Posted by Crystal Nichols on Fri, Jan 29, 2010 @ 07:00 AM
Whether you run a small or medium sized business, or whether you are involved in a larger company, storage capacity management is at the heart of your business’ IT concerns. The days when a business could get by with storing files on individual desktops (or on a single server, for that matter,) are long gone. In our time of PowerPoint presentations, PDF documents and large image and video files, keeping tabs on your storage capacity is a never ending challenge.
Further complicating this problem is the fact that the demand for digital storage is actually rising faster than the capacity for storage itself. The demand for digital storage is rising as much as 50 percent every year. And, while capacity is growing, performance is lagging way behind, growing just at a tenth of the pace that capacity is.
Fortunately, there are solutions. There are ways that a business can get a handle on its storage capacity management. It depends, at least in part, on the size and type of business. The challenge is to implement an effective solution within budget and without overbuying.
Storage Capacity Management for Small Businesses
Small businesses can’t afford to hire an IT professional just to handle their storage capacity management. In fact, many smaller companies don’t even have an IT professional at all. Fortunately, there are a number of relatively inexpensive and easy to use products available for smaller businesses.
One example is a single storage server device that you attach to your network. This is, in the most basic sense, a barebones computer with a large hard drive installed. The storage device is a central repository for a small business on a network. These devices can range anywhere from $500 to more than $2000, depending on the capacity you desire. Some have wireless networking capabilities built in, while others require a hard connection to your network. These devices are, for the most part, plug-and-play and will automatically identify themselves in a Windows network.
This sort of model fits best in an environment where you don’t have a full-time IT staff person, and where you probably don’t already have any servers.
Storage Capacity Management for Medium Businesses
When you hit around 50 employees, or when you have a smaller number of employees who routinely all work with large files, you may need something a little bit bigger. At this stage, you’re a good candidate for Network Attached Storage (NAS). NAS lets you provide a single repository for multiple servers to access data. So, you might have three or four different servers, at least one of which has critical data. A NAS device provides you greater reliability, scalability and flexibility than a simple locally attached hard drive.
This kind of solution is best in companies who have their own IT person, or who have a service provider contract and routinely have an IT person on site.
Utimately, the storage capacity management solution you choose will depend on the specific size, needs and processes of your business.
HP Storage Essentials
• Simplifies end users’ ability to analyze and share information
• Enables unified end-to-end storage and infrastructure reporting of assets for faster informed decisions
• Facilitates the creation of customized reports to suit business needs
• Reduces report generation cycles from weeks to minutes
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