There is a new web service being deployed everyday. There are services to service those services. We wish them all very best of luck, so you’d think that this small start up will one day become the next big thing.
Whether they are web based or not, they all do one thing in common. Generate data. The question is:
“Do startups need to worry about an ILM strategy ?”
My answer is they do. Luckily, they’ve got one thing going for them. They are a startup and don’t have much data to begin with. A big pain point for places who already have mountains of data is its management. There is too much data. Too much of that data is stuck on expensive disks. The data is categorized into data directories and file systems without an ILM strategy in mind so no one can tell which data is old, stale and can be migrated away.
How did they get into this mess ? Every company was a startup at some point. As a startup, what can you do now so that your don’t have these headaches later ?
No. You do not need to buy an “ILM” Software. There is no such thing as an ILM software.
No. You do not need a super-duper central storage system for ILM to make sense.
No. You do not need to spend money to deploy ILM.
ILM solutions do not come as hardware solutions nor software solutions. It’s more of an attitude, if you ask me.
As an IT guy, it starts with you. Get to know your user base. Get to know about their applications. Talk to them as to how they use data, create new data. Also talk to them as to what they will do with that data a few months from now.
Chances are they do not know and/or want to stay flexible. As a startup, one has to be flexible. Applications are still being built and the coal is still being burned. That does not mean that all data must be stored on the fastest disk possible all the time. That also does not mean that all data must be backed up every day and retained like mission critical data.
Start with taking a long and hard look at how you lay out the directory structure. Whether you are a Windows shop, Linux shop or a mixed bag, applications access files and directories across various file systems. You can make that file system hierarchy work for you from an ILM strategy perspective.
Think about the following things while the initial file systems are being designed.
- What kind of data is being stored ?
- How long should it be retained ?
- What kind of uptime should that data experience ?
- What kind of access performance should be available for that data
- What privacy/legal attributes are associated with that data ?
Global Namespaces
If you are primarily a Windows shop and using Windows File Services, do yourself a favor and use DFS. It is available in Windows Server 2003 R2 and offers a global name space for all of your files. Even if you have only ONE windows file server, I recommend you use DFS starting NOW. That way, when you install that second file server (note that I said when, not if), you can integrated all of the new data into the global name space. This will also mean that all of your users’ shortcuts on their Desktops are all DFS based and later data migrations do not involve touching the desktops – at all.
If you are a Unix/Linux shop, then one way you can accomplish a global name space is via use of symbolic links (soft links). Even if your data is local to every server. Create a pseudo-global name space so that you can migrate it later when you grow. i.e. decide on a prefix path for all data and make that path available on all servers pointing to its data.
Directory Structure
Directory structure does not have to ONLY reflect application structure. Before the application -specific structure can begin, insert an data-class specific structure that makes sense for ILM. For example: Instead of /export/data/app/, may be have /export/tierN/data/. Having your file systems laid out like this will mean that the applications that are being deployed and developed are already aware of the tiered storage system and will be much more receptive to your data classification and migration efforts later on.
You are not done with ILM. But you are a start up. Everything is small and new. So having these minimalistic hooks in place will allow you to grow in the right direction. You will look like a genius later on.
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