George Crump, the Storage Switzerland blogger wrote about thin provisioning and talks about how wasteful unused storage is.
If you manage storage for your company, you probably get a sinking feeling whenever storage utilization is mentioned because you know it is probably THE ELEPHANT in your data center(s). Energy consumption may have been the ignored problem a few years ago, but that's had too much attention the last couple years to be this year's "dirty little secret".
I don't think anybody I know really enjoys hoarding storage but over allocating it has become a default practice that passes budget scrutiny simply because non-technical managers (and CIOs) don't know whether or not they can believe what IT managers tell them. Of course, there have been good reasons for buying excess storage in the past, but times and technologies change and people become aware of new ways of working. As more non-technical people become aware of the potential of thin storage technology storage professionals obviously need to increase their understanding and skills with it so they don't look ignorant.
Of course, shiny new technologies like flash SSDs are more fun to talk about, but they aren't the solution to the larger financial problems companies have. Some vendors want to portray "thin provisioning" as a feature, but Thin Storage is a whole branch of storage technology designed to get the most efficiency out of spinning rust. This year 3PAR is going to introduce new thin technologies that will significantly change the way people think about thin technology. So pay attention if you want to get a leg up on everybody else.
My shiny new T400 is waiting for that new thin software!
Posted by: nate | January 06, 2009 at 02:01 PM