july 5

Developing a storage reference architecture
Jim Damoulakis, GlassHouse CTO, writes about "Making sure vendors have a greater stake in project success".

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=
viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=19&articleId=9001574

A good architect knows that you don't start planning a building at the blueprint stage. You develop representations of what the building will look like after getting a good understanding of the goals and requirements - pictures and models come before creating the actual building plan. Once the concept is defined and agreed upon, the detailed plan is developed.

In contrast, a surprising number of storage infrastructure projects seem to start from the bottom up instead of the top down. Perhaps driven by vendor prodding, the focus all too quickly jumps to physical design details and implementation considerations while not enough effort is spent on developing a logical reference architecture that represents the future state in a non-product specific way.

A reference architecture should provide a clear, easy-to-understand functional representation of a future-state environment that encapsulates the agreed upon design goals of all key stakeholders. It should provide vendors with enough detail about requirements and goals but still allow them sufficient flexibility to propose a solution that leverages their technology in the most effective way. Presenting a physical design, essentially wedges the vendor into a fulfillment role rather than forcing them to make (and therefore take responsibility for) a design recommendation. While pigeonholing may work for incremental expansion, it is shortsighted to do so when undertaking a major new project such as introducing archiving or replicated disaster recovery to the environment. Even worse is basing an RFP on a design influenced solely by a single vendor.

While competing products may perform the similar functions, the manner in which they accomplish this may be significantly different, and one vendor may suggest a more innovative approach than had been previously considered.

So what should a logical storage reference architecture include? The basic elements are:

• A description of goals and requirements

• Identification of relevant environmental restrictions and constraints

• A logical representation and description of each relevant functional layer of the environment

• Enough descriptive detail for each layer as needed to link requirements to each layer

The intent is not to give the vendors carte blanche in their proposal, but to make sure they have a greater stake in the ultimate success of the project.

Jim Damoulakis is chief technology officer of GlassHouse Technologies Inc., a leading provider of independent storage services. He can be reached at jimd@glasshouse.com