Phil Roberto CEO

By: Phillip Roberto, CEO of Savage IO

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In a quest for improved efficiency, higher performance and maximized storage utility, organizations operating in increasingly demanding IT environments continue to deploy expensive proprietary products or ineffective heterogeneous hardware/software solutions to gain the necessary IOPs and/or capacity required for their particular compute needs.  Companies can better maximize their storage investment while outperforming alternative solutions by following these five tips:

1.         Ditch the “legacy” equipment – Too often companies look to save money by repurposing their existing data center hardware using software-defined solutions that are then supposed to maximize performance and capacity lacking in their current infrastructure.  The problem is that while software solutions look to optimize how data flows through any particular hardware architecture, the results will be less than if the hardware itself is optimized to provide the highest speeds and peak performance, without the reflections, throughput bottlenecks and signal loss inherent in underperforming legacy solutions.

2.         Avoid vendor lock-in – Purpose-built solutions in which both hardware and software are designed by a single company to work in perfect harmony can be an ideal solution for organizations needing the performance oftentimes lacking in heterogeneous environments.  However, the costs of such solutions are often prohibitive, with expenses incurred from purchasing the hardware and the ongoing software licenses, maintenance contracts and upgrade expenses.  Implementing an Open Storage Platform allows customers to integrate hardware in any configuration, with the software solution of their choice to maximize flexibility while minimizing costs.

3.         Adopt a hardware storage platform that complements the software solution of choice – Whether using open-source software or proprietary software-defined storage solutions, a company’s use case should determine which protocol and “flavor” of storage they implement.  Whether they need DAS, NAS, SAN or other protocols, a mechanically flawless hardware architecture that overcomes software incompatibilities is a necessity to satisfy the ruthless IO requirements of cloud storage, big data analytics, HPC, enterprises and remote sites.

4.         Mitigate the “either or” dilemma of choosing between performance or capacity – By implementing a hardware solution that increases the storage density of both SSD and SAS/SATA storage solutions, companies can gain the benefits of both traditional Tier 1 and Tier 2 storage in a flexible, customizable and fully scalable single storage solution.  Through the combination of storage and compute resources in a single storage solution, organizations can cut data center space requirements, while increasing performance at a lower TCO compared to disparate systems.

5.         Implement hardware that utilizes top-of-the-line components from audited suppliers – State-of-the-art software solutions need state-of-the-art storage servers built to the highest specifications for speed, performance and reliability.  By using top-of-the-line components from audited suppliers rather than cheaper mass-produced parts to omit cross talk, packet loss and power jitter, companies can assure themselves maximum throughput and reliability not available in standard, off-the-shelf hardware products.

Choosing a storage solution is a business-critical decision for many organizations faced with the capacity and performance needs of today’s data-hungry environments. Storage incumbents continue to offer the same hardware configurations regardless in improvements in media or software available, claiming that their equipment is capable of handling the changes.  The reality is that only by implementing a high-performance storage server system designed to maximize the utility of software solutions can organizations truly meet the demanding storage needs of their particular industry.

Designed without the inherent physical bottlenecks or software incompatibilities of other storage products, SavageStor is an all-in-hardware (server, networking and storage) solution that satisfies the ruthless capacity and IO requirements of cloud storage, big data analytics, HPC, enterprise and ROBO environments.