Solution Set

Storage is a big ticket item that often only gets purchased every three to five years. Get best practice buyer's advise that leverages the purchasing experience of your IT peers.

Note

Storage is a big ticket item that often only gets purchased every three to five years. Get best practice buyer's advise that leverages the purchasing experience of your IT peers.

Note

In selecting consolidated storage, the goal is to meet strategic business requirements while getting the most for your dollar. Find the best fit for your needs in an increasing consolidated vendor landscape.

Solution Set

This solution set will clearly describe the strengths and weaknesses of a full range of vendors in midrange storage and will apply a range of scenarios to provide deeper insight into what solutions are best.

Tool

The Storage Vendor Shortlist Tool allows enterprises to profile their storage solution requirements and generate a rank ordered vendor shortlist from a fixed list of vendors.

Template/Policy

Organizations embarking on the selection process for a storage vendor may select to issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) after determining their final selection criteria.

Tool

For organizations that have issued a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) to evaluate consolidated storage vendors, gathering and scoring the various responses can be difficult and time consuming. This tool enables enterprises to evaluate and...

Template/Policy

This script provides questions that you can explore with a reseller to clarify the specific value add that the reseller brings to the engagement. Use this interview to help solidify your vendor choice.

Vendor Research

This report is designed to help vendors and solution providers understand the market dynamics surrounding consolidated storage. The analysis and guidance provided will help in selling and marketing consolidated storage solutions.

Vendor Research

This report will help vendors and solution providers understand the marketplace dynamics surrounding data center consolidation purchases.

Note

Cloud storage is typically seen as an alternative to in-house backup or archiving capacity. However, businesses are finding multiple use cases for cloud storage, often adopting it across the enterprise to experience maximum benefits.

Tool

The Cloud Storage TCO Calculator enables IT professionals to estimate the costs of deploying a cloud storage solution, comparing it to the cost of purchasing new NAS or SAN storage capacity.

Video

Regardless of how you plan to use cloud storage, there are key criteria that must be met, and the initial data migration challenges that have to be resolved. Now there are several technologies and vendors that can accelerate your data transfer...

Video

Consolidated network storage is a strategic enabler that forms the foundation for server consolidation and a unified approach to data and system availability and recovery.

Tool

This is the Storage Vendor RFP Scoring Tool populated with actual evaluation scores created by Ken Juneau and others at TM4.

Template/Policy

The typical trigger for acquiring consolidated networked storage (CNS) is server consolidation; however, getting the most value out of storage purchases requires a strategic context. This business plan template puts the CNS acquisition in the...

Tool

In storage acquisition strategy it is ideal to balance the most storage capacity and performance with the lowest cost per unit of storage. Some solutions have a lower overall price tag, but have a higher TCO per Terabyte because of a lack of...

Tool

iSCSI SANs are rapidly catching up to Fibre Channel (FC) in both usage and performance. However, FC SANs may still be appropriate for many organizations. Use this decision tool to assess the appropriateness of Tier One FC SANs, Tier Two iSCSI or...

Note

Consolidated network storage makes more efficient use of storage resources through the elimination of waste and effort duplication across distributed islands or silos of direct attached storage. Consolidated storage is also a strategic enabler...

Solution Set

Consolidated network storage is a fundamental enabler of agile utility infrastructure. Storage consolidation and server consolidation are like two sides of the same coin. Benefits include better capacity utilization (reduced waste over...

Prevailing wisdom says that networked storage is needed for storage consolidation. So why consider direct attached Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) storage? It is now possible to achieve many consolidation objectives with direct attached SAS. Don't...

Tool

This tool is designed to help organizations determine top tactics for cost reduction within the server and storage service area. After the questions have been completed, the tool will generate guidance on which cost-saving actions to take, the...

Networked storage vendors are aggressively targeting small enterprises in an attempt to grow market share. However, there remains considerable confusion around storage area network technology in the small to mid-range space due to considerable...

Any small enterprise that wishes to create an agile, highly optimized server infrastructure can do so using the hardware and tools currently available. The utility infrastructure will continue to evolve and improve as more server rooms migrate...

At the end of March, HP introduced two new ProLiant servers. These are marketed as low cost, energy efficient units. While they live up to those claims, they also provide lower performance ? which is not necessarily bad for enterprises needing...

HP's eight-socket ProLiant DL785 G5 server offers small enterprises a high performance, expandable platform for multiple applications or a critical database operation. Enterprises that need more power in a single chassis should investigate this...

Many vendors now offer consumer-oriented storage devices that can also fit the storage needs of small enterprises. Not all of these storage devices are appropriate for small enterprise use. Select on the basis of well-defined criteria to reap...

Many small enterprises struggle to find appropriate and cost effective tools for data storage, backup, and security. Often the latest consumer products match the needs of many small businesses and are the forerunners of enterprise-focused...

With Veritas CommandCentral Storage, Symantec has a full-featured Storage Resource Management (SRM) package that covers all of the SRM bases of functionality at competitive prices. Symantec has a depth of features and breadth across...

Job Description

The Storage Administrator's role is to operate and performance-tune storage platforms across the organization to ensure high levels of data quality, availability, and security. This individual also participates in the planning and implementation...