Virtualization, Tiering--two major technologies to improve private cloud storage

Because of the widespread popularity of cloud computing in life, senior IBM executives say that increasing the efficiency of storage is a need for companies to do well before cloud computing is implemented, rather than by implementing private cloud storage to improve storage efficiency. This requires a number of technologies such as storage virtualization, data compression, automated tiering, and streamlined configuration.

IBM executives have described several of the best practices that companies must follow as guidelines for implementing private clouds in the industry. Those measures include the adoption of the latest storage management capabilities.

Cloud computing does not equate to storage efficiency because storage efficiency is how you implement a private cloud, from a storage standpoint, to build a private cloud, " says Dan Galvan, vice president of marketing and strategy at IBM's Department of Storage systems and technology. You must at least be able to ensure storage efficiency first, while the nature of the private cloud is to improve the service level of the enterprise end user. The

Galvan says customers need virtualization and need to consolidate servers and storage infrastructures so they can take full advantage of economies of scale. Galvan that the enterprise should be able to increase utilization by storage virtualization by 30%, which is similar to server virtualization.

"We've found that such cases are recurring in our customers," Galvan said. "Virtualization consolidation is the first step and you have to implement virtualization to improve efficiency and flexibility." ”

He also advises customers to do a good job of automating data tiering before implementing private cloud storage. IBM plans to expand its easy tier software to fit all IBM systems, which were released last June with the DS8000 Enterprise array, he said. The heuristic algorithm used by easy tier can predict which storage driver can achieve a particular performance level according to the customer's workload. Galvan says easy tier picks out the data that is most likely to be needed for quick access and automatically moves it to higher-speed storage devices, such as SSD.

"We found that with easy tier only 2% of the storage arrays were stored on a solid-state drive, while the rest was on a regular hard drive, and customers were able to get a full three times-fold performance boost," Galvan said. " ”

"We are all believers in cloud computing, but we think it's the right thing to do," says Galvan. ”

Galvan that many companies need more time to build confidence in cloud computing. "As far as I know, no company is concerned about moving their information to the public cloud," Galvan said. "There are two things to be prepared for: first, make sure the information is secure, and then make sure that the customer is able to access the data at any point in time when they need the data, especially the transaction data. As a result, businesses do not choose a public cloud unless they are able to determine the security and accessibility of the public cloud. The worst thing that can happen to a company is that data is compromised or that they cannot access the data.

David Hill, an analyst with Mesabi Group, agrees that the organization needs to improve storage efficiency and define service levels before implementing cloud computing. For example, a business must first define a data retention policy, because cloud computing service providers usually do not communicate with their clients ' legal departments.

He added that it is important not only to duplicate data deletion before implementing cloud computing, but also to ensure the independence of archived data and backup data to avoid confusion between active and inactive data.

"This will ultimately affect the ability to recover data faster," Hill said. "Inactive data should not interfere with activity data." You're wasting I/O resources, and they're more expensive, but inefficient. IBM says: "You have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk, and first, customers have to go through several steps, otherwise they won't really benefit from cloud computing." Cloud computing is not their panacea. ”