Businesses constantly pursue strategies to enhance their IT infrastructure and leverage data-driven insights to drive growth and innovation. With the rise of insights-driven enterprises, the importance of unlocking the full potential of business data has become increasingly evident.

As businesses embark on this modernization journey, they face various challenges, particularly in areas such as security and data management. To shed light on these burdens, WEI works alongside industry experts to gain valuable insights on data utilization and cybersecurity to guide customers to meaningful IT modernization.

Understanding Pain Points And Embracing Modernization

In a recent WEI podcast focused on IT infrastructure modernization and its critical role in leveraging business data effectively, experts Matt Leal, Shawn Murphy, and former White House CIO Theresa Payton discuss the practicalities and strategic importance of data modernization.

While the benefits of modernization are undeniable, challenges like cybersecurity loom large. Shawn Murphy, Cybersecurity Solutions Architect at WEI, emphasizes these burdens:

• Expanding Threat Landscape: With cloud computing, remote work, and SaaS services, the attack surface has become much larger and is constantly changing. This makes it harder to pinpoint what needs protection.
• Data Proliferation: The increase in data collection leads to an extensive attack surface. It could overwhelm security teams with information and hinder their ability to analyze it effectively.
• Inability To Stop All Breaches: News reports may highlight some breaches, but the reality is likely much worse. The FBI estimates that in losses. This doesn’t account for unreported breaches or losses like damaged reputation or privacy violations.

“Proactive measures are crucial,” Murphy explains, as WEI focuses its cybersecurity solutions heavily within the prevention phase. He also highlights the importance of developing useful metrics to measure the effectiveness of cybersecurity initiatives.

Additionally, Matt Leal, Presales Solutions Architect at WEI, shares the importance of a holistic solution. “While some industries are more advanced, any organization can progress with the right support. Our customers span various industries. Each has its own challenges, but we provide tailored solutions to overