Data storage – some tips for cost control

IT budgets are under continual pressure, but against that background, requirements for storage are growing and growing fast.  With some analysts predicting up to 100% growth in corporate data in the next three years, that means the proportion of the IT budget spent on storage is going up.

There are some key things that companies can do to ensure they are making the most of their investments and maximising RoI.

1 – You need a clear data retention, protection and recovery strategy

Many companies fall in to the trap of storing everything forever. That means you are probably spending money, disk space and management time retaining data you just don’t need, or continually backing up static or reference data – in turn negatively affecting your backup and recovery windows. Just think how many .mp3 files you may be storing forever, or why are you keeping a document that no one has accessed in the last two years on high value primary storage? Archiving and backup/recovery should be treated as separate processes, and an effective data retention, protection and recovery strategy should encompass the most efficient and effective policies for your enterprise.

2 – Consider your Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity strategies

In addition to your data retention, protection and recovery strategy, you should plan for efficient and cost-effective disaster recovery and business continuity processes to reduce business risk. Tiering of applications, data and users/groups and applying appropriate service levels and availability policies allows you to design robust, easy to manage and cost-efficient strategies for disaster recovery and business continuity, to ensure the maximum protection and availability at the most effective price-performance point for your environment.

3 – Adopt a thin provisioning strategy

When we analyse customers storage estates, we often find 50-70% of disk space underutilised. One of the main reasons for this is that their storage provisioning policy means they allocate big ‘chunks’ of storage for departments or applications that are sitting there “waiting for data”. By adopting a thin provisioning strategy you are able to allocate storage when the data and demand for that storage exists, and hence get better utilisation out of your existing infrastructure.

4 – Adopt de-duplication technologies

We all know that in most companies there is more than one version of a document, spreadsheet or other content. With this sitting on potentially tens, if not hundreds of people’s computers, you end up storing the file multiple times! By adopting de-duplication technologies, you can significantly reduce the capacity used storing the same file, hence giving you better utilisation of your storage estate.

5 – Consider storage virtualisation

With many storage pools in many different locations, management and control becomes a costly challenge. By virtualising your storage you can gain efficiencies by through using a single management system, reducing management time and improving the control over your whole storage environment.

6 – Get expert advice

Most companies do not start with a clean slate as far as storage is concerned, and they find themselves in a position that they didn’t design for or intend to happen. By working with our storage experts, we can bring the experience and skills of how to move from where you are to where you need to be across a wide range of leading storage vendors.