EMC'S FULLY AUTOMATED STORAGE TIERING (FAST)
Taking ILM to the "Next Level"

At VMworld Europe held in Cannes, France, EMC made a number of key announcements. Two of these were most significant in my mind. First, 50% of all customers using VMware are doing so on an EMC Unified Storage Platform. The second was the scheduled release of FAST across DMX, Clariion, and Celerra by the end of Q2 2010. Over the next couple of blogs I will be answering: Why are so many VMware Customers working with EMC? Where does Cisco UCS fit into the cloud puzzle? What will "Cloud Computing Technology" mean to your business continuity plans? And ultimately what the business value is for building "Your Private Cloud". All critical issues faced today by business competing in a global economy. For the purposes of this discussion I will be addressing the net effect of EMC's FAST technology will have on your ILM strategy and your company's ability to react quickly to customer demands.
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What is FAST?

Put simply, EMC's FAST technology is designed to automate the allocation and relocation of data across two or more storage tiers based upon the performance requirements of the applications. By intelligently migrating workloads to the most suitable disk, based on real-time resource requirements, FAST ensures optimal performance and optimal storage design simultaneously.

Many of us in IT are familiar with the term ILM or Information Lifecycle Management. ILM is defined on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Lifecycle_Management as: ILM is the practice of applying certain policies to the effective management of information throughout its useful life. In real world terms: ILM is the general understanding that as our company's data ages, it becomes less relevant to running our business. I.E. it is a depreciating asset.

Traditionally in a networked storage environment we addressed this by "tiering" our drive shelves. We would migrate the flow of data from more expensive Flash (if you are using these) and/or Fibre Channel Drives (smaller, high speed 15K RPM) to an additional DAE's of less expensive Sata Drives (larger, slower moving). On EMC's platforms: DMX is done with Optimizer and in the Clariion/Celerra world it is done with LUN migration built into the FLARE and DART operating systems based on the aged policy we set.

Another aspect of ILM is the concept of Virtual Provisioning. Defined by Chucks blog: http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2009/09/stacking-storage-technologies-to-tame-the-information-beast.html Virtual Provisioning is also known as thin provisioning, the idea is deceptively simple: allocate big virtual chunks of storage to applications and users initially, but only allocate physical storage when it's actually needed. Best describe in real world terms by thinking of your local bank. If every customer came in on the same day and emptied out their respective accounts. The bank would not have enough money on hand to give everyone. Just like in the storage world not every application and user is going to demand this all at once. The net result of both Tiering and Virtual Provisioning is delivering aged value data to applications and users in the most economical means possible. Makes sense, right?

Let's look at a business example that is common place in today's fast paced world. You're an IT Manager working at a large law firm and your biggest client calls one of the Partners to tell him that an acquisition the firm worked on last year is now "red hot" and they want get this deal constructed and closed in the next couple of business days. This sets off a fire drill at the firm. It is "all hands on deck" to get back up to speed and develop a deal to meet your clients tight timeframe. In order to do this your firm must gather all relevant matter and bring the files up to date and work as a team to develop the new deliverable. To make matters worse, it is Friday afternoon and you have plans to head out of town with your family.

You have done a great job of leveraging ILM to save the firm money from a flexibility and cost of storage perspective. The data has been Virtual Provisioned and resides on Sata Drives as it is historical with little current value (Remember, it is over a year old and had been written off as a dead deal). In a matter of seconds that application and data is now the most important information in the firm. It is being hit hard by Partners, Junior Attorneys, Paralegals, ect. It is literally what is running the business. But the SATA drives are just not designed to handle the I/O to meet these high performance needs. Traditionally, before Virtualization and Virtual Provisioning you knew exactly where these applications and data sat (down to the spindles) according to Gestalt IT http://gestaltit.com/featured/top/gestalt/emc-unified-platform-storage-tiering/ In today's virtual world this is a much more complex issue. Bottom line, call the wife. You're not going anywhere this weekend; and if the Partners hear all the end user complaints steaming from the lack of performance you could be in hot water as well.

Here is where the beauty and business value of FAST comes into play. Starting in Q4 2009 and with phased releases in 2010 EMC will bring FAST technology to the DMX, Clariion, and Celerra product lines. What this would mean in the example above is the application and customer matter (data) needed by the firm would be automatically moved and temporally stored on Flash Drives (Fibre Channel if you don't have Flash as of yet). Sometime after Tuesday when the deal is complete and this information again has very little value it will be automatically moved back to the DAE of Sata for you. The real world business impact is huge! The company's data is demand driven based upon its needs and not only its age. The Tiered and Virtually Provisioned storage solution is cost effective and now dynamically reactive to the business. The best part you ask? Your job is secure and you get to go on your family trip confident that your end users will have optimized performance.

Reference Material:

http://gestaltit.com/featured/top/gestalt/emc-unified-platform-storage-tiering/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofKBDvo8214
http://chucksblog.emc.com/chucks_blog/2009/09/stacking-storage-technologies-to-tame-the-information-beast.html

http://storage-news.com/2009/08/17/emcs-fully-automated-storage-tiering-coming-soon/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDPPX9twAZw&amp;feature=related Chad Sakac