Would it be nice to know with one click if your growing data are hot, used, ageing or even cold? Or simply duplicated and taking unnecessary storage space?
Sure, it would be nice… but we need to clear up a few things before!
There are only 3 options… and they are very different.
Before you pick your preferred option, read the following :
1.
The first option is that you develop yourself all the tools you need.
Well... this option is not a real option.
Why ?
Because you probably don’t have the resources needed to do it all by yourself.
And the risks for budget overrun are just too high.
And this is why you try to find ready-to-use solutions… And you’re right by doing so!
2.
The second option is to buy a very efficient IT ecosystem providing you what you want.
IBM, Dell EMC, Quantum and more vendors provide excellent systems using flash, disk, tapes and clouds.
Their performance is very high and consistent. They have been specifically designed to create an environment which allows you to control everything from 1 screen and with a minimum of clicks.
Now,
- those advantages come at a cost…
- These nice machines are far from being cheap…
- And are also quite expensive to maintain…
- And there is more… It’s technological lock-in by design.
If their specific design ensures the performance, it creates also a very specific ecosystem that is not compatible with the many solutions that run on more standard protocols.
Finally, for any storage capacity scale up… you have no other choices than buy more from them… which makes this solution even more expensive.
For example, never think to unload your cold data, stored in this very proprietary environment, to a more conventional and cheaper one…
In a few words, very specific machines are very good by design but also expensive by design and bring de facto their own technology lock-in by design.
3.
Now there is the third option: The “Open System” option and this is where NODEUM belongs.
What’s different?
We designed NODEUM to be the most “Open System” possible so you can merge all the technology you need, prefer or wish in a “Transparent Archiving Solution”.
You get full transparency in your archive linking seamlessly and right away any NAS disks (be it Dell EMC, NetApp, Quantum, HP and all the possible vendors out there) with any object storage, with any tapes libraries, with any cloud, even with optical disks libraries.
This philosophy is the preferred option of thousands of companies across dozens of industries. This why we built NODEUM.
Sure, there are trade-offs.
If you require high performance flash primary storage, you need to treat it as separate storage in your ecosystem.
Linking Flash to the secondary storage would bring processing speed down by a factor of 4, 5 or even 6x. This isn’t a good idea, so we don’t do it.
What are the consequences of an “Open System”?
The trade-off?
You have de facto 2 screens: 1 screen for your Flash Primary storage and 1 screen for all your Secondary Storage. This is the trade-off…
The rest is all good news…
- First, the price can be 10, 20 or even 30 times cheaper than the very specific machines we just mentioned here above.
- Second, you keep the full autonomy and freedom to choose the best storage platform you need and like.
- Third, you are free to automate, or not, some workflows like back-ups and archiving with simple instructions provided on-board and with all the APIs you need.
- Finally, this is the cheapest strategy to scale up your storage in the future with the techno you want and the vendors you prefer.
Executive Summary
There is always a trade-off.
- “One screen - One click” is expensive and a technological lock-in by design.
- “Two screens and two clicks” is much cheaper and with a total freedom to adapt your IT ecosystem the way you want thanks to its very open and vendor agnostic design.
- The “Open System” solution probably represents a big step forward and in the right direction for your IT strategy.
It most likely is the right trade-off for your environment.
Download now our demonstration product and test it for free into your environment .
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