Device Manager TNG & Central Storage Management

Right, I've got Device Manager 5 installed pending installation of Tuning Manager 5. Agreed, the layout looks better (shame it is all still Java, my least programming tool). Now I need to generate some data. But yes it looks better.

Old JWT at DrunkenData seems to think www.storagerevolution.com is still alive. Here's his recent post discussing the site plans. Unfortunately I don't think there's any holy grail here (excuse the DaVinci Code reference - it wasn't intentional - I haven't even seen the film or read the book). Storage is evolving daily, let's face it, EMC is buying nearly a company a day at the moment! Keeping up with this technology is impossible; spending 12 months developing an infrastructure will provide you with a design that is 12 months out of date, a long time in this industry. Just look at how quickly new technology is being introduced; think of how technologies such as virtualisation will skew all the products in terms of accounting and managing data.

Creating a single consistent framework for all vendors and technologies is simply impossible, so we have to think more pragmatically. We need a baseline; that baseline needs to create generic storage terms against which we can map technologies. Let's face it, all the major storage vendors have split mirror technology and COW technology, they just call it a different name. The same applies to other functionality - synchronous/async replication; NAS, iSCSI and so on.

My suggestion; start with the basics. Create a framework that maps against hardware from an agnostic position. Revise and develop it; increase the complexity to encompass application and business requirements. OK, now that will take some time; but at least there will be a working solution in place.

NO Storage Vendor is going to hold back their product development lifecycle just to make sure they work with generic standards, they will continue to press for market share bring new features to the market and always look to maintain their USP.

We will have to run just to keep up.