By Lee Johns
For a number of years now the relentless growth of SANs has overshadowed the Direct Attached Storage market (DAS). Indeed market studies have shown that while still a large market, DAS is shrinking. However, recent advances in SAS drives and SAS connectivity, along with market shifts are pointing to a resurgence of DAS.
I thought I might put forward 10 reasons why over the next 18 months DAS will grow! SO HERE WE GO (drum roll)...
1) SAS connectivity offers much more functionality that older SCSI cable connections. Indeed major systems manufacturers, like HP, have introduced SAS connected arrays that can provided a shared storage environment for multiple servers just like a SAN. For smaller environments this offers SAN functionality without the headache of managing a network.
2) Server Blades are the hotest growth area of the server market. By consolidating servers in a single enclosure, SAS based arrays will in the near future be able to share storage across more servers without using a network with traditional server architectures.
3) Server Virtualization is the hotest SW growth story in the market. Using products like VMware forces customers to have to consider how to implement shared storage, and for many using fibre channel storage is too expensive. SAS connectivity offers a lower cost alternative and is easier to manage, especially for server administrators. SAS products like the HP MSA 2000sa are VMware certified.
4) Although SAN's have consolidated a huge amount of data there still exists an extraordinary amount of drives in servers today that have not been consolidated for a variety of reasons. SAS offers a lower cost consolidation play for the drives that have not today been moved to SANs.
5) Ongoing management costs are one of the major issues faced by IT organizations today. If you don't already have a Fibre Channel SAN and just require shared storage for a few simple applications why look at managing a new fabric and hiring expensive SAN administrators?
6) Applications like Microsoft Exchange are moving more and more storage services inside the application. They are even recomending DAS for performance.
7) Web 2.0 companies are having to think differently about storage implementations b/c of new scale out applications. They can not afford traditional SAN's and the promise of architecting Storage based on DAS is compelling.
8) Server purchasers can not buy SANs without engaging Storage teams. They can buy shared SAS storage though and get the same effect.
9) Choice is always important as a consumer. Products like the HP MSA 2000 offers the choice of Fibre Channel, iSCSI or SAS interconnect, while providing the same basic functionality and management interface. This means you can buy into SAS connected storage with a simple migration path to a future SAN based on iSCSI or Fibre, if you need the future scalability.
10) AND FINALLY......... COST, COST, COST. It is an easy way for SMB's to implement shared storage and have you seen the economy lately?!?
What do you think?
Posted
08-26-2008 6:17 PM
by
jasontreu