Addressing data growth with enterprise data storage management tools

Addressing data growth with enterprise data storage management tools

A data storage strategy may only be as effective as the tools a storage professional has to manage it.

And with data growth in many IT shops increasing at exponential rates, the case for purchasing new data storage management tools is starting to make more sense even in tight economic times. In this five-part series, SearchStorage.com staff writer Carol Sliwa takes a close look at the enterprise data storage management tools available on today's market.

Be sure to check out all five parts to learn about leveraging storage resource management (SRM) tools for data backup, why capacity management tools are still often lacking, how the latest configuration technologies (such as thin provisioning and virtualization) can help and much more.

Improved enterprise storage management tools are needed, especially for data backup

The built-in reporting and monitoring features that ship with data backup applications are adequate for many IT organizations. But an independent backup reporting tool can become a critical add-on purchase for anyone using more than one backup product or overseeing an especially large environment.

Enterprise data storage capacity management tools still found lacking

Tracking and managing enterprise data storage capacity can be a tricky proposition. An administrator might allocate 90% of the available storage, but the servers may actually use only 30% of the disk space. Determining the true utilization requires tools that can delve into both ends of the spectrum.

Thin provisioning, virtualization aid data storage configuration

The latest storage configuration tools often prove most useful for an enterprise with a mix of different storage systems or a large installation of virtual servers, especially now that the virtual machines can be shifted from one physical server to another with greater ease.

Enterprise data storage performance monitoring goes beyond storage arrays

Enterprise data storage performance monitoring and troubleshooting may be as much art as science, yet there are plenty of tools that aim to help administrators fine tune storage and pinpoint storage bottlenecks before their application slows to a crawl.

Remote site monitoring often missing from disaster recovery plan

There are plenty of options for replicating data to a disaster recovery (DR) site. Far less common are tools that can monitor the remote data center to help insure the recovery is ready to go in the event of a catastrophe.

This was first published in October 2009