The storage industry has been on a jag recently about the need for something marketing folks refer to as Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). What they are selling, however, bears little resemblance to ILM as we understand it: a methodology for initially provisioning storage to data based on data characteristics, application requirements and budgetary criteria, then migrating the data over time in concert with tech and business-savvy policy, until it can be deleted. The objective is to achieve capacity utilization efficiency.

To a one, the vendors are selling data movers: the means for moving data around the infrastructure in accordance to generally simplistic policies. What the vendors don't tell you is that the heavy lifting is on the shoulders of the consumer to decide what data needs to be moved and what platforms are appropriate targets for data placement.

Without a data classification scheme, a count of accesses made to data where it is stored, and a storage classification scheme, ILM is more Information Feng Shui, in the Californian use of the term.

Our recommendation: Learn what you are actually buying before you jump on the bandwagon. Better yet, spend your money intelligently by putting a good, vendor agnostic, storage management framework in place. Then only buy storage platforms that can be managed using the framework. That way, you can begin getting capacity allocation under control, at least.