We teach our children that sharing is a good thing, but then again most of them won’t grow up to be network administrators.
Those who do will quickly learn that sharing isn’t always a good thing, especially when it means sharing storage, data, and application traffic over a single network. Storage-based traffic has become particularly problematic in recent years, as the exponential growth in business data (much of it now unstructured data), large-scale analytics, and virtualized environments have made it increasingly difficult to manage shared networks.
As a result, more enterprises are looking at dedicated IP storage networks to manage their storage traffic and meet internal and external customer service level agreements (SLAs).
A dedicated IP storage network offers several advantages to enterprises:
- It minimizes network disruption and downtime—particularly those issues that are caused by human error;
- It enables enterprises to easily and quickly add storage capacity;
- It can deliver much faster response times by utilizing Ethernet technology;
- It gives storage area network (SAN) administrators more control and autonomy from network teams to manage SLAs more effectively;
- It’s much easier to manage, which drives down opex costs.
There are a number of network equipment vendors in the IP storage network arena, including Brocade and EMC. At Rolta AdvizeX, we’ve worked a lot with EMC and Brocade solutions because of their longstanding partnership and proven track record in enterprise storage. One of the main reasons we recommend Brocade is the strength of their network fabric technology.
It’s fair to say that a storage network is only as strong as its fabric. In the case of Brocade, their zero-touch, self-forming fabric delivers a plug-and-play functionality that simplifies network management; you can simply plug devices into the network, and the network will automatically discover them to create a seamless, efficient network fabric.
Of course, for many enterprises, the appeal of a dedicated IP storage network comes down to one factor: speed. IP/Ethernet technology is substantially faster than traditional Fibre Channel storage. But speed alone shouldn’t be a business driver for change; after all, the whole idea of the third platform is to move beyond the incremental evolution of faster chips and cheaper bits. Instead, enterprises should look at IP storage networks as an adaptation to the changing role of data.
Businesses today are data driven, and they can’t afford to have their data stuck in network traffic because of inefficient routing, human error-induced loops, or bursty application demands. By moving storage into its own network environment—one that leverages IP technology to gain faster speeds and broader interoperability—enterprises are acknowledging the rising role of data in their business.
That said, it’s natural for network administrators to resist change, especially if they’re comfortable with their current setup. Our role at Rolta AdvizeX is to help enterprises move forward by providing expert design services based on best practices and best outcomes, product training, route optimization, platform migrations (e.g., moving from Cisco to Brocade), and more.
We also believe that transformation is a business conversation first, and a technology conversation last. Faster storage, in and of itself, doesn’t solve a business problem. The ability to deliver reliable, real-time data to customers, however, can be a game changer that drives innovative new services. At Rolta AdvizeX, we’ll help you identify the impact that a dedicated IP storage network can have on your business before we recommend it.
When your partners are dedicated to driving your bottom line, the rest falls into place. ▪