Opinion: Embrace your fear of frameworks

Computerworld - Q: You were quoted in Symantec's Storage Foundation 5.0 announcement saying it was "completely cool." We run many of Veritas/Symantec products but are afraid of implementing a "framework," which this sounds to be. What are your thoughts? -- P.A., Hong Kong, PRC.

A: The fear of a unilateral "framework" arises not from the framework itself, but from what it lacks. Historically, we have disliked frameworks because they have been expensive, pervasive and have restricted our ability to implement best-of-breed technologies as we wish. In other words, we don't like being convinced that someone has the be-all and end-all solution only to find that after we spend huge time and money, it does a lot of things fair, but very few well.

I mentioned this concept in last week's article on ITIL and ITSM (see: Opinion: The linchpin to IT service management ), which are perfect examples of well-meaning frameworks without a lot of substance behind them for practical, tactical IT benefits.

The Veritas/Symantec Storage Foundation 5.0, while it is sort of a framework, is really more of an example of building the barn after buying all the assorted animals on the farm. (I'm guessing that didn't translate well -- sorry). Unlike most frameworks whose intent really is to provide a high-level umbrella manager, and then to have that manager work best with the same vendor's more tactical solutions, Symantec did this in reverse.

First, it became the de facto standard for volume management, and as such you use its Volume Manager products across all of your operating environments and all of your disparate hardware server platforms. Then a lot of you decided to also use its file system -- and its backup software, replication software, and whatever else the company has these days. So you wake up one day realizing that you have tons of Veritas stuff all over the place, with no central control or management. The fact that it now offers Storage Foundation 5.0 as a way to corral and manage all of those disparate tools should be considered a monumental blessing, not a concern. You have already gone the vendor lock-in route, so now you might as well get the benefits of it.

I can't imagine how anyone running lots of Veritas stuff wouldn't want to use Storage Foundation 5.0. All it will do is make your life easier, help you scale past the operational challenges you have by managing lots of smaller elements independently, and enable you to create more consistency in what you have in your shops.

If anything, I'm surprised that the user community allowed Veritas/Symantec to get away with having no type of centralized function for so long. I would have thought a mutiny was in order. Veritas/Symantec created the problem by its own success, so it was incumbent upon it to fix it. I think 5.0 goes a long way toward that goal.