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Today's Information Management Challenges
IT professionals today face increasingly difficult challenges
in managing rapidly growing enterprise-wide storage resources in heterogeneous
networks. Companies in almost every industry, ranging from seismic imaging and
digital content creation to ASPs and ISPs, are experiencing explosive growth in
their requirements for information storage capacity. These environments often
include large numbers of servers with attached storage and a growing population
of servers sharing storage over a storage area network (SAN).
These
complex requirements are driving the need for centralized storage management
tools that simplify the administration of storage assets, reduce IT overhead
costs, and improve overall efficiency and usage of storage resources. The key
to effective storage management? A robust software solution. Software is a
critical component of an enterprise data storage strategy, giving businesses the
ability to better leverage their IT resources, including employee time.
Storage Management Software Moves to the Forefront
As the cost per megabyte continues to decrease, the focus is
shifting away from hardware toward storage management software. This is not to
downplay the importance of a reliable, high performance hardware solution –
the true safekeeper of businesses' mission-critical data. But software is
emerging as the differentiating factor and a highly competitive advantage. This
is due to the fact that storage management software plays a vital role in
administering distributed IT assets, maintaining high availability, and
minimizing downtime. The effective management of resources from the data center
across the network increases both productivity and revenue.
Two key
factors to consider when purchasing storage management software are network
security and heterogeneity (the blending of different operating systems and
platforms). A typical network today has several servers running different types
of operating systems, storage systems, and workstations, making storage
monitoring in these environments a difficult task. Customers require a single,
easy-to-use software application that simplifies the many tasks required to
support a heterogeneous network. Although storage vendors promote
interoperability and open standards in theory, software offerings are falling
short when it comes to managing a storage pool consisting of mixed vendor
environments. The demand for heterogeneity will only continue to increase as
businesses realize the benefits of managing all their networked storage as if it
came from a single source.
Complete network security is also one of
the most important attributes to consider when implementing storage management
software. Software must able to provide the tools necessary to promote a secure
environment. This can be accomplished in several different ways. Some software
offerings allow the administrator to assign every component in the storage
system to a defined storage domain, or multiple domains if desired, each with a
different password. This capability means that the system manager can grant
limited access to storage management without needing to expose full privileged
access to any operating system. In this way, IT policy makers, for example, can
easily keep engineering, accounting and e-commerce information "partitioned"
from each other to prevent inadvertent misuse or corruption of files.
Not
all storage management users need to perform the same tasks. Some users simply
need to be able to evaluate the current status, others must deal with
maintenance issues, and selected individuals reconfigure and deploy the storage.
The utilization of user-defined domains creates a rich environment to support
any system administration management structure desired. Operating system
administrators can have the access they need to configure and manage the storage
they use, while storage administrators can effectively deal with their storage,
independent of the various computers that require access.
Storage Management Anytime, Anywhere
The ability to keep a watch on storage resources at all times
is critical. This makes automatic monitoring an important component of a storage
management software suite. Storage must be monitored 24 hours, 7 days a week.
Automatic monitoring programs check on the health of the storage, generating
messages as needed, and provide the ability to adjust, configure and interact
with the storage systems. Allowing all hosts in a storage environment to
communicate with each other makes it possible to coordinate their activities.
Automatic monitoring programs can also broadcast alerts to network
administrators or outside service personnel through email messages to
individuals, groups, or pagers. This type of functionality greatly simplifies
complex storage architectures such as SANs and reduces the cost of
administration.
Web-based administration is another important emerging
feature in storage management software. New offerings provide system
administrators with local or remote access via a standard web-based browser with
a high degree of security, reliability and performance. Users can not only view
and manage storage resources from anywhere in the world; but they can also
choose to view the storage as individual units, or opt for a centralized view of
all resources in the SAN.
The Future of Storage Management Software
No matter how you look at it, powerful and efficient management
of storage resources is critical to maximizing business productivity and
reducing administration costs. As IT managers continue to be faced with
exploding amounts of data to store, secure, and make continuously available
across the enterprise, the industry is assured of a continuing worldwide demand
for effective storage management tools. |
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About nStor
Technologies
Headquartered in San Diego, California, nStor Technologies is a
leading provider of highly integrated, enterprise-class storage solutions for
computing operations that include Windows NT, Windows 2000, Unix and Linux
platforms. Designed for storage-intensive environments and mission-critical
applications, the NexStor 3000 product family features a unique, patent-pending
design that offers the highest storage density in the industry, packing 584GB
into 3.5" (2U) of space. The NexStor 3150/3250 SAN-ready RAID solutions
are available with Fibre Channel, SCSI or Fibre-SCSI connectivity. nStor
also manufactures the robust AdminiStor storage management software suite and
complements its product offerings with a full spectrum of tape backup solutions.
nStor trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol NSO and markets
its products through a direct sales force and a global network of reseller and
OEM partners. Additional information about nStor can be found by visiting the
company's web site at www.nstor.com. |
