• Home
• Articles Archive
• Features List

• Media Pack
• Contact Us
• Subscribe

Are your SLA's exposed?

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 4 No 02 - April 2004

With storage as a strategic part of the professional IT mix, what help is there for the beleaguered IT department?

Enterprise storage solutions increasingly form a key part of the corporate IT resource. Their role becomes ever more business and operational critical as the organisation switches its commitment to electronic storage of important business documents and official records.

Running overnight backups with the occasional trial restore just does not cut it any more, leaving too many areas of exposure. Add to this increased legislative and regulatory pressure and ask yourself - are your agreed service levels (SLA's) and system availability at risk? The general attitude towards support contracts and warranty (unnecessary overhead and taken for granted respectively) only serve to increase this exposure.

Establishing a productive support mechanism for storage is about selecting the right partner. One who can bring specialist skills and augment those available internally. The requirements of each organisation will be different and changing. Organisations who allow their procurement cycle to focus on the cheapest price are missing the point and will certainly pay. The one thing that you cannot buy from anyone is good will - like respect it has to be earned and is a two way process.
With the supplier taking the lead in building this (customer comes first!) and having established their technical, organisational and fiscal qualifications for doing the job, what services are available, and should be considered by an IT function wishing to establish a solid and defensible business position?

By necessity, most storage solutions are built up over time. Standards help to ensure interoperability, but do you know (for example) that the product performance you paid for is being delivered? One common area that should be looked at when adding a new device or auditing, is performance - does the network impose a bottleneck such that the "fastest" tape drive you paid a premium for runs slower than its capability?

There are numerous organisations that are capable of providing this service for you at a range of charges. What if you could find a supplier who could provide some of this as a part of their committed service level? Commenting on the example, John Greenwood, Sales Manager of NCE Computer Group (Europe) Ltd says, "organisations tend to exist with what they have and may need to consider disk staging to maximise performance. We provide this advice as part of our standard service as it underwrites our philosophy of providing and supporting storage solutions, as opposed supplying equipment - we want customers who we can use as a reference."

If you consider the range of services available as on a spectrum with services such as break-fix on the left and storage architecture and design on the right, then we can see how the level of intellectual content rises, left to right. It is on the right hand side that the significant value can be added and where the number of companies offering the high intellectual content services decrease.

An audit will be made up of a range of services to meet the perceived needs of the customer. For example, it might include a pre-installation survey to look at location, power and network capacity. Allan Russell from Kodak Service & Support points out that they are currently reviewing a number of software based audit tools that, once approved, will be offered as the basis of a service. Providing information on such things as file and device utilisation and other important details used in designing and managing a storage solution. It is this type of information that allows for the provision of best advice.

In short, if you are considering deploying or upgrading a storage solution, some degree of business analysis and architecture design is now essential. Essential to providing a solution that works for today's requirement but can scale into the future.
There was a time when manufacturer warranties were not that good. However competition drove improvement - great for customers. But does the warranty service you have meet your business needs? Frankly it is unlikely it does. If a server crashes during a month end invoicing cycle and you need to restore data - and your tape drive fails, a return to base warranty is unlikely to appease the Finance Director or CEO. By the way, it may have been the Finance Director that drove the procurement process and reduced that extremely detailed proposal into a price driven shopping list - so its payback time!

We all know about warranty upgrades, but each item of equipment will assume a particular level of importance in the overall storage solution; and you cannot automatically rely on anything, especially warranty. A systematic, considered plan is required to complement the standard warranty.

Warranty is largely about break-fix and software upgrades. Even here though the mentality is changing. Industry sectors like Finance understand that an inexperienced or poorly trained engineer can unwittingly bring a live system down. In response to this threat, they are asking about formal training. There is an emerging acceptance that SNIA (Storage Network Industry Association) training is filling this gap.

One interesting trend I have noticed is that user organisations are becoming more inclined to commit to three or five year support and maintenance contracts. This is a good approach that can have cost advantage, secure advanced budget and it also allows the service supplier to adequately provision spares. This again, can help extend the working life of a device.

Unlike most computer hardware, storage devices often have Electro-mechanical sub assemblies - moving parts that wear. If you can find a partner who has a broad base of repair experience across a range of manufacturers, the chances are that they will develop an understanding around patterns of failure that they can link back to operational usage. The possible outcome is that operational life can be extended but you need to have the right relationship with the right partner.

Organisations increasingly take more seriously their planning for disaster - storage is very much at the heart of this process and deserves separate consideration and planning. It is possible however to take an overall view and in so doing, increase contingency and service levels and possibly reduce cost. Again the strength of relationship with an established supplier will be key to securing progress.

While support and serviceability of the devices is important, we should not loose sight of the fact that it is the data that is key. Closely linked and compatible with Disaster Recovery, outsourcing of storage does seem to be taking hold though it is early days. In some sense this approach does isolate the user from supplier selection, capital investment and the latest technology worries. I do strongly feel however that this is a big step and that partnership is key - it must never be used to abdicate responsibility.

While thinking of data, we should spare a thought for legacy data - and this is most important when thinking of official record storage and archiving. For a variety of reasons, it may be necessary to have legacy data converted to a more modern and readable format. Such a service is provided by Kodak, Service & Support. Depending on the level of in-house expertise and system complexity, it is essential that your service contract provide you with some level of "Help Desk" type support. Good suppliers will offer a range of options with one to suit your needs.

It is a noticeable trend that as a market moves out of early adoption and towards commodity (storage is not there yet) you see a greater recognition of the service that so called third party organisations can provide. I do not necessarily see great benefits between a true independent and a supplier who provides service across all makes. Don't be taken in by the argument of independence and above all see the building of a third-party relationship as a joint endeavour, as opposed to outsourcing of a problem.

With legislation driving the need for advanced storage solutions, don't create a flawed system by ignoring the need for an advanced lifetime support strategy. ST