Many DAS boxes are colocated with servers in a common data center. This is a perfect environment for storage consolidation. If servers and their associated DAS systems are distributed, you're in for a storage and server consolidation project, which is much more complex.
Disk utilization varies or storage growth rates soar. Does your company have several DAS boxes that need constant upgrades, while others run at 20% to 30% utilization for months on end? This is a classic problem where server consolidation can help balance utilization rates while decreasing capital costs. Alternatively, an environment which experiences constant dynamic growth will benefit from a high-bandwidth, high-capacity consolidated storage architecture.
Storage administration is a bottleneck. Rule No. 1 in operations is to find the bottleneck and fix the bottleneck. If administering numerous DAS boxes puts the IT staff is in a state of constant fire fighting, you've found a bottleneck. Storage consolidation can address this issue. According to Gartner, a storage admin can manage up to 500% more capacity in a consolidated storage infrastructure.
Storage consolidation projects can help overcome any of the shortcomings described earlier, but these projects are complex undertakings by themselves. Most IT shops are running lean these days, so it's not likely you have adequate bench strength or skills to do a storage consolidation project alone. Before you choose a services partner, be prepared to initiate a few upfront tasks:
