* Stretching the storage dollar by using technologies that let you get more
OK, I’ll say it – the economy stinks. I’m not eating beans or rice yet – though, my mother a depression-era kid, reminds me that it can be done. She also tells me I should use coupons, shop at the dollar store and be really nice to my boss, so I won’t get laid off. And, then she reminds me that if I do, that there are always jobs at Walgreens – and, oh, I won’t be able to count on her to pay my mortgage. Everyone should love their mothers for such advice.
Anyway, the economy is having an effect of storage spending. Even though expenditures for storage aren’t as dismal as for other segments of the IT industry, customers need to begin looking to get more for less out of their storage. Customers I’ve talked to tell me they are still spending on storage capacity – they can’t really cut that cost, but they can temper it by deploying storage technologies such as thin provisioning that let them get more for less from their storage investment.
The whole idea is to stretch that storage dollar by using technologies that let you get more. Vendors are responding to this with ways to save dollars by oversubscribing storage, virtualizing it to increase utilization and reduce capacity upgrades, de-duplicating data to save space on secondary storage.
While the same principles apply to servers and extend the life of data centers, they apply to storage too. To make more efficient use of storage – tier it to less expensive drives when appropriate, use less-expensive Serial ATA drives and technologies such as iSCSI when your application environment can support them. Deploy spin-down disk technology when you can, de-duplicate data to reduce your backup footprint. Get lean, increase utilization.
We’re in for a period of ‘getting more for less.’ Start acting on it.
