Tag Archives: ITaaS

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EMC Data Protection Advisor For As-A-Service Cloud Environments

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What can you do to ensure data protection as you move to cloud?

Services-based storage, infrastructure, and data protection trends and technologies are recurring topics in this blog. Awhile back I wrote a post about enabling data protection as-a-service discussing the need for centralized management at cloud-scale, multiple service rates based on customer data protection needs or usage, and historical data for analysis and trending. The reality is that you can only get so far with legacy products built for physical environments. At some point, management tools, like the data center environments they support, need to be remade to the requirements of the day. Effective data protection solutions are no exception.

Data protection needs are more acute for as-a-service cloud models and require new approaches. Now, with the release of EMC Data Protection Advisor 6.0, I would like to share what it means to augment a successful data protection solution and extend it with a new distributed architecture and analysis engine to cloud deployments, without losing any usability benefits (i.e. without making it complex). Continue reading →

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Five IT Storage Infrastructure Predictions For 2013

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What is the future for storage infrastructure?

It is not uncommon at this time of year to see predications on a variety of subjects for the coming year.  While nobody has a crystal ball, knowledge and experience can lead to insight. To this end, I polled a number of my colleagues for their thoughts to add to my own around our core competencies to deliver a list of five IT storage infrastructure predictions for 2013.

Foreseen for the coming year is the continued paradigm shift for IT from the back office to a contributor of business value. Key to accelerating this change will be the further automation of the data center.  This includes the move to software-defined architecture such as software-defined storage, and the growth of object storage in both public clouds and enterprises. Data growth will continue to be a challenge, though more organizations will tap into their vast data pools with analytical tools. IT management will increasingly be implemented across domains rather than up and down the stack and tools will be judged by their ability to provide context for the information they present. Continue reading →

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Infrastructure-As-A-Service Goes Mainstream

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Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the fastest growing segment of the rapidly expanding cloud market, is going mainstream into the enterprise. Concurrently service providers, who were early adopters, are moving upstream to more higher-value services

IaaS is a simple concept, but with complexities that must be dealt with to successfully implement. The basic idea is to deliver data processing services quickly on a converged infrastructure that pools resources and automates repetitive manual processes to speed time to market. It minimizes redundancies, though initially it can be disruptive to how infrastructure is managed because it aggregates compute, network, and storage resources, moving the autonomy enjoyed by domain administrators (e.g. storage admins) to a central function.

IaaS first found acceptance with service providers looking to leverage their data center investments to provide cloud services for new revenue streams. As technology evolved, and cloud economics were better understood, enterprises began to apply the IaaS model within the data center. Several approaches have emerged, including single-SKU solutions that give service providers and enterprises the ability to roll-in prepackaged infrastructure to rapidly deploy services whether to end-user customers or internal business groups. Continue reading →

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Automating Infrastructure Management at EMC

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What is storage-industry leader EMC doing to simplify and automate management in its data center?

EMC IT is deploying EMC, VMware, and partner management automation technologies to simplify operations in its data centers. This effort includes installing new products, adopting new processes, and changing roles to further evolve a private cloud model.

EMC practices what it preaches—and uses what it creates. EMC IT is leveraging EMC as well as third-party enterprise management, automation, and orchestration technologies to discover and manage performance across complex virtual server, network, and storage in a private cloud environment.

These infrastructure management technologies and the changes they bring to the global EMC IT structure would be unwieldy if not directed by sound principles. An internal-customer orientation with better services as a goal guides the EMC IT changes to the many areas that comprise its infrastructure management environment.  An internal governance team makes technology decisions with the entire IT organization in mind. This approach sets a good foundation for the present and for adopting new technologies in the future. Continue reading →

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Enabling Data Protection As A Service

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When does data protection become a money-maker?

Data protection has long been thought of as somewhat of a necessary evil like life insurance. Throw money at the possibility that something will go wrong and pray that it never does. However, with cloud computing models and the concept of IT-as-a-service, data protection can now contribute directly to the value of the data center as well as to the bottom line.

Most organizations use numerous technologies to protect application data across primary, replica, and backup storage, as well as archive systems.  Trying to manage a mixed data storage environment without an effective data protection management strategy makes applying a uniform chargeback to these systems almost impossible. 

As IT transitions to a fully operational private cloud, effective ways to measure and meter data protection services across the environment need to be put into place. Data center managers need mechanisms to differentiate between service levels offered to the organization, and to justify and apply chargeback to business units.

Continue reading →