While the move toward truly digital environments provides IT with an exciting opportunity to contribute to the organization’s future, it also increases the workload on IT infrastructure. And when resources are taxed, mistakes are made. Unfortunately, the process of building storage environments capable of satisfying the demands of the new digital economy isn’t exempt.
Some mistakes are understandable, painless, and easy to correct. But others can be harmful enough to put your company on the path to failure – especially if left unaddressed. Here are three prime examples of common storage mistakes and how you can avoid them.
Mistake 1: Undervaluing the role visibility plays in today’s digital environment.
When always-on performance is a prerequisite, failing to embrace visibility tools means that you are essentially operating in the dark and surviving on chance. Dynamic visibility tools combined with a Fibre Channel-based storage fabric can give you the ability to rapidly troubleshoot current or looming problem areas.
Embracing an open, programmable, software-based architecture also provides the flexibility to quickly integrate network visibility tools without limiting the ability to scale your infrastructure. With greater visibility, you can harness network data to improve the customer experience, reduce network outages, enhance security, and create new revenue streams.
Mistake 2: Failing to recognize the need for scalability and seamless integration.
Many companies are rapidly deploying new flash apps – often in “side deployments” – as well as hyper-converged solutions (HCI) from emerging providers. These solutions perform great in small environments with minimal IT staff. However, when these solutions are deployed in a real data center, scalability and protection will ultimately surface as primary challenges. While it’s easy to get hung up on the latest technology, you must be able to understand application capabilities and where these new tools fit – or don’t.
While perceived ease of use and low IT resource needs are often the drivers for new technology, significant problems creep up when it comes to scale, and more importantly, when it comes time to integrate data stored within HCI environments. As such, when the HCI deployments are no longer experiments and your organization wants to leverage this data, you can find yourself searching for answers. Bottom line: These types of solutions are not integrated into most storage networks today. And they do not have the other tools, like backup or DR apps, that are critical for important data.
The key is to seek open solutions capable of accelerating the rate of innovation through scalability and agility, while reducing the potential for vendor lock-in.
Mistake 3: Ignoring the need for timely network upgrades.
Storage and server refreshes are not optional in today’s ever-evolving business environment. A new network is needed to keep up with the rate of change at both the AFA/NVMe end and the compute-density end. The requirement for 24/7 flawless performance is the new reality, with increasing workloads translating into the need to seamlessly maintain infrastructure that runs at optimal levels. When you’re constantly focused on adding the next solution, it’s easy to lose sight of the foundation’s health. In these situations, the network can quickly become the weak link, diminishing the potential successes of any other solution added to the mix.
Without undergoing a true rip-and-replace network rebuild, embracing a software-defined environment empowers faster application deployment while setting the stage for continued movement toward a truly agile architecture.
For additional guidance on modern storage strategies for the enterprise, visit our Network World blog page.
To learn more about Brocade’s advanced storage networking solutions, visit us here.
