ILM dubbed the next big thing in storage

By Heinz Bulos
November 2003

SINGAPORL - Storage endor LMC Corporation said that its new strategy, Inormation
Liecycle Management, or ILM, is the next big thing in storage during a South Asia press
conerence held last 1hursday.

ILM is the company strategy and our ision o where we want to take the company.
Lerything we do, whether it`s in platorm deelopment, storage arrays, sotware, or
serices, it`s all about ILM. It`s a ery singular ocus or us,` 1ony Marzulli, LMC`s Vice
President or Open Sotware, explained.

It`s the next step in the eolution o storage, according to LMC, which started with direct
attached storage, which is a single storage array included in the serer. 1he second stage was
enterprise storage, with many serers and one array. 1hen, it was networked storage, or
many serers connected to many arrays. 1he next step was automated networked storage,
which emphasized sotware that can manage all the inormation. ILM builds on the
oundation o the automated networked storage inrastructure.

ILM is a strategy or approach or the automated management o inormation that is policy-
based and aligns storage inrastructure with data alue. It`s premised on the act that
dierent data hae dierent alue to an organization at arious points in time, and such has
to be managed dierently throughout its liecycle, rom cradle to grae. Marzulli said, 1he
challenge or CIOs is that they treat all inormation the same.`

Clay Ryder, Lxecutie Vice President and COO o 1he Sageza Group, Inc., a consultancy
irm, explained during the same press conerence, Business data o all sorts is business
critical and has alue, more alue than what enterprises realize.` loweer, he stressed that
dierent inormation has dierent alue. And the alue at any point in time is ariable.`

Marzulli also emphasized that inormation growth is relentless, is more strategic than eer,
and changes in alue oer time.` As such, the key challenges or companies are to scale
storage inrastructure within budget constraints, make aailable and protect critical
inormation at optimal cost, and prioritize inormation management based on data alue.

1he process
1he ILM concept requires that an organization be on an automated networked storage
enironment. And the process o managing a company`s inormation liecycle begins with
classiying data or applications according to their alue to the business and deining policies
to determine the optimum serice leel.

During a one-on-interiew, Marzulli explained that once a company is in a networked
enironment already, either in a storage area network ,SAN, or network attached storage
,NAS,, it should set a alue or each data or application it has. Let`s say there`s a ile serer
out there where a company keeps all its PowerPoint |iles|, Lxcel spreadsheets, and lat iles.
It may be acceptable that in case o an outage that that system can be down or an hour.
\hile people may be inconenienced, it won`t shut the company ersus i I`m an
Amazon.com, I`m taking orders in real time, then my order system has to be aailable 24,
no matter what.`

Ater the company has gone through a process o understanding the alue o its inormation
oer time and what are the policies or that inormation, then it should tier its storage
resources to align with its data classes, such that inormation can be moed within the
automated networked storage inrastructure to the appropriate serice leel to meet business
needs. Marzulli explained, Let`s make Symmetrix |LMC`s high-end storage system| as an
example. Does all o your inormation really need to stay in Symmetrix 1hat`s a ery highly
aailable system and more expensie than some other kinds o systems.`

A customer may hae a ery speciic recoery time objectie in the eent o some kind o a
ailure, so i the system ails oer a secondary system, and let`s say there`s an outage, their
policy may be I cannot aord to lose any transaction and I must be up and running within
ten seconds.` 1hat might be an objectie ersus I can actually aord a downtime or our
hours because the system in question is not critical to my business.``

Ryder pointed out that when it comes to storage, one size does not it all. Storage solutions
must be optimized or the business processes they support. Like eerything, business
inormation ollows a natural liecycle. And the best solutions support all phases o that
liecycle.`

1he liecycle o data starts with its creation, which then requires protection, access, and
update. It moes to migration, archiing, and inally, disposal. During its entire liecycle,
inormation can be moed rom the most expensie, high-aailability storage system down
towards the cheapest but long recoery tape system.

lor instance, instead o storing all e-mail archies in a high-end storage SAN,NAS system,
which approximately costs ie cents per megabyte, they can be automatically moed, or
example, ater three months to a mid-tier SAN,NAS system, which costs some three cents
per megabyte. Ater a ew months, it can be transerred to a one cent per megabyte A1A
CAS,SAN system, and ultimately to cheap tapes, which cost only around 0.15 cent per
megabyte. As the cost goes down, so does the serice leel. 1he ILM approach matches
both appropriately and automatically.

So there`s a dierence, and customers are willing to pay or that dierence in serice leel.
\e will help customers go through that discussion process to understand the alue they
ascribe to their inormation and to understand the policy that they need to put to that
inormation,` Marzulli said.

ILM can drie down the total cost o ownership ,1CO, in storage by as much as 23 or a
typical large enterprise with 50 1B o total storage, according to LMC. And it is precisely
LMC`s ision, Marzulli said, to help customers get the maximum alue rom their
inormation at the lowest total cost at eery point in the inormation liecycle.