Economics of Vendor

Economics of Vendor-Independent

Storage Consolidation – An ROI

Perspective

Sometimes an innovation entices us, yet leaves us unequipped to quantify its economic merits.We shy away, returning to business as usual and turning down offers for vendor-independent storage consolidation. Eventually enough of our competitors, more willing and aggressive than ourselves, make it clear that the change is long overdue. Don’t let your next storage deployment be crippled by this failure to leverage an opportunity. To take some of the emotion out of the decision, DataCore commissioned a financial model that walks through a comprehensive return on investment (ROI) analysis. The ROI Modeling Tool pits competing alternatives against each other. With a little insight into your operational objectives, we can jointly answer the basic questions, “Will this outlay save or even make the company money?”

Translating Financial Value

The guys and gals holding the purse strings tend to be level headed people. Unmoved by technojargon, they rely heavily on cold hard facts to help them choose where and when to spend. So how does one translate cool features into something financially meaningful? And how does one go about comparing alternative widgets?

Let’s answer those questions with more questions:

§ Which route brings the greatest payback?

§ How much better off functionally and operationally will you be?

For many facets of storage management, these are relatively easy questions to answer – once you’ve thought through the variables.

Key Variables

At the top level are three key considerations:

§ Acquisition costs

§ Recurring costs

§ Operational benefit

Most of us intuitively know what goes into calculating the top two costs. However, there are numerous ripple effects that a process or infrastructure choice has on recurring costs. Quantifying operational benefits can sometimes be elusive. There are also a few factors that often go forgotten.

§ Asset utilization – How well will I use what I have and plan to buy?

§ Abandonment costs – What assets am I essentially throwing away?

§ Cost avoidance – What future expenditure will I avert?

§ Leverage – How much control does this give me over my future?

The ROI analysis accounts for all these variables in comparing alternatives with the decision to “pool” storage with a Powered by DataCore solution.

Validating the decision to “pool” storage

DataCore is in the business of consolidating dispersed disk capacity into vendor-independent storage pools. Most of our prospects are immediately drawn to the benefits of being able to add, upgrade, reassign and replicate disks without disrupting their applications. Their economic reasoning, however, varies. Roughly speaking, three profiles of customers have surfaced over the past years. These can be categorized as:

1. Moving from Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) to Network Storage Pools

2. Consolidating distributed disk arrays under a Network Storage Pool

3. Incorporating clusters of large consolidated arrays alongside distributed disks in a

Network Storage Pool

To capture the unique financial motivation for each group, DataCore employed a consulting firm familiar with the economics of conventional storage deployment. The firm’s analysis is the heart

of the comprehensive ROI Modeling Tool. Of course, the first temptation was to “fix” the output so it would always suggest our products are the only way to go! We dismissed that approach knowing the tool’s believability would be compromised. Instead, we opted to let the equations show what they may – and on some occasions, the math favors the status quo. However, we wouldn’t be writing this paper if that were the norm.

The majority of analyses reveal just what our customers intuitively suspect - the value proposition of advanced storage virtualization Powered by DataCore is indeed fiscally compelling.

We invite you to run “what if” scenarios with one of our account managers any time.

Three concrete examples

Before taking us up on the invitation, determine which of the three profiles described above best matches your situation. Look through the factors that are most important to your operation and start thinking about how you would quantify the relief, or opportunity represented by consolidating your storage assets under a highly available network storage pool – a centrally managed pool that hides and compensates for all of the vendor-specific inadequacies of disparate disks. Our expectation is that a properly implemented environment can resolve many of the storage management issues you confront daily. The only catch is that you must invest in the following components to enable hardware agnostic storage consolidation:

§ Advanced storage virtualization software from DataCore

§ Network nodes on which to run the management and control services

§ Host bus adapters to connect the servers into the pool

§ Switches and ot her networking components to tie it all together

The last three items are commercially available from a wide range of suppliers and may already be in place at your facilities. Alternatively, packaged solutions Powered by DataCore are available from our authorized worldwide resellers and OEMs.

