How to Overcome the Challenges of Enterprise Cloud Storage

Enterprise cloud storage is becoming the main platform for modernizing IT portfolios. Companies are finding greater flexibility, agility, and cost-savings by renting software from vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, and Microsoft. Many aren’t choosing just one either – they’re using elements of several companies.

Understanding the Demand for Data Storage

There will come a point in every business when the need for more data storage arises. Businesses store important information ranging from emails to documents, presentations, graphics, audio files, spreadsheets, applications, databases, and more. These are the lifeblood of many organizations and require some form of data storage management.

Current trends are fueling the demand for data storage, such as:

•          Government regulations are requiring businesses to back up certain data.
•          Many small businesses are archiving emails data back five or more years for legal reasons.
•          Viruses and spyware require more vigilant backups and storage capacity.
•          More companies are storing large media files, such as video or voice recordings.
•          Each new software application version requires more hard-drive real estate than the one before it. 

Storing and managing data is critical to a company’s success. But the reality is many companies struggle with maintaining frequent backups due to their existing IT infrastructure not allowing it. There’s concern that some organization IT infrastructures may not perform instant data recovery in the event of a failure. Many IT decision makers in organizations are struggling with data growth now and only think it will get worse.

The good news is, several storage options are available from in-house to tiers of cloud data storage. The best solution for organizations is often a combination of several storage solutions. But first, you must understand your data storage needs.

Understanding Data Storage Needs

First, businesses should assess the storage needsof their data and applications, including how and where they need to access it. Use these questions to better understand your data storage needs:

•          Which applications run on which servers?
•          Which applications create the largest number of files?
•          How old is the data?
•          How much of the older data is duplicate or stale?
•          How much data isn’t business related?
•          How quickly do you need to access the data?
•          Where do you need to access the data?

Once you understand how much data you’re working with, and when, where, and how you access it, you’ll better understand your storage needs. You can also work with a data storage company to help you select the best data storage management options for your business needs.

Cloud Data Storage Solutions

Cloud data storage offers remote storage and backup over the internet with several compelling benefits for businesses. Backing up important files in a secure, remote server protects data stored onsite. It makes it easy to share large files with clients or partners with password-protected access online without trying to send large files via email.

In most cases, you can log into your account from any web browser or through a desktop app. This makes it easy to retrieve files no matter where you are in the world, or if you’re away from your PC. Remote storage can be slower, as it’s only as quick as the speed of your network access to storage. For much larger files, it’s best to invest in higher speed network access.

Looking for a data storage company to help with your data storage management needs? At Datera, we understand data powers your business. Contact us today to learn how we can help solve your company’s data storage needs.

Data Services Platform: The Basics and Why It Matters

As cloud-based technology becomes increasingly popular and complex, it’s getting harder for data professionals to keep track of the various cloud computing models. Data services platforms become even more necessary as they deliver flexible and scalable data integration. The good news is, the shifts in technology offers data professionals the opportunity to educate themselves and adapt to new technologies making data management easier.

Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) is newer to cloud computing models but delivers on the promise of making life easier. Here, we’ll look at data services platform models and why they’re making an impact.

Data Services for Data Center Explained

The basis for a data services platform is pushing the risks and burdens of data management to a third-party cloud-based provider. Until recently, many companies housed and managed their own data in traditional on-site storage systems. The issue with this approach is the data became too complex and difficult to maintain or keep up with growth.

The DaaS cloud computing model made data easily accessible through a cloud-based platform. It allows you to access critical business data in an existing datacenter. Data services for hybrid cloud gave companies even more flexibility in how they house and manage data in private and public spaces. 

Data services for data center give users access to information regardless of where they are in an organization or the world. Common business applications powered by this are Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications and Customer Resource Management (CRM).

Benefits of Data Services Platforms

Data Services platforms offer many benefits, including:

• Agility: Data services offer greater flexibility in accessing critical data. Availability is faster due to the simplistic architecture where data is located. As data structure needs change, or if geographical needs arise, elastic data services make it easy to implement changes to the data.
• Cost-Effective: Third-party providers can easily deploy their data applications in ways that reduce costs associated with housing and managing complex data on the premises. Providers can help companies save money on the presentation layer of their interfaces and applications. They are built to easily change location-based and organization assets fluidly.
• Data Quality: A significant benefit is improving data quality. This is due to the majority of data access being controlled through data services. It creates a layer of security and better data quality.

As with any new cloud-based solution, not everyone jumps on board immediately and organizations from the top down need to be convinced of its value. However, as the need for elastic data services continues to increase, we’ll continue to see more organizations being interested in data services for data center.

At Datera, we offer data services for hybrid clouds, elastic data services, and much more. Contact us today to learn how our software solutions and services can help your organization.

