Category: RELDATA

Ask any VMware administrator what the implications are of using a non-certified storage solution in their VMware environment and they shudder to think of the consequences if they call VMware support. But identifying a unified storage solution that is also VMware Certified is more complex than small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) may expect.

No one wants to pay more for less, yet that was exactly the situation that Delta Dental of Colorado was facing as it looked to upgrade its FC SAN to meet new application requirements. Further, new iSCSI SAN alternatives were not that much better as they had some of the same inflexibility and software licensing issues as the company’s FC SAN. It was only when Delta Dental brought in the RELDATA 9240i that it found a solution that gave it more for less.

Data migrations are viewed as problematic by almost every size organization with administrative overhead, cost, downtime and risk among the problems most commonly cited in executing on them. For mid-sized organizations, these issues are compounded as they have the same challenges as larger organizations but fewer resources with which to perform them. This is why the RELDATA 9240i, that delivers block and file data migrations on a single unified storage platform, may just be the answer that mid-sized organizations seek.

In 2007, IDC estimated that 211 PBs of iSCSI storage was shipped worldwide. This grew to 500 PBs shipped in 2008 and was forecast to continue to grow in 2009 and beyond. But what those numbers do not reveal is that it is mid-sized enterprises who bought the majority of these iSCSI storage systems. Now these same organizations are about to get a wakeup call as they start their upgrade cycles and encounter the challenges associated with migrating data to newer iSCSI storage systems.

Failing to capitalize on all of the possibilities that networked storage offers is a mistake that many midsize organizations can and do make. “Disk drives” and “storage arrays” condition these organizations to think of storage as a “dumb” device so much so that they fail to realize that today’s storage systems and disk drives have little in common. It is for this reason that these midsized organizations must change their mindset when they adopt and implement a network storage solution, especially those classified as a unified storage platform.

Data is the lifeblood of any organization and, in the last decade, increasing emphasis has been placed on protecting that data so organizations can recover the information that they need in the time frame they need it. Replication is now rapidly emerging as a viable form of data protection even for midsize organizations because of its lower costs, faster recovery times and the level of protection that it provides. However the process of selecting the right replication solution for the different data types that organizations need to protect is anything but an intuitive exercise.

Anyone wonder why storage virtualization is still growing relatively slowly while server virtualization platforms like VMware have gone on a tear? If so, a look at the licensing strategies that these two respective virtualization technologies have adopted provides some insight into why.

It is commonly suspected that midsize organizations have the same priorities as their enterprise counterparts especially when it comes to managing their IT infrastructures. However a study released a few months ago removed whatever doubt may have existed as it revealed that the majority of midsize businesses place a premium on improving efficiency and increasing employee productivity. So today’s announcement from RELDATA that it is releasing a private storage cloud offering that addresses those exact concerns for these size businesses could not be more appropriately timed.