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Looking to download your latest TV episode online? Creating a streaming server for your business to demonstrate some of your expertise in an area?.
 Storage space, once a premium is now readily available in bunches. The only problem is that the storage requirements by today's generations need equal amounts. DVD-to-video conversion typically take up 4-8 gigabytes per movie. Basic MP3 libraries can fill up hard drives. Even from a disaster recovery standpoint, the availability of hard disk storage has led many business to move away from tradition tape technology to incorporating arrays of hard drives for their disaster recovery plan.
The question for many residential and business users alike is which technology to purchase? How much hard drive space should a home PC or server have? How does on extend their storage space without creating extra locations which add to search lists and overhead? What type of technology is best suited for now as well as for the future?
There is no simple answer as the type of storage is generally dictated by the usage of the end-user. The key is to purchase the right solution with some room for upgrading without replacing costly hardware.
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For the business sector, network storage is the most critical element of the enterprise along with network security. The business storage solution must be able to withstand hardware failure, software failure, and user ignorance (deleting files accidentally). Storage resiliency has improved dramatically in the past several years while sustaining excellent price/performance ratios. One terabyte of storage, once a Fortune 500 trait, is now available on high-end workstations and some home gaming machines.
What is critical for network storage is the capability to fail over and adapt. Storage topologies today match very closely with networking topology.
Microsoft technologies such as Distributed File Systems (DFS) combined with hardware RAID setups and Data Protection Manager provide storage resiliency as never before.
Businesses can now recover quickly from failed hardware and servers and oftentimes only experience a slight performance degradation during system failback, eliminating costly business downtime.
For larger businesses, or those with greater storage and uptime requirements, we can taylor a multi-site failover arrangement which not only takes into account point of failure servers and hardware, but provides constantly replicating site resiliency should a geographic disaster occur.
Contact us to examine your storage infrastructure and let us recommend a turnkey solution or recommended upgrade path to keep your business
agile and versatile.
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From a strictly value perspective, the storage industry has become perhaps the greatest value in the rise of technology. In the late eighties, having a single gigabyte drive meant spending thousands of dollars. Today's a 750 gigabyte drive can be purchased for under $250.
That said, the technology behind storage has changed considerably. The three primary storage type today are DAS (Direct Attached Storage), NAS (Network Attached Storage), and SAN (Storage Area Network). Each technology has its own benefits and limitations.
DAS is an external device which connects to the server or PC using either a SCSI, SATA, or SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) cable to the controller on the machine. This method is generally the easiest to manage and has the fastest throughput, as the drive bus is physically connected to the machine. The downside is that there is usually a limitation in storage capacity (although generally sufficient for all but the largest of the SMB sector).
NAS is essentially a self-contained server which uses a small proprietary operating system to share a disk or disks that are housed within the chassis. NAS systems typically permit the connection of other NAS devices (if from the same vendor) to grow the array to span other NAS devices to create a very large storage footprint. NAS devices are generally inexpensive and easy to manage. Their throughput is not as high as DAS or SAN technologies, but are a very good price/performance ratio. NAS devices are actually becoming very popular for the home as a storage as well as disaster recovery storage solution.
SANs are the most expensive to purchase, and the most complicated to maintain. They offer throughput very close to that of DAS (greater in some very expensive implementations), offer block-level aces to files (necessary for clustering and Exchange/SQL servers), and are unparalleled as far as storage scaling. SANs typically require their own network space to operate efficiently. SANs are generally limited to very high budget IT departments and small businesses with performance based mission critical objectives. Some small business sectors (such as video editing or those who deal with mathematical modeling) may actually derive a very strong benefit from SAN implementations.
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Are you running out of room? Contact our technical department for a storage proposal for your home or business. Consultation costs are deducted from any storage proposal purchased from Vitalix Solutions.
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