Considerations in Storage Infrastructure Planning

Transcription

1 Considerations in Storage Infrastructure Planning

2 At NetDef, we re all about recommending the right solution for you now and for the future. The investment you make in your storage environment must support the needs of your organisation whatever happens in the future. Making the wrong investment could lead to capacity shortages, overwhelming storage administration burdens and failing service levels. We have evaluated the market and believe that NetApp offers the best portfolio of products to provide the performance and flexibility our customers require at a competitive and realistic price point. So much so that we use it ourselves to host our infrastructure services on. This document lays out the main discussion points around storage infrastructure challenges and explains how NetDef and NetApp address them in a way that helps us to sell you less storage.

3 Where should you start when it comes to re-evaluating your storage strategy? It stands to reason that if you carry on doing what you ve always done and simply add more capacity to what you already have, you will carry on suffering from the same problems just on a larger scale. For a fundamental re-think, there are three main issues that need to be addressed when looking at your storage infrastructure. 1 Data capacity: You need to cope with your current data needs and prepare yourself for even more data in the future. Be sure you re using the right hardware and spending the right amount of money for your needs benefiting from cost saving technologies and techniques wherever they are appropriate. 2 Resources: managing your data is costing you time, money and manpower. To ensure maximum productivity of your people, you need to be sure that optimal processes are in place and that the tools being used are standardised where possible. NetDef can help you take your storage infrastructure in a new direction, challenging assumptions about what you can achieve and the investment required to achieve it. We can do this because we have a unique philosophy when it comes to storage: We want to sell you less storage. Our expertise will help you allocate your budget efficiently and give you solutions that will put you in a great position for the future. 3 Innovation: Your organisation s data holds the key to innovation and competitive advantage. How can you manipulate and use your data in new and profitable ways if you re stuck with inefficient and outmoded data storage?

4 Your first consideration: Capacity Your ambition: storing more on less for a low budget start and easy future upgrades Are you running into capacity issues? Are you finding it expensive to buy more storage, or finding that your current systems are limiting your expansion options? Running out of storage capacity can be crippling and it can be a financial burden to buy more. But having the resources to properly research the best path forward is a challenge in itself when you re already over stretched. With NetApp technologies, we can offer you solutions that can give you the capacity you need that are not only affordable, but are also more powerful than other systems in their class. From less than 10,000, we can provide you with no compromise unified storage with the capability to get more out of applications and improve storage efficiency. NetDef can provide you with a storage assessment service to properly analyse your current infrastructure and recommend the best course of action in the short, medium and long term for your organisation. + With these storage-efficiency technologies, you can use up to 50% less storage in virtual server environments guaranteed! And something that other solutions don t offer is a simple and easy upgrade path so that, when you re ready to consolidate and expand, we can provide you with a rock-solid base without locking you out of future options.

5 Your second consideration: Resources Management efficiencies put you in control Your IT department needs to manage more than just storage and has to look beyond just data, to applications and other resources. Data doesn t exist for itself. It s there to be used. If your IT team is trying to manage data separately from the applications which use it, it could be causing a resource bottleneck. You can t afford to be encumbered by complicated storage management NetDef can help you consolidate and virtualise to make your datacentre run more efficiently, more cost-effectively and free up your valuable personnel. The inherent value of NetApp s capability to reduce the overall volume of data stored naturally leads to it being less to manage, but the benefits of the technology go much deeper than that. Through integration with applications, automation of repetitive tasks and elimination of extraneous processes, we can: Reduce management overhead by 60% Cut provisioning time from hours or days to minutes While we are confident that the NetApp functionality will dramatically ease your management overheads, you may wish to engage NetDef s Managed Services to look after your storage infrastructure on your behalf. NetDef specialises in providing a complete range of managed services to protect your corporate network and information assets. The great thing is you don t have to buy separate products to get all these capabilities. This comes built in to any NetApp solution implemented to increase capacity or protect your data.

6 Release resources from inefficient backup and recovery processes Many businesses are facing challenges when it comes to protecting their data. It s often the case that midsized businesses don t have a solid plan to protect their data if disaster strikes. Backup and restore operations are seen as complicated and resource intensive, they take too long, and they often interrupt the normal running of IT. NetApp backup, restore, and archiving processes are different. With NetApp solutions to safeguard your critical data, you can drive operational efficiencies by reducing backup time and improving data recovery all while cutting infrastructure, tape and administrative costs. NetApp has some fantastic technologies that allow you to back up in minutes rather than hours, and restore in a fraction of the time you ve become used to all without disrupting the normal flow of your business. These solutions also offer great off-site, disasterrecovery options that can be installed in a similar manner to your regular systems. They cost less than competing solutions and don t require specialist infrastructure. + We can also help you achieve high-performance data archiving and compliance, while reducing your costs. All on just one system. The best way to gain an understanding of the simplicity of the NetApp tools is to see them in action at one of our quarterly Demo Café Briefings. These half day events run at our offices in Daresbury are designed to offer you face to face time with a NetApp Systems Engineer who will show you how you can store more data than the physical capacity you ve bought while simplifying management, using less power and less space.

7 Your third consideration: Innovation Keeping storage infrastructure as simple and powerful as you need it to be Who knows what your IT needs are going to be in 5 years time? Maybe you will have grown beyond any perceived future capacity needs, maybe you ll be handling and manipulating your data in ways that you d never think possible today? You could even be using applications and handling workloads that are completely alien to your current setup. How can your storage and data management stay flexible when the future is so uncertain? That s where we come in. Along with NetApp and our other technology partners, we offer solutions that are future-proof. You ll be able to do what you want when you want with on-demand solutions that scale with your needs. And by taking virtualised storage to the next level, you can have limitless capacity and utility. Whether it s implementing a private cloud solution or simply scaling your storage estate, we give you the freedom to decide how you want your storage future to play out. The future of your data storage infrastructure can be as simple and as powerful as you need it to be, without spending money on systems that will become obsolete as technology progresses. At NetDef, we pride ourselves on our ability to deliver innovative solutions to our customers and to forge long-standing relationships. Many of our larger customers have been working with us for 10 years or more testament to our commitment to customer service and technical excellence.

8 Next Steps Storage Assessment Service The Storage Assessment Service is a one or two day on-site activity which will provide you with a detailed report laying out the resources and processes employed within your storage infrastructure alongside our recommendations for improvement and investment. Utilisation of existing storage environment Power consumption and system capacity Availability / downtime Performance of current storage system Capacity optimisation Management of storage environment Total cost of ownership / return on IT investment Following the on-site activity, we will provide you with a detailed report to allow you to easily understand the dynamics of your storage infrastructure. We will also provide you with a range of recommendations encompassing operational and infrastructure adjustments based on our findings. Demo Café Briefing This half day event run quarterly at our offices in Daresbury is designed to offer you face to face time with a NetApp Systems Engineer to discuss your IT requirements and business objectives. We ll show you how you can store more data than the physical capacity you ve bought while simplifying management, using less power and less space. Agenda Registration and coffee Introductions to NetDef & NetApp Unified Storage: achieving scalability & flexibility Interactive Live Demonstration Features included in the demo are: Storage Efficiency: RAID-DP, Thin Provisioning, Snapshots, Deduplication, Thin Replication, FlexClone Latest Innovations FlashPool, Virtual Storage Tiering and simplified remote office backups Conclusions, questions & lunch This event is free to attend but spaces are limited, to secure your place register by ing sales@netdef.co.uk today.

9 Managed Services For some companies, IT systems managed in-house can become a burden; tying up resources and incurring additional costs. Other companies may lack the in-house resources and expertise in the first place to manage the tasks themselves. In either scenario, outsourcing all or some of your IT management will ease the burden on your IT resources allowing greater flexibility for staff to focus on delivering core business services to your customers. All our services are underpinned by our expertise in systems management, monitoring and support. We improve your security stance and simplify management, providing guaranteed response times from our managed services team to ensure continuous, secure operation of your internet services. Based on experience and real customer feedback, we estimate that we cut around half of the cost of in-house service provision while providing a better, more consistent service. About NetDef NetDef is a leading managed service provider supporting a wide range of clients in the public and private sectors. Founded in 1996, we work with medium to large customers across the UK delivering and managing highly secure IT infrastructure solutions. We pride ourselves on our ability to deliver innovative solutions to our customers and to forge longstanding relationships. Many of our larger customers have been working with us for 10 years or more testament to our commitment to customer service and technical excellence. Contact Us 6700 Daresbury Park, Daresbury, Warrington, WA4 4GE Tel: +44 (0) sales@networkdefence.com