Group offers storage, data requirements for grids

27.03.2006
The Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) Monday released its data and storage provisioning requirements for enterprise grids as part of its ongoing effort to foster development of interoperable grid products and best practices.

The requirements outlined by the vendor group in the report, 'Enterprise Grid Data and Storage Provisioning,' detail the specialized data and storage provisioning needs and questions that grid administrators will likely want addressed, said Alan Yoder, chairman of the EGA's data provisioning working group and senior technical staff member at Network Appliance Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif.

For instance, said Yoder, if a given storage component in the grid breaks, which applications running on top of it are going to break as well? 'It's just something that any grid administrator is going to need to know,' he said.

Some of the other issues addressed by the requirements include data handling procedures in commissioning and decommissioning grid components, security, chargeback and copying, said Yoder.

The EGA hopes that enterprise users review the requirements and offer feedback. Ideally, they should see their own requirements -- the things they need for grid use -- addressed in the documents, said EGA officials. The grid requirements can be used by groups such as the Storage Industry Networking Association to develop standards.

Last year, the EGA delivered security requirements and a reference model for grid deployments.