Are your storage needs growing faster than you can manage?

Would you like to save money and time by centralizing the storage for your organization?

Storage Consolidation, also called Storage Convergence, is a method of centralizing data storage among multiple servers. The objective is to facillitate data backup and archiving for all subscribers in an Enterprise, while minimizing the time required to access and store data.

Other desirable features include:

• Simplification of storage infrastructure
• Centralized and efficient management
• Optimized resource utilization
• Low operating cost

There are two storage consolidation architectures in common use:

NAS (Network-Attached Storage) - are storage devices that can be accessed over a computer network (usually TCP/IP), rather than directly being connected to the computer (internal hard drives or external USB/SCSI drives). NAS devices enable multiple computers to share the same storage space at once. These devices are assigned an IP address and can then be accessed by clients (PCs or laptops) via a server that acts as a gateway to the data (this server is within the NAS device and hence NAS devices are often referred to as NAS servers). Some of the big advantages of NAS include the expandability; if you need more storage space, add another NAS device and expand the available storage. They also bring an extra level of fault tolerance to the network. Fault tolerant measures such as RAID (link to RAID page) can be used to make sure that the NAS device does not become a point of failure. NAS systems often contain more than one hard disk drive, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID arrays for added redundancy/security - thus protecting data in the case of disk failure.

A number of factors are accelerating end user demand for NAS offerings:

Cost benefit. NAS offers an affordable and expandable solution for endusers requiring network shared storage in a home or office environment. It is an effective strategy for extending an existing investment in server technology. NAS architecture allows these businesses to add storage on the network without requiring any upgrade and/or replacement of existing servers.

Administrative convenience. NAS offers a simple solution for sharing photos, files, music or videos stored in one central location, accessible to anyone in the family by PC/laptop.

NAS can be a simple storage solution to an otherwise complex IT problem! NAS-based storage offers administrative features that simplify or eliminate manual disk expansion and archiving functions, user and application partitioning, data protection, and other time-consuming storage maintenance activities.

Fault Tolerance. NAS devices with more than 1 hard drive bring an extra level of fault tolerance to the network as many offer mirroring RAID features and functionality.

SAN (Storage Area Network) - a dedicated storage network that carries I/O traffic only between servers and storage devices—it does not carry any application traffic, which eliminates the bottlenecks associated with using a single network fabric for all applications.

A SAN can also enable direct storage-to-storage interconnectivity, and lends itself to the exploitation of new breeds of clustering technology. SANs uncouple the front end of the IT infrastructure applications, operating system, and processors from the back-end storage. This enables businesses to meet their expanding storage requirements while still maintaining rapid response at the application, business process, and user level.

SANs provide continuous client availability to storage devices if a server in the loop fails, and some backup solutions on the market today are capable of replicating data and application files in real time to secondary servers on the SAN. These solutions provide continuous access to data even if the primary server suffers fatal damage or network connections are interrupted. When it detects an interruption, the backup solution can instantaneously and transparently switch users to a secondary server.

In addition, SANs provide total cost of ownership benefits such as:

• Minimized down time
• Improved LAN performance
• Ability to connect to existing LANs
• Reduced administrative costs
• Leveraging of existing hardware
• Improved fault tolerance
• Maximized storage resources through load balancing
• Total SAN management.

What does an investment in Storage Consolidation do for you?

• More Flexible use of Resources
  • Save money on Upgrades
• Reduced Power/Space requirements
  • Save money on Electricity/Rent
• Reduced Maintenance Costs
  • Save money on Hardware maintenance
• Reduced Support Costs
  • Reduced Staff/Management Hours
• Redundant Architecture
  • Minimized Downtime
• Centralize Server Upgrades
  • Save money on Upgrades
• Faster Backup/Recovery Capability
  • Minimized Downtime

From NAS (Network Attached Storage) to SAN (Storage Area Networks), Cpak Technology Solutions can help you leverage the right technology for your organization.