Originating Author: Fred Moore
The July 31, 2008, announcement of the CLARiiON CX4 midrange disk array offers a rich, multi-functional storage solution with a solid feature set. In particular, the CX4 offers multi-tier (tier 0 through 3) storage capabilities from flash memory to spin down and reduced power disks. These features are appealing and enable the customer to further optimize storage infrastructure expenses.
However, before users can exploit a tiered storage architecture, they need classification tools to identify what data is best suited for each tier. Without this capability, highly active data could be allocated on disks that would normally spin down when inactive, thus negating any "green" energy savings capability. Implementing effective data classification discipline is becoming near-mandatory for medium-to-enterprise sized customers and consistently comes up in Wikibon Peer Incite Reviews.
Unfortunately storage companies in general and EMC specifically have not yet integrated such classification tool sets into their solutions. These suppliers instead offers professional services, but data classification requires a lengthy engagement. This definitely will impact the potential ROI advantages of CX4 upgrades, despite its full-tiered storage solution and investment protection of CX-3's facilitating migration from older arrays to CX4. That ROI impact will only grow as the cost of electricity rises.
Action Item: CX4 will require easy-to-use tools to allow for customer applications to exploit the tiered hardware architecture. Without these tools, optimizing data assignments to the four storage classes will require a substantial effort. Going forward, think of classification in three dimensions: 1)business criticality 2) performance and 3)capacity. Users should ensure EMC provides sufficient data placement capabilities to exploit the strong CX4 hardware offering before committing.
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