Storage questions to ask yourself
Computerworld - One of the largest challenges organizations face right now is articulating a plan that defines what they want their enterprise storage infrastructure to look like. Without a vision, organizations generally resort to buying and managing storage based upon the two lowest common denominators: who has the cheapest storage and which vendor's name is on the box.
While that may work for the short term, that is not a sustainable long-term model. Though price and reputation are worth something and should be a factor in the decision-making process, someone needs to look beyond the daily tasks of allocating storage and responding to crises and ask critical questions before just buying more storage. Questions like "What do I want my storage infrastructure to look like?" and "Will this purchase move me down that road?" are good starting points.
Without knowing the answers to those two questions, you end up with the kludge many organizations try to manage now. Disparate systems with no central management interface, different pockets of individuals with varying levels of expertise and no one who has the knowledge or authority to take companies down a path of change. Yet to establish a storage vision requires organizations possess some type of base line information so they can identify where they are at now before determining where to go next.
Only a few vendors such as MonoSphere Inc., Onaro Inc., Scentric Inc. and TeraCloud Corp. are positioning themselves to deliver this baseline information quickly and easily across companies of all size. And while these companies and their products may not take center stage at the next storage conference, they are the ones that offer the type of products that can help you quantify how deep a hole you are right now and some insight into how to dig your way out.
Jerome Wendt currently works as a storage engineer and storage analyst. He contributes regularly to a variety of industry trade publications and can be reached at jerome.wendt@att.net.
Read more about Storage in Computerworld's Storage Topic Center.



- Excel 2010 Cheat Sheet
- Register for this Computerworld Insider Cheat Sheet and gain access to hundreds of premium content articles, guides, product reviews and more.
- Datacenter Consolidation Best Practices Whitepaper
- The benefits of storage consolidation are being realized by companies and seen as a way to streamline many storage-driven applications. Learn why the...
- Eliminating VMware / Storage Related Performance Challenges
- How to proactively monitor the performance in a Fibre Channel SAN / vSphere environment is always a concern. Understand the importance of a...
- Cloud Environments Have Familiar Storage Challenges
- Cloud environments have many storage challenges that are familiar to data center managers, but due to their density and abstraction, the issues become...
- Eight Considerations for Evaluating Disk-Based Backup Solutions
- In the past, the movement from tape- to disk-based backup has been less compelling due to the expense of storing backup data on...
- ExaGrid Helps U.S. Federal Government Agencies Reduce Backup Windows and Improve Data Protection
- The U.S. Government has been the largest user of tape-based backup systems since the 1970s. Most agencies have begun to deploy disk storage... All Storage White Papers
- Understand Your Data: The Future of Backup and Archiving
- Archiving and Backup are the foundation of the next generation of information governance. However, commodity data protection tools and basic archives are only...
- Optimizing Networks for the Cloud
- Join guest speaker, Rohit Mehra, IDC Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, to explore current trends, discuss best practices for optimizing Data Center and...
- Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere
- Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as...
- Apps QuickStart Series Part 1: Designing and Deploying Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere
- Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and...
- Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware
- Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn... All Storage Webcasts