BA in Storage Domain

BA IN STORAGE DOMAIN
Authors: Amrutha Kamath and Sristika Gopinath

1. Introduction to Storage Domain

Technologies used by people to store the data/files have been drastically developed throughout the history.
Initially the medium for storage was CD/Floppy disk then with technology growth our medium for storage kept on
changing. Now we are in cloud storage era. The data which is being stored can be categorized in to Structured data
and unstructured data. Data that exist in a fixed field within a record or file is called structured data. This includes
data contained in relational databases and spreadsheets. Unstructured data are the ones which do not have any
pre – defined model or it is not in an organized manner.

The ever-increasing mountains of data are preferably stored using optimized resources. The device which is being
used to store the data should meet the compliance requirements which are as follows.

1. As data has to be available anytime, anywhere, the storage systems used must provide the data
worldwide via the Internet on a 24 hour-a-day basis. Data has to be saved several times on a redundant
basis in order to ensure that it is not lost due to unforeseen circumstances.

2. An increasing amount of data with even less structure will dominate everyday data storage processes:
data management must thus become more intelligent so that data is suitably saved according to its value
(Information Lifecycle Management).

Many companies now offers data storage, information security, virtualization and etc. some of the leading
companies which provide the above services are
 EMC Corporation
 NetApp
 Hewlett-Packard
 Hitachi Data system

2. Storage Device

Storage solution holds a significant place in the budgets of IT Companies as the integrity, availability and protection
of data are more important for a business. A storage device may hold information, process information, or both. A
device that only holds information is a recording medium. Devices that process information (data storage
equipment) may either access a separate portable (removable) recording medium or a permanent component to
store or retrieve information.

Apart from providing data storage, vendors also concentrate on the following features, because providing only
data storage will not be an efficient choice.

1. Archiving: Acquiring data, Preserving, and dissemination of data will fall under the category of Archiving.

2. Backup: A data can be archived or copied so it can be used to restore the data, if there is a data loss event like
data deletion or corruption .

3. Data Recovery: The term Data Recovery refers to the process of recovering data from damaged, failed,
corrupted, or inaccessible secondary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally.

4. Protect: Protects the data with the following features.

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a. Array replication
b. Backup-to-disk
c. Data deduplication
d. Continuous data protection
e. Security

5. Virtualization: virtualization refers to the creation of a virtual machine that acts like an operating system. The
following features are available for the virtualization.

a. Virtualization
b. Information management
c. Resource management

3. Introduction to Business Analyst (BA)

The role of Business Analyst is to analyze the business needs and documents the functional/ technical
requirements /Business process.BA plays a major role in Plan and analyze phase of SDLC, and supports testing
team and Development team during Design, Build, Test phases.

Generic responsibilities of BA are

 Gathering and analyzing the requirements

 Coordinating with client for detailed requirements
 Document the functional requirements
 Coordinating with developers/ testers and handle the clarification
 Raise risk alarms, if required

3.1. BA Roles in Software Development Life Cycle

Business Analysts are involved in all stages of Software Development Life Cycle model. The following contents
explain about the responsibilities of a BA in different stages

1. Plan phase
Product Owner creates and maintains the product vision, roadmap, and backlog of work regularly throughout the
project's life cycle. He discusses the expectations and the pain points of the product with the business users. He
communicates with the business users and stakeholders on a regular basis to provide feedback on progress of the
implementation of the vision. Designs and communicate the vision of the product being developed. He also
translates the expectations and preferences of the end users into User Stories. He also prioritizes
requirements/User Stories based on their business value and risks.
Tasks performed:
o Define Application Requirements
o Maintain Product Backlog
o Plan and Analyze Current Release
o Analyze and Enhance Acceptance
o Create Functional Design
o Sprint Review
o Transition Project Initiation Deliverables

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2. Analyze phase
He works with the business architect and other planners to assess current capabilities and identify high-level
customer requirements. He identifies and defines detailed product requirements and use cases. He sets up
requirements and works with project manager, architects, and other team members to define metrics and
performance goals for the application. He also participates in transitioning the requirements and use cases to the
designers, and ensure a clear and complete understanding of the requirements. He also assists in translating
requirements and use cases into test conditions and expected results for product, performance, and user
acceptance testing. He also participates in quality management reviews as outlined in the Quality Management
practice, in particular reviews of the designs, prototypes and other requirements work products to ensure they
fulfill the requirements.

He conducts packaged software training for conference room pilot participants, and participates in transitioning
the designs to the developers, and ensures a clear and complete understanding of the designs.

3. Design
He identifies and document configuration management items to be managed under Change Management (CM)
processes. Creates, manages, maintains, and communicates the Configuration Management Plan and any CM
standards and procedures to all stakeholders on the project. Plan the branching and labeling strategies.

4. Test
He develops test scripts, test conditions, input test data, and expected results for one or more test streams,
including unit, assembly, application product, integration product, performance, user acceptance, operational
acceptance and technical architecture tests. He also updates, and maintains testing standards and procedures. He
executes test scripts. He records problems and issues in accordance with the project's problem and issue
management plans. He documents defects using the project’s defect management tools.

4. Role of a Business Analyst working with Data Storage Vendor

The basic responsibilities of a BA working in Data Storage Vendors is to assess the current capability of an existing
solution and analyze the business needs. He should also be updating his technical knowledge, as the technology
grows day by day. So it is mandatory for a BA to keep on updating his skill and knowledge for a better market
scanning.

The technical knowledge and analytical skills of a BA can make a key contribution of change and transition. He
needs to highlight the nature of the product details and help to make understand how the new implementation
will impact the product. This will also include the pros and cons of the new process. After the implementation of
the new process, it is also the duty of a BA to develop a training plan which helps people adapt to change and
make a smooth transition to the new way of using things.

5. Role of a Business Analyst working for third party Data Storage Vendors

The basic responsibilities of a BA in Storage Product based company are to focus on the requirement gathering.
BAs will receive the Business requirements from product manager so he needs to analyze the existing product and
the requirements received. After the analysis he will need to highlight the requirement conflicts to product
manager if any. He also prepares the functional document based on the business requirement which will be used
by the development team and testing team.

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6. Basic understanding of Storage solution

When an organization opts for a Storage solution there are several factors which are to be considered.

 Capacity - the amount and type of data (file level or block level) that needs to be stored and shared
 Performance - I/O and throughput requirements
 Scalability - Long-term data growth
 Availability and Reliability - how mission-critical are your applications?
 Data protection - Backup and recovery requirements

The storage solution are divided in to different sections, which are as follows

6.1. Architecture or Types of storage Network

o DAS( Direct attached storage)
o SAN(Storage area networks)
o NAS(Network attached Storage)
o Hybrid

6.1.1. DAS (Direct attached storage)

Today, greater than 95% of all computer storage devices such as disk drives, disk arrays and RAID systems are
directly attached to a client computer through various adapters with standardized software protocols such
as SCSI, Fibre Channel and others. This type of storage is alternatively called captive storage, server attached
storage or direct attached storage.

6.1.2. SAN (Storage area networks)

A storage area network (SAN) is a dedicated high-speed network (or subnetwork) that interconnects and presents
shared pools of storage devices to multiple servers.

A SAN moves storage resources off the common user network and reorganizes them into an independent, high-
performance network. This allows each server to access shared storage as if it were a drive directly attached to the
server. When a host wants to access a storage device on the SAN, it sends out a block-based access request for the
storage device.

A storage area network is typically assembled using three principle components: cabling, host bus adapters (HBAs)
and switches. Each switch and storage system on the SAN must be interconnected and the physical
interconnections must support bandwidth levels that can adequately handle peak data activities.

SAN consolidates storage from servers in a single place where it can be accessed by any application; it inclines to
improve storage utilization. Those utilization improvements often allow organizations to comply purchases of
additional storage hardware, which saves money and requires less space in the data center.

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6.1.3. NAS: Network attached Storage (File-Level Data Sharing across the Enterprise)
Network-attached storage (NAS) is a type of dedicated file storage device that provides local-area network local
area network (LAN)nodes with file-based shared storage through a standard Ethernet connection.

An important benefit of NAS is its ability to provide multiple clients on the network with access to the same files.
Prior to NAS, enterprises typically had hundreds or even thousands of discrete file servers that had to be
separately configured and maintained. Today, when more storage capacity is required, NAS appliances can simply
be outfitted with larger disks or clustered together to provide both vertical scalability and horizontal
scalability. Many NAS vendors partner with cloud storage providers to provide customers with an extra layer of
redundancy for backing up files.

6.2. System
Disk, Tape, High End FC Array, Mid End FC Array, Unified Storage, Libraries and VirtualTape.

6.3. Network
Switch, Director, Gateway/Bridge and Appliances

6.4. Technology
FC, SAS, SCSI, SATA, iSCSI, InfiniBand, GbE, FCIP, IFCP and FCoE.

6.5. Component
RAID Controller, JBOD, HBA, NIC/TOE, CNA, NAS Head and iSCSI Head.

6.6. Software
OS, Security, Deduplication, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Snapshot, Remote Duplication, Thin
Provision and Disaster Recovery

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7. Future Scope of BA in Storage Domain

Cloud Storage
Cloud computing is now becoming a business standard. The purpose of cloud storage is to use the internet for data
storage. The main advantage in storing the data in cloud allows us to access the stored data from any Internet
connected device. It also provides a virtual storage space to the user which could be used without bothering about
the details of the entire mechanism. There are various reasons for an organization for opting Cloud storage.

1. Cost savings - Cloud computing removes the requirement of a company to invest in storage hardware and
servers.
2. Focusing on the business -Since all the services will execute over the internet, a company does not have to
bother about technical issues and other problems associated with physical storage and backup. A company
can thus focus more on their core business.
3. Performance - It delivers reliable performance irrespective to the geographical location of the user. Another
key feature could be the automatic updating of services and applications.
4. Security - Cloud Computing offers optimum security which protects you against any unauthorized access,
modification and loss of data because when all the data are stored in a PC/Hard drive there are chances that
the data can be lost due to device damage or lost.
5. Flexibility - Even if part of the cloud environment fails or stops working, the other resources continue to work
until the problem is fixed.

The scopes of Business Analyst are high in Cloud Storage sector as the technology keeps on increasing and
changing. The Primary skills which are required for a BA in cloud Storage are

1. Technical Skills - Knowledge of HTML, PaaS (Platform as a Service), Cloud Computing Basics like Virtualization
technologies (like VMWare), OOPS and programming languages like Java, C++, .Net etc.
2. Business and Financial Skills - Knowledge of business case, online marketing strategies and financial
terminologies like ROI (Return on Investment).
3. Project Management - Negotiating with the clients and having knowledge of risk analytics, service agreements
and policies.
4. Data Integration and Analysis - Having knowledge of Database, data mining and ERP system (Enterprise
Resource Planning).
5. Security - Having knowledge of internet security, encryption, authorization and security protocols.

8. Certifications recommended for BA in Storage Domain

Apart from the above mentioned technical skills, there are few certifications which will help to gain technology
knowledge.

 EMC Cloud Architect (EMCCA)

 EMC Cloud Infrastructure and Services Certification (Associate Level)
 EMC Virtualized Data Center and Cloud Infrastructure Certification (Specialist Level)
 VMware Cloud Certification
 Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge
 IBM Certified Solution Architect
 HP ExpertONE Cloud certification