Opinion

posted on 24 April 2008 10:06

An opinion piece by Alan Kessler, CEO of Attune Systems.

Overview
Today’s IT organizations are faced with a dilemma. Unstructured data growth is accelerating. File sizes are rapidly expanding and the diversity of file storage is growing as multimedia files increasingly find their way onto enterprise storage.

At the same time, user expectations are escalating for anytime, anywhere access to information, yet the need to secure and protect file information has never been greater. Increased regulatory and compliance demands require much greater amounts of information to be protected and stored for much longer periods of time.

All of these trends are contributing to an explosive growth of unstructured file data, yet this growth is occurring with a global economic backdrop that continually pressures organizations to reduce capital budgets and to cut back on operating expense spending.

New Storage Solutions Emerge
Many new storage technologies are emerging to help customers deal with this rising tide of unstructured data. These solutions include deduplication, archival, and Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID) to name a few. These new technologies are important because they provide a broader range of storage solutions for customers. As organizations wrestle with this unprecedented growth of unstructured data, they are looking to new storage technologies for help.

The Advent of File Virtualization
One challenge inherent with the adoption of new storage technologies is how customers get from where they are – swimming in a rising tide of unstructured data – to where they want to be – having the ability to effectively manage files to ensure the right file, is in the right place, at the right time. File virtualization technology is the solution to meet this challenge today. It is being embraced more and more as a mainstream technology which, when properly employed, can address the challenges of unstructured file management in a mission-critical, risk-averse and cost-sensitive environment.

File Virtualization Defined
File virtualization is a simple concept. File virtualization separates the file location as it is seen and perceived by the end user from the actual storage location of the file. By so doing, a file can be moved, managed, deduped, or archived without disruption to the user of the file. In fact, the location of the file remains the same (from the end user’s perspective) regardless of the storage platform within the storage network on which the file is stored.

The Evolution of File Virtualization Solutions
During the early days of file virtualization, vendors promoted the benefits inherent in pooling under-utilized storage to optimize storage management and reduce cost. After all, moving files form place to place without file virtualization creates disruption. Organizations that began to implement file storage using NAS solutions found it increasingly difficult to optimize the utilization of their NAS storage.

Some file types would grow much more quickly and certain users would increase the number and size of files faster, while others were more efficient users of storage capacity. The big problem IT faced was how to increase storage capacity over time without impacting end users. Did they need to buy more storage for the heavy consumers of file storage or could they recapture some of the under-utilized storage from other users on the network? If they grew their storage by adding a new NAS, how could they point users to the new storage without the users losing reference to their prior storage?

Most early file virtualization technologies were focused on solving this problem of storage capacity. They enabled files to be migrated from device to device as customers purchased and upgraded more storage. Or, they pooled storage on existing NAS systems so they could get more efficiency from their storage. Quite often, storage utilization rates were less than 50 percent. With increasing storage costs, came the need to find ways to maximize the usefulness of the existing storage. First-generation file virtualization solutions provided the answer.

New technologies that provide deduplication and archival storage are changing storage cost curves. It is now possible for organizations to store more information more efficiently. Today organizations can store vastly larger amounts of storage in a much smaller footprint. Further, the price of storage is dropping as the density of drives and diversity of storage options increases.

Pooling of storage (which was the focus of first-generation file virtualization solutions) is no longer the key pain point for customers. The prior emphasis on helping customers recapture under-utilized storage must now expand the focus to include:
1) Helping customers understand their file systems
2) Assessing how they can benefit from new archival and deduplication solutions
3) Realizing the benefit of storage tiering,
4) Serving as a force multiplier for IT teams who are faced with massively growing unstructured file growth

State-of-the-art file virtualization solutions must address these challenges today. File system assessment, non-disruptive transparent file movement, and policy-based transparent placement of files between or across the NAS file system are among the key features found in leading solutions today. The most effective approach to save operating and capital expenses for customers is to use file virtualization, so IT can have the right file, in the right place, at the right time for their end users.

Leading File Virtualization Solutions
The table below summarizes the key file virtualization solutions from leading vendors. Each solution is compared along several key dimensions of functionality:

Networks ARX