Data Impacts Storage Configuration

Four Ways Data Impacts Storage Configuration

When configuring storage, organizations should pay particular attention to data.

This might sound strange!

Storage analysts, engineers, and administrators are trained to think of storage configuration in terms of:

• physical components (such as data or server hosts, host groups, initiators, trays, and disks), or
• logical components (such as storage domains, profiles, pools, virtual disks, volumes, and snapshots.)

Furthermore, administrators often consider storage configuration in terms of performance, capacity, and/or access needs. 

However, it’s equally important to ensure that your storage configuration is driven by what your data needs.

With that said, here are four main elements of data that are essential to storage configuration:

Data Creation

Pay attention to how your data is created – specifically, when and where your data comes from. Everything from IoT (Internet of Things) devices delivering irregular business-critical information, to applications, to a continual stream of performance-monitoring data on the manufacturing floor (and everything in between) can be included.

Data Storage

A more obvious factor to consider is data storage. Data storage is concerned with data persistence, dependability, and durability.

Where and how data is stored is at the center of these decisions.

Administrators have their own opinions on how to set up storage. Many use a configuration that will provide the most protection for their data, while others try to obtain the optimum performance. Still others employ a storage configuration that is halfway between the two.

An organization’s storage should provide an elevated level of flexibility in terms of the storage architectures it supports. And data in motion strategies should aim for ease, speed and cost-efficiency.   

Data Activation

Another principal consideration factor for storage configuration is data activation. Data activation looks at how data is utilized to achieve corporate goals, such as when and how data should be stored and used – or more specifically, ‘utilized.’

Too often, collected data is overlooked, thrown away, and misused, skewing storage economics toward mediocre or negative returns on investment.

Organizations must be able to collect the right data, identify it, store it where it is needed, and make it accessible to decision makers. 

Data Movement

The final consideration factor, data movement, is crucial for flexibility. Policies should be created to minimize cloud or device vendor lock-in and to prevent specific datasets and substantial amounts of data from becoming stuck in silos.

Instead, allow them to be freely accessible and moved to specific cloud services or locations where the data’s value can be leveraged at any given time. 

Why Data is Essential for Storage Configuration

Businesses are sinking further and deeper into a never-ending data quagmire as they are inundated with data creation and retention. The sheer volume and pace of data being created daily can be overwhelming for anyone who interacts with the data.  

Even worse, organizations and data owners – the IT custodians in charge of preserving and securing the data – risk becoming numb to the importance and challenges of all this data.  

It’s no longer accurate to say that organizations have complete control over their data and storage requirements, in addition to a clear understanding of these expenses.

Storage administrators dealing with a flood of data are constantly having to reconfigure storage and also take heat from their bosses regarding spending and asset optimization.

With edge computing, hybrid infrastructures, and other multi-platform infrastructure models, the datacenter is no longer as predictable a factor in storage costs.

As a result, organizations must now maintain, manage, and utilize their data to maximize their worth. It is time to understand the four main elements of data: data creation, data storage, data activation, and data movement.  

How Visual One Intelligence™ Helps with Storage Configuration & Maintenance

Visual One Intelligence™ can make your device configuration and maintenance easier – for you, your director, and your entire IT organization. 

You can use Visual One Intelligence™ to:

• Receive alerts when components fail or auto-support disables
• Monitor firmware levels and prevent unaligned firmware on similar drives
• Identify breaches of vendor-identified best practices
• Track EOS, EOSL, and EOM dates
• And more…

Join us for a live demo – we’ll show you everything Visual One Intelligence™ can do, including how it can help streamline storage maintenance & configuration in your organization.