Optimizing IT: Storage innovations that reduce costs

In part one of the optimizing IT blog, you were presented with an example of cost structure for a datacenter using traditional storage provisioning and data protection solutions. In this part, I will introduce some technology innovations into the infrastructure to see if it helps reduce costs.

There are four key innovations in technology which can be applied in any IT shop to reduce costs. 

Storage Virtualization: Commoditizes disk resources and enables data to be placed anywhere on any storage array.

Thin Provisioning: Let's you get more out of your storage by increasing utilization while also eliminating the need for application downtime to add capacity.

Data Deduplication: Reduces storage requirements for data protection and WAN requirements for data replication. 

Continuous Data Protection: Changes your data protection paradigm from backup focused to recovery focused, enables many more recovery points from snapshots or zero data loss from journaling versus tape backup for improved recovery point objectives, and enables instant recovery for mission critical applications for improved recovery time objectives.

We can apply storage virtualization to pool the existing storage into multiple tiers based on performance and reliability, introduce thin provisioning for added efficiency and optimization of the existing disk resources, and include data deduplication to reduce backup and DR storage and WAN requirements.  In addition, we also can add continuous protection with WAN optimized replication and snapshots to eliminate the license costs for array-based replication and business continuance volumes (BCV), which also reduces the number of full copies of primary data.
 
Once the storage is virtualized, all the intelligence which is usually located within the storage array is now centralized within the virtual abstraction layer. The disk arrays become a commodity which can now be purchased according to the following. Thin provisioning works to increase disk utilization to bring down storage costs and offset future storage purchases.

The cost savings from adding virtualization, Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and deduplication can pay for the solution costs within the first year of operation. All additional monthly savings can then be used more proactively to grow the bottom line of the business.

As stated, storage virtualization with thin provisioning can be a key component in making your disk a commodity, enable better utilization of your existing storage assets, and enable you to purchase disk space from any vendor at the best price without increasing  operational expenses. Deduplication helps lower media, storage, backup and DR costs, and continuous protection with replication and snapshots (CDP) eliminates the entire traditional backup process and associated costs. 

Now let’s include the benefits and see what the costs are:

(The following assumes no array-based license costs except RAID, thin provisioning to increase utilization of the current disks, snapshots instead of full BCV copies and the ability to leverage commodity disks).

New sample per GB storage costs for optimized tiers using the same downtime cost of $1,000/hour

• Tier1 with CDP:    $2.00                 RPO = 0 Hours
• Tier1 with DR:      $4.00                 RPO = 1 hours
• Tier2 with CDP:    $1.50                 RPO = 0 Hours
• Tier2 with DR:      $3.00                 RPO = 1 hours
• Tier3 with snap:   $1.00                 RPO = 1 Hours
• Tier4 with snap:   $0.75                 RPO = 1 Hours
• Tier5 w dedupe:   $0.50                 RPO = 24 Hours

Optimized capacity via virtual storage with thin provisioning: 10TB across 4 tiers, plus T5 backup (includes 50 percent increase in utilization efficiency via thin provisioning)

T1: 1TB CDP + 1.5TB DR
T2: 1TB CDP + 1.5TB DR
T3: 2.5TB
T4: 2.5TB
T5: 25TB (20TB + (growth + change)x retention/20:1 dedupe)

Optimized Monthly Expenses:
$17,034 for production, and $12,800 for backup

Single outage costs:
$0-1K for T1-T2, and $1K-24K for T3-T5 (at $1,000 per hour)

T1: 2.5TB = $7,168.00
T2: 5TB   = $5,376.00
T3: 2.5TB = $2,560.00
T4: 2.5TB = $1,920.00
T5: 25TB  = $12,800

Cost improvement of the optimized model versus the traditional model:

330% improvement in production storage costs
50% better storage utilization
680% improvement in backup costs
400% less backup media
1200% improvement in outage costs

After looking at these typical results, do you think your CFO would be interested in datacenter optimization?

Christopher Poelker is the author of “Storage Area Networks for Dummies” and has more than 30 years of experience in architecting storage, backup and disaster recovery solutions. Chris specializes in storage virtualization and data protection, and is currently the vice president of enterprise solutions at FalconStor Software.