Discovering the Importance of Storage Analytics

Since storage has become a key component in nearly all media systems and workflows, one might wonder if storage analytics -the detailed information about individual and overall storage elements-are important to operations and management of the entire media production ecosystem.

Utilizing and understanding storage analytics is becoming more important as users configure virtual environments (such as VMware or Hyper-V) as well as conventional structured storage systems. When virtualized computer environments take shape across the enterprise, shared storage can also take on a much broader dimension. While multiple operating systems can operate from a single physical computer, how the information (data) generated in those environments is stored or managed becomes more difficult. Complex multi-element environments are never as easy to understand or manage compared to how a single OS, computer or server platform addresses a small NAS or group of drives.

Virtual machine environments and virtualization fabrics are subjects which have much depth, vary by manufacturer, and-for now-are beyond the scope of this month's article. However, whether your system is VM-based or a mid-to-modest scale NAS or SAN, the value proposition in having analytical tool sets available that can manage the overall storage system is becoming a subject of interest to many IT managers and production workflow administrators.

If you're fortunate enough to have a greenfield system with a full complement of new raw storage, then the options to configure and deploy this untapped storage pool are many. Yet, if your storage pool is a collection of many different sets of storage (as with many facilities) that are accumulated over various time periods, the efficient management of those storage islands takes on another dimension altogether. Often such systems may be comprised of DAS, NAS or SAN elements and will have little consistency in terms of volume sizes, I/O capabilities and distribution.

PERFECT CANDIDATE

The later (likely more typical) configuration is a perfect candidate for both storage virtualization and for a toolset capable of looking at the demands and stresses put onto the storage system. This process that uses these toolsets, in more modern terms, is known as storage analytics.

With the popularity continuing to grow in cloud technologies, a quick Google search for storage analytics will yield multiple sets of products provided by major cloud providers and by enterprise class storage vendors. Most products or services are prefaced by the cloud provider's name (e.g., Azure) followed by the marketing term for the analytical toolset.

Some of the storage vendors will wrap the sentence to include VMware, Big Data, all Flash, scalable or some other storage marketing buzz word. The plethora of terms sometimes breeds confusion as to what you're getting and how well it really does its job.

So, what's under the hood? Why are storage analytics important? And what do they do or provide? How do they benefit the user?

STORAGE SYSTEM INSIGHT

Storage analytics are intended to provide insight into the physical and/or the virtual storage environment. Its tools should allow the user/administrator to optimize the storage system regardless of the complexity or the distribution. Additionally, there is also a business-sense component defined as improving business performance and reducing costs.

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