10 Secrets to Purchasing Storage

1. Buy Affordable Scalability
2. Flexibility Matters
3. Do You Know the Cost of a Minute of Down Time?
4. Not All Storage Needs Are Equal
5. How Much Speed Do You Really Need?
6. Never Buy More than You Need
7. Buy On-Site Service Programs Before You Need Them
8. If you can't explain it to your mother - don't buy it
9. What every storage sales person doesn't want you to know
10. How can be sure I am buying the right system for today and tomorrow?

1. Buy Affordable Scalability

Understand how your storage needs will grow over the next 3 to 5 years. Storage needs will be largely driven by the growth of your company (new customers, suppliers and employees) and deployment and expansion of new applications - especially data intensive applications like ERP systems. If you anticipate low to no growth or don't plan on adding any new applications - scalability is not your major concern. If you are growing or plan to deploy additional applications or expand the use of existing applications, look for storage systems that are modular and that let you start with a small footprint and add modular storage blocks as needed without having to buy additional raid controllers every time you need more disk space. Too many "scalable" storage systems require purchasing large storage cabinets with empty disk slots that remain empty until you buy more disks. This requires many users to buy far more infrastructure than they initially need. Look for scaleable systems that allow you start small and then daisy chain add-on disk modules at low cost.  

2. Flexibility Matters.

Do you know what your network infrastructure is going to look like in 4 years? Is your mix of high speed vs slower access speed raid storage going to be the same 3 years from now? If you are like most companies - you're probably not sure. That's where buying a flexible system becomes important. Look for flexibility in 2 key areas. First - a system that supports multiple network connectivity options such Fiber Channel and IP (1 or 10 Gb iSSCI). Also consider options that include key future network connectivity trends such as 10 Gb iSSCI and SAS. This will let your storage system grow with the capacity of your network. Second - buy a system that offers you a choice of using different disk types within the same storage box. Key disk types include SATA (higher density but slower access speed), SAS (lower density but higher access speed) and Fibre Channel (lower density and the most fault tolerant and highest access speed). This enables you to switch disk configurations to match your storage needs down the road.  

3. Do You Know the Cost of a Minute of Down Time?

Everyone wants to save money when buying storage - who wouldn't? But would you price shop when looking for a heart surgeon to perform triple bi-pass surgery? So why would you try to save a couple dollars on your network storage system - the heart of your organization - if it leaves you exposed to an unnecessary storage system outage - the cost of which could be astronomical depending on your organization. Consider the case of a catalog / web-based specialty retailer that between the hours of 8 to 5 every day sells over $5 million worth of outdoor equipment and clothing. What is the cost of a network storage failure? What if the system were shut down for 6 hours due to a failure? (lost revenue of $3.75 million). What if the system operated at half speed for 6 hours and could only process orders at half capacity? (lost revenue of $1.875 million). What if the system was only down for 5 minutes? (lost revenue of $52,083). What if the system was only down for only 1 minute? (lost revenue of $10,417). Key Message: weigh relatively small dollar savings against the cost of a minute of down-time. Avoid cutting costs by eliminate options that offer redundancy and fail-over performance if you have a high cost per minute of storage downtime.  

4. Not All Storage Needs Are Equal.

Would you buy a Suburban to commute 70 miles to work one way each day by yourself driving through LA traffic? Would you buy a Toyata Prius to transport a family with 6 young children between home, school, sporting events and the family cabin? Probably not. But the family with 6 children might buy the Suburban and the single commuter might by the Prius . Why? - because each vehicle meets their specific needs. The same is true for storage. Want to know what kind of storage to buy? Understand what kind of data you need to store, how quickly it needs to be accessed, what the cost of your down time is and where it needs to be stored. Need storage for mission critical applications that cannot afford down-time and need super fast access to data for intense database applications (like ERP) - then consider Fiber Channel or SAS systems with very large network connections. Need storage to back-up financial records or e-mail archiving that are rarely accessed and require minimal database mining - then consider SATA storage systems. Need both - then consider hybrid storage systems that incorporate both SATA and Fibre Channel storage in the solution.  

