Information Storage and Management: Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information Review

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(More customer reviews)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".


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