Essential Evaluation Features In A Storage System

The market for storage devices is growing by the day, being driven by an ever increasing demand for storage options to fit various business types and business models. When you start looking for a storage device, you would do well to keep in mind the following tips; these will help you get a purchase that will not only fulfill your storage requirements but also get you a fast ROI.

Consider convergence - The two major enterprise storage systems – NAS and SAN have reached a stage where there is little to distinguish between the two. So, within the same system you can have a file-level NAS and a block-level SAN. If you wish you can integrate NAS functionality into your SAN storage by the simple addition of a gateway appliance. Functional convergence allows you to get the best out of your storage devices.

Ease of deployment – Ease of deployment and ease of use are major considerations as they have a direct bearing on your IT costs. This is of special significance for small businesses that do not have a dedicated staff for manning storage. SMBs should look for features such as disk auto-notification, backup failure, degradation of RAID, or alarms on capacities getting full. Automation allows admin to focus on other aspects of storage management and also nip potentially downtime-causing incidents in the bud.

Energy conservation – Storage devices can be major energy guzzlers and storage needs of a business can only grow; they do not become less. So keep energy efficiency in mind. Look up virtualization for improving utilization. See if you can consolidate your servers. Learn about the relationship between disk capacity and efficiency. Look up products with energy-efficiency features that can control disk drives in both active and idle states.

Storage utilization – Keep storage utilization in mind and a lot of things will fall in place. You will save on energy, your capital outlay will be less and you will make better use of whatever you spend. Look for de-duplication devices that can help free disk capacities. Tiered storage helps in improving storage capacities by migrating less frequently used data to lower-cost storage systems while keeping mission-critical data on high-performance devices. Incorporate this with archiving and you can also improve your backup procedures and their efficiencies.

Scalability – Keep scalability and a modular architecture in mind. These are important factor that affect the present and future costs of your storage systems.

When purchasing a storage system, maintain due diligence and do not fall for marketing claims. Be aware of your storage requirements and technical expertise. Check how mature and pervasive competing technologies are and the performance levels that your business requires.