IN A PERFECT WORLD, administrators would manage service policies rather than hardware equipment. Unfortunately, IT reality is quite a different, and flawed, story. The separate, proprietary management software and configuration tools on each server, piece of networking equipment, and storage device translate into supervision of each machine discretely. And forget about working on policies. For IT leaders adopting networked storage, the problem gets even more tangled because of the number of multivendor devices that constitute a SAN (storage area network). For instance, the path from a server to a storage device is determined by concurrent settings on the host operating system, the host bus adapter cards, fabric switches, device controllers, and the devices themselves. In a worst-case — but all too common — scenario, each component has its own management interface, so any change must be carefully replicated on each component across the path for the whole system to work properly. When this is extended to the full spectrum of storage management activities, it may eliminate the simplification and cost reduction expected from a SAN deployment. But CTOs count on those benefits — 74 percent of the IT leaders surveyed in the 2002 InfoWorld Networked Storage Survey say that cost-reduction of SRM (storage resource management) is a driving factor behind their SAN implementations. Will those expectations set CTOs up for a rude awakening? The answer is: It depends. SAN solutions from one vendor, such as those offered by EMC and Compaq, provide management software that covers heterogeneous components under a common software umbrella, so they work well within the vendor’s domain. But they don’t address the problems faced by IT managers who have a diversified storage infrastructure. Products such as Veritas’ SANPoint Control and McData’s SANavigator help create a common administrative view for configuring and monitoring devices from different vendors, but they solve only part of the problem. Storage management is more than simply controlling heterogeneous devices. The Networked Storage Survey shows just how chaotic and confusing the SRM market is to IT leaders. This wait-and-see attitude is hurting SRM software sales and is possibly delaying some companies’ SAN deployment plans. But this gap in the market constitutes an opportunity for vendors, and some illustrious names are announcing their multivendor management solutions. EMC’s AutoIS Fujitsu-Softek’s Storage Manager and TrueSAN’s CloudBreak promise comprehensive, vendor-neutral software for storage administration. TrueSAN takes a unique approach with a “storage operating system” that, similar to a host OS, imposes layers of discipline over its managed resources. EMC takes a more pragmatic approach, bridging other vendors’ solutions to its management tools. And Hewlett-Packard plans to release this year an appliance, the StorageApps SV3000, that will coordinate storage virtualization among heterogeneous servers and storage resources. But as promising as they are, these initiatives offer only quick fixes. Most of the storage administration woes stem from vendors’ use of proprietary UIs to control devices and expose information — such as status, statistics, and error logs — in a proprietary format, making what is otherwise equivalent data incompatible. As a result, storage management software with multivendor ambitions must include separate and dedicated code for each different device or vendor. Not surprisingly, development is expensive and only the most popular equipment gets supported. A new set of standards from the Storage Networking Industry Association addresses the root of the problem. Compliant storage management products should be available no later than 2003. Vendors will adopt WBEM (Web-Based Enterprise Management), a standard, unified UI* developed by the Distributed Management Task Force, which will create a common management GUI for different devices. The proprietary format of management data for each device will be replaced by the CIM (Common Information Model) an object-based, platform-independent data model. This is welcome news for the 81 percent of readers who consider compatibility the third most important factor when choosing storage management software. The WBEM-CIM standards will facilitate creating products that at last offer a single point of SAN control and management. At the recent Storage Networking World, almost every major vendor presented compliant prerelease versions of their products, indicating that the new interoperability standards are being taken very seriously indeed.