* Critical and timely analysis of current storage technologies and trends* A unique vendor-agnostic perspective that cuts through the marketing hype!* Information you can use to leverage the capabilities-and cope with the limitations-of current data storage technologiesThe latest installment in a comprehensive, vendor-neutral guide to data managementIf your organization is like most, data storage is the biggest line item in your IT budget-despite the fact that the cost of storage media is dropping at a rate of over 50 percent per year. That's because data itself is poorly managed, a task typically assigned to technical staff who lack either the tools or the skills to design, plan, administer, and operate the data storage infrastructure efficiently. How can you cope with the requirement to provision storage capacity to the applications that need it in a world of increasingly constrained IT budgets? How can you protect your most critical corporate asset-data-when your technology options come down to selecting one proprietary and non-interoperable solution versus another? What can you do to rein in an industry that seems more concerned about growing market share than solving the real-world problems that you face every day? The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management, by noted author, speaker, and IT veteran Jon William Toigo, provides a compelling and objective analysis of what is wrong with today's storage technologies, and delivers actionable information for coping with the situation from the consumer's point of view.In his clear, engaging style, Toigo cuts through the hype and offers straight advice on the problems of the currentstorage architecture. In The Holy Grail of Network Storage Management you'll find practical measures for surmounting the limitations of current technology as well as for confronting the "two towers of storage pain"-provisioning storage to applications and protecting data from loss or corruption. Ultimately, you'll be able to critique product offerings and to select and deploy only those technologies that deliver real business value. You'll also find:* Techniques on deriving the most from the least in your data storage infrastructure* A scheme for data management that can deliver enormous value with minimal changes in existing operating systems and storage subsystems* Methods for gaining advantage in product purchasing, skills for making effective choices that address current and strategic goals, and more!This book is intended for storage administrators, IT decision-makers and architects, financial investors examining the storage industry, and for those vendors who are seeking to deliver real architecture, rather than marketecture, to their customers.