with
one another. The exception to this rule crops up when a
storage-related problem occurs on a fiber network. In such
cases, the two groups often find they spend way too much time on
collective fire drills.

Storage managers have their toolsets, network managers have
theirs, and like their human counterparts, these rarely work
together. At this point however, what we really need is not a
set of tools that work together but a single management tool
capable of looking out across both the storage and the fiber
networks, and then applying some intelligence to what it sees.
Given such a tool, IT organizations would get see the entire
data path and get some insight into the interactions occurring
between two important subsets of their overall IT system.

Storage management tools tend to be remarkably unintelligent
about what happens to the data as it transits between arrays and
switches across a storage-area network, and most are just plain
stupid about what happens when the data moves onto long distance
fiber. It would be nice to have a tool that provides an
integrated view of disks, HBAs, SAN switches and fabrics, and
dense wavelength division multiplexing and SONET devices. In
fact, it would be nice to have even a reasonable subset of this
capability.

A really useful tool should do more than just monitor what goes
on, however; when a fault occurs it should also be able to drill
down into the various elements along the data path and isolate
the location and cause of a fault. This would most likely
require the ability first to collect data from each element in
real time - SNMP traps from the network elements, SMI-S
information from the storage, and proprietary data for those
elements where neither of the first two is available.

The tool would then have to "normalize" the disparate data into
a common data set. Data would likely be allocated to specific
columns to facilitate analysis, and might be nothing more than a
simple comma-delineated file. Once that is done, additional data
smoothing can take place: a correlation engine would examine the
normalized data, compare it against a database of known events
and remove redundant references (alerts from various points
along the data path that report the same problem).

What is left would be significant data, against which
intelligence could be applied to identify the root cause of the
problem.

Real-time topology and performance monitoring, plus fault
analysis, will lead to much more reliable systems. IT shops
sending data out over fiber to remote sites need such a product,
particularly if they have been dispatching multiple IT personnel
to address a single problem or to verify false positives
appearing in error reports. Actually, just about any site
requiring more than a few minutes to locate faults on the data
path might view this sort of thing as almost a gift from the IT
gods.

Whether managers will be willing to spend money on this sort of
tool depends. After all, they still have an alternative - going
through life always keeping one finger on the escape key.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Cisco Catalyst 4948-10GE aces performance tests
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6648>

2. 2005 salary survey
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4039nlstoragealert6020>

3. Google hacking <http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6693>

4. Supermarket chain freezes Internet access
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6649>

5. VoIP rollouts generate heat, power concerns
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6298nlstoragealert6506>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Tacit
Network World Executive Guide: Staying Focused on the Moving
Target that is Storage

Keeping pace with evolving storage strategies, architectures,
and trends is not unlike keeping pace with your organizations
underlying capacity needs. From ILM strategies to SAN management
to the threat of those USB memory sticks, this Network World
Executive Guide will help you stay focused on the moving target
that is Storage. Register now and get a free copy of Network
World's Storage Executive Guide.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112858
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Storage newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/index.html

Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
_______________________________________________________________
FEATURED READER RESOURCE

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what they say are "The Five Most Overhyped Security Threats,"
risks that have been overblown and shouldn't be scaring everyone
as much as they seem to be. For more, click here:

<http://www.networkworld.com/weblogs/security/009180.html>
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