Systems Alliance Blog

In conversations with current and prospective clients over the last few weeks, most believe the economy is in recovery. Yet these same CIOs have two sharply divergent views on the state of IT and the approach they're taking to develop roadmaps for the future.  I've labeled these perspectives restoration and transformation – see how they align with your thinking.

The restoration perspective sees the challenges ahead in terms of past funding levels, headcount, skills and gradual change in the technologies deployed across the enterprise. Particularly in those industries impacted by an eroding tax base (state & local government, higher-education and healthcare), the focus is on keeping the lights on (literally in some instances), hanging on to talented professionals during recurring rounds of reductions and making the most of an uncertain technology investment environment. Coupled with increasing regulatory requirements, the CIO’s job is becoming more challenging each month rather than less so.

A transformation perspective appears to be gaining ground across other industry verticals. There is a recognition that the world has dramatically changed, and isn’t likely to return to the old paradigm. Ever increasing levels of IT functionality are being offered to the business, emerging capacity on demand models (partly cloudy?) SaaS, DaaS and PaaS approaches are opening up brave new worlds for CIOs functioning as architects intent on differentiating their businesses with IT.

Funding makes a heck of a difference. Building an effective business case that clearly correlates results with spend is back in fashion.

How well does your SAN handle crunch time? I’m talking about periods of heavy random read/write scenarios, such as:

• Data mining
• High Performance computing
• ERP Application loads

Depending on how you’ve got things architected, you should have no problem provisioning high-performance storage for all your applications. Got a slow SATA array? You can greatly boost its performance by applying cache principles to the entire SAN, not just a single array – and, not just a write cache, but an intelligent read cache. 

Now, imagine taking this a step further. Let’s add an SSD cache in front of your entire SAN (operating at over 1 million IOPS) and make it intelligent with data profiling… OK, let’s turn on the lights and get real. You can make this happen today with the FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator. NSS lets you configure a write cache and a read cache for your entire SAN using two technologies: SafeCache and HotZone.  Here’s how they work:

SafeCache is a designated area on your SAN, such as an SSD array, where all application writes are sent. By using an SSD array (or any faster LUN on your SAN), the writes are high performance, and acknowledgements are much lower-latency.  Writes are also sequentially written to the final SAN target, which is any typical SAN resource (SATA array, FC array, etc.)   You can see how this would greatly increase the overall performance of the SAN, and subsequently all applications utilizing the SAN storage. With all writes going to the highest performing LUN on your SAN, the write performance becomes predictable regardless of which array is the final target, and predictability is a very good thing in our business.

HotZone is also used as a cache, but it is a designated read cache. Unlike SafeCache, HotZone can be used for the entire SAN or prioritized by application. HotZone intelligently recognizes data that is accessed on a more regular basis, and makes a copy available on the SSD array (or other faster LUN you designate).  As the data is used less, the data profiler will remove the data from the HotZone and redirect access to its normal location on the SAN resources.  Again, you get faster, more predictable storage performance.

How fast you ask?
Lab tests of the FalconStor NSS SAN Accelerator  show that adding a solid-state layer of one percent of a SAN´s total storage capacity will increase overall SAN performance more than 100 percent. Compared with achieving an equivalent performance increase by adding spindles alone, the FalconStor NSS is a bargain – even for organizations with modest budgets.

If you’re having performance issues or contemplating adding disk to boost SAN performance or reliability, please contact us for a no-obligation storage assessment.

We recently received a request from a writer at Processor.com who was looking for tips about how IT managers can build more effective partnerships with their line-of-business counterparts. Here are five suggestions we shared for your consideration:

1. Improve communication: Business unit leaders are accustomed to instant gratification on Amazon, eBay and Google. They will expect similar results from internal IT unless you do a thorough job of communicating costs, options and other data.
2. Develop an understanding of your organization's core vision and objectives: A view across the multiple parts or divisions of the business is essential for properly prioritizing IT projects and resources. As an IT executive, you're often weighed down with multiple, sometimes competing objectives. Understanding how these fit together will ensure success.
3. Share your process discipline: IT is well positioned to provide process discipline to other parts of the business and can accelerate business results if deployed thoughtfully. Your PMI certified project managers can help other professionals in the business develop plans and execute them with discipline. When offering your project management services don't be heavy handed – volunteer and wait for a response is the best approach.
4. Become an enabler rather than a supplier: Enablers, consultants and other specialists are perceived as providing high value internally. Suppliers are not. Your level of understanding in IT can differentiate the IT organization internally.
5. Everyone sells: Most IT Directors are responsible for a large chunk of the corporate spend annually. Vendors and suppliers to IT are potential customers to the rest of your business. Ensure that you are maximizing your opportunity for “balance of trade” conversations with vendors and suppliers that might help your colleagues in the business.

What do you think? Have you tried building collaborative, results-oriented relationships with your fellow managers? Your comments and additional ideas on this subject are welcome.