5. How Much Speed Do You Really Need?

Ask a tech junkie this question and you are likely going to get a response something like this - "As much as you can afford, dude!" While simple in appearance, this approach is not very practical. SATA disk drives tend to spin at 3,500 to 5,000 RMP minute and have slower data access speeds than SAS or Fiber Channel drives which have smaller disk platters and spin at 15,000 RMP. What does this mean? You can generally access data 5 to 7 times faster using Fiber Channel or SAS disks because of their higher spin rate (RPM) and small disk platters which reduce the time it takes to access a byte of data. However, Fiber Channel and SAS drives are typically twice as expensive and have half the storage density of SATA drives making them almost 4 times as expensive on a per unit of storage basis.

So.. As general rule of thumb, speed requirements can be assessed based on the software application supported and general data base processing requirements. The following guidelines can be helpful: Consider SATA disk drives (lower cost and slower access speed storage) if: you do not have large quantities of users, data base processing requirements are simple, or delayed data access times do not have an impact on service or application performance. Applications where there is good fit for SATA include: e-mail and document archiving, back-up functions, static web hosting, general office application, non-mission critical back-office applications.

Consider Fiber Channel or SAS disk drives (higher cost and fastest access speed storage) if: you have large quantities of users, heavy data base processing requirements, complex search and data mining applications, and where delayed data access times have an negative impact on service or application performance such in high volume help desk or e-commerce applications. Applications where there is good fit for Fiber Channel or SAS include: ERP, E-commerce, dynamic web hosting, high volume transacation processing, data mining, numberical processing, video editing, video processing and recognition, survielance, image recognition, military systems, oil and gas exploration, maritime systems and field based applications subject to vibrations or shocks.  

6. Don't Buy More than You Need.

Have you ever grocery shopped for a dinner party for six people and bought and prepared enough food for fifteen people. Chances are if you have ever done this you felt like you wasted money. The same is true for storage. Investing in network storage infrastructure you do not need is like preparing too much food for a dinner party. Having a little extra food in case guests want seconds is reassuring, but having gross amounts of leftovers is wasteful. Be careful in assessing your true storage needs and developing buffer requirements. Purchase scalable systems that allow you to cost effectively add disk storage as it is needed. And avoid buying expensive features you know you will never use.  

7. Buy On-Site Service Programs Before You Need Them.

When is the worst time to borrow money? When you need it. When is the worst time to buy an on-site technology support contract? - Likewise - when you need it. If you have a deep technical staff and the capacity to stock on-site spare items for your storage solution including disk drives, controllers, replacement fans and power supplies, and you also have the ability to service your system with quick response times in the event of a component or system failure - then you probably do not need to consider buying an on-site service contract. However, if you are like most small to mid size businesses - you don't have the capacity or experience to do any of this. If your cost of down-time is more than $250 per hour - then strongly consider purchasing an on-site service contract with 4 hour on-site turnaround. These usually cost less than $1,000 per year and can really save your bacon in the event of a storage system failure.  

8. If you can't explain it to your mother - don't buy it.

Don't buy something that you cannot explain to a lay person in simple to understand terms. If you cannot explain in simple business terms why you need to pay more money for special features in system A compared with system B - then don't buy it. Always think in terms of "what is the business benefit of buying this system compared with something else." Business benefits are things like: this system will provide more flexibility as I grow so if my required mix of storage changes in 2 years - this system will support it, or this system has better redundancy features so it is less likely to fail - the extra $3,000 dollars in cost is well worth avoiding an hour of system downtime which costs $10K per hour. If you find yourself saying - I need to pay more for this system just because..then reconsider your decision.  

9. What every storage sales person doesn't want you to know.

Ever hear a sales person say "There's money in the Mystery." What they are really saying is that the buyer is so dumb they can sell him or her all kinds of extra features they don't need because they are too dense to know the difference. Don't be that buyer! Ask common sense questions and if there is no practical business benefit in buying extra features that you do not need then, by all means do not buy them. Look for a system that meets your needs today - that you think will reasonably meet your needs tomorrow and that does not include costly features that you will likely never need. Buying features you do not need can in some instances actually make your system more complex and difficult to use than necessary.  

10. How can be sure I am buying the right system for today and tomorrow?

This is simple - always remember to FUS. First, make sure your system is Flexible. This means it can support multiple disk types and network options. The ideal system will support FC, SAS and SATA disks and support FC, SAS and IP networks. Second, make sure your system is Upgradeable. Make sure your vendor will provide you with easy to retrieve updates for all controller and system software so your system can automatically take advantage of storage performance improvements. And finally, make sure your storage system can Scale. This means buy a modular system which easily lets you add controllers, disk drives and redundancy without having to buy all new components every time you want to add more disks.