Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Jun 21, 2010 @ 06:43 AM
It’s true that there are some signs our economy is starting to turn back around, at least in some areas and some sectors. Still, it’s going to be a while before IT has the kinds of resources it had access to just a decade ago. The storage management component of IT, while it may see some growth due to things like increased need for compliance and demands for greater storage capacity, is going to be asked to do more for less. Enterprise storage personnel are asked to move the organization forward without investment, or with minimal investment.
Cost Avoidance and Cost Savings
If you are being asked to cut your enterprise storage expenses, you’re going to look at those cuts in terms of the impact they have on the organization. Cuts fall into two camps:
• Cost savings reduce your budget today. They product quick and tangible results, right now. Examples would include reducing or eliminating a service contract or lowering your contracted throughput with an outside vendor.
• Cost avoidance reduces your budget in the future. It lets you put off costs or even eliminate costs that you anticipated would hit in the future. This is the kind of cost “cutting” that politicians like to discuss, and doesn’t represent spending less but rather not spending more.
Obviously, cost savings have the most visible impact. Arguably, cost savings is also the real measure of whether you’re doing more with less. Cost avoidance is more like doing less with the same, or even doing the same with less.
In practical terms, what are some of the ways to avoid costs in enterprise storage? Things that come to mind include improving capacity utilization. Many enterprises find their used to usable ration at around 20 percent, which means there is plenty of extra space that can be put to good use. Cleaning up data, eliminating unnecessary copies, getting rid of temporary files, utilizing compression and deduplication technologies will all help us to avoid buying new disks or arrays and expanding infrastructure.
Cost savings are harder to come by in the enterprise storage environment. Dropping an existing expense probably means breaking a lease, returning equipment or worse. In many cases, getting tough in negotiations with your vendors may lead to cost savings. Unfortunately, one of the most rapid ways to save costs is to eliminate personnel. The problem, of course, is that this move can dramatically impact service.
There are some other ways to realize immediate costs savings. Converting capital costs to operational costs is one way. This usually involves bringing in service providers. Rather than choosing to replace a server, for example, you hire a vendor to provide managed services. This lets you take the old equipment off the floor, reducing power and maintenance costs out of the gate.
Ultimately, if your organization is asking you to do more with less in terms of enterprise storage, you’re going to have to get creative about making the most of what you have and finding new solutions that don’t increase costs.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, May 14, 2010 @ 10:10 AM
If the early signs are any indication, 2010 is turning out to be a time when enterprise IT, in general, starts to normalize after a long stretch involving financial instability. For many organizations, at least, enterprise storage upgrades and optimization are back on the table after a time away. Without the looming threat of a financial disaster, people in IT departments are willing to take some more risks with enterprise storage and other technologies.
Here are some of the trends that are beginning to emerge in that area:
• Virtualization continues to increase, creating more significant I/O requirements. Everything from VMware to vSphere to Microsoft’s Hyper-V is putting through the large amounts of data needed by database and by other applications. This means storage I/O has to keep up. How it will do so isn’t certain, but you can expect to see higher uses of SAN arrays, even for more low-end implementations.
• An increase of SANs among small and medium businesses. Even smaller businesses are turning more and more to virtualization. As they do, they need more robust, more intelligent SAN storage. Accordingly, the lower end of the enterprise storage market should continue to boom.
• More archiving. Data management and compliance are no longer the sole purview of big business. Archiving services, as well as in-house solutions, will continue to grow. Managed archiving services are likely to especially increase, as archiving hasn’t really ever been one of the core foci of the IT department.
• Special-purpose storage solutions integrating with applications. We’re seeing more and more storage solutions that integrate essential applications – SAP, SharePoint and Exchange being just a few.
• FC disks are coming to an end. Between flash disks and automated tiering technologies, SAS is set to put the nail in the coffin of more traditional high-performance disk drives. We’ll see larger capacity drives, more SAS, and higher amounts of cache RAM as well as flash.
• Tiered storage systems continue to grow. As virtualization merges more and more with cloud technology, more and more solutions will work to cash, manage performance and manage capacity. These super storage systems will combine cloud storage, flash and SAS as well.
• Convergence is still delayed. Yes, some of the big vendors (most notably Cisco and EMC) are continuing to push for converged networks and technologies like FCoE and 10 GigE, there are not yet significant business reasons to make the move for most folks. Those high-end I/O environments may see some 10 GigE implementations.
As has always been the case, the times are changing. Successful businesses and organizations continue to rely on the industry to provide cutting-edge solutions to their ever-growing needs.
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Posted by Crystal Nichols on Mon, Oct 12, 2009 @ 08:37 AM
Enterprise storage, in the most basic sense, is the use of a centralized storage system to manage, protect and provide access to the enterprise’s data. An enterprise storage solution gives connectivity to that data from whatever source or application can effectively use that data.
It’s important to understand, first of all, how enterprise storage is different from basic consumer storage. Enterprise storage requires vastly larger amounts of storage capacity. Enterprise storage also utilizes different and more advanced technologies than consumer storage.
Types of Enterprise Storage Solutions
Historically, there have been three different types of storage solutions available to the enterprise. Direct Attached Storage (or DAS) was, historically, the first to come about. Direct attached storage is storage that’s directly connected to a host computer. In this model, access to the data is provided through the enterprise’s Local Area Network.
For obvious reasons, DAS has fallen out of vogue. It has significant limitations, not the least of which is the impact that this solution has on the rest of the data network. DAS exists today only in the sense that the storage media are attached to storage server nodes, which may or may not be attached directly to the LAN.
Network Attached Storage (or NAS) is exactly that sort of storage. It refers to a storage device that’s part of a server located on your LAN. Network Attached Storage takes the form of data servers that are directly integrated into your LAN architecture. Network file servers typically make up an Network Attached Storage solution.
NAS has its limitations, as well. NAS doesn’t offer compatibility with certain applications, for example. In addition, NAS still can create something of a drag on your Local Area Network.
A Storage Area Network (or SAN) is probably the most widely-used type of enterprise storage solution today. SAN lets you connect more than one host to a storage device. This frees up your server resources in a number of ways, and gives you many more options when it comes to things like redundancy and failover. In addition, a SAN tends to create less drag on the Local Area Network, because much of the passing of data takes place only in the SAN environment.
Choosing the Right Enterprise Storage Solution
When it comes time to choose an enterprise storage solution, there are some things to keep in mind.
First of all, you need to choose a solution that is scalable. The explosive need for data storage means that a system that isn’t scalable can be obsolete in months.
You also need a secure storage solution. Make sure your solution is secured against threats on the network. Make sure your solution has backup and disaster recovery options, as well.
Finally, you need an enterprise storage solution that meets regulatory compliance issues. Depending on what industry your business is in, this may or may not be particularly difficult, but it is an issue that needs to be brought up before you choose a solution, rather than after.
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