Better Backup Strategies
What Are Your Options?
Faced with exponential data growth, companies need to reduce inefficiencies and maximize use of their storage environments. You'll first want to consider your data storage needs in terms of levels of protection needed, performance requirements, frequency of data use, etc. Assigning different categories of data to types of storage media to reduce storage cost is known as tiered storage.
Tier 1 data (mission-critical or recently accessed files) might be stored on more expensive media such as RAIDs. Tier 2 data (such as financial files) might reside on less expensive media in storage area networks (SANs). Tier 3 data could contain rarely used files on tape. Software can automatically assign data to particular media based on company-defined policy.
You will likely employ an assortment of storage architectures depending on your specific environment and applications:
- Direct-attached storage (DAS) is traditional mass storage that cannot share data or unused resources with other servers.
- Network-attached storage (NAS) systems contain one or more hard disks, often arranged into RAID arrays, so hardware limitations exist. They offer access at the file level over a network.
- A storage area network (SAN) provides other computers with storage capacity. A SAN offers access at block-addressing (raw) levels, leaving it to attaching systems to manage data or file systems. SANs can consist of several physically separate drives or arrays. They offer replication and disaster recovery features (automatic fail over) and complement server virtualization.
Solutions Begin with Us
Data Deduplication
Traditional methods of reducing storage space, such as data compression, remove extra characters or white space to squeeze files down to smaller sizes—without actually eliminating redundant files. Data deduplication eliminates wasted space by storing only unique pieces of data, getting rid of repetitive data entirely. That translates to a better use of disk and tape resources, less network congestion with files moving back and forth, and a longer lifespan for your infrastructure.
Eliminating chunks of data—even redundant ones—may sound scary at first, but data deduplication is a safe way to optimize your storage environment. However, data deduplication is only part of an overall storage strategy. It does not to take the place of building resiliency and redundancy into your environment.
The Best Strategy for Your Data
With expertise in product lines from top tier storage vendors, the dedicated storage specialists at MoreDirect will help you sort through all the options and design and build the right storage for your data requirements. Services such as our Storage Assessment and Storage Healthcheck can help you create solutions to meet your goals. We spend time qualifying your needs through discovery, data collection, and analysis so we can address your unique challenges. We can also help present the cost savings of your storage project to your decision makers.
For more information, call your Account Manager at 1-800-369-1047