Profile 1. DAS to Network Storage Pooling Transition

The pre-existing conditions for a Direct-Attached (or server-centric) storage environment include the following areas of pain:

Storage-related interruptions

§ Downtime while adding, moving and upgrading disks, compounded by complex cabling

§ Downtime recovering data from failed servers

Resource under-utilization

§ Inaccessible capacity locked behind servers

§ Processing cycles and LAN resources occupied with backup tasks

Opportunity costs from not reacting quickly enough to expansion requirements

§ Disk capacity not available for expanding applications

§ Known good working images not ready to put new servers into action

Twisting the Buyer’s Arm

Obviously, financial decision makers are not dealing with these issues day-in and day-out and have little compassion for the subjective argument that the new-fangled virtualization software makes administrator’s lives’ easier. A shortsighted CIO might turn down the request because he/she can buy internal disk drives dirt cheap, so why spend more money on all the new equipment. You’ll need some convincing economic reason to free the necessary funds. You have three weapons at your disposal:

§ Projected administrative expense

§ Lost revenue from storage related interruptions

§ Estimated reduction in the above as a result of network storage pooling

To arrive at the administrative expense, one can run a relatively simple calculation with theunderstanding that:

§ A large portion of each system administrator’s time is spent managing storage

§ The number of administrators grows as capacity grows

The lost revenue calculation requires a bit more research. Many IT facilities can place a monetary figure on the value derived from each hour of processing. The number can be approximated from:

§ Average revenue generated by each transaction from that group of servers

§ Average number of revenue-generating transactions per hour

You can conservatively estimate the beneficial reduction in the administrative expenses and lost revenues for a given consolidation alternative. These are best broken down along the areas of pain outlined above. For example, a Powered by DataCore solution has the potential to eliminate downtime while adding, moving and upgrading disks. For each hour saved, you return “N” average number of revenue-generating transactions.

Profile 2. Consolidating Distributed Storage Under Network Storage Pools

The second scenario includes companies who have taken some of the necessary steps to curtail downtime and administrative expense by implementing a connection infrastructure based on a Storage Area Network (SAN). However, most of them have not gone far enough. Many have been surprised to find only modest operational benefits from the cabling andbandwidth change, while their storage management woes largely remained. They incurred all the expense – without the payback. As a result, the initial SAN proponents are in a difficult situation. Having promised a bevy of benefits to promote the initial SAN acquisition, these crusaders are fighting an uphill battle to obtain the additional funding needed to deliver on those promises. If this is your situation, try discussing the incremental expenditures as “completing the consolidation plan.” Which is very much the truth.The same sound arguments used in Profile 1 apply here, although having the connectivity infrastructure already in place lowers the cost of the new request.

Profile 3. Incorporating Consolidated Arrays in a Network Storage Pool

Companies that fall into this category have tasted the benefits of storage consolidation – albeit in pricey and proprietary single vendor configurations. As they look to the future, a few challenges come to mind.

·How do I gain back buying power and negotiating position by reducing the dependency on a single storage hardware vendor? Network storage pools drive down costs by enabling you to make vendors compete for your business.

·In what ways can I extend the advanced storage facilities currently enjoyed on premium arrays to the lower priced storage devices throughout the campus and remote locations? Powered by DataCore solutions elevate the attributes of ordinary storage devices and reduce the need for the expensive stuff.

·What are some possibilities for offloading non-critical data from premium-priced resources, to better use the pricier assets? In a network storage pool, you can relegate snapshots, temporary files, etc. to inexpensive devices.

·How do I match quality of service to workload characteristics by combining the strength of high-end gear with the price / performance of lower-end devices? Only by having a range of pooled storage resources can you effectively match the task to the cost of the assets. In short, these firms are searching for:

§ Cost avoidance measures

§ Future buying power and freedom

§ Cost-effective resource utilization

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

It goes without saying that ROI is closely intertwined with TCO. Our experiences with accounts that share the above profiles suggest that substantial TCO savings result from a modest investment in Powered by DataCore solutions. There is one easy and inexpensive way to find out if these economic and operational wins apply

to you – give us a call or contact us at mail@4raid.com.