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Grayhair's Van Horn prefers to use one storage system to ease management. |
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Grids let businesses easily add low-cost storage from a variety of vendors. But some administrators say that approach poses management challenges. "I'd prefer just one storage system from a management standpoint," says Robert Van Horn, director of IT at Grayhair Software Inc., which provides mail-tracking services to clients with large mail campaigns. "The more you complicate the infrastructure, the more you create multiple points of failure."
Still, Grayhair chose a gridlike storage array from 3PARdata Inc. over a storage system from Hitachi Data Systems after a performance test. The Hitachi system processed around 4,000 operations per second, while 3PAR processed 16,000 operations per second, Van Horn says. The 3PAR InServ operates as a single system, making it easy to add capacity and move blocks of data. Grayhair plans to increase capacity by 50% by this summer, and Van Horn says all he needs to do is plug in 40 new disk drives. He also likes the simple way he can add capacity for specific apps. "We just assign the space we think an app will use," he says, "and the app pulls capacity from a pool as it grows."
There's a downside to the grid approach: a huge increase in network traffic. "We're seeing a 6,000% increase in disk and network traffic," Industrial Light & Magic's Thompson says. But he says that's a minor issue compared with the cost reductions and improved file handling of storage grids.
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