CommVault Positioning Archiving and SRM Software Together

Storage resource management (SRM) software is probably one of the more "on again, off again" storage technologies that I cover. In the many years I have been intimately involved with and covering storage, no one (standards boards, analyst firm, or vendor) has yet arrived at a definition of SRM that everyone agrees upon. If anything, this lack of an industry standard has done more to hurt the adoption of SRM software by end-users since it can leave users confused as what they are actually going to get from SRM; if and when they actually go to purchase it.

It was with those thoughts and questions in mind that I went into a conversation with CommVault's Product Manager of Enterprise Reporting, Eric Harless, to discuss the updated version of CommVault Storage Manager 7.0 that came out this week. It's purpose: Help users adopt a proactive approach to tracking and analyzing storage information. Harless is responsible for the development of Storage Manager, the SRM software component of the CommVault® Simpana® software suite, and helps to navigate and define what CommVault Storage Manager is in the notoriously nebulous world of SRM.

As part of the conversation, Harless clarified what specific problems that Storage Manager will help users resolve. Rather than try to produce SRM software that is all things to all administrators across an organization, Harless said that CommVault made a conscious effort in its design of Storage Manager to manage data at the file level and not to try to manage SANs or SAN-attached volumes.

Though Storage Manager understands which host volumes are SAN disks by looking at volume serial numbers, Harless says it does not try to create zones on FC switches or provision LUNs on storage systems as some other SRM software does. "CommVault has found that customers often obtain this type of SRM software from their storage hardware provider and do not look to us to provide this functionality," say Harless.

Instead, CommVault's clients look to Storage Manager to provide file level information across a spectrum of operating systems (Linux, Windows, UNIX), as well as insight into applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint or databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. It also provides some detail on server backups by identifying if servers are being backed, if backups are completing successfully and how they are being backed up (differentials, incrementals or fulls).

The evolution that Harless sees occurring within SRM software in general, and CommVault Storage Manager specifically, is moving beyond just looking for information but actually doing something about it. It is not uncommon for Storage Manager to discover that 90% of the data on file systems is over a year old which is part of the reason CommVault added new NAS reporting capabilities for the EMC Celerra and the latest NetApp (ONTAP) storage systems in this latest upgrade. The new objective among its Storage Manager customers is not just about cleaning up this mess but ensuring it does not recur again.

This new customer mindset results in SRM projects turning into archiving projects. This plays very well into CommVault's strengths since both its Archive and Storage Manager modules share the same underlying common technology engine (CTE) that are part of CommVault's broader Simpana software platform. In this way, data collected by one module can be used by the other, thereby facilitating the creation of a common interface for policy creation, administration and enforcement.

SRM software will continue to face an uphill climb in those organizations that position the technology as a point solution without any roadmap towards solving the larger data management issues that they face. CommVault Storage Manager changes that dynamic. Though it can be implemented as a point product, customers will reap its larger value when they implement it first as a way to quantify what they have and then use that information to optimize their environment. Using Storage Manager's integration with the broader CommVault Simpana software suite, companies can use it to lay the foundation for a better way to do data and information management in the future.