Data Center Journal

VOLUME 49 | APRIL 2017

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THE DATA CENTER JOURNAL | 23 www.datacenterjournal.com BeSt practIceS To remain successful in a data center that is increasingly converged and automated, storage administra- tors must begin evolving both their role and responsibilities. By employ- ing the best practices below, they can extend their knowledge to align with any technology operational model, including SDS, cloud computing and containers, and go even further into the serverless paradigm. Break down silos by working to adopt more of an IT-generalist perspective that enables a better un- derstanding of how the infrastructure stack functions as a whole. is per- spective also includes how the stack will respond to introduction of new technology, such as SDS, containers and even serverless computing. Man- agement and monitoring skills like the DART (discovery, alerting, reme- diation, troubleshooting) and SOAR (security, optimization, automation, reporting) frameworks will serve storage administrators well on their journey toward a broader knowledge base and a fundamental understand- ing of data center operations. embrace change and look for opportunities to learn new technolo- gies such as the cloud, containers, and the main tenets of DevOps techniques and processes. With the advent of flash and NVMe, which have largely ameliorated latency and bottleneck concerns, storage administrators can no longer afford to focus only on performance improvements. Expand- ing and enhancing knowledge of new trends and technologies will pro- vide a better understanding of their relevance to the business and enable them to better manage the data center environment. Monitor as a discipline (MaaD) to gain a holistic understand- ing of the application stack and how it will change with new-technology adoption. Vendors typically provide their own monitoring and manage- ment tools, but these tools oen increase the number of data center silos. e reason is that more of- ten than not, an organization's data center comprises heterogeneous storage solutions, and this trend will continue as SDS enables growth of a vendor-agnostic environment. Invest in comprehensive monitoring tools that help consolidate metrics, alerts and reporting from each disparate vendor, thereby allowing a more ef- ficient approach to troubleshooting and management. A comprehensive tool will also better equip storage ad- ministrators to easily balance existing workloads and plan for the future. concluSIon As new constructs such as the soware-defined data center, contain- ers, serverless computing and hyper- convergence grow in both awareness and adoption, storage technology—as a critical part of IT infrastructure— will undergo considerable upheaval as well. We are in the age of flash. Al- though it has certainly helped give storage a larger role in modern data centers, in addition to acting as a springboard for industry awareness of NVMe and SDS, it has introduced its own concerns, including what will become of the traditional stor- age administrator. To survive, storage administrators must embrace a more generalist approach to management, as well as become more responsive and flexible to accommodate the changes driven by hybrid IT, compos- able infrastructure, and new applica- tions and workloads. With an eye to the future of storage technology, and by employing the best practices for skill development, storage administra- tors can carve out a new role in the modern data center. about the author: Kong Yang is a head Geek and senior technical product marketing manager at SolarWinds. To survive, storage administrators must embrace a more generalist approach to management, as well as become more responsive and flexible to accommodate the changes driven by hybrid IT, composable infrastructure, and new applications and workloads. With an eye to the future of storage technology, and by employing the best practices for skill development, storage administrators can carve out a new role in the modern data center.

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