Storage Cloud Planning Software for the 21st Century Storage Professional

Anyone who has ever tried to assess their existing storage infrastructure and then compare it to a newer storage system knows just how frustrating an exercise it can be to try to balance price and feature functionality of the different storage systems. On one hand, you want to achieve maximum uptime, peak performance and unwavering reliability and, on the other hand, you want to obtain it at the lowest possible price while still meeting the application's requirements. In fact, one would think that storage professionals operating in the 21st century wouldn't need a storage vendor looking over their shoulder to help them do their job. Rather these individuals have a need for unbiased analysis and they are not going to get it from an incumbent vendor let alone an outsider.

The problem is that there is generally no easy way for these individuals to come up with an objective way to determine what features can be had on which storage systems, what the trade-offs are between their current storage systems, competing storage systems and new storage technologies such as cloud storage and then what is the optimal storage configuration for their particular environment. This is the problem that the new TwinStrata's Clarity AP software attempts to solve by giving organizations the ability to select a storage system according to the specific requirements of the applications in their environment.

To understand what makes Clarity AP unique in the storage space and why today's storage professionals should consider using this software in their storage environment, I recently met with TwinStrata's CEO Nicos Vekiarides. Here are some of the main points that I took away from that conversation as to what its Clarity AP software offers:

• Storage Modeling and Change Management software. Storage professionals can quickly model their existing storage infrastructure using a built-in component catalog to determine availability metrics such as application uptime, expected cost of downtime, amount of data loss and more.  Once their existing environment is modeled, Storage professionals can change the model by dragging and dropping new storage solutions to see the impact on the availability metrics when compared to their existing environment. Is Vendor-A's storage array have a cost advantage over Vendor B's? What impact does Cloud storage have on my application? Is a combination of Cloud and local storage offer an advantage? Clarity AP answers these questions with quantitative analysis.   
• Web-based software delivery and pricing. Unlike other enterprise software, TwinStrata is making its software exclusively available through the web. It is available in three different versions: an AP Express version that is free and comes with limited functionality; an AP Standard version that is available for $99/user per year which can be used for the management of two applications at two different sites; and, an AP Enterprise version which is available for $499/user per year which comes with unlimited functionality.
• Supports heterogeneous storage environments. Other storage system sizing tools that I have looked at in the past have, at best, only covered features from storage systems from one particular storage vendor. Even then, an engineer from the company would need to be onsite to help you manually step through the configuration. Clarity AP offers an expandable catalog with over 100 vendor component and solutions so you can pick from a large number of storage systems that contains all of the specific features in terms of controller configurations, supported disk drives, supported storage system RAID types and what software features (replication, deduplication, etc.) that they offered. The number of storage systems one can access and configure is determined by the type of user you are (free, standard or enterprise) with the enterprise user having access to the widest array of of storage systems and product features.
• Model different configurations according to different parameters. Users can set policies so that they can model storage configurations that meet the application's availability and price requirements. For instance, if an application required four "9's" of uptime and replication between sites, they can enter those policies into Clarity AP and then see what configuration options it presents. This can all be done without any risk to your current environment since it does not access your current storage environment or try in any way to discover what components you already have in it.  

While there were other features that Nicos brought forth, my impression after spending 30+ minutes looking at the software was that this software is a no-brainer in terms of trying. TwinStrata offers companies the ability to obtain a limited version of it for free, it runs on a PC or Mac and it provides organizations some insight and guidance into an aspect of storage planning and configuration that is too often shrouded with mystery.
 
So is the software perfect or will it answer every question that organizations have regarding storage infrastructure planning and assessment? Obviously not. But organizations are struggling with how to assess potential risks and application availability metrics and then best choose from a growing number of storage systems and new storage choices without sacrificing application stability. TwinStrata's Clarity AP is one of the first tools on the market that allows storage professionals to make incremental changes to their data center on an ongoing basis that improve application availability and begins to deliver this type of functionality to organizations of all sizes without an exorbitant price to match.