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Six Best Practices for Implementing All-Flash Arrays – DCIG

Focus on accelerating applications, mind failure domain, use SoS features and multi-tenancy to consolidate confidently, pursue automation, realign roles and responsibilities, conduct PoC implementation

The author of this report, published on April 26, 2018, is Jerome M. Wendt, founder, president and lead analyst of DCIG, Inc.

Six Best Practices for Implementing All-flash Arrays

Almost any article published today related to enterprise data storage will talk about the benefits of flash memory. However, while many organizations now use flash in their enterprise, most are only now starting to use it at a scale where they use it to host more than a handful of their applications. As organizations look to deploy flash more broadly in their enterprises, here are six best practices to keep in mind as they do so.

The six best practices outlined below are united by a single overarching principle. That overarching principle is that the data center is not merely a collection of components, it is an interdependent system. Therefore, the results achieved by changing any key component will be constrained by its interactions with the performance limits of other components. Optimal results come from optimizing the data center as a system.

Best Practice #1: Focus on Accelerating Applications
Business applications are the reason businesses run data centers. Therefore, accelerating applications is a useful focus in evaluating data center infrastructure investments. Eliminating storage performance bottlenecks by implementing an all-flash array (AFA) may reveal bottlenecks elsewhere in the infrastructure, including in the applications themselves.

Getting the maximum performance benefit from an AFA may require more or faster connections to the data center network, changes to how the network is structured and other network configuration details. Application servers may require new network adapters, more DRAM, adjustments to cache sizes and other server configuration details. Applications may require configuration changes or even some level of recoding. Some AFAs include utilities that will help identify the bottlenecks wherever they occur along the data path.

Best Practice #2: Mind the Failure Domain
Consolidation can yield dramatic savings, but it is prudent to consider the failure domain, and how much of an organization’s infrastructure should depend on any one component – including an all-flash array. While all the all-flash arrays that DCIG covers in its All-flash Array Buyer’s Guides are ‘highly available’ by design, some are better suited to deliver high availability than others. Be sure the one you select matches your requirements and your data center design.

Best Practice #3: Use QoS Features and Multi-tenancy to Consolidate Confidently
Quality of Service (QoS) features enable an array to give critical business applications priority access to storage resources. Multi-tenancy allocates resources to specific business units and/or departments and limits the percentage of resources that they can consume on the all-flash array at one time. Together, these features protect the array from being monopolized by any one application or bad actor.

Best Practice #4: Pursue Automation
Automation can dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on routine storage management and enable new levels of IT agility. This is where features such as predictive analytics come into play. They help to remove the risk associated with managing all-flash arrays in complex, consolidated environments. For instance, they can proactively intervene by identifying problems before they impact production apps and take steps to resolve them.

Best Practice #5: Realign Roles and Responsibilities
Implementing an all-flash storage strategy involves more than technology. It can, and should, reshape roles and responsibilities within the central IT department and between central IT, developers and business unit technologists. Thinking through the possible changes with the various stakeholders can reduce fear, eliminate obstacles, and uncover opportunities to create additional value for the business.

Best Practice #6: Conduct a Proof of Concept Implementation
A good proof-of-concept can validate feature claims and uncover performance-limiting bottlenecks elsewhere in the infrastructure. However, key to implementing a good proof-of-concept is having an environment where you can accurately host and test your production environment on the AFA.

A Systems Approach Will Yield the Best Result
Organizations that approach the AFA evaluation from a systems perspective – recognizing and honoring the fact that the data center is an interdependent system that includes hardware, software and people – and that apply these six best practices during an AFA purchase decision are far more likely to achieve the objectives that prompted them to look at AFAs in the first place.

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