Storage that grows with you
Storage is the category where buying too little is expensive and buying too much is as well. What helps is knowing which kinds exist and what they are for: a NAS for an office and a SAN under a virtualisation cluster solve different problems and are not interchangeable.
Five kinds of storage and where they belong
The catalogue puts them under one heading. In practice the application chooses.
- NAS, storage that offers filesA cabinet of drives sharing folders on the network. For shared documents, project folders and as the first destination of a backup. For an office this is usually the answer.
- SAN, storage that offers disksDelivers raw disks to servers rather than folders, typically under a virtualisation cluster. This is data centre work with its own network underneath and its own design.
- Individual drives and SSDsFor expansion and replacement. A server needs a drive built for continuous running; a laptop drive in a NAS is the reason a RAID set fails on a Tuesday morning.
- Backup mediaTape and removable media for the copy that is not attached to the network. Awkward, slow and precisely for that reason resistant to what an attacker does with the network.
- Enclosures, controllers and accessoriesCabinets, RAID controllers and the cables between them. Small on the quotation, decisive for whether the setup can be expanded later.
How we establish what is needed
Three steps, in this order. The last is the only one that produces a number.
Measure what is there and how fast it grows
Not what is in use, but how much it increases per month. An environment growing ten per cent a year needs something different from one that doubles.
Establish what has to be able to come back
Storage and backup are two questions that run into each other. What sits on a NAS is not protected by sitting on a NAS; RAID is not a backup and a second copy belongs somewhere else.
Choose on five years, not on today
Expandability is worth more here than capacity. A cabinet that is full and cannot grow is a migration in three years rather than an order.
What belongs with this
Storage and continuity are the same question from two sides.
Storage that still fits in five years
Tell us how much is there now and how fast it grows. You get a setup with the expansion built into the sum, and an honest account of what it does and does not protect.
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