Seven things every IT person should know about storage

Seven things every IT person should know about storage
Avoid performance problems with these new tricks


1. You might be spending too much money on storage and still not getting performance gains
Optimizing storage isn't about buying new stuffIt's about determining whether the data you've created is stored in the right place. This discussion goes beyond the basic concept of using inexpensive disk to store data and delves into how the disk is configured, especially when it comes to replication and mirroring.

2. Application-centric monitoring tools can help boost SAN performance
Users who get great performance out of their storage-area networks (SAN) have discovered application-centered monitoring for storage performance.

3. Green storage technologies can cut energy bills without sacrificing performance
Storage isn't the biggest energy hog in the data center, but new technologies can still help cut back on its power consumption by as much as 20%, users say. Even using storage space more efficiently can cut down on wasted capacity, experts say. This means spending less on storage in the long run.



4. Advanced backup-management tools ease auditing and compliance
Over the last several years, numerous vendors have taken backups from boring to remarkable by rolling out fancy backup-management tools.


5. storage virtuailisation appliances can give you a single storage system for both backups and live storage
Just ask the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine (UFCVM). Over the last six months, the college has been putting its 7TB storage area network through its paces, using it for nearline backup and primary storage.

6. Lawsuits are a fact of life and sloppy e-discovery can cost you millions
Recent surveys show that, on average, U.S. companies face 305 lawsuits at any one time. With each lawsuit comes the obligation for discovery -- production of evidence for presentation to the other side in a legal dispute. With 95% of all business communications created and stored electronically, that puts a heavy burden on IT to perform e-discovery, finding electronically stored information.


7. Storage grid standards could put an end to proprietary storage management
The Open Grid Forum, a standards organization focused on Grid Computing, is working on a variety of standards for the compute, network and storage infrastructure, all the way from describing jobs to being able to move and manage data, says Mark Linesch, who heads the organization.