Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Access "NAS Takes SMBs to Next Level"
This article is part of the Vol. 3 No. 9 November 2004 issue of Disaster recovery planning options on a shoestring budget
Not all small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are created equal. Take NetFronts Inc., a Web hosting provider in Salt Lake City, UT. With about $1 million in annual revenue and seven employees, the company fits the description of an SMB. But when it comes to storage, its requirements are far afield of what vendors think a company of its size would need. Storage vendors "can tell you what they want, but they're not reaching us," says Chris Marks, NetFronts' president. He came to that conclusion this year, after the firm set out to move the thousands of small files that comprise its customers' Web sites off internal disk drives and onto networked storage. The problem NetFronts was having with direct-attached storage was no different than for any other company: poor utilization. Despite having a balanced number of customers hosted on each server, some had excess capacity, and others were full. The first thing NetFronts considered was a storage area network (SAN), but because multiple servers need to serve up the same files, that would have required a shared ... Access >>>
Access TechTarget
Premium Content for Free.
What's Inside
Features
-
- Fund Watch
-
Tiered storage has arrived
by Mark Schlack
Our semiannual Purchasing Intentions survey shows spending is up, if not at the levels of earlier this year. Storage managers are spreading money across multiple tiers of storage products.
-
How to design a core/edge SAN
by Norman Owens
Use the SPICE algorithm to simplify the process of designing a large core/edge SAN.
-
First Look: Asigra Televaulting for Enterprises
Asigra's Televaulting for Enterprises is an agentless remote backup application that uses commodity servers at remote locations to ship pared-down data back to a centrally managed site.
-
Hands-On Review: Softek Performance Tuner
Softek's Performance Tuner is adept at identifying bottlenecks and impending failures.
-
Accommodating arrays
by Jerome M. Wendt
Modern storage arrays offer disk types to meet any need -- costly Fibre Channel (FC) disks for high-end applications requiring superior performance and availability, and lower-priced SATA disks for less-critical data. The arrays also come with mixed RAID configurations. But selecting the right mix of disks and RAID levels requires understanding the impact of those decisions.
-
Remote Replication Gets Out of the Array
Network-based replication challenges array apps
-
-
Synthetic Full Backup Catching On
Synthetic fulls slash backup time
- NAS Takes SMBs to Next Level
- Girding for Grids
-
4Gb--ready or not, here it comes
You might not need them, but 4Gb/sec Fibre Channel products are coming. Comparably priced to 2Gb/sec and backward compatible, they might end up in your storage network whether you need them or not.
-
The search for cost-effective disaster recovery
Creating an efficient DR strategy starts with determining the value of your company's applications and data. You can find the right mix of DR technologies to protect your data without breaking the bank.
-
Cheap SANs--Hype or Hot?
Low-cost SANs still looking for a market
-
Synthetic Full Backup Catching On
-
Columns
-
Hot Spots: Bring disaster recovery home
by Jon Oltsik
Disaster recovery services offer convenience and economy, but they may not protect your company's data sufficiently--maybe it's time to bring DR back in-house.
-
Best Practices: Backup operations redux
by James Damoulakis
Readers comments on July's column on 10 steps for better backups raise some new issues.
- Storage bin: A business with a heart
-
Editorial: Common sense triumphs
by Mark Schlack
Common sense triumphs
-
Snapshot: Network-based storage services
Do you run network-based storage services?
-
Hot Spots: Bring disaster recovery home
by Jon Oltsik
More Premium Content Accessible For Free
How to improve your virtual server storage setups
E-Zine
One of the biggest challenges of building a virtual server infrastructure is fine-tuning the storage that supports the virtual machines. Having ...
Rethinking the way storage architectures are packaged and presented
E-Zine
Cloud storage, virtualization and the growth of unstructured data have contributed to the way storage architectures are built and used. Virtual ...
Archiving stays active with LTFS and the cloud
E-Handbook
While the concept of data archiving has existed for decades, archiving practices that were once considered standard are becoming inadequate. Factors ...