True IT – Storage Stories: 3 (SRM Tools)
The necessity for SRM (Storage Resource Management) tools is growing by the day, a complete picture of the entire storage environment can be obtained using these SRM Tools. Customers typically use SRM tools for performing key functions related to storage management which includes analyzing storage environments, configuration changes, reporting around storage, collecting performance data, alerts on exceptions, etc. Also a granular view of the storage subsystems and its relationships to the host, fabric, disk, file-systems, consumption and utilization can be obtained using SRM tools.
A very large customer in US decided to deploy Storage Resource Management tools for their Storage Infrastructure, that consisted of 15 sites globally, several PB’s of Storage, various make & model of storage arrays and segregated storage management teams. Overcoming several technological and organizational challenges they managed to deploy a SRM tool that will give them a complete picture of the Storage Environment.
30 Million Dollars as deployment cost in CAPEX which included SRM tool, licenses, OS licenses, hardware, agent deployment, testing, training, virtualization, etc, etc and 24 months deployment cycle, they were up and running, 50% over budget and 12 months behind schedule the implementation was over.
Though challenges today remain around patch management on SRM tool, managing 15 sites globally, OS upgrades, SRM tool upgrades, Array firmware upgrades & compatibility, SRM management, SRM periodic cleanup’s, support for non SMI-S arrays, support for other vendor arrays, accuracy of reports with virtualization, clustering and thin provisioning.
Lesson Learnt:
With any SRM tool deployment, set goals, targets, expectations, requirements and organizational needs. With today’s SRM tools it may be unrealistic to achieve 100% of your requirements.
See if there are trial versions available from vendors, deploy them for 3 to 6 months to see if those meet the expectations and organizational needs.
Check the compatibility of the SRM tool across a wide variety of storage platforms deployed in the organization. Review security features around access control, login rights, active directory integration, etc
Set Budget caps with implementation and set target completion dates and be aggressive to achieve those.
Obtain TCO models for the SRM tool deployment, which may include CAPEX SRM purchase, deployment, testing, day-to-day management, software support cost, upfront & ongoing training, hardware for deployment, infrastructure changes, etc.
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