Storage proliferation creeping up the IT agenda

If you’re wondering which way to turn on data storage, you’re not alone. Data and communications proliferation, estimated to be rising at between 200—300% annually averaged across sectors is causing firms to have to reconsider most aspects of their, usually fragmented storage infrastructure. Issues include: proliferation of disk in data centres against budget, space and complexity constraints and the need to serve data fast and efficiently; back-up and recovery alternatives; and exponential email server growth requirements. “Two and a half year ago we changed from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange Server,” says Ady Dawkins, IT leader at voice recorders manufacturer Thales Contact Solutions. “At that time we had 2Gb of email storage; today we have 30—40Gb. It’s no longer just straight emails; it’s attachments, executables, code, the works. We also scan all emails in and out, so there’s a lot of load on the server.” And with Exchange server sizing being somewhat ‘digital’, as Dawkins says, if you haven’t sized it well, you’re into all new disks, or another Exchange Server – which is rather expensive. As for regular storage, issues of Raid, SAN (storage area networking) and NAS (network attached storage) notwithstanding (see www.mcsolutons.co.uk reference library: Gambling on your IT future), the practical problem for is not the cost of the file servers, but space. Dawkins says his answer is to go for the newer breed of slimline boxes, particularly for application servers, where he expects to get 40 in a rack. But part of the solution will be education: what users need to keep and what not, to reduce data proliferation at source. One aspect worth checking: software for automatic common file elimination. It deletes common files and provides links instead to centrally held documents and the rest.