Understanding the Demand for Scale Out

Data sprawl is a big problem for many organizations. Companies of any size are always trying to balance the need for increasing data storage while managing infrastructure costs. Newer technologies such as IoT, AI, video streaming, and virtual reality are driving a massive build-up of data coming soon.

Benefits of Better Cloud Infrastructure Management

Moving to the cloud brings a lot of change to IT teams, including how they monitor costs and organize staff. One of the biggest challenges they face can be developing an efficient cloud infrastructure management plan. But with a good plan is in place, infrastructure agility can be achieved.

Comprehensive Guide to Data Center Infrastructure Management

Data centers are physical facilities which companies use to house important business applications and information. As data centers evolve, it’s critical to think long-term about the best ways to maintain reliability and security through effective data center management. The following contains the critical elements driving today’s data storage management, and that of the future.

The Cloud Is the Latest Computing Architecture

Cloud computing is becoming more common for a variety of reasons. If you’re interested in moving to private or public cloud computing, here we’ll cover the basics of cloud computing architecture and how it is being implemented today.

Why Scale-out Storage Is Better than Traditional Storage

Having enough storage capacity is critical for storage devices. If you run out of capacity, the solution may be as simple as adding a new shelf of drives or as complex as adding a whole new data center. While simpler solutions are preferred, the difference between simple or complex solutions can be whether your system is designed to scale-up or scale-out.

3 Benefits of Using Enterprise Cloud Applications

In this evolving and competitive market, businesses are continually trying to develop new and innovative ways to add value and simplify the lives of their customers. As consumers, we get to reap the benefits of better service and faster access to technology advances.

To improve client experience and organizational structure, many organizations are moving to enterprise cloud application technology. Consider the hospitality or food and beverage industry. What better industries to implement cloud storage when traditionally their servers are stored in a closet? Now all their programs and applications can run in the cloud with public cloud infrastructure.

Yet, the main benefit of choosing this solution is the ability to scale up or down resources while companies only pay for what they’re using. In addition, some of the higher-end enterprise cloud applications need modern solutions built for modern methods of app delivery. Solutions like SaaS and The Web applications are developed through solutions for cloud-based delivery offering higher security, availability, and better performance.

Consider the following three benefits of enterprise cloud applications.

1.    Slashes IT Expenses

By moving to cloud storage, you’ll naturally save on hardware and maintenance costs. But with an enterprise cloud application solution, you’ll also reduce costs for support as the user experience enhances app performance. In addition, you will likely enjoy other advantages such as the affordability of public cloud infrastructure for your business’ app delivery.

2.    Better Security

Security is a major concern for every business. By choosing safe and secure cloud networks, you’re helping secure your data and giving your company the privacy it needs. Using cloud storage for your company means no more losing files on computers or laptops due to hardware failures or theft. The cloud can keep your data and documents safe with encryption, data recovering, and backup options.

3.    Simplifying How You Work

Cloud storage solutions are replacing hardware-based solutions because they couldn’t handle the scaling process quickly and efficiently. Now, you can deliver reliable service with every app without dealing with server limitations. Until recent technology emerged, IT departments had to constantly buy and configure new hardware and software so everyone in the company had up-to-date information and new technology. Depending on the size of the company, this was a significant expense to maintain. 

Enterprise cloud application solutions solve this issue by storing applications, programs, and files in the cloud. As discussed previously, this also slashes costs for IT departments without the need to spend time and resources on new software and hardware upgrades.

The benefits of enterprise cloud applications for your business make it worth the investment. The simplicity and affordability of cloud storage make it even easier for companies to adopt the technology.

At Datera, we help organizations discover better cloud solutions to reduce costs and improve scalability. Contact us today to learn more.

Hybrid Cloud as the Future of Cloud Hosting

Hybrid cloud services are the wave of the future. As cloud computing continues to evolve and cloud services expand, hybrid cloud computing is gaining developer and investor interest with promises to change the future of enterprise IT. Even as a newer entrant, hybrid cloud computing is becoming known as the gold mine of the future.

Why Is Cloud Storage a Good Idea?

When you hear “cloud data storage,” do you imagine data floating around above you in the clouds? If so, you’re not alone. What many people don’t realize is cloud data is actually stored on hard drives similar to how data is typically stored.

But if cloud data storage is just like conventional data storage, is it any really any better or different?

What Does 2017 Hold for Object Storage?

Many companies struggle in today’s environment to manage higher amounts of information amongst the massive growth of unstructured data. It’s becoming more apparent that traditional storage hasscaling limitations and better solutions are in high demand.

Object-based storage enables a storage system to manage data as objects rather than as blocks or files within sectors. Data and valuable metadata are included in these objects making it easier to find, sort, and understand the information. Objects are stored in a flat address space, therefore, eliminating complexity and scalability challenges of hierarchical files systems in traditional storage.

Withunlimited scalability, object-based storage doesn’t outgrow a file system and consolidates storage silos. This provides a better remote backup solution with automatic data replication to a secondary site. It also uses standard hardware and avoids the expense of replacement and expansion to upgrade classic storage systems. For companies experiencing high scale growth, data accessibility with object storage could be valuable for anyorganization. 

A Shift in Software Approach

Companies interested in scaling from small clusters of data to exabytes of data need a software-based approach with affordable scalability. Object storage vendors offering the pay-as-you-go licensing model are increasingly attractive as customers prefer to pay for current usage, not 3-5 years of cost upfront. Companies can use object-based storage to deploy and manage their own private cloud storage while maintaining freedom of choice in access and protection across data centers.

To mirror requirements for organizations of any size, object storage vendors are developing a new style of software to include unified file and object-based storage in one solution. This offers several ways to access stored data.

Object-Based Storage Is Gaining Awareness

Object storage is finally on the verge of becoming known after nearly 20 years thanks to Amazon S3 being the driving leader in the public cloud storage sector. S3’s success is generating more interest in object storage and increasing customer awareness.

Another driver for object storage adoption is OpenStack. OpenStack Object Storage (aka Swift), is a free open-source software platform for cloud computing which enables solutions to be deployed as IaaS. Companies have embraced this scalable storage system to handle large amounts of data, especially in industries focused on life sciences, media, and entertainment.

A big challenge for storage systems is compatibility and interoperability between systems and resources. Most companies have a diverse storage environment and expect the same flexibility from object storage with solutions that support OpenStack Swift API and AWS S3 API. Organizations are looking for affordable, easy options to optimize their resources based on their specific business needs.

Object storage awareness is growing and will encouragemore object storage vendors to lead development and bring additional solutions to market. The conditions may be just right this year for object storage to gain traction in the storage industry.

Curious to learn more? Contact Datera for data storage solutions.

Top 3 Data Center Management Challenges

The costs for deploying and managing on-demand technology services continue to skyrocket as demand increases. To manage complex deployments with higher costs, and to ensure uptime and reliability, data center management personnel need access to data that isn’t always immediately available. The following are the top three challenges experienced in data center management and how data center infrastructure solutions can help resolve these challenges.

#1: Maintaining Uptime and Availability

If you manage your server information with spreadsheets or homegrown tools, this information can quickly become inaccurate, outdated, or incomplete. A lack of information can become a hindrance when troubleshooting is needed for unplanned downtime, or when mapping the power chain.

Data center infrastructure solutions provide one easy location to house your asset information. This offers consistent and accurate record keeping with access to readily available visual and textual information. In turn, you reduce the time it takes to locate assets, and ultimately,it helps reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot an issue.

#2: Measuring Reduced Operating Expenses in Reports

Implementing solutions to reduce operating expenses is one thing. Proving that they work and are effectively reducing expenses is another. To prove data center infrastructure solutions are working, data center management teams need to be able to collect cost and performance data and articulate their value to the business.

A dashboard on data center infrastructure solutions with reporting capabilities will allow you to instantly gather data across several dimensions. This allows data center management teams to accurately show important stakeholders how the data center is operating efficiently and reducing costs.

#3: Keeping Energy Usage and Costs Low

Many online companies run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock. This consumes vast amounts of energy, and as a result, data centers are extremely wasteful with energy consumption and electricity leading to higher costs.

Data center infrastructure solutions help monitor energy consumption and cycle off servers during the off hours. Sensors can collect information for raising temperature set points safely. They can also help companies implement an energy bill-back program which can drive energy efficient behaviors for data center management.

Need help reducing costs and managing your data center efficiently? Datera offers data center management and data center infrastructure solutions to achieve greater reliability and efficiency while saving costs. Try our free demo to learn more.

7 Steps to Save Your Organization Money with Capacity Management

Effective capacity management can offer immediate savings for organizations. For some, it can reduce their hardware and software budget by 20-30%.

Due to organizations needing to reduce expenses, IT infrastructure management is increasing to help companies cut costs. Here, we’re showing you how you can implement capacity management to help keep IT costs to a minimum. Use these steps to achieve better capacity management.

#1 Define Your Scope

Your capacity management project is defined by the resources you want to manage. Each set is designated in “pools”.

For example, managing disk space is one capacity pool. Each category must be listed in a separate capacity pool. Make sure you don’t extend your scope beyond capacity pools that don’t offer value for your organization. You must understand your organization well enough to manage only the things that return real value.

#2 Gather Trend Data

Now that you know what to manage, it’s time to understand how to manage it. You may have a tool already for gathering capacity statistics whichcan forward them to a central database. If not, collect technical level details for each capacity pool. The key is getting data from each pool and ensuring it flows to one centralized location.

Once you have the data, observe the trends. Document trends over time for each pool to understand whether utilization is growing or shrinking.

#3 Make Your Predictions

Once you see trends, you’re on your way to solid IT infrastructure management. The next step is using the trend data to make your predictions. You may notice your server utilization is growing at 4% per month which allows you to predict the server will be out of capacity in eight months.

Take your predictions beyond simple mathematics to combine other knowledge such as knowing a new program will increase percentages even higher in coming months. The more you can predict future utilization, the more valuable your capacity management program will be. 

#4 Scale Up and Out

The next challenge is deciding how much memory to add and determining when the memory will run out again. This is referred to as scaling up and scaling out.

Scaling up is adding more resources within an environment such as bandwidth to a network link or memory to a server. Scaling out is duplicating portions of the environment to add more resources such as adding another network link or server. These methodsincrease capacity and each resourcecan impact how you make future capacity utilization predictions.

#5 Organize & Share Data

By now you have lots of data about your capacity pools. To organize it all, a Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) should become your source for capacity readings, trends, and predictions. Establishing a CMIS allows others in the company to make better business decisions by using the data.

#6 Make Capacity Plans

A capacity plan offers an analysis of your data and recommendations for what to do with it. These plans are built for important applications, IT services, and IT infrastructure management. The goal is to avoid running out of capacity without buying and deploying more capacity than needed.A capacity plan includes data trends, predictions, and recommendations for what to do.

#7 Develop Service Capacity Management

To this point, you’ve managed component capacity at the lowest level. As you successfully manage components, you may start managing IT services involving complex sets of components with business value. An IT service may include a set of servers and applications that support product design. Tracking trends and measuring utilization is easier at the component level and much more complex with IT service. While important, the lack of quality tools in this area has lead business to decide service capacity management is too expensive to implement.

Start with the basics and work your way up to achieve full capacity management. Take a systematic approach to realize the potential and cost savings it can offer your company.

Need help? At Datera, we help companies achieve better IT infrastructure management. Contact us today to learn more.

The Power of Private Cloud Computing

When companies move data, applications, and processes to the cloud, they must choose which infrastructure to use and decide how data and apps will be hosted and distributed. Companies have the option of private cloud computing, using the public cloud, or hybrid cloud computing solutions.

Here we’re looking at the benefits of using private cloud computing and the differences between public and private cloud infrastructures.

Tips and Best Practices for Data Storage Management

Data storage management isn’t what it used to be. In the past, hard drives stored information and onsite backups saved the daywhen hard drives failed. With these methods, organizations had more time to shop the market and compare storage upgrades.

Data storage companies today face the pressure of delivering data-related performance that’s bigger, better, faster, with greater agility. Data storage management has become more complicated and competitive with storage solutions for different workloads.

IT Capacity Management –A Necessity for Businesses in Today’s Virtual Environments

Today, more companies are realizing the usefulness of IT capacity management tools. While these tools have been around for some time, there wasn’t much of a need for them – until now.

In the world of cloud and virtualized solutions, the high levels of automation and complexity in systems has created a greater need for capacity management in today’s IT environment. Companies need to be able to forecast capacity levels, plan ahead for IT operations, and predict risks in critical applications before they happen. This is where capacity management tools and IT capacity management planning come into play.

Private Cloud Storage: How is it different from public cloud storage?

More businesses recognize the affordability, reliability, and scalability of storing data in the cloud. But the question often asked is whether to choose public cloud storage, private cloud storage, or hybrid cloud services using local and off-site resources.

There are often misconceptions about private cloud infrastructure and storage. Here we’re helping you understand what private cloud storage is and what it is not.

Goodbye Silos – Hello Automated, Virtual Cloud Data Storage Environments

Modern day enterprises are often trapped between two worlds: 1) the evolving world of cloud data storage, agile development, and unlimited scalability with next generation data storage companies, and 2) the traditional world with fixed software and hardware architectures combined with rigid application silos.

The former approach of separating data storage into semi-automated application silos takes us back to pre-industrial era production methods. 

Approaching the Billion IOP Datacenter

Are you still using traditional data storage systems? These systems are most often being pushed beyond their intended design. While users have always asked for more than just raw storage capacity, they’re now wanting multiple instances of terabytes, sub-microsecond latencies, and thousands of IOPs per deployment – all across multiple coexisting workloads.