Administering storage systems

Information Lifecycle Management refers to a wide-ranging set of strategies for administering storage systems on computing devices. By Manjari Juneja

Organizations often struggle to manage the volume and variety of information assets flowing within and between their business units. Improving business processes and boosting the value of information requires examining the factors operating on information assets at every point in the lifecycle of the same. Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is a method to handle this task. An ILM solution consists of an integrated and automated approach to data availability, data protection and data retention management, while maintaining application transparency and end-user uniformity, including common federated data classification and policy management as well as an integrated management paradigm.

The principal focus of an ILM solution is to ensure that data is continuously reevaluated throughout its lifecycle in order to keep storage management costs under control. ILM confers the ability to better align an organization’s investment in managing and protecting information to the value that it delivers to the business.

Subroto Das, COO, EMC India & SAARC, said, "Organizations can benefit hugely from an effective ILM strategy. It helps in maximizing storage utilization and thereby helps in cutting costs. It does not require users to get rid of their existing applications, servers, networks and storage investment. Rather, it allows users to take advantage of and manage heterogeneous and diverse environments."

Vishal Tripathi, Principal Research Analyst, Gartner, said, "ILM is a comprehensive approach to managing the flow of an information system's data and associated metadata from creation and initial storage to the time when it becomes obsolete and is deleted. It breaks down the lifecycle that all information moves through into four distinct phases and identifies the most pertinent issues that influence how information should be managed during each phase."

Compliance issues are also driving the adoption of ILM. During its lifetime, data requires different levels of performance, availability, protection, migration, retention and disposal. Since data is critical to daily operations in many organizations, it demands high levels of availability and protection. Furthermore, at times, data also becomes less important and is used less frequently and accordingly it can be moved to different tiers of storage that provide appropriate levels of availability, capacity, cost, performance, and protection.

More than a technology

ILM is not really a technology being more of a holistic approach to data management. It focuses on the lifecycle of data and applying this knowledge to ensure that said data is housed in resources that deliver the appropriate quality of storage services. Data requires different levels of performance, availability, protection, migration, retention and disposal throughout its life and ILM integrates all of these criteria seamlessly.

It has been observed that traditional storage vendors have adopted ILM as a strategy for creating cost optimized storage environments.

Vijay Mhaskar, Vice President, Information Management Group, Symantec, said, "We enable enterprises to reduce their storage costs through the efficient and effective use of multiple classes of storage within their computing environments. The solutions help enterprises develop policies that allow data to be transparently moved to appropriate classes of storage over time without changing the way that users or applications access data. This helps in the more efficient utilization of storage resources by implying reduced cost in its purchase and management."

Pavitra Aggarwal, Senior Manager Engineering, GlobalLogic, said, "ILM is not a technology. Rather it represents a major shift in the approach towards creating and managing a storage infrastructure and the data that it maintains. All data maintained on storage networks has a defined lifecycle. This lifecycle identifies the way in which information travels through an organization from its inception to its eventual archival and removal."

ILM is not a technology but rather it is an approach or strategy to manage the lifecycle of information right from its birth till its death based on its value to the business, which keeps changing with time. According to EMC, Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) is a great example of ILM where information moves to a tier automatically as per the demands of the system. Das said, "We have seen the adoption of technologies such as FAST that help an organization significantly save on cost and dramatically increase performance."

ILM for enterprises

Tripathi said, "ILM provides some key benefits such as consistency, flexibility, inclusiveness and proactive measures, which benefit organizations. It helps in collaboration and sharing. For ILM to work in the data center, storage consolidation is required and virtualization helps in the same. With server capacity and storage resources becoming virtualized, data moves from one storage resource to other."

"The need for compliance is also driving the adoption of ILM. It is an end-to-end strategy that can adequately protect an organization's data assets and reduce the risk of large fines or litigation. We have specific solutions, which enable an organization to address its pressing compliance challenges while also improving business results by effectively managing information at every point in its lifecycle—from creation to final disposition," informed Das.

Implementing ILM

Implementing ILM is the best way to effectively conform to regulations. Organizations can build an information infrastructure and deploy best practices that enable information integrity, confidentiality and accessibility at every stage of the information lifecycle. As a result, they can enhance their ability to comply with a broad range of information requirements, while also gaining operational, business, and financial benefits beyond compliance.

Mhaskar said, "ILM is an immense boost for IT and business professionals for a future in which managing storage systems is done in less time and for a lower cost. Information, now more than ever, is seen as a vital corporate asset, with its value changing over time. It is important that the intent of regulatory compliance should protect some of the most valuable and potentially dangerous information from improper use. Organizations that can efficiently and quickly address compliance are those that can remove the internal barriers between IT and the lines of business and take a proactive approach towards compliance."

Das pointed out, "To be successful, an ILM strategy must be business-centric, tying closely to key business processes, applications and initiatives. At the same time, it must provide an integrated view into all information assets, both structured and unstructured. As our current offerings demonstrate, EMC is committed to delivering measurable business value and we are on an accelerated delivery path for all of the components that a customer needs to optimally manage information throughout its life."

Coming up

ILM has come to the fore as organizations focus on reducing costs. According to Gartner, the existing data storage capacities in organizations are under pressure to hold and maintain more data to meet business needs as well as comply to government regulations. Therefore, business organizations need to undertake several data storage management activities as a part of their ILM strategy.

Voluminous growth in data, compliance and regulatory issues, the need for a faster decision-making process and for a contingency plan to handle any disaster or security issue are the factors that are driving the adoption of ILM. With this approach, organizations can manage information in a more structured manner. ILM services can help facilitate easier access to important data, expedite storage implementations, improve content management, storage utilization and enhance an organization's ability to meet regulatory requirements

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