– Paul Chan, Vice President of Storageflex (www.storageflex.com), says:
The major drivers behind higher-performance storage networks:
We’ve come full circle from a mainframe centric computing model with dumb terminals in the 70’s, to a client server model with low cost servers and powerful desktops/laptops in the 90’s, back towards a centralized model with cloud computing at the centre and thin clients such as Citrix, netbooks and Smartphones at the perimeter. Therefore, storage is back to a centralized model yet again with nothing more than a browser interface needed at the user level.
Main issues to consider:
Power and cooling are becoming more scare as organizations have taken for granted the ability to put up more datacentres as need and budget are released yet the power grid is being pushed to the limits in many areas.
The essential elements:
Storage is rather simple. No matter how large, there are only four main elements to any storage platform. RAID Controller(s), power supplies, cooling fans and disks/Solid State Disks. Performance is a matter of variation amongst these variables. The more power, caching memory and spindles or Solid State Disks, the higher the performance.
Advice for consideration when improving enterprise storage:
“Improving” is a relative term and means different things to different people. One customer may think of “low cost” when asked about improvement while another may rate “disaster recovery” as their version of improvement. This is a very open ended question with many different answers possible all of which are correct from their own persecptive.
