Tag: Enterprise Storage

So you've been working with your certified IBM business partner for 15 years, and it's been a very pleasant relationship. After all, IBM VARs are great for consulting you through a project, providing the necessary hardware and software, helping you implement the solution, and supporting that solution afterwards.

However, on this particular occasion, you just want to add some capacity to one of your existing storage systems without having to pay the typical premiums associated with that level of service. You need it quickly, and you don't think it should be a big ordeal.

Fortunately, you're already on the right track. Here are three easy ways to add capacity without the budgetary pains of services and additional maintenance.

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In the datacenter, the tape library is the ultimate lifeline to combat data loss and data corruption. Tape’s reliability with today’s LTO5 media and off-line status is essential, since tape isn’t as vulnerable to lightning-fast overwrites and corruption.

IBM’s recently announced expansion of the TS3500 Tape Library improves the capability of the IBM Total Storage Tape Library, allowing companies to improve their EMC, IBM, and NetApp environment’s backups and reliability.

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When IT departments face budget shortfalls for necessary capacity, sometimes the only way to bridge the gap is to change the way you think about your data. For some, it’s creatively using hardware and repurposing legacy equipment. For others, it’s managing the way data is stored by creating accountability and management at the user level. Regardless, getting the most out of your budget requires a thorough and creative examination of your business’ environment and asking—how can we do this more effectively and at a lower cost per terabyte?

Today, we went to share an organization that exemplifies the creative ways we help our customers repurpose equipment, get more TB’s for their budget, and do more with less. The company, Facebook, is no secret—but their lesser known Open Compute Project is an example of how a company can think outside of the box (and outside of the traditional vendor offerings) to get more computing power and more storage at a much more affordable price. Here's the video:

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VMWare Storage Growth – 5 Best Practices for Capacity Planning

Virtualized system resources often consume more storage than expected due to the proliferation and ease with which virtual machines (VMs) can be created. When using shared storage that supports VMWare or Microsoft Hyper-V (the two leading virtualization technologies), you can expect two waves of increases. The first will occur at the onset of the virtualization effort. The second wave will happen as users gain acceptance—and test, development and quality assurance copies are created to build new unique environments and feature sets.

Here are five tips for making sure your VMWare storage can handle those increases:

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EMC SnapView is a pretty cool product.

Instead of backing up and recovering data from tape, EMC CLARiiON customers can use SnapView to make a quick disk-based copy for testing or backup.

So if EMC SnapView is so great, why is it that more people don't use it protect more mission critical data?

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EXP810s can be purchased new or used. Used EXP810s will allow you to save anywhere from $8,000-$15,000 per tray of disk depending on the make/model of the drives being supplied. This is great news for shops that need all the performance they can get - as adding more drives will boost I/O throughput.

As background, the IBM EXP810 - a 4Gbps disk expansion that holds 16 Fiber Channel or 16 Sata disk drives, is currently supported under the IBM DS4300, DS4500, DS4700 & DS4800 storage systems - and is being RPQ'd under the DS5000 storage array(s).

To be clear - the IBM EXP810 can be filled with SATA drives, but you will be required to purchase a fiber channel/Sata intermix kit if your Controller has both Fiber Channel and SATA drives. It's also important to know that SATA and FC drives cannot be intermixed within the same tray (EXP810) of disk.

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Ever feel like you were wearing a shirt that was too tight? The buttons were hanging on for dear life? And when you stretched out our arms you silently hoped that the thing wouldn?t explode off your back?

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