Category Archives: Storage

Storing Data in the Cloud Not Yet Popular with IT

Posted on by gregl

The concept of storing data in the “cloud” is not especially popular among IT decision makers, according to a new survey by Forrester Research. The survey wanted to know who planned to use cloud storage services offered by companies such as Amazon, EMC Atmos, Nirvanix, and AT&T.

Three percent of the survey respondents said they already are using cloud storage. Another three percent plan to implement cloud storage in the next year, while five percent they plan to do so next year or later.

But an overwhelming 43 percent said they’re not interested, and the balance said they may be somewhat interested in the concept but had no plans to adopt it.

“There is long-term potential for storage-as-a-service,” wrote Forrester analyst Andrew Reichman, “but Forrester sees issues with guaranteed service levels, security, chain of custody, shared tenancy, and long-term pricing as significant barriers that still need to be addressed before it takes off in any meaningful way.”

The 1,200 IT administrators Forrester surveyed are from small and mid-sized businesses in North America and Europe.

Does Higher Density Mean Greater Inefficiencies?

Posted on by gregl

Faced with ever-shrinking room in the data center, some storage vendors are cramming as many disks as possible into a single space to gain capacity without expanding the storage footprint. Not a good idea, according to Nexsan Corporation, itself a provider of energy-efficient storage systems, headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.

“Without proper efficiencies and architecture, high-density storage systems can create more problems than they solve and ultimately devastate your business,” Nexsan warned in a recent white paper entitled “The Power/Density Paradox.”

The main culprits are poorly constructed storage subsystems, as well as the “paradox” itself: Inefficiencies in power distribution and additional cooling requirements that end up consuming the floor space the condensed storage was supposed to free up. “Many data centers end up trading space for power resulting in more empty space without any real value achieved – thus, the paradox,” Nexsan states.

“Buildings with infrastructures designed 10 years ago are now reaching their limits on what they can support as data continues to increase at exponential rates,” the authors contend. “In a weak economy, data centers are increasingly motivated to extend the useful life of everything from technology to facilities. As such, vendors have responded with ever increasing amounts of capacity packed into a given amount of space.”