In Storage Technology News, Marc Staimer makes hisSeven network storage predictions for 2007. Let's take a closer look at each one.

1. Federal Rules for Civil Procedures (FRCP) will increase adoption of unstructured data classification, email archive systems and CAS.

   CAS continues to flounder, but the rest I can agree with. Regulations are being adopted world wide. Japan has its own Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) style legislation go into effect in 2008.IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center for Data is a great tool to help classify unstructured file systems. IBM CommonStore for email supports both Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Domino, and can be connected to IBM System Storage DR550 for compliance storage.

2. Unified storage systems (combined file and block storage target systems) will become increasingly attractive in 2007, because of their ease of use and simplicity.

   I agree with this one also. Our sales of IBM N series in 2006 was great, and looking to continue its strong growth in 2007. The IBM N series brings together FCP, iSCSI and NAS protocols into one disk system. With the SnapLock(tm) feature, N series can store both re-writable data, as well as non-erasable, non-rewriteable data, on the same box. Combine the N series gateway on the front-end with SAN Volume Controller on the back-end, and you have an even more powerful combination.

3. Distributed ROBO backup to disk will emerge as the fastest growing data protection solution in 2007.

   IDC had a similar prediction for 2006. ROBO refers to "Remote Office/Branch Office", and so ROBO backup deals with how to back up data that is out in the various remote locations. Do you back it up locally? or send it to a central location?Fortunately, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) supports both ways, and IBM has introduced small disk and tape drives and auto-loaders that can be used in smaller environments like this. I don't know whether "backup to disk" will be the fastest growing, but I certainly agree that a variety of ROBO-related issues will be of interest this year.

4. 2007 will be remembered as the year iSCSI SAN took off because of the much reduced pricing for 10 Gbit iSCSI and the continued deployment of 10 Gbit iSCSI targets.

   While I agree that iSCSI is important, I can't say 2007 will be remembered for anything.We have terrible memory in these things. Ask someone what year did Personal Computers (PC) take off, and they will tell you about Apple's famous 1984 commercial. Ask someone when the Internet took off, cell phones took off, etc, and I suspect most will provide widely different answers, but most likely based on their own experience.

   For the longest time, I resisted getting a cell phone. I had a roll of quarters in my car, and when I needed to make a call, I stopped at the nearby pay-phone, and made the call. In 1998, pay phones disappeared. You can't find them anymore. That was the year of the cell phones took off, at least for me.

   Back to iSCSI, now that you can intermix iSCSI and SAN on the same infrastructure, either through intelligent multi-protocol switches available from your local IBM rep, or through an N series gateway, you can bring iSCSI technology in slowly and gradually. Low-cost copper wiring for 10 Gbps Ethernet makes all this very practical.

   Another up-and-coming technology is AoE, or ATA-over-Ethernet. Same idea as iSCSI, but taken down to the ATA level.

5. CDP will emerge as an important feature on comprehensive data protection products instead of a separate managed product.

   Here, CDP stands for Continuous Data Protection. While normal backups work like a point-and-shoot camera, taking a picture of the data once every midnight for example. CDP can record all the little changes like a video camera, with the option to rewind or fast-forward to a specific point in the day. IBM Tivoli CDP for Files, for example, is an excellent complement to IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

   The technology is not really new, as it has been implemented as "logs" or "journals" on databases like DB2 and Oracle, as well as business applications like SAP R/3.

   The prediction here, however, relates to packaging. Will vendors "package" CDP into existing backup products, possibly as a separately priced feature, or will they leave it as a separate product that perhaps, like in IBM's case, already is well integrated.

6. The VTL market growth will continue at a much reduced rate as backup products provide equivalent features directly to disk. Deduplication will extend the VTL market temporarily in 2007.

   VTL here refers to Virtual Tape Library, such as IBM TS7700 or TS7510 Virtualization Engine. IBM introduced the first one in 1997, the IBM 3494 Virtual Tape Server, and we have remained number one in marketshare for virtual tape ever since. I find it amusing that people are now just looking at VTL technology to help with their Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape (D2D2T) efforts, when IBM Tivoli Storage Manager has already had the capability to backup to disk, then move to tape, since 1993.

   As for deduplication, if you need the end-target box to deduplicate your backups, then perhaps you should investigatewhy you are doing this in the first place? People take full-volume backups, and keep to many copies of it, when a more sophisticated backup software like Tivoli Storage Manager can implement backup policies to avoid this with a progressive backup scheme. Or maybe you need to investigate why you store multiple copies of the same data on disk, perhaps NAS or a clustered file system like IBM General Parallel File System (GPFS) could provide you a single copy accessible to many servers instead.

   The reason you don't see deduplication on the mainframe, is that DFSMS for z/OS already allows multiple servers to share a single instance of data, and has been doing so since the early 1980s. I often joke with clients at the Tucson Executive Briefing Center that you can run a business with a million data sets on the mainframe, but that there wereprobably a million files on just the laptops in the room, but few would attempt to run their business that way.

7. Optical storage that looks, feels and acts like NAS and puts archive data online, will make dramatic inroads in 2007.

   Marc says he's going out on a limb here, and that's good to make at least one risky prediction. IBM used to have anoptical library emulate disk, called the IBM 3995. Lack of interest and advancement in technology encouraged IBM to withdraw it. A small backlash ensued, so IBM now offers the IBM 3996 for the System p and System i clients that really, really want optical.

   As for optical making data available "online", it takes about 20 seconds to load an optical cartridge, so I would consider this more "nearline" than online. Tape is still in the 40-60 second range to load and position to data, so optical is still at an advantage.

   Optical eliminates the "hassles of tape"? Tape data is good for 20 years, and optical for 100 years, but nobody keeps drives around that long anyways. In general, our clients change drives every 6-8 years, and migrate the data from old to new. This is only a hassle if you didn't plan for this inevitable movement. IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, IBM System Storage Archive Manager, and the IBM System Storage DR550 all make this migration very simple and easy, and can do it with either optical or tape.

   The Blue-ray vs. DVD debate will continue through 2007 in the consumer world. I don't see this being a major player in more conservative data centers where a big investment in the wrong choice could be costly, even if the price-per-TB is temporarily in-line with current tape technologies. IBM and others are investing a lot of Research and Development funding to continue the downward price curve for tape, and I'm not sure that optical can keep up that pace.

Well, that's my take. It is a sunny day here in China, and have more meetings to attend.

technorati tags: IBM, FRCP, SOX, TotalStorage, Productivity Center, Microsoft, Exchange, Lotus, Domino, DR550, SnapLock, unified storage, NAS, iSCSI, FCP, ROBO, Tivoli, Storage Manager, TSM, Ethernet, AoE, CDP, DB2, Oracle, SAP, VTL, TS7700, TS7510, GPFS, DFSMS, Optical, 3995, 3996, Blue-Ray, D2D2T,DVD

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