Cloud Storage Budgeting First Steps
In a time of economic uncertainty, one thing remains certain: this time next year there will be more data in the data center. Probably a lot more data.
History shows that data growth has been pacing at about 50% per year. Some growth is driven by new business solutions, such as productivity and quality gains, while other growth relates to regulatory requirements, like those of Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA.
Many IT budgets, if not already cut, soon will be—but from where? All that new data is going to stress every component of every system. Server CPUs will be busier, RAM less plentiful, and networks more congested. Data storage devices may soon overflow.
While all systems will feel stressed, the direct hit to storage makes it most vulnerable. A delay on software upgrades may delay the release of a new feature. Server or network upgrades may hold down productivity gains. But a “disk full error” will grind everything to a complete halt.
Develop a Cloud Storage Strategy
Consider creating overarching plan to grow and manage centralized storage. Yes, I’m talking about a SAN here. Storage Area Networking, or its cousin, Network Attached Storage, is discussed in about a million places. Investing in a SAN can save money in direct storage dollars and definitely save in other IT capital and labor.
Centralized storage makes optimal use of resources, sharing workloads by using techniques such as Thin Provisioning to manage storage requests and Virtualization to flatten the learning curve.
Next week, we'll discuss adding on to your existing storage platform (if you have one).
