Solving the Storage Dilemma

The Problem

Data storage technology has evolved significantly in just the last few years. Until recently, most servers contained one or two hard drives inside the server enclosure, and that was usually enough storage capacity. If additional disk storage was needed, expansion disks could be easily added by installing a SCSI Host Bus Adapter (HBA) and attaching one or more boxes with additional hard drives.

This method, called Direct Attached Storage (DAS), is still the primary method used today for storage expansion. However even small IT shops have multiple servers, and managing each one independently is becoming cost and time prohibitive. When a server fills up its disks, data has to be painstakingly moved to new, larger hard drives, requiring extensive downtime and labor. Expansion storage now comes in units of several hundred gigabytes, and cannot be shared between servers. Many IT shops do not know the real utilization of their storage assets, but less than 50% utilization is not uncommon.

Backups require each system to have a tape drive and manual procedures of mounting tapes and starting the backups. Alternatively, the company's LAN is used for backup, allowing centralized tape handling but tying up the network for hours each day. Some companies mistakenly think that RAID is the only protection they need and don't do backups at all. It is no longer acceptable for most servers to be taken out of service to perform nightly backups, because email and key databases need to be accessed around the world and around the clock. Many shops do not have the capability of testing their backups until a data loss event occurs. Then recovery can take hours or days, or the restore process fails and data is irretrievably lost. Most small and medium IT organizations have limited or no capability of recovery if a fire, earthquake, or other major disaster occurs.

Today, every company's most valuable asset is its data. Most transactions and communications are electronic. The amount of critical data that must be available on-line is growing geometrically. Major or minor disasters or equipment failure can seriously cripple a company or even cause it to go out of business. The cost of servers and storage is going down, however the need to manage multiple servers and terabytes of storage is placing a tremendous burden on IT departments.

The Dilemma

A market that is growing geometrically will attract a plethora of companies seeking to meet the needs of that market. Indeed, the storage industry has grown tremendously in the last five years. Hundreds of new companies have been formed. New technologies are announced almost daily. CIOs and IT managers are finding it exceedingly difficult to wade through the hype and buzzwords to find the solutions they need. Unlike networking, where standards abound and interoperability can be just about taken for granted, storage has few standards, interoperability is questionable, and the vendors are dragging their feet on standardization so they can maintain their proprietary solutions as long as possible.

IT managers are faced with two choices. They can go with the major vendors like EMC, Compaq, Hitachi, and HP. Those vendors will provide one-stop shopping and claim to solve all your storage problems, but at premium prices, and you will be locked in to that vendor's solutions. Furthermore, you may be denied better and lower-cost solutions because that vendor does not supply them. Their motto is: "If we don't have it, you don't need it."

The rest of the storage vendors sell components. They require the IT managers to pick and choose and build their storage infrastructure from the bottom up, hoping it will all work when it's done. This consumes large amounts of time and resources to do the research and learn about the myriad technologies such as SAN, NAS, switches, hubs, routers (different from the switches, hubs, and routers that are in the LAN), virtualization, business continuance, RAID, mirroring, fibre channel, SCSI, Ultra-SCSI, iSCSI, FCIP, etc. etc. This expertise is in very short supply and is difficult and costly to develop and maintain. Most small and medium IT shops simply cannot afford to have their own in-house storage experts.

The Solution

Storburst Technologies was founded to fill this void. Staffed with storage experts with years of experience in the storage industry, Storburst Technologies will work with you to evaluate your storage requirements and design a solution that perfectly fits your needs. As an independent consultant, Storburst has the freedom to find the best-of-breed technologies from a variety of suppliers, integrate them into your custom solution, and test it to ensure it meets your requirements. The result is a faster, scalable, and dependable storage infrastructure that meets the specific business needs of your company at the lowest possible cost.