What is a Unified Storage Device?

As i was trolling through the blog-o-sphere and product-sphere, I noticed that both EMC and HP were touting their unified storage products.

And I was a bit surprised by that, because they certainly are not unified in my mind, but then I realized that the term unified storage like real fc like snapshots doesn't really mean what I think it means...

Which got me thinking, much like I was able to define snapshots to be

1. point-in-time copy that was
2. space efficient
3. performance neutral

Could I come up with an equally useful definition for unified storage?

As I started to scribble my thoughts down, I realized that I had to distinguish between a unified storage device  and a unified storage architecture.

So first I will define what is a unified storage device, in my next post, I'll attempt to define a unified storage architecture.

So what is a unified storage device?

A unified storage device is a single piece of hardware that has a certain amount of disk and a certain amount of CPU and Memory

that supports all major storage access methods (FC, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS).

 

The value of a single piece of hardware is fairly obvious: there are fewer components to setup, manage, repair and service.

So is that all? Well if having a single piece of hardware to setup, configure and manage adds value, then it would stand to reason that a single way to manage all of the storage functions would also add tremendous value:. After all you're spending a whole lot more time provisioning storage than you are dealing with hardware. So a unified storage device should have a single way to provision storage, monitor the storage, manage the space on the storage.

And is that all? Well, if having a single management pane makes a lot of sense, it stands to reason that having a single way to replicate storage also makes sense. Having a single replication strategy means there is a single DR strategy for all storage regardless of protocol...

So what is a unified storage device:

1. A piece of hardware that has CPU, Memory and disk
2. That supports FC, iSCSI, CIFS and NFS
3. That has a common management console for all storage functions that are not protocol specific
4. Has a single replication mechanism that is independent of protocol

Because

A storage manager who wants a single device to support all protocols should not have to buy or setup more than one device, should not have to learn different tools to perform the same task, and should not have to understand different replication mechanisms to do DR or backup.

And what about an architecture?

That's for my next post...