Until recently, storage chores had subsets across the IT organization, from the desktop to legacy databases and mainframes. But the growing importance of storage has pushed many enterprises toward a holistic approach. That's both good news and bad for those seeking a career path in storage. It's good because most IT workers, from help desk techs to Unix sysadmins and database administrators, are likely to have at least some storage experience. It's bad because the most sought-after storage professionals are the ones who are familiar with all of those areas -- and they are rare.

The desirability of storage workers with broad experience is seen in a higher-than-average salary differential between storage administrators and those who merit the "senior" title. Foote's 2006 salary survey gathered data from 51,000 U.S. IT pros at more than 1,800 employers. The survey, which was released in January, found a mean national salary of $80,500 for storage and SAN administrators, while the mean salary for senior storage or SAN administrators was $95,000.

Storage administrators' bonus pay ranged from 7 percent to 12 percent of their base salaries, while their senior counterparts' bonuses ran from 9 percent to 18 percent of base salary.

The $14,500 base-pay premium for senior storage administrators -- a bigger differential than that found in most IT specialties -- reflects "a big run on experienced senior people who really know what they're doing," Foote says. The survey found that salaries for all storage administrators have risen about 2 percent in the past six months, a similar increase to that of IT as a whole.

Gary Foote (no relation to David) understands the challenges of storage administration and hiring storage administrators. He spent nearly two decades in the field, and for six years he handled about 250TB of Unix storage at an East Coast health care firm that he declines to name (he left the company last year).