Study Note 3

1.3.3 management and storage infrastructure

Management of Modern complex data centers involves many tasks. Key Management actions include:
■ Monitoring: continuously monitors information and infrastructure of the entire data center. The data center needs to detect security, performance, accessibility, and capacity.
■ Reporting: regularly reports the performance, capacity, and utilization required for running the data center. The reported tasks can help to establish proper business reasons and the cost recovery associated with data center operations.
■ Provide necessities: the resources required to provide hardware, software and other operational data centers. Supply actions include capacity plans and resource plans. capacity plans ensure users and ApplicationsProgramFuture requirements will be met in the most efficient and controllable way. A resource plan is the resource required for evaluation and identification, such as personnel, equipment, and technology. the resource plan ensures sufficient resources to meet the needs of users and applications.

For example, the utilization of resources assigned by an application is monitored. once the utilization of storage capacity reaches the threshold, more storage capacity will be provided to this application. if resource utilization is properly monitored and reported, business growth can be understood and future capacity requirements can be predicted. this helps us establish a positive data management policy.

 

1.4 key challenges for information management

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In order to establish an efficient information management policy, the following information management challenges must be considered in the business:
■ Explosion in the information world: Information growth is exponential. data redundancy ensures high availability and data re-raising are all reasons for the growth of multiple types of data.
■ Growing reliance on information: Practical information strategies play an important role in business success and market competitiveness.
■ Changes in information value: Today's valuable information may be useless tomorrow. Information will change its value over time.

Construct a policy that can meet these challenges and understand the lifecycle of information.

 

1.5 Information Lifecycle

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The information life cycle is "the change of information value over time ". when the data is first created, it often has the highest value and is often used. when the data gets old, it is less accessed and less valuable to the Organization. understanding the information lifecycle helps us deploy an appropriate storage architecture based on changes in information value.

For example, in an order application, the value of information is created from the order, and the guarantee takes effect. The value of information is the highest when the order is received and the order is sent. after the order processing is complete, the customer and order information no longer need to be accessed in real time. companies can convert this data to a less expensive second storage system with lower access and availability requirements, unless one warranty statement occurs or another event requires this information. once the guarantee is blank, the company can archive or process the data so as to free up the necessary space for other higher-value information.

 

1.5.1 information lifecycle management

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Today's business needs 24x7 data protection and availability. the data center can establish an optimized and appropriate storage architecture around points. an efficient information management policy must support this architecture and take advantage of it.
Information lifecycle management (ILM) is a positive strategy that enables IT organizations to efficiently manage information throughout its lifecycle. IT organizations can optimize the storage architecture to maximize the ROI. the ILM policy should include the following features:

■ Business-centric: proactively integrates with key processes, applications, and businesses to meet current and future information growth.
■ Centralized management: all commercial information assets should be under the perspective of ILM policies.
■ Policy-based: the implementation of ILM should not be limited to only a few departments. ILM should be used as a policy to be enforced in all business applications, processes and resources.

■ Diverse: An ILM policy should take into account all storage platforms and operating systems.
■ Optimization: because the value of information varies, the ILM policy should consider different storage needs and allocate space based on the value of information to the business.

 

1.5.2 Implementation of Information lifecycle management

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The implementation of ILM policies includes four actions: classification, implementation, management, and organization:
■ Data and applications are classified according to basic commercial principles and strategies, making it possible to treat information differently.
■ Use information management tools to implement policies from data creation to data cleaning.
■ Manage the environment and reduce operation complexity by using integrated tools.
■ Organize storage resources by data type and use the correct architecture based on the current value of the data.

Implementing ILM throughout the enterprise is a continuous process. Figure 1-8 describes a three-step road map within the enterprise.

Step 1 aims to implement ILM for several key enterprise applications with limited steps. the first step is to implement a storage network environment. the storage architecture provides different levels of protection and performance, which is similar to the future basis of policy-based information management. step 2 and Step 3: A storage platform can assign storage resources to applications based on the value of information processed by applications. the second step brings ILM to the second level by linking business policies to specific applications, data classifications, and storage architectures. these categories and the resulting regular expressions can be automatically executed using tools. The result is better management and optimized storage resource allocation.
The third step is to automate the classification of applications and data and policy management actions to measure a wider range of enterprise applications.

 

1.5.3 benefits of information Lifecycle

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Implementing an ILM policy has the following key benefits to directly address the challenges of information management:
■ Enhances utilization by using a layered storage platform and increases the visibility of all enterprise information.
■ Use individual tools to integrate processing steps and interfaces, and simplify management by adding automation.
■ A wider range of backup and restoration options to meet the needs of continuous business development.
■ Provide a maintenance commitment by knowing what data needs to be protected and how long it will take to protect it.

■ Achieve lower cost of full ownership and higher value of information through infrastructure management. as a result, resources will not be wasted, and complexity will not increase as low-value data is managed based on high-value data.

 

Summary

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You need to understand the types of data, the value of data, and the key management requirements of the storage system. this chapter also highlights the importance of ILM strategies, and commercial entities are adopting ILM to improve information management efficiency across the enterprise. ILM enables commercial entities to categorize, protect, and exploit information to gain a competitive advantage.

This chapter introduces the Storage Architecture and the evolution of the core elements of the data center, providing the foundation for information storage. The next section discusses the storage system environment.

 

Translated from <Information Storage Management>