Originating Author: Dave Vellante

Storage management has never involved more complexity. Applications, servers, storage tiers, networks, resource management, security, backup, business continuance...the list of technologies storage managers deal with goes on. With truly challenging implementations in areas such as remote email replication, archiving, three-node data centers, tiered storage, ILM, heterogenous storage management, data warehouses etc. why is it that more vendors don't show customers the way by providing specific, step-by-step instructive how-to's with best practice information.

For example, demonstrate a successful implementation of Exchange remote replication using HP servers, EMC arrays, Symantec software and Brocade switches. Show me it can scale in a real world setting, let me fly in and see it and give me a "cookbook" so I can show people in my company this stuff really works and here's how you do it.

Granted my exact configurations will vary but if a vendor has done it, not as a benchmark, but as a real world example, my confidence will skyrocket, especially for technology combinations that aren't super mature. IBM is one vendor that has led in this area and HP has been doing some good work in this regard. EMC as well has published reference architectures for many environments including Oracle, Exchange and SQL. It would seem the return on this effort would be excellent compared with traditional vendor marketing hype. This approach can provide a terrific opportunity to build relationships with key clients and educate practitioners on specific solutions.

Next time a vendor asks you to consider an 'on-the-edge' solution, ask them to send you their "How-to Cookbook" and see what they say. You might be pleasantly surprised.

-Dave Vellante

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