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Do we really utilise our new storage features fully and realise their cost savings?

Martin Ros, Business Development Consultant, Shoden Data Systems

In recent times all of the major storage vendors, including those who specialise in enterprise solutions have released new features offering increased performance, easier data and configuration management – all this with promises of cost savings.

This is partly due to the inclusion of commodity based components, larger capacity SAS and SATA drives and where performance is required the inclusion of Solid State Disks. Management software has also progressed to more intuitive consoles and away from the days of command line inter-phases. Arguably, something which server administrators have enjoyed for many years.

Included in the data management benefits are Thin Provisioning and Storage Tiering software which both aim to reduce the arduous and erroneous tasks of allocating and balancing capacity to achieve the greatest performance. However, if one looks at the number of customers who have actually deployed these features in production environments (I’m not referring to minimal “test” implementations here), it seems that there is some reluctance in using these features. 

The question is why?  Is this a natural fear of the unknown? Do storage administrators feel that they lose too much control when leaving certain storage placement and performance decisions to the storage array?  Or maybe companies are so risk averse that they want to make 200% sure that these features work as designed. 

Whatever the reasons, those companies that do not make use of these features, and especially those that have already procured them with their disk arrays, effectively lose out on the money saving game.  The sooner they implement these features, the sooner they start seeing the return on their investment.

About Shoden

Shoden Data Systems PTY (Ltd.) provides innovative, high-end technology solutions to leading organisations across Africa, allowing them to gain what Shoden refers to as:“The data centre advantage”. Shoden aims to deliver the data centre advantage by understanding clients’ challenges and implementing optimised solutions that address these challenges, coupled with excellent service and support.www.shoden.co.za

For further information

Melinda de Gee
Shoden
Data Systems
083 212 9840
Melinda.degee@shoden.co.za