Top 5 Storage Challenges for Mid-size Businesses and How Exablox Can Help Solve Them

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1 Top 5 Storage Challenges for Mid-size Businesses and How Exablox Can Help Solve Them Easy, effective methods to successfully overcome the pitfalls of conventional data storage Mid-sized businesses are increasingly faced with enterprise-scale storage demands, but without enterprise-scale budgets or resources. Traditional storage methods pose significant challenges in the areas of capacity, management, availability, reliability, and business value. In this first of a series of informative e-books from Exablox, we explore the top storage challenges facing your business, and offer ways in which you can overcome them.

2 Challenge #1: Storage capacity is difficult to scale More organizations depend on vast amounts of unstructured data including high-density graphic images and streaming media and this data continues to grow exponentially. Currently, you have two ways to scale capacity to meet this demand. One way is to scale up by adding more disks. But this requires extensive planning, and is limited by the performance of the controller. Another way is to establish discrete islands of storage. But this way is extremely difficult to manage, and can impede data availability. Why trade off performance and availability for added capacity? How to solve it: Grow dynamically Unlike traditional approaches, the object-based OneBlox solution from Exablox now offers a seamless pool of capacity in the datacenter. Exablox let s you scale out your storage dynamically by simply adding drives, nodes, while at the same time boosting performance and availability as you grow.

3 Challenge #2: Storage is complex to manage For your organization to stay agile and competitive, you need the flexibility to allocate storage to applications as needed not just as projected. Traditional storage management can be complex, confusing, and inflexible. Replicating site-to-site storage requires painstaking planning and configuration. Plus, the complexity of integrating and customizing traditional storage often requires you hire third-party experts, and maintain dedicated servers to manage your storage. You shouldn t need a PhD to manage your organization s data storage. How to solve it: Simplify management At Exablox, our goal is zero-configuration. Our object-based approach enables all of your applications to equally share a single pool of storage as needed, simplifying capacity planning. You can easily deploy Exablox in under five minutes, without engaging third-party experts, and replicate storage over a wide area, or for disaster recovery, in just three simple steps. What s more, the Exablox OneSystem lets you manage your storage from anywhere using any web browser. Plus, you don t have to maintain separate dedicated servers to manage your storage.

4 Challenge #3: Stored information is not always available Data retention is crucial, not only for meeting industry standards, but also for productivity and business performance. But critical data can get lost due to accidental overwrite or deletion, disk and controller failure or even onsite disaster. For mid-size businesses, ensuring that data stays available no matter what can be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. If you lose access to mission-critical information, you disrupt your organization s productivity. How to solve it: Keep information available With Exablox, your information is always available. The Exablox OneBlox appliance replicates in real time, taking a snapshot each time a file changes, up to the very last write. Workers can browse their own stored data to locate and recover any file version from any point in time, without help desk assistance. Plus, you can recover your storage environment in a third of the time it would take with traditional techniques. It s as easy as unplugging one OneBlox and plugging in a new one.

5 Challenge #4: Traditional storage is unreliable Retained information is useless if your storage architecture fails. Traditional storage systems are prone to failure at multiple component points. Even external cloud-based services introduce additional potential points of failure at the gateway, carrier and ISP. Your storage architecture has multiple inherent points of failure. How to solve it: Minimize failure Exablox minimizes your potential points of failure. Using our unique Exablox ring architecture, multiple drive and node failures can be tolerated. In addition, with Exablox, the data on the disks/ storage appliance is encrypted, thus eliminating third-party points of failure and preventing data loss from any removed disk drive.

6 Challenge #5: Storage costs overburden your business Your information is a core business asset and differentiator. And yet, conventional storage can add costs disproportionate to its potential value. Storage complexity often results in the added costs of unneeded capacity, third-party consulting fees, and increased internal administrative overhead. Traditional storage vendors significantly mark up commodity hardware costs, or require costly forklift upgrades. And cloud-based services incur fees that are typically cost-prohibitive for mid-sized business budgets. Excessive storage costs undermine the business value your organization s information. How to solve it: Add business value from your storage Don t let storage be a burden on your budget. Exablox helps you add business value by receiving a greater return on your storage investment. You can instantly and non-disruptively right-size capacity to meet your current business needs, and affordably scale as needed as you grow. Zero configuration drives down total cost of ownership by reducing consulting costs and administrative overhead. You can use whatever drive hardware you like, with the flexibility to mix-and-match drive types. Plus, you don t have to pay a provider premium to host your own storage.

7 The Exablox Approach The Exablox OneBlox appliance is a powerful, re-imagined scale-out storage solution that any organization can afford. Exablox s cloud managed, scale-out, object-based storage appliance solves businesses common storage pain points: complicated installation, cumbersome storage management, lack of data security and forklift upgrades. Without the shackles of legacy storage architecture, Exablox s clean sheet approach combines the CIFS/SMB accessible OneBlox appliance with OneSystem, an elegant multi-tenant cloud-based management service. Re-imagine what your storage can offer to your organization. Learn More Find out more about how Exablox can help you overcome the challenges of data storage today. Visit our web site at call us at 855.EXABLOX, or us at sales@exablox.com.

8 About Exablox Exablox is the company re-imagining storage. Exablox solves businesses runaway storage costs and information management nightmares by providing a scale-out cloud-based management solution that is both affordable and easy to use. OneBlox is an inclusive storage offering that combines an elegant hardware architecture and integrated, enterprisegrade software, including continuous data protection, inline deduplication and disaster recovery. Founded in 2010, Exablox is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA and backed by leading Silicon Valley venture firms. Visit Exablox online at and join the conversation at www. twitter.com/exablox 1156 Sonora Court, Sunnyvale, CA EXABLOX ( ) info@exablox.com Exablox and the Exablox logo are trademarks of Exablox, Inc. 10/13 EX001