Fixing something that’s not yet broken can easily slide to the bottom of the to-do list for most IT shops. But waiting to fix your enterprise virtual array (EVA) until there’s a problem could increase your risk of downtime.

Unplanned downtime accounts for 15 percent of IT costs, according to IDC, and it lowers productivity and revenue.¹ In addition, poor EVA performance can make it difficult for your employees to get the information they need. “The data can be safe and stored somewhere but not be accessible,” says Gerry Nolan, director, WW Mission Critical Services. “It’s just like an outage.”

To be sure your employees retain fast access to your data, especially as your company’s needs grow, you need to manage your EVA proactively. This can protect against the types of problems that hardware warranties won’t cover, including software incompatibilities and defective processes.

To stay on top of your virtualized storage system, you need to look for problems before they arise. Experts suggest focusing your proactive management on the following areas.

Compatibility

EVAs have a lot of parts, and they interact with many other IT systems. This means you need to make sure all the components are updated regularly. But you also need to check compatibility first, since one upgrade can sometimes break another part of the system.

Every six months, you should conduct a systematic check of your EVA’s firmware and software. Are your EVA components all up-to-date and compatible with your other systems? Conducting these system checks can be time consuming, but there are services to make it go faster, such as a compatibility analysis.

Performance and capacity

IDC projects that enterprise storage system capacity is expected to grow 44.9 percent annually from 2008 to 2013.² If you are not prepared for this explosion of data, you could run out of disk space or see much slower performance.

Is your EVA's performance slowing down because it is getting full? It may be time for more disks or an additional EVA. Conduct a performance check every six months to catch these slowdowns before they become problems.

It’s also important to check your EVA for disaster tolerance and recovery. Do all critical pieces of the system have a backup? If the power goes out or a component fails, it should fail over to a redundant system.

Change management

Setting up your EVA is only the first step. Every time you add a component or change your EVA functionality, you should determine how that will affect everything from RAID levels to performance. Mergers and acquisitions, for example, can double the number of users the EVA has to serve and change what those users need.

“Whatever change happens around the EVA, you can usually adapt to it,” says Karen Pherson, a Mission Critical Services portfolio manager. “But don’t just assume, ‘Well, it can handle that.’” The key is to proactively adapt to changes before problems arise.

Processes

Many of the problems that hamper an EVA’s performance can be traced not to faulty hardware or software but to human processes. For example, almost all IT departments have a backup system for data, but not all of them test those systems. “Suddenly they need to restore their data, and they realize, ‘Oh no, we’re missing some key data,’” Pherson says.

In addition, you should document your processes. For example, if you upgrade your EVA for a technology refresh, will you be able to duplicate the original setup? If there’s a problem that the IT staff can’t resolve, who decides when to call the vendor? “Does everybody know who to call when an issue happens?” Pherson asks. Often, the answer is no. “Employees get absorbed in day-to-day stuff and can forget to plan.”

To make sure your EVA continues to work for your business, you need to look beyond the day-to-day crises of your IT shop. But as systems are built up and adapted over the years, managing them can become more and more difficult.

“Storage area networks with EVAs become very complex mazes that you have to manage,” says Pherson. “If something goes wrong, it’s sometimes hard to find out what piece is causing the problem.”

Bringing in experts to help you proactively manage your EVA can help make the process smoother. Outside expertise can also help you troubleshoot difficult problems more quickly and accurately. HP offers several levels of proactive management services to help you:

• Proactive Select —Choose from a menu of proactive services, including a compatibility analysis.
• Proactive 24 —Combine proactive-management services with a 4-hour on-site response time for problems.
• Critical Service —Get proactive management services and a 6-hour call-to-repair window.
• Mission Critical Partnership —Continuously improve your always-on IT with failover site set-up and 6-hour call-to-repair.

Managing your EVA doesn’t have to be a headache. With regular maintenance, upgrades and the right expertise, you can improve your EVA performance—and your business performance. Explore HP’s Mission Critical Services to learn more about how you can drive better business outcomes.

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