• Critical and timely analysis of current storage technologies and trends
• A unique vendor-agnostic perspective that cuts through the marketing hype!
• Information you can use to leverage the capabilities-and cope with the limitations-of current data storage technologies

The latest installment in a comprehensive, vendor-neutral guide to data management

If your organization is like most, data storage is the biggest line item in your IT budget-despite the fact that the cost of storage media is dropping at a rate of over 50 percent per year. That's because data itself is poorly managed, a task typically assigned to technical staff who lack either the tools or the skills to design, plan, administer, and operate the data storage infrastructure efficiently. How can you cope with the requirement to provision storage capacity to the applications that need it in a world of increasingly constrained IT budgets? How can you protect your most critical corporate asset-data-when your technology options come down to selecting one proprietary and non-interoperable solution versus another? What can you do to rein in an industry that seems more concerned about growing market share than solving the real-world problems that you face every day? The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management, by noted author, speaker, and IT veteran Jon William Toigo, provides a compelling and objective analysis of what is wrong with today's storage technologies, and delivers actionable information for coping with the situation from the consumer's point of view.

In his clear, engaging style, Toigo cuts through the hype and offers straight advice on the problems of the current storage architecture. In The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management you'll find practical measures for surmounting the limitations of current technology as well as for confronting the "two towers of storage pain"-provisioning storage to applications and protecting data from loss or corruption. Ultimately, you'll be able to critique product offerings and to select and deploy only those technologies that deliver real business value. You'll also find:

• Techniques on deriving the most from the least in your data storage infrastructure
• A scheme for data management that can deliver enormous value with minimal changes in existing operating systems and storage subsystems
• Methods for gaining advantage in product purchasing, skills for making effective choices that address current and strategic goals, and more!

This book is intended for storage administrators, IT decision-makers and architects, financial investors examining the storage industry, and for those vendors who are seeking to deliver real architecture, rather than marketecture, to their customers.

The Holy Grail of Networked Storage Management addresses the problems inherent in current storage architectures - including direct-attached, network-attached (NAS), and storage area networks (SAN) - in sharp contrast to marketing hype promulgated by vendor marketing departments. Toigo explores practical measures for surmounting the limitations of current technology and offers advice to readers who confront the two towers of storage pain: provisioning storage to applications, and protecting data from loss or corruption. The Holy Grail of Networked Storage Management provides readers with the ability to critique current product offerings and to select and deploy those technologies that will deliver real business value in their infrastructure. This book lays the groundwork for a consumer movement in data storage. The author suggests some methods for gaining advantage in product purchasing and seeks to empower consumers through the creation of critical knowledge and skills to make effective storage choices that address current and strategic goals. The book focuses on the business value of technology and offers techniques and best practices for deriving the most value from storage acquisitions using the least amount of precious resources. Do more with less is the mantra of business managers in a challenged economy and implementing the guidance offered in this book may help to realize this goal in the reader's own data storage infrastructure.