july 25

How to align your data for ILM
Is cost savings the main goal or is it to improve service levels?
Computerworld Opinion by Jim Damoulakis, CTO of GlassHouse Technologies

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=
viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9001993&taxonomyId=19

As storage organizations work to improve service levels, they inevitably face the challenge of data alignment. While it is relatively easy to define tiers of storage, it's somewhat more difficult to determine which data belongs where and to establish consistent, repeatable policies for that data placement. The fundamental question is: how do you actually go about doing it?

There are a number of different approaches to the whole data alignment problem, but to a large extent, it comes down to a matter of degree, i.e. how granular do you want to get? If you stop to consider the millions of data objects on hundreds or thousands of servers within an organization, the mere thought of a tedious data classification exercise causes many to shudder. However, the data alignment effort does not need to be quite so intricate to provide value.

An important consideration is to establish what the primary driver for alignment is: is cost savings the main goal or is it to improve service levels? This will help determine and narrow the area of focus

When starting out, the best advice is to keep it simple - don't try to make the alignment effort overly complicated. There are several different dimensions along which data can be aligned. These include:

- Performance
- Data Availability
- Data Resilience
- Data Retention
- Data Security

For many, data resilience is a good place to start. Determining recovery time objective and the recovery point objective (RTO/RPO) requirements, and aligning applications and service capabilities accordingly is often an area in need of attention and with the focus on both operational and disaster recovery in many organizations, starting here can be worthwhile. However, we have also had clients focus on other areas, such as data retention, or even address multiple dimensions simultaneously.

From a strategic perspective, data alignment is one critical element for evolving to a service provider model. Other elements include defining policies for data management, determining service levels based on business needs, and creating a services catalog. Data alignment represents the next major step along the way.

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