Pay-as-you-go storage

I wanted to point you to our recent New Data Center article on pay-as-you-go storage options.

Our author (dconnor@nww.com) writes that one of the hallmarks of the new data center is flexibility, moving away from the confines of dedicated, paid-for, but nearly always underutilized or unused, resources. When it comes to storage, that flexibility means tapping into capacity on an automated, on-demand, pay-as-you-go basis.

Metered storage plans, introduced in the past year, have advantages over capacity-on-demand programs. Cost management is one, and easier capacity planning another. With metered storage, a company buys software or a server that collects information on the storage capacity being consumed on the array. The software then transmits this data to the vendor’s financial services department for billing. In this model, storage arrays often come configured with the amount of capacity a company estimates it will need, plus extra idle capacity. A user can grab as little or as much capacity as needed and only pay for the amount used per instance.

With capacity-on-demand, users buy a storage array with the extra capacity, and access this capacity in pre-negotiated chunks of data. They pay for all this data whether they use it or not.

A number of vendor offer this option, for example, EMC with OpenScale automated billing program on its Symmetrix, Clarion, Centera, Symmetrix Remote Data Facility offerings;  Hitachi Data Systems with its on-demand and managed services are available on a case-by-case basis on its Lightning, and Thunder offerings. IBM, StoraeTek, Sun and others offer pay-as-you-go-plans.

For more on this story see: https://www.nwfusion.com/supp/2004/ndc3/0524utility.html

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Network World is working on our You Issue, our special annual report all about reader’s jobs, salary, future and – this is where you come in – free time. This year, we’re looking for IT/network professionals who spend their weekends rummaging through estate sales and flea markets or antique shops looking for pieces to add their collections. Maybe that’s a vintage Barbie or a Windsor chair – who knows! If you collect for a hobby or know a colleague who does, let us know by e-mailing Brett Cough, at bcough@nww.com