Managing the Data Explosion (page 1 of 2)

To keep up, it seems as if the IT department is always being asked to add storage capacity to servers or the storage area network (SAN). At the same time, you hesitate to spend more money on storage hardware because you know that typically half of any company's storage space is unused, idle, costing money. In fact, the actual cost of the underused storage hardware is two to five times more than the initial procurement cost. In today's economy, that's not acceptable.

To satisfy the access and availability demands in today's distributed, need-it-now business environments, enterprise data storage is becoming network-centric. But hardware alone is not enough to create an effective, cost-efficient network storage strategy.

The servers and network components must be managed to optimise the data flow and provide backup and failover services so mission-critical data is always available. You must have quality software to reap the benefits of network storage — without it, the result is a more complex, expensive, and hard-to-maintain storage environment.

The need to handle increasing amounts of data raises key IT strategy questions. As you introduce new applications, will you be able to seamlessly integrate your new or acquired resources into your existing storage infrastructure? Will you be able to fully exploit all your storage resources? Do you have the appropriate storage network in place that adapts and scales to meet the demands of your fluid business model? How do you know if you have sufficient storage to ensure that data is accessible, highly available, protected from failure, and optimised for your infrastructure?

Are these questions difficult to answer? Not with VERITAS. Unlike the storage hardware companies that sell you storage every time you need to add a new server or expand your SAN segment, VERITAS lets you use your existing storage resources more efficiently and effectively. Its multi-platform support means you can use Unix- and Intel-based server storage across applications.

More important, the VERITAS suite of network storage solutions lets you understand and configure your enterprise storage to best fit your environment. VERITAS is so flexible, it lets you use NAS, SAN, and even Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) in any combination, so you can optimise both your network configuration and your storage utilisation and management functions.


That's because VERITAS understands that each enterprise is unique, and that there are many appropriate approaches to managing data and making it available to users. And because VERITAS isn't selling storage hardware, its solutions don't force you to buy expensive boxes to get the application performance and management tools you need.

Support for All IT Storage Strategies
Terms like "SAN" and "NAS" become loaded with artificial and sometimes arbitrary meaning, which can inhibit the effective use of the technologies.

In reality, both are legitimate IT approaches to storing data in a way that makes it available across networks, both to users and to computers and other hardware systems. Enterprise-level network storage architectures encompass SAN, NAS, and the integration of DAS into these architectures, so IT can create appropriate storage and system network topologies that deliver guaranteed levels of data availability, security, and manageability.

Whether your storage infrastructure contains DAS, NAS, a SAN, or a combination of these architectures, VERITAS solutions provide consistent storage management.