Managing data growth: Tips for mid-market organisations
Ravi Rajendran
27/06/2007

Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) across Asia Pacific are struggling to manage data growth and storage costs. While storage requirements for these companies are similar to that of larger enterprises, SMEs tend to have limited resources. This is especially so in Asia, where SMEs are smaller than their US and European counterparts.

To save money and time, many SMEs respond to growing data by simply investing in more storage capacity. This may fix problems in the short-term, but result in an expensive, inefficient and difficult to manage storage environment in the long run.

A more cost efficient, long-term approach would be for SMEs to classify their data according to its business value and then introduce a simple, tiered storage infrastructure. This will ensure that the most important business applications achieve optimal performance because they are supported by the best storage platform. In turn, less important data is stored on lower performance, inexpensive media.

Rather than being viewed as a risky and time-consuming task that is more appropriate for large businesses, SMEs should see storage management as a strategic exercise that will better align IT with the business and will result in significant cost efficiencies and yield a higher return on investment. Here are nine tips for you to consider:

1) Start straight away
With limited headcount and resources, many SMEs focus their energies on sustaining and growing the business. Issues like managing storage often take a back seat. The truth is, the sooner they start, the easier it will be and the faster they will benefit from cost efficiencies.

2) Align applications with the right storage tier
As the first and most simple step towards data classification, SMEs should categorise their applications according to their importance to the business. These can then be assigned to the right storage tier.

For example, for an online bookstore, its revenue-generating web applications make a significant contribution to the business and should therefore be allocated to the highest level of storage. An HR application, while important, is less business-critical in this instance and should therefore be assigned to a lower tier of storage.

3) Assign SLAs in consultation with the business
SMEs that are ready to take a more advanced approach should apply service level agreements (SLAs) to the performance of these applications. SLAs are critical to business continuity as they are designed to minimise the amount of data loss or downtime a company will suffer in the event of a corruption or other problem.

Because SLAs represent a 'contract' between the IT team and other departments in the company, they must be developed in partnership with the rest of the business. The IT department may not realise the importance of some applications to the running of the company without this consultative process. The more business-critical an application, the more stringent and demanding its SLAs will be. And this will dictate which tier of storage it should be assigned to - the more demanding an application's SLA, the higher performance of storage required.

4) Classify data attached to applications
The next step is to analyse the data attached to each individual application, and assign value according to its age and importance. For example, a record of a financial transaction is very valuable to a company when it is a day old. However, when it is 20 days old and hasn’t been accessed for a week, its value to the company is much less. At this point, a company may want to assign it to a lower tier of storage. This level of data classification is becoming increasingly complex and requires the application of policies. It would be good for SMEs to work with a storage vendor to develop these.

5) Minimise the number of tiers
Three tiers of storage should be enough for most SMEs. Tier One represents the premium storage, providing the best availability, reliability and performance to applications. The most important applications with the most demanding SLAs should use this storage. Tier Two, or mid-tier storage, is less expensive and provides lower performance. Tier Three represents the lowest-cost, volume storage devices and will be used for data that is accessed least or has the lowest value to the organisation. Back-ups and archiving will occur here.

6) Spend system management time appropriately
When the tiered storage infrastructure is up and running, system administrators should ensure they are spending at least 50 per cent of their storage management time on the top tier - ensuring the best possible service for the end-users. Around 40 per cent of their time should be allocated to the mid-tier and just 10 per cent to the lowest storage tier.

7) Focus on the long-term benefits
Many SMEs postpone the adoption of a tiered infrastructure because they worry about the cost of implementation, potential problems and service degradation. However, properly planned and implemented, the adoption of a tiered storage system will run smoothly. Mid-market organisations should draw on the expertise of their storage vendor to ensure this. And when in place, the savings in cost and management time, as well as the improvement in service levels to the business, will be clear to see.

8) Cost considerations
Most of today's SMEs will still be looking to consolidate their data in one form or another. This could vary from server-based data consolidation to consolidation of data from direct attached storage (DAS) or even from SAN islands (Storage Attached Networks).

All three different profiles must address acquisition costs which may include the initial cost of hardware for a SAN infrastructure or the cost of manipulating the existing infrastructure where the cost of managing the data must match the value of that level of data. The cost of acquisition versus ongoing management costs needs to be carefully considered. Be weary of a storage management system that is not feature rich and where valuable time and money will be consumed by ongoing management costs.

Look at the long-term benefits of what an early investment into a flexible storage management system will bring to you over the burden of having to manually manage ever-expanding data at a later date.

9) Understand legal responsibilities
The current business environment poses increasing challenges to organisations to comply with regulatory and corporate governance requirements. The risk and exposure to fines and penalties have grown as businesses face increasing scrutiny from government regulators and legal entities.

SMEs should make sure they know their legal responsibilities, and adapt their tiered storage infrastructure to ensure they can store and protect information for the required period. They must also be able to search for, restore and retrieve this information in response to an audit.

- Ravi Rajendran is Regional General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems.

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