The Inescapable Storage Challenge

There's a reality TV show in England that profiles people who need help ridding their homes of clutter and organizing their possessions. Each week, a self-proclaimed expert calls on a packrat. There is arresting footage of the home's disorder, lots of on-air soul-searching, and a catharsis involving dumpsters and garage sales. The episode closes with tearful congratulations and photos of order restored.

The IT world faces the same dilemma, except there are no rescuers from the BBC. Instead, CIOs, IT managers, and storage administrators must decide on their own how to restore order to overflowing electronic closets.

This is the situation addressed by the book Inescapable Data: Harnessing the Power of Convergence (IBM Press, 2005). "In the world now, there's data everywhere, spinning around you can't escape from it," says Chris Stakutis, an IBM technologist who co-authored the book with John Webster, founder of the Data Mobility Group consultancy. "This is largely a business book about how to leverage data to achieve efficiencies."

Byte and Switch has been granted exclusive online rights to Chapter 11 of the book, which can be found in our latest report: Computer Storage Impacted by Inescapable Data. In it, Stakutis and Webster muse on the process of deciding what data must really be saved, why, and for how long.

The authors focus first on the importance of organizing storage. Those who skimp on the task could forfeit control of their corporate destinies:

The essay mentions new technologies, but these aren't seen as panacea. The capital and operational costs of storing data requires companies to step outside the routine. ITers must look at exactly what it is that must be saved, and for how long. Tape, and even paper might be just fine:

This isn't to say disk isn't vital to the future of data storage. Indeed, the authors say a lot of attention must go into how to best manage the humongous amounts of information on disk. Everything needs to be questioned, including the increments of stored data:

The new increments call for a new approach to managing stored data.Yes, we're talking objects, along with other fun concepts like the universal virtual computer (UVC) of IBM researchers. The authors say standards coming out of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) will help promote these new approaches and others in a uniform fashion. Let's hope!If some of this makes one think of ILM (information lifecycle management), think again. The authors of Inescapable Data importantly hold that IT needs to rethink what it's doing with storage. But they don't get into the nuts and bolts of how decisions should be made, or how organizations can set policies for tiered storage. As ever, there's a big gap between ivory tower and data center that can only be closed in the trenches.

Still, the authors' point is key: Some of the best storage techniques are already in hand. What's needed is reasonable thinking. Without that, the data center is just another packrat's packed – and stifling – domain.

— Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch