Storage as an asset

Storage

That word means a lot of things to a lot of people. I'll try and talk about what it means to me, in both a personal and professional context.

First and foremost, storage is a strategic asset. Just as electrical power and networking are utilities that enable computing, I see storage in a similar fashion. Storage is the computational element to safeguard data over time. I choose the word 'safeguard' specifically to indicate a level of 'stewardship' for data; to protect it from errors both human and mechanical. I have a bevy of tools at my disposal, subject to the boundaries of cost, performance and reliability.

Second, each storage asset can be described as having some level of cost, performance and reliability, relative to another asset. For example, a laptop hard disk has some level of cost, which may be higher or lower that the cost of a desktop hard disk or an enterprise hard disk in a storage array. Similarly, it may be more or less reliable than the aforementioned types of disk. In my discussions about storage, I tell everyone:

Cheap, Fast or Reliable - pick any two, because you can't get all three.

These three points are only relative between storage solutions of varying configurations and technologies. One set of technologies will always be cheaper, faster or more reliable than another, for a given configuration. We choose two of three points for optimization and see how things go from there.

Finally, storage technologies, to me, are orthogonal to server/platform/OS technologies (for the most part). Many of my colleagues add storage in chunks of servers; if you need 2TB for a project, you buy another server with 2TB of disk on it. I find that highly inefficient, much the same way you'd add more servers with 100Mb interfaces to fill a 1Gb network pipe. As much as possible, storage should be a separate, strategic element that scales independently from computing power. When implemented properly, a storage architecture enhances your computing infrastructure, giving you a dynamic environment that delivers the performance/capacity you need, at an compelling price point. Sometimes, that compelling price point or performance/capacity need will fit inside the server quite easily. I accept that, in small, singular instances. But twenty, singular instances later, you'll wish you had that SAN, instead of running herd over 19 unnecessary boxes....