Users tackle ILM

HDS has tiered hardware and management products for open systems, mainframes and NAS. The vendor emphasizes data replication and moving data non-disruptively across the various storage tiers, using its virtualization controllers as a front end to the external storage systems.

When it comes to ILM, HDS collaborates extensively with Arkivio, StoredIQ and a number of other partners to provide a comprehensive offering. HDS's contribution is the hardware (particularly storage devices and virtualization controllers) and the storage-resource management (its HiCommand suite, which manages discovery, tuning, tiering and a number of other storage aspects) that enable policy-based automated storage movement across storage tiers. The company also provides a suite of business-continuity tools that create data copies, replicating them across local heterogeneous tiers of storage and out to remote recovery sites.

"Storage volume is growing fast, with more multimedia, video and image data," said Fred Sheu, marketing director, Technology Solutions Group, HP HK. "ILM is used increasingly, and IT managers are determining the value of data, especially in the light of compliance requirements. But only large enterprises are using ILM fully-for example, chargeback mechanisms to make users pay for their storage service are not used much."

Although ILM is not new, Hong Kong users, like others around the world, are struggling to define the best ILM policy. "They have to map their organization's data values to the available storage infrastructure, and that requires input from the internal end-users of storage," said Douglas Lo, IBM's senior IT specialist, system storage, Systems and Technology Group, "However, it also requires expertise, including help from vendors, consultants and standards such as ITIL."