In times to come, big data is the big trouble for companies. There's just too much data that's going to come rushing in and companies will just need to find a way to grapple with it all. A large part of this data also needs to be stored. How should a business store data? Should it go for physical storage or virtual storage? It's a hard decision to make since physical storage isn't bad at all; it's just expensive. Would a Virtual storage solution make sense?
With the advent of Cloud computing, the notion of physical storage is fast going the way of the dinosaur. While it still makes sense for very large companies, in a few cases, most companies prefer to operate lean and keep their costs low. Many of the businesses today prefer the sheer scalability, flexibility, and the affordability of Infrastructure-as-a-Service model for assets and resources.
Storage, traditionally, has been NAS based or SAN based – but purely physical mostly. For such systems, businesses had to invest a considerable sum of money, think and plan for future growth, make preparations for scaling up or down (depending on the business), etc. – all of this is quite a handful to plan, implement, spend and manage.
In comparison, VSA (Virtual Server Appliance) used for storage just takes a software installation (maybe a software license) and a few existing servers. Virtual Server Appliances use Virtualization – which means that a single physical server or storage space is multiplied by VSA to host or store different applications or data off a few actual physical storage devices.
Virtual shared storage utilizes Virtual Storage Appliance, which consolidate directly-attached physical storage leading to a virtual storage pool that can be leveraged for business use, working much like the traditional network storage minus the enormous amount of hardware required for the latter.
VSA-based storage allows businesses to add additional storage capacity inexpensively, easily, and efficiently. They also allow for other features such as data protection, ease of management, disaster recovery, scalability, and flexibility – all the while not costing much.
While the actual storage needs differ from business to business, the resounding value of the total feature set of VSA is clear: small and medium businesses immensely benefit from the low-cost, easy, and flexible deployment of a VSA storage or virtual storage. While it does take a bit of management, careful planning, and slight experimentation Virtual storage solutions hold promise for companies.
For years, we've helped companies manage their IT requirements. We set up networks, do network audits, help clients recover their data, monitor their networks, manage data, and much more. If you'd like us to help, do let us know and we'll be glad to help.
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