As our appetite for data grows, so does our need for storage. Even with lower prices for hard drives and RAID arrays, trying to keep up with the ever-increasing data demands can be challenging for an enterprise. Luckily, virtualization technology has opened up a whole new world of data solutions for companies who want to increase their bandwidth without damaging their bottom line.
Hybrid cloud storage systems enable a best-of-both-worlds solution for enterprises seeking to maintain local control over their data. With virtualization, cloud backups and data sets can be maintained, ensuring that service interruptions will not restrict access to critical data, while still allowing for cloud-based data services like backups and data sharing with remote users or temporary data usage for data sharing and metrics.
Another use case for storage virtualization is within a Storage Area Network (SAN). Presenting multiple data sources as a single unified “pool” of data, SAN services greatly simplify providing data to remote users, can reduce costs across a dispersed network by reducing the number of physical data centers that need to be maintained, and can be used for network tuning and load management.
Storage virtualization also allows the use of high-speed SSD storage for huge quantities of “flash storage” across the enterprise. Utilized as temporary data holding areas, like the “swap files” used for RAM management in the past, these large volumes can provide disk-based memory swapping duties without incorporating the throttled I/O of traditional mechanical spinning disk media. This can greatly increase data search speed and indexing, and reduce the amount of RAM necessary for each individual workstation on the network that is tied into the virtual flash storage.
NSC Information Technology Group specializes in assisting businesses like yours in designing and implementing your data plan, including the potential use of storage virtualization. Contact us today for more information.