Written By Eric Herzog
High-end enterprise storage is one of the most foundational pieces of the enterprise data centre today, because of the enormous explosion of data – and where it needs to be stored and made available for applications and workloads. When you peel back the layers of enterprise storage, some very interesting debates emerge about what constitutes best-in-class enterprise storage.
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to decide where you and your current storage supplier stand on each of these five aspects of the “great debate” defining today’s enterprise storage deployments.
In an AI-centric world of data that is increasing exponentially, the stakes for enterprise storage are also exponentially high, which is why debating these issues is pertinent to enterprise storage purchase decisions today and in the foreseeable future.
- The Architectural Matchup: Triple-redundant storage architecture vs. Dual-redundant storage architecture
- Cyber Competition: Strong cyber storage resilience vs. Weak cyber storage resilience
- Immutable to the Finish Line: True immutable snapshots of data with no backdoor vs. Semi-immutable snapshots of data with “backdoors”
- The Uptime Challenge: 100% availability vs. 6 9’s availability
- Head-to-Head: Guaranteed SLAs vs. No guarantees
DEBATE #1 ─ The Architectural Matchup: Triple-redundant storage architecture vs. Dual-redundant storage architecture
Most enterprises are currently relying on a dual-redundant storage architecture – and some may not even know it. There are severe limitations to the dual-redundant architecture that create issues for enterprise customers. Performance can degrade faster. Direct and indirect costs tend to soar quickly with the dual approach.
A triple-redundant storage architecture ensures a much higher degree of system reliability and availability, while providing superior performance because of the triple active, synchronized copies of data. This approach is designed to support continuous operations 24x7x365, allowing for instant failovers while eliminating single points of failure. Additionally, a triple-redundant architecture is ideal for high-throughput workloads vs. a dual-redundant architecture.
DEBATE #2 ─ Cyber Competition: Strong cyber storage resilience vs. Weak cyber storage resilience
Cybercriminals are attacking enterprise data centres and their storage infrastructures, as well as corrupting backups, at an alarming rate, and snapshots alone are no longer sufficient. No wonder the question is not “will our enterprise suffer a cyberattack?”, but “when and how often?”
With weak cyber resilience, an enterprise is not able to isolate and perform cyber detection on the compromised data, which means it will likely replicate corrupt data and spread it around the enterprise, unknowingly. It also means that an enterprise is likely to be slow in responding to a cyberattack on the storage infrastructure and not have the capability to recover quick from an attack.
In contrast, strong cyber storage resilience enables an enterprise to recover from a cyberattack, such as ransomware or malware, within a few minutes or few seconds.
DEBATE #3 ─ Immutable to the Finish Line: True immutable snapshots of data with no backdoor vs. Semi-immutable snapshots of data with “backdoors”
Many enterprises are using what they consider “immutable snapshots,” but there is a problem. Those snapshots have a “backdoor.” They are not truly “immutable.” Someone could potentially hack in and change the data in the snapshots, which defeats the purpose of immutable snapshots, which are supposed to be unchangeable and undeletable.
For the best in cyber storage resiliency, as well as corporate regulatory and compliance issues, an enterprise should be using truly immutable snapshots that cannot be altered or deleted. There should not be a “backdoor” to the snapshots. This may sound so basic, but the trade-off that IT teams make can be startling. Or an IT team may not even know there is a backdoor to the snapshots. What they really need is high-end enterprise storage capabilities for cyber storage resilience.
DEBATE #4 ─ The Uptime Challenge: 100% availability vs. 6 9’s availability
When the enterprise storage infrastructure goes down or is unexpectedly interrupted – even for a short period of time – it can cost an enterprise a significant loss of revenue and profits, as well as cause reputational damage. This is why ultra-high availability is so important. However, the debate is about how “high” does the availability of the enterprise storage infrastructure need to be. Can an enterprise get away with less than 100% availability?
The reality is that applications and workloads in enterprise environments are in use almost all enterprises 24x7x365. Thus, both high availability and high performance are critical to daily business operations – hallmarks of the right high-end enterprise storage.
DEBATE #5 ─ Head-to-Head: Guaranteed SLAs vs. No guarantees
It’s a “no-brainer.” Enterprises are accustomed to service level agreements (SLAs) that guarantee their system, software, or service will deliver the performance and the results for which the organization has signed up. It’s no different in enterprise storage and next generation of data protection. It’s exceedingly more advantageous to the company to have guarantees in place, such as guaranteed 100% availability, guaranteed performance, and guaranteed cyber recovery. Guarantees remove the guesswork.
About Eric Herzog
Eric Herzog is the Chief Marketing Officer at Infinidat, a Lenovo company. Prior to joining Infinidat, Herzog was CMO and VP of Global Storage Channels at IBM Storage Solutions. His executive leadership experience also includes: Senior Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing for EMC’s Enterprise & Mid-range Systems Division, and CMO and Senior VP of Alliances for all-flash storage provider Violin Memory.
FOR UK MEDIA OUTREACH
Basically this blog – https://www.infinidat.com/en/blog/great-debates-enterprise-storage-part-one
More thought leadership style, so product names etc. stripped out
FACTS have been removed to keep it neutral