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Sprawling, underutilized storage environments are costing businesses thousands of dollars every year. For most IT departments, optimizing the use of existing devices is a disruptive and time-consuming proposition, so storage administrators instead choose to meet short-term needs by purchasing new storage. Distributed file systems can make storage optimization much easier by reducing the time and impact of these projects. This white paper discusses how storage administrators can use a distributed file system to move data between storage devices without taking users offline, remapping client shortcuts, or manually moving security attributes. By eliminating maintenance windows, ensuring users always have access to data, and automating many error-prone tasks, storage optimization can be an approachable project with a measurable ROI.
The cost of managing storage is 4-10 times the initial cost of storage acquisition. – Independent Research Firm
When storage is cheap, servers sprawl Even though the raw cost of storage is decreasing, the total cost of managing unstructured Windows data is going up. Rising energy prices and a heterogeneous mix of devices are partly to blame, but the biggest driver of storage costs is the fact that data grows too quickly for most IT shops to manage it efficiently. As data grows, storage administrators tend to purchase additional storage instead of optimizing existing devices. The result is that most Windows devices are operating at just 30-40% of capacity, and storage administrators find themselves managing sprawling environments.
The state of unstructured Windows data • Storage prices are declining by roughly 35% to 40% each year. • Storage capacity is growing at a rate of 50% to 60% each year. • In the short-term, it is non-disruptive and cost-effective to add storage: If data grows at roughly the same rate that storage prices decline, companies can purchase more storage without dramatically increasing their capital expenditure. As a result, most storage administrators today manage numerous, heterogeneous devices that only use 30-40% of the available disk space.
As management costs rise, storage optimization has become an initiative for many organizations. Optimization – including server consolidation, upgrades, and data tiering strategies – helps companies save money on labor, power, and cooling. Storage optimization also reduces data center complexity to improve the quality of service to end-users, simplify storage management activities, and ease the burden of complying with data security regulations. Finally, storage optimization can help companies reduce their environmental footprint.
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