Firmwire| The bridge between

Will it happen?

What does it mean to companies making the move away from Tape based storage? How will this effect their current initiatives as well as the future goals that they would like to put into place?

From my perspective there will be a more strategic solution put into place that will allow, Data managers to streamline and therefore cut their cost over the long term. Storage is an important piece in keeping companies compliant and strong. The ability to retrieve information quickly and efficiently is most important for them to stay afloat and continually compete in the market place.

I will look more into this over time. Here is the story from Channel Web

Most people believe that technology is a commodity and to some extent some of it has taken that position in which it is produced and released. However it is the intricate details that removes it from this category, and therefore brings value to the table. There are differences between a tank and a car, but they both have wheels. This is something that you must keep in mind when looking out into the world of IT. It is my job to make sure that you obtain the right vehicle so to speak. Not only one that will last, and cut down your trips to the customer care phone line, but also one that will operate based on your specifications, allow you to lead a more efficient IT operation, cut cost, and ultimately pay for itself. 

The questions that I must answer. How can I minimize IT stress points? What are the budget eaters? What can we do to maintain a far better IT department? How do we implement in such a horrid economic landscape? These are some of the questions and I must say, that they are not the only questions that I come across on the day to day. This is my general view of what I come in contact with daily. 

So what do we do? First we must think of everything as a problem. Even if it does not appear to be so. This will allow you to analyze every detail of your operation. Data to dollars is a phrase that I often think in. I use it as a measuring stick of the sort. This allows me to analyze what I am being told and in return allows me to share the information that I am aware of appropriately. 

So what are the stress points? Everyone has them…right? Where we fail to recognize these stress points is that we are comparing them to the next companies stress points, or we are looking at the deal of the day that does not apply to our need. So the stress points go unnoticed until we take the time out to look into them further or in most cases, everything that we have is on fire, and we must now run out and get new equipment. That is so wrong on so many levels, especially when you have a company that needs to run 24/7 and can not afford down time.

So what now Sherlock?

The solutions to those stress points is where the value comes in. Whether it be data pile up which can be minimized by a proper data de-duplication, and storage configuration containing all elements of hardware and software to maximize its existence. We must first identify what it is that is going on exactly with the scenario that is unique to your data strategy. From there you will be able to begin the search from what will fix that problem. There are many solutions out there. Like the NETAPP solutions that are available and used by many, once IT Directors and there squad of IT techs, concluded that data is costing them more than it should be. This is evident  that you are backing up way more than actually exist. There are mirrors of data within your systems and it is creating a stockpile of data, that is not useful. Why? Because you already have a copy, why is it multiplied? NetApp solves this issue.

Data de-duplication essentially refers to the elimination of redundant data. In the deduplication process, duplicate data is deleted, leaving only one copy of the data to be stored. However, indexing of all data is still retained should that data ever be required. Deduplication is able to reduce the required storage capacity since only the unique data is stored.

Through the process of Data deduplication, Enterprises save huge ammounts of disk space through the reduction of repeated data elements, not just at file level, but right down to the bits that make up files. Data Deduplication is now becoming a common method of reducing backup data thus saving money on media and other associated Data Management costs.

Deduplication is also also written as de-duplication, and is synonymous with data reduction or commonality factoring.

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Excerpts from this post is credited to Nexstor