wiSechannel
Unified storage delivers high-value benefits to SMBs
with storage management challenges.
the benefits of Unified Storage
By Richard Kuhar
BUSINESS DATA IS GROWING at an astonishing rate. Today’s SMBs are facing the mounting need to store and
secure this critical data long-term because of compliance
requirements, while assuring it remains highly available
in case of disaster. The complexity of managing external
storage systems, poor storage utilization, and the need
to support storage and data protection requirements at
remote and branch offices are among the biggest challenges companies face with storage management.
The impact of server virtualization on
storage has also required a greater focus
on storage management costs, along with
increased performance demands. Server
virtualization only addresses half the infrastructure problem—companies must
now find ways to align their storage with
their server virtualization environments.
Compounding the issue are budget
constraints. SMBs must ensure high data availability,
regulatory compliance, and disaster recovery—and do
so with shrinking budgets—so they need solutions that
are adaptive and cost-effective to ensure that data can
be stored, accessed, and managed with ease.
Unified storage solutions, which consolidate, virtualize, and support SAN and NAS (or block and file)
storage within the same system, address these challenges. Unified storage is rapidly gaining widespread
attention and increased market adoption. According to
a September 2009 Enterprise Strategy Group research
report, 70 percent of organizations are in the process
of implementing, or planning to purchase, unified storage to consolidate their NAS and SAN systems.
This presents an opportunity for channel pros to
deliver high-value benefits to their SMB clients, as
they look for innovative ways to handle the challenges
of storage management:
Better utilization of existing storage resources. Aggregating existing storage assets into a sharable storage
pool eliminates the common predicament in which one
application has too much storage capacity and another
too little. And, because unified storage solutions support
both block and file storage environments, organizations
can eliminate storage silos that occur when block-only or
file-only storage systems are deployed.
Nondisruptive data migrations. Migrating data from
aging direct-attached or networked storage to a new storage device is historically one of the largest challenges
of managing storage. A unified storage platform should
include its own migration software that enables migration
of block or file data with minimal or no disruption to the
attached application, file system, or operating system.
Standardized approach to storage management. The
last thing an organization wants to do is develop one
Unified storage solutions … consolidate, vir-
tualize, and support SAN and NAS (or block
and file) storage within the same system.
richArd kUhAr, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
ARKAY ENGINEERING SALES INC.
set of skills and procedures for managing and replicating data for block-based storage systems, and another
for file-based storage systems. With unified storage, once
an organization has individuals trained and policies set,
their storage, whether block or file, can be managed the
same way and from the same management interface.
Not all unified storage solutions can deliver on
these promises, however. Look for a unified storage
platform that supports both block- and file-level storage on a single storage system, enables the migration
of data from current storage assets to the unified storage system, and offers advanced storage management
and replication features.
It’s also important to understand different licensing
models. Most vendors follow the traditional model of charging clients for additional capacity as their storage grows,
which can be an expensive proposition. A new model is
emerging that doesn’t require clients to pay more for software licensing as their system capacity requirements grow.
This is a far more cost-effective model for SMBs whose
data is likely to increase substantially, enabling them to
“future proof” their storage investment.
RICHARD KUHAR is executive vice president of Arkay
Engineering Sales Inc., a provider of advanced data
storage solutions and services in Akron, Ohio.
