Data storage in today’s business environment has never been more challenging with the increased reliance on information technology.  The information requiring storage is more critical than ever for businesses of all sizes.

The storage capacity requirements for many companies are increasing at astounding rates with costs rapidly exceeding the growth rates for most IT budgets.  In addition to this dilemma, compliance standards and regulations for storage standards are becoming rigorous. And most companies are working with older legacy IT systems.  As a result, backup and restore processes are not meeting requirements, disaster recovery objectives are costlier and do not meet compliance due to the growing number of applications. And dispersed technology increases management overhead.

The factors mentioned earlier have led many companies to end up with a broad distribution of storage technology in multiple geographic locations.  It increases the complexity of managing numerous storage platforms which extend across a vast geographical area.  If you have been keeping up with market trends, it predicts that the need for new applications is going to continue to rise in demand. Which is why it is now more critical than ever to improve storage processes.  One of the ways this can be simplified is by using Advanced Storage.

Advanced Storage Defined

Advanced storage is the process of consolidating data storage. While leveraging the appropriate resources during the entire lifecycle of company data.  There are many different options when it comes to choosing storage technology and relocating data.  For useful advanced storage to occur, it is essential for companies to take a careful look at the current infrastructure.  It allows for proper analysis of data storage methods so a unified tiered storage infrastructure which adequately addresses new and complex storage requirements can implement.

Industry Trends for Advanced Storage

Due to the advancement in storage systems and services and the wide array of new technologies designed specifically for the purpose of providing solutions, these new technologies encourage a lot of discussion around current IT topics for data storage.  Some of the topics include but are not limited to:

• Virtualization:  New virtualization technologies have allowed for unified storage systems at a much lower cost than systems that disburse throughout multiple geographical locations. Virtualization solutions represent a way to cut IT costs while increasing the efficiency of data storage and recovery.
• Lifecycle:  Information and data take on a specific lifecycle depending upon data type and regulation for storing data.  It means that storing and managing information may vary throughout the information lifecycle which requires a well thought out approach to achieve an appropriate solution for storing data.
• Local and Remote Storage:  New technologies which accommodate Wide Area Networks (WAN) can provide solutions that meet both local and remote storage needs.  The result is more efficient performance and reduced cost.
• Deduplication:  Reduced deduplication of data increases efficiency by optimizing storage utilization of disk usage for data backup and recovery.  Deduplication is a data compression technique developed to improve the efficiency of data storage space on a network. And also, used with cloud storage technologies.

The challenges that many companies face about new storage technologies is defining when, where, how, and why, when it comes to implementing advantage storage.  This criterion sets the stage for the best way to deploy new methodologies for advanced storage.

Rethinking Data Backup and Recovery with Advanced Storage

Although the conventional approach to storage on multiple servers still applies to today’s IT environment, advanced storage techniques and services have allowed for improved consolidation through the use of new technologies. Such as virtualization, cloud storage, and advanced storage methodologies.  The advantage of new technologies in an excellent room is improved efficiency which includes but is not limited to:

• Improved Data Protection:  Unification of IT through advanced storage provides for improved data protection and efficiency on both the local and remote level.  It also provides for better efficiency when it comes to disaster recovery.
• Diversification:  By dispersing the storage investment across multiple methodologies and using consolidation, this reduces management costs. While improving data backup and recovery processes.
• Improved Storage Utilization:  Instead of estimating storage capacity, advanced storage allows for better utilization of network resources. It eliminates the conventional techniques. Which plan for excess capacity and reduces the possibility of wasted resources while improving storage efficiency.
• Easy Data Migration:  Using traditional methods data migration from old systems to new systems can represent a monumental problem.  With advanced storage technologies, the new data storage systems are scalable and more flexible. It allows for easier data migration without any interruptions.
• Centralized Management:  Instead of deploying IT management across multiple infrastructures. And also geographic locations, advanced storage processes allow for IT management from a centralized location.  It also includes IT support and troubleshooting as well as the implementation of new applications as needed.

These concepts represent some of the ways that many companies are rethinking data storage and recovery through advanced storage methods.

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