Storage & Data Management
Storage and data management is key within any network as your applications are useless without their associated data. Storage management is the design and implementation of your storage systems. Depending on your needs and budgets, we are able to advise, design and implement a range of storage solutions including:
- Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
RAID is a mechanism that allows one or more of the physical disks used to store your data to fail without losing any data. Therefore, it protects against a single point of failure. All production servers should use some form of RAID, either software or hardware based. Although the performance of software based RAID is constantly improving, we would recommend a hardware based solution.
- Storage Area Networks (SAN) -
both iSCSI and Fibre Channel
Storage Area Networks are high performance, dedicated storage networks used by companies who need fast, shared access to data, multiple redundant components or additional storage security. All our SAN designs follow best practices with the use of multiple paths, hard and soft zoning, LUN masking and multiple redundant components. SANs can be an important component if, and when, you decide to harness the benefits of Virtualisation.
- Network Attached Storage (NAS)
Network Attached Storage is usually a cheaper option than implementing a SAN but still provides many of the benefits. We can advise on both hardware and software NAS solutions.
Data on your storage needs to be managed. If it is not, you will soon find your IT storage becomes bloated. We will work with you to create a data management strategy which clearly defines what data is to be stored, where it will be stored, and for how long. Once a strategy has been created, we can advise on the necessary software and hardware to enforce it.
Through our sister company, we have the facilities to offer physical storage.