Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information [Hardcover]

EMC Education Services (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0470294213 | ISBN-13: 978-0470294215 | Publication Date: April 6, 2009 | Edition: 1

The spiraling growth of digital information makes the ISM book a "must have" addition to your IT reference library. This exponential growth has driven information management technology to new levels of sophistication and complexity, exposing a skills gap that challenge IT managers and professionals alike. The ISM book, written by storage professionals from EMC Corporation, takes an ‘open’ approach to teaching information storage and management, focusing on concepts and principles – rather that product specifics – that can be applied in all IT environments

The book enables existing and aspiring IT professionals, students, faculty, and those simply wishing to gain deeper insight to this emerging pillar of IT infrastructure to achieve a comprehensive understanding of all segments of information storage technology.

Sixteen chapters are organized into four sections. Advanced topics build upon the topics learned in previous chapters.

Section 1, "Information Storage and Management for Today’s World": Four chapters cover information growth and challenges, define a storage system and its environment, review the evolution of storage technology, and introduce intelligent storage systems.

Section 2, "Storage Options and Protocols": Six chapters cover the SCSI and Fibre channel architecture, direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area networks (SANs), network-attached storage (NAS), Internet Protocol SAN (IP-SAN), content-addressed storage (CAS), and storage virtualization.

Section 3, "Business Continuity and Replication": Four chapters introduce business continuity, backup and recovery, local data replication, and remote data replication.

Section 4, "Security and Administration": Two chapters cover storage security and storage infrastructure monitoring and management.

The book’s supplementary web site provides up-to-date information on additional learning aids and storage certification opportunities.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Information Storage and Management

Managing and securing information is critical to business success. While information storage and management used to be a relatively straightforward and routine operation in the past, today it has developed into a highly mature and sophisticated pillar of information technology. Information storage and management technologies provide a variety of solutions for storing, managing, connecting, protecting, securing, sharing, and optimizing information.

To keep pace with the exponential growth of information and the associated increase in sophistication and complexity of information management technology, there is a growing need for skilled information management professionals. More than ever, IT managers are challenged with employing and developing highly skilled information storage professionals.

This book covers concepts, principles, and deployment considerations across all technologies that are used for storing and managing information. It gives insight into:

• Challenges and solutions for data storage and data management

• Intelligent storage systems

• Storage networking (FC-SAN, IP-SAN, NAS)

• Backup, recovery, and archive (including CAS)

• Business continuity and disaster recovery

• Security and virtualization

• Managing and monitoring the storage infrastructure

EMC Proven Professional is the premier certification program in the information storage and management industry. Being proven means investing in yourself and formally validating your knowledge, skills, and expertise by the industry's most comprehensive learning and certification program.

This book also helps you prepare for Information Storage and Management exam E20-001 leading to EMC Proven Professional Associate certification. Please visit http://education.emc.com for details.

About the Author

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (April 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470294213
• ISBN-13: 978-0470294215
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,999 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #46 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking > Network Administration

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Primer on Information Storage, June 26, 2009

By 

Ori Idan "parilitas fanaticus" (Israel) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information (Hardcover)

Over the past decade the world has witnessed an exponential growth of information and the rapid development of the storage technology industry. While both are certainly two sides of the same coin, it is debatable whether the former inspired the latter, or vice versa. Either way, storage technology has become a field of knowledge and information, in itself, and as such necessitates a didactic approach. The non-profit trade association - SNIA (Storage Networking Industry Association) - aims to lead the storage industry in developing and promoting educational services, and has accordingly developed a vendor-neutral certification program and courses. SNIA did not however publish any definitive textbook that would lay the foundation for an accessible storage networking's body of knowledge. This gap has been filled in the past years by several authors and vendors. EMC's "Information Storage and Management" (ISM) is the latest textbook of this kind.

Starting with the bottom line, I would say that ISM is a well-written and coherent book. It succeeds in introducing the main theoretical issues of storage networking without ever losing its audience. As with all storage networking books ISM is also divided into several main sections - storage system, storage networking technologies and virtualization, business continuity, storage security and management. However, the book's new approach here is that each chapter ends with helpful real-life examples from the vast variety of EMC's product line. Considering this, the theoretical part of the book is short. This is, in my opinion, the main virtue of the book - being succinct and deep at the same time, the editors - G Somasundaram and Alok Shrivastava, have skillfully conveyed their massage. Novice readers, as well as experienced IT and storage practitioners, will benefit from reading the book.

Nonetheless, the book suffers from a few flows, mainly in neglecting to get into details regarding some emerging technologies and concepts like green storage, cloud storage, de-duplication SSD and FCoE. I believe that adding these issues would not have compromised the book's coherency and brevity.

Another aspect of ISM is that one can use it as study guide for EMC's E20-001 exam, leading to EMC Proven Professional Associate certification. Plainly, EMC has intended the book not only to promote the theoretical knowledge of storage networking in the IT and academic communities, but also to initiate them into "the EMC path". This dual goal (as seen also in the usage of EMC products as examples in each theoretical chapter) is unavoidable and in my opinion should not be frowned upon. On the contrary, following "Information Storage and Management" I believe that EMC education services should publish additional books that will further enhance general knowledge of storage networking. Two likely candidates that will most certainly benefit both the general public and EMC are "Storage Networking Design and Management" and "Information Availability Design and Management".

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fills a Void, September 28, 2009

By 

SANsMadeEasy "Eel" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information (Hardcover)

I have been working with storage and related technologies for over 10 years now.
This book fills a void in the Storage/SAN world. There arent too many good texts available for a beginner who wants to learn about storage technologies. Even the few texts that are available are from the vendors and yes, I realize that this one is from a vendor as well, but this text tries to be very neutral, and is written from a user/learner point of view.
It is organized well, starting with explaining the various terms, and then moving on to description of RAID and then describing specific storage technologies. An experienced professional might not be too impressed at the depth of coverage of advanced SAN techonologies. However, the book isnt aimed at that class of readers.

In summary, this book is great if you are a beginner or if you are a faculty teaching basics of SAN and storage, and it is a good handy reference guide for experienced professionals.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Primer, October 7, 2011

By 

JASON N BOYD (Brentwood, TN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information (Hardcover)

I find this to be an excellent storage primer and it doubles as study material for EMC's basic storage Exam. I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a basic understanding of the nuts and bolts of storage and the management of the data on it.