ISV Management Software & SAN Management Solutions
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The Evaluator Group developed its Storage Management Stack to provide a consistent, vendor-neutral way to understand storage management software products. This stack is organized by the basic functions provided by the software. The layers towards the bottom of the stack focus more on the management of storage hardware. The layers towards the top focus more on management of the data, application or environment as a whole. |
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Storage Management solutions that fit into this stack can be provided by storage hardware vendors or storage software vendors. Some of the software may be provided by vendors who are not traditionally known as storage vendors.
Device Management
The lowest layer is the Device Management layer. Software is supplied with each piece of storage hardware, and this software performs basic installation and configuration of the associated hardware. Some device management software performs advanced functions and can pass certain information upwards in the stack to the higher layers. Examples of this software include SANtricity Storage Manager from LSI/Engenio, EFCM from McDATA, and others.
Virtualization
Above the Device Management layer is the Virtualization layer. This layer provides an abstraction of storage, separating the logical representation of the storage from the physical devices. This commonly allows for a grouping of storage devices into larger volumes or pools of storage, so that applications and users have fewer entities to manage. Storage Virtualization can be performed several different places, and many of the solutions also provide other features such as point-in-time-copy, replication, etc. Examples include VERITAS Volume Manager, FalconStor IPStor, and others.
Storage Network Management
The next layer moving upwards in the stack is the Storage Networking Management layer. This layer views the storage network as a whole, and includes such things as discovering all the storage devices, drawing topology maps, etc. This software can be provided by storage hardware vendors or independent software vendors. Examples include HP Storage Essentials, IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center for Fabric, and others.
Storage Resource Management
The Storage Resource Management (SRM) layer provides information not only about storage devices but also about data stored on those storage devices. SRM software is often divided into two groups: active and passive. The passive software monitors and reports on storage usage, while the active software can take action based on events that occur. Some vendors of SRM software are incorporating various policy-based functions, event correlation, and trend analysis and prediction functions into their SRM software. Examples include CA BrightStor SRM, EMC StorageScope, and others.
Management Framework
Enterprise management framework software may include some storage management components. This software provides overall system and network management and can provide a way for separate storage management components to communicate with it, or “plug into” it using methods such as SNMP. Examples include HP OpenView, Tivoli Enterprise Console, and CA Unicenter.
Application Management
At the top of the storage management stack we are beginning to see applications that can manage their own storage. These applications can pass information to lower levels of the storage management stack or perform those functions directly. This allows administrators to manage the line of business application and all the storage components associated with it, rather than simply managing a collection of computing resources. Examples include Oracle 10g Automated Storage Management (ASM).
Information Lifecycle Management
Touching all the layers is the Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) layer. True ILM solutions include not only functions that IT staff might perform, but also require line-of-business or application owners to get involved in making some of the policy decisions and actions, including classifying application data and incorporating data management policies into business processes. A subset of ILM is called Data Lifecycle Management (DLM) and includes functions and actions that IT administrators might perform. DLM includes, but is not limited to tiered-storage, data movers, hierarchical storage management, storage policies, expanded metadata, and making efficient use of storage resources. There are several examples of solutions that perform some ILM or DLM functions, but none yet that perform complete ILM.
Summary
As the industry has matured, the storage network management and storage resource management layers have begun to merge together. Most vendors of enterprise class storage management software sell a combined product that provides functions from both layers. In many cases, these used to represent separate products.
We also find that those building ILM or related solutions often build them with, or on top of, SRM solutions, because SRM solutions often contain a great deal of metadata and have some policy-based functions already built into them.
In our Advanced Storage Education classes, we spend a good part of one day reviewing the stack and discussing some of the products in these layers. Get more information at www.evaluatorgroup.com/education.
