Cutting through the SDS hype

Software-defined storage can be a coveted solution in the right situation and within the right company.

It’s undeniable that businesses are facing a massive data explosion — in fact, IDC projects that the amount of data on our planet will grow from 4.4 zettabytes in 2013 to 44 zettabytes by 2020. Companies have an unprecedented opportunity to harness this information to create profitable business opportunities.

Yet the unrelenting pressure of storing and managing all this data is becoming overwhelming for IT departments across Australia.

As your business generates more and more data, the time spent on storage maintenance can quickly consume an increasing proportion of your IT budget. Coupled with the huge pressure to contain costs and do more with less, you may find yourself looking to invest in a ‘miracle’ storage solution to alleviate these burdens. Software-defined storage (SDS) is often hyped up as that miracle cure.

The hype around SDS is such that recent research from IT analyst firm Enterprise Strategy Group revealed that whether or not storage decision makers even know what SDS is, they still believe it has the potential to help them address some of their most pressing business challenges.

Simply put, SDS enables storage infrastructure to be managed and automated by intelligent software, rather than by the storage hardware itself. SDS turns mixed and disconnected physical disk drives into a single storage pool, helping your business best utilise existing resources. It offers unparalleled efficiency and flexibility, and can be simply managed via open standards.

In fact, Gartner estimated that by 2020, between 70% and 80% of unstructured data will be held on lower-cost storage managed by SDS environments. This clearly signifies that the allure of using SDS to reduce costs and lessen the demands on IT administrators is resonating with businesses.

Is SDS right for you?

Don’t be fooled into thinking that traditional storage infrastructures are obsolete, and that the only way into the future is through ripping and replacing. Any new system needs to be able to fit seamlessly into your company’s existing hardware and architecture.

However, it’s critical you understand that SDS is not the instant miracle many portray it to be. Making a bad decision and investing wrongly in SDS can cost your business and waste valuable time.

If you invest in an SDS solution that doesn’t work together with your existing storage architecture, you may find yourself with yet another isolated storage silo and an inability to migrate data in or out.

This means all that rich information your business is generating — the data that could help your business tap into a wealth of information and become more profitable — is a lot harder to get to than you thought.

When carefully evaluated, SDS can work together with your existing IT architecture to become an efficient, cost-effective and agile storage solution. Any enterprises who want to find out whether SDS is right for their business should begin by taking the following initial steps:

1. Do your planning — Understand what you have in your current IT environment, and how your data is being used. Think about what your storage solution needs to do for you so that you can plan to invest accordingly.
2. Don’t ignore what’s in front of you — Think about how you can reclaim your existing storage capacity, not just about purchasing new storage solutions. By doing so you can lower your costs and use the capacity you already own to deploy new applications.
3. Reassess your data — Take a good look at the data being stored to determine how critical it is to your business.
4. Merge the old and the new — SDS solutions should seamlessly integrate your old world and the new world. Look for a solution that leverages your legacy infrastructure without creating another isolated storage silo. It should also help improve efficiency by reducing power, cooling and floor space requirements.
5. Think about service level agreements — Ensure your storage strategy contains the right level of service required to support any given application. This includes performance, level of business criticality and scale to be delivered.
6. Safeguard against disruption — Your storage requirements around disaster recovery and business continuity must not be compromised, otherwise your business will be at major risk. Avoid trading off data services functionality for an initial cost benefit.
7. Understand your data protection costs — Protecting multiple copies of data stored on separate systems can be a huge cost burden. Ask yourself if you’re using the right resources for first-level defence mechanisms to protect your online digital assets. SDS provides cost-effective solutions for both online assets and protection data — meaning you can better manage costs and not pay premium fees unnecessarily.

Ultimately, storage technology is not just about buying spinning disks that meet functional requirements or fare best in a comparison spreadsheet. It’s about solving a business problem and understanding how your storage solution can play a part in helping to solve these challenges.

Achieving a successful SDS rollout requires a thoughtful and thorough investigation. In the right situation and within the right company, SDS can present that coveted solution, reducing costs while increasing agility and flexibility. However, the journey must start with these strategic steps.