Jim Damoulakis, GlassHouse CTO, write how "Simplicity remains an elusive goal for storage management".

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A friend remarked recently that the older he gets, the more he desires simplicity. Unfortunately, for those of us in storage, simplicity remains an elusive goal. Complexity has become a way of life and the best that we can hope for is to avoid chaos by managing that complexity as effectively as possible. An analogy that we often use to convey this is the cockpit of a modern airplane. With its assortment of gauges and controls, it represents a complex, but highly organized and manageable environment. The question is can we develop the same model for storage infrastructure?

At the risk of overextending this analogy, a key factor in the success of the cockpit model for flying a plane is that both the data and the controls are readily at hand. The pilot can monitor and observe key performance indicators through the displays and gauges and quickly take action as needed via the controls. In contrast, storage management is often a situation of flying blind because we lack the right information to guide our actions so instead we are constantly estimating.

The irony is that it's not actually a lack of information that is the cause of the problem. Every management application for storage, backup, or archiving produces reports or provides logs. Unfortunately, this data is often not organized and presented in a way that enables taking effective action when needed. The pilot has a series of dials and gauges for normal status items, but also has alerts like lights, buzzers, and even verbal cues ("Terrain ahead! Pull up!").

Effective management of storage requires several tiers of information. Hardware management tools can provide base metrics and even alerts related to the operational management of a device, but beyond base metrics, we also need to be able to roll up and aggregate these into performance indicators that can, for example, determine the recoverability status of all of the components of a key application. Few environments have this kind of information readily available. Even rarer are environments that monitor key performance indicators that aggregate and trend all performance indicators to provide a comprehensive picture of the overall costs, risks, and levels of service being provided by the storage organization.

Jim Damoulakis is chief technology officer of GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a leading provider of independent storage services. He can be reached at jimd@glasshouse.com.