The Circle of (Storage) Life

Remember the Lion King? Simba starts off as a little cub, and his father, Mufasa, is king. Over time, Simba goes through a lot of growing pains but eventually matures to take over his father’s role despite the best efforts of his Uncle Scar to prevent it. This is the circle of life. It kind of reminds me of the storage life cycle only without the Elton John score!

Hardware Will Eventually Fail and Software Will Eventually Work

New storage technologies are quickly maturing and replacing legacy platforms. But will they be mature enough to meet your high availability, high performance IT infrastructure needs?

One thing that the legacy storage vendors have on their side is a wealth of experience and history in the enterprise storage business. When I was at IBM, my mentor IBM Fellow, Mike Hartung, had a saying: “Hardware will eventually fail and software will eventually work”. What this means is that over time more and more of the bugs in a software system get ironed out. Thus, the microcode in legacy storage systems can be inherently more robust and reliable than newer technologies. But, on the other hand, by not embracing new technology you risk being left behind in a fast-changing world.

Manage All Phases of the Storage Life Cycle in a Holistic Way

Technology trade-offs are just one aspect of the storage life cycle that must be faced. Unfortunately, storage administrators are often too busy to devote much time to this. Instead, managing the storage life cycle becomes another tactical effort on the laundry list of tasks that need attention. In many cases, important decisions on when and how to replace or upgrade storage are simply delegated to the storage vendor. Technology changes are often made based on the latest trade press hype. This is not the way to run a business!

There is a better approach. IntelliMagic offers an integrated suite of software and services that can help you manage all phases of the storage life cycle from design to build to run. IntelliMagic Direction may be used to model how a storage hardware configuration will perform for a given workload. This can help you choose a storage configuration that truly meets your requirements. IntelliMagic Vision helps you to keep a handle on the performance and availability of your storage installation. In addition, it provides workload profiles that can be used as input to IntelliMagic Direction. IntelliMagic has skilled consultants with years of industry experience that can provide objective analysis and independent guidance when making storage decisions. By managing the life cycle in a holistic way, changes to your storage infrastructure will be well planned and less traumatic for your staff.

If you feel like you are wandering in the jungle when it comes to storage decisions, IntelliMagic can help you lead instead of being part of the herd. With success achieved by partnering with IntelliMagic, you just might find yourself standing on the top of Pride Rock!