VirtualInstruments

SAN Maturity Model (SMM)

The SAN Maturity Model (SMM) was co-developed in 2008 by Virtual Instruments with the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) as part of ESG’s Data Center Efficiency Maturity Model.  SMM is a management framework designed to systematically improve SAN business value through the continuous improvement of people, processes, and technology. The objectives of the framework are to:

• Minimize the risk of SAN and storage-related application outages and performance degradations that impacts the business
• Drive down the number of day-to-day problems that the storage and SAN team have to deal with and improve the overall operational efficiency of SAN and storage administrators
• Make better use of the overall capacity within the SAN (ports, ISL bandwidth and storage target bandwidth) and virtual server infrastructure by ensuring the I/O workload is balanced across the SAN and virtual infrastructure and that I/O performance does not constrain the adoption and efficiency of the virtual infrastructure and
• Facilitate the use of storage performance-based response time SLAs and provide the fundamental metrics that are needed to design, deploy and manage a flexible and scalable virtual infrastructure that aligns with the needs of the business in the most cost-effective way.

There are five levels defined in the SAN Maturity Model:

• Level 1: Initial 
  Unmanaged and chaotic
   
• Level 2: Managed
  Stable at a point-in-time but lacks the tools and processes to maintain it in that state over time
   
• Level 3: Defined
  Operational excellence, characterized by proactive operational management and continuous improvement
   
• Level 4: Quantitatively Managed
  Maintains a level of operational excellence while focusing on infrastructure optimization and performance-based SLAs
   
• Level 5: Optimizing - Introduces a more strategically focused set of objectives for ensuring that the infrastructure is optimized to meet the real needs of the business from a performance perspective

SMM and Business Value

Ultimately, the goal of the SAN Maturity Model is to enable the business to deliver storage services in a more cost-effective manner to the business through: reduced downtime, more efficient SAN operations and a virtual infrastructure that is tightly aligned with the needs of the business.  The figure below depicts the Capital Expense (CapEx) and Operating Expense (OpEx) impact at each level of the SMM.

Delivering on this business value requires a concerted effort by the business to manage the SAN and storage infrastructure through a process of continuous improvement, focusing on the people, process and technology.

Why Rely on a SMM?

SMM is not a detailed cookbook for executing the steps that get you to a particular SMM level, but rather a high-level description of what activities should take place at each level and the value that achieving a particular level brings to the business. In fact, most SANs are operated in a manner that spans multiple SMM levels, with gaps at each level.

Most shops want to know, “How are we doing?” Are we improving”; particularly if investments are made (in people, process and technology) needed to develop SAN maturity. This is done by measuring specific metrics, called Key Performance Indicators or KPIs, in the environment and tracking those KPIs over time. 

The goals of the SMM aligns very well with ITIL’s IT Service management objective which is to deliver IT services that are both “fit for purpose” and “fit for use”, thereby providing best value and return on investment for the organization that uses them. While SMM has no specific links to ITIL, the practice of planning, designing, developing, delivering and optimizing these IT services is identical to those identified by ITIL.

SMM is simply a way of categorizing and organizing the activities required to manage the SAN infrastructure in a way that maximizes value delivered to the business. Using a framework like SMM to deliver these IT services significantly increases the probability that the IT organization will successfully meet this objective.