Today, the typical mainframe
storage administrator manages on the average more than 40 terabytes of disk storage while the typical storage manager for Unix, Linux and Windows manages from 1 to 5 terabytes.
Storage administrators must choose to implement asynchronous or synchronous mirroring as tradeoffs exist for each case and all increase the total storage requirements for the backup and recovery application.
Storage administrators are vital to IT departments because they protect and maintain a company's most valuable asset--its data.
Administrators will need to scale to support both simple environments (where the security officer and
storage administrator are the same), as well as more complex, diverse models with delegated authority.
To execute on ILM, for instance, if a volume in a medium performance storage pool is not meeting the specific service level guaranteed to the application owner, the
storage administrator moves the data to a higher performing pool (most likely on a different tier of storage) to meet the requirement.
Today,
storage administrators must select, install, configure and manage dozens of independent storage, backup, archiving, and replication products as well as management tools to adequately store and protect data.
A
storage administrator is required to shut down a switch, but doesn't fully understand its impact on the SAN.
Storage administrators can perform proactive monitoring of NetApp systems, assess the impact of storage performance problems on end-user services, and better align their efforts with business needs.
New functionality in Veritas Operations Manager, the next generation management platform for Storage Foundation HA, bridges the gap between server, database and
storage administrators to increase storage utilization, scale operations, maintain compliance and help ensure uptime and availability across Unix, Linux, Windows and VMware.
Unfortunately, storage is sometimes relegated to an afterthought; after all, don't we have
storage administrators who deal with our disk arrays?
According to the company, the new EMC Unisphere management software enables
storage administrators to perform common tasks with 90% fewer clicks.