The Business Case for Storage Networks [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Execution and Functional Roles

When the appropriate hardware solution is defined to meet the client's needs, the appropriate vendor is chosen, and the SLA framework is built, it is time to begin the task of execution.

There are four roles that are absolutely essential to the success of the storage networking project, regardless of the final form that your support structure takes.

Role of Project Manager

The first role is that of project manager or project lead. Even if your organization does not have a defined or distinct career track for project management, there needs to be a focal point for the complete operation from start to finish. The project manager is integral to facilitating communications between application leads, vendor representatives assigned to the project, and technical staff on the storage team. In addition, the person filling this role is responsible for clearing road blocks and ensuring that all deadlines are met. Budgeting, purchasing, and financial planning can be handled by this person if there is no dedicated representation from a financial analyst or purchasing agent. If you do not have a formal role defined for project managers, this presents an opportunity to senior technical staff members who might be looking for a career change. Professional experience managing projects is ideal; however, there is no substitute for corporate knowledge including an understanding of purchasing processes, change management and down-time policies, and application requirements.

Role of Storage Architect

The role of project manager might be complementary to or, in smaller organizations, encompass the role of storage architect. This role might be referred to differently in different organizations. Regardless, the storage architect is the technical lead for the entire project. This person should have a fundamental understanding of application architecture and operating system requirements for connecting to the networked storage architecture (FC SAN, NAS, and IP SAN).

Ultimately, a storage architect is responsible for designing or approving the disk layout on the backend, the design of the fabric in the middle, and the host fan in to the switch. This person needs to work closely with the vendor to ensure that appropriate performance and design considerations are made when the vendor staff configures the disk array, and also needs to ensure that the storage administrator creates the appropriate volume and Logical Unit Number (LUN) assignments, and presents them correctly to the host.

For large environments, or large projects within smaller environments, it is almost essential that different individuals fill the project manager and the storage architect roles.

Role of Storage Administrator

The most crucial role to consider in the rollout of any storage networking project is that of the storage administrator. The storage administrator is integral to the ongoing success of the project. He or she is the primary contact after the project goes live and will more than likely be the staff member assigned to pager duty for the environment.

If you have created a virtual or a dedicated storage team, the storage administrator might be a junior staff member to the storage architect but might also have the most recent experience managing the systems and first-hand knowledge of the environment itself. Working with the project manager and storage architect from the networked storage support perspective serves to increase corporate knowledge and the capacity to contribute to other environments and new projects in the future.

Note

The creation of a storage architect role offers career advancement opportunities for storage administrators who want to stay purely technical in their careers.

Role of Professional Services Staff

The use of professional services staff to fill roles outside that of direct product installation can pose some risks to the ongoing success of the project. Depending on the overall structure of your IT organization, handing off production support of your Fibre Channel or IP storage networks can prove difficult.

In addition to the significant cost of contractual support, there is loyalty and pride of ownership that comes with building and supporting your own solution. This is not to say that one solution is ultimately better the other. Rather it is important to understand that engendering responsibility and accountability is a lengthy and difficult process. An internal staff member who helps build and implement a cutting-edge, high-performance storage solution for clients whom he or she knows intimately, is more likely to respond quickly in the middle of the night when a critical piece of the solution fails. A contract staffer might also respond, but also bills by the hour and in some cases might not provide best-in-class support.

Note

It is easy to find the financial break-even point for using external support staff over an internal dedicated team. The ongoing support contract should be a flat rate for the calendar or fiscal year regardless of the time of day or number of hours. If that is not the case, you must calculate an estimated hourly overage, preferably based on trending for the previous year's after-hours calls. Using that same number of hours for trending, calculate and compare the annual wage for the appropriate number of full-time employees while adding in any additional hourly rates for on-call pay.

Much has been said about the potential gains from using consultants and external professional services for storage installation and ongoing maintenance.

There is, of course, no substitute for a learned and experienced internal staff member intimately familiar with both the applications and the storage protocols in their own environment. If you do not have an internal support staff and you are starting from scratch, you might have no alternative than to use professional services, either from the storage vendor or from a third-party integrator or consultancy.

Building a storage support staff internally takes time; however, engagements with storage consultants can lead to opportunities for finding and hiring solid candidates, many of whom might be tired of traveling and willing to consider other options if they are not bound by a non-compete clause.

Professional services organizations, third-party integrators, and consultants can bring with them a wealth of product and project knowledge to enable the success of your installation. Vendors might also try to bring in inexperienced technicians and support personnel to increase knowledge and value to the firm (increasing their capability to book billable hours). Obviously, experience has to come from somewhere, but you have the right to not have consultants learning on the job at your expense. Before agreeing to a contract with a vendor or service provider, ask to review the resumes of the staff members being assigned to your account. It can also prove valuable in the long run to schedule an interview for potential candidates with your core team members to ensure compatibility and to cross-check knowledge bases.

Any engagement with a consultant or integrator must be bound by the agreements of both SLAs as discussed earlier and by a clearly scoped statement of work (SOW). An SOW serves as the spine of any engagement, and as such should outline clearly all deliverables and milestones. These deliverables should be mutually agreed upon, and a copy of the signed SOW should be provided to both the vendor and the customer project leads. The milestones in the SOW should be reviewed and should match the project plan for the overall project. If the milestones and the timelines do not match those of the project, the SOW is not properly scoped, and either the project or the SOW should be updated accordingly.

If you already have a large internal support framework and still choose to implement consulting or professional services, it is essential that you clearly communicate your rationale for doing so. It should be apparent that there are either knowledge gaps in your current support model that can be temporarily filled by using outside services, or that the long-term strategy is to have external professional services handle the mundane and dreary ongoing support tasks while moving your own staff into a more strategic role. Failure to communicate any changes in functional roles can lead to a crisis of faith in management and your leadership, and can raise the ugly specter of outsourcing. If the overall strategy for your firm is to outsource major initiatives, then that strategy should be broadly communicated.

The use of consultants in general, if not appropriately sold to your technical staff, can in fact lead to serious personnel issues. If there are incompatible personalities, your own staff might in turn refuse to cooperate with consultants (rightly or wrongly), derailing any progress on your project.