Access "In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options "
This article is part of the October 2011 issue of Break free with open source storage
Shared storage costs a lot. It’s probably the biggest single-ticket item in the data centre. On SearchStorage.co.UK we recently examined the supposed sub-$10,000/euro 6,000 SAN market, and the conclusion was that there really wasn’t one; we determined that the few products available at this price point lacked dual controllers or support and maintenance, and you’d actually need to spend more like $20,000/euro 12,000 to get a decent entry-level SAN. That’s entry level, remember. Realistically, to deploy a fully redundant SAN with a reasonable amount of options plus maintenance you’re looking at around euro 100,000 for, say, 10 TB of shared storage from the likes of EMC, HP or IBM. But does enterprise-class shared storage have to be that expensive? Well, right now there isn’t a wealth of affordable shared-storage options. The overwhelming majority of storage products are those produced by the major vendors. They consist of controller software and a bunch of disk enclosures. There’s nothing very special at all about the latter, but the former is proprietary ... Access >>>
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In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options
by Antony Adshead, UK Bureau Chief
There are viable, affordable shared-storage options available via open source storage software and AoE-based gear, so why is the big-vendor regime still so powerful?
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Storage thin provisioning benefits and challenges
by Stephen Foskett, Contributor
Storage thin provisioning requires transparency into your storage environment and an understanding of how the technology works. We detail the benefits and challenges.
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Remote and mobile data backup: Backup's last frontier
by W. Curtis Preston
With organizations becoming more mobile, the time to get a handle on mobile data backup is now.
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Where is the cloud storage market headed?
by Jeff Byrne, Contributor
Break down the cloud storage services market and you’ll find players both big and small jockeying for position in key segments.
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In pursuit of affordable shared-storage options
by Antony Adshead, UK Bureau Chief
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Open source storage users break free of vendor lock-in
by Manek Dubash
Open source storage frees users of the need for proprietary software on top of commodity disk. Read how UK IT departments have used it to gain cost-saving advantages.
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Exchange 2010 and storage systems
by Brien M. Posey, Contributor
With Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft made some significant changes to the email app's database structure, and those changes may also affect the storage it resides on.
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Tape makes a comeback (but was it ever gone?)
by Rich Castagna, Editorial Director
Somebody out there is spreading rumors about the death of tape, but there’s plenty of life left in this venerable storage technology.
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Open source storage users break free of vendor lock-in
by Manek Dubash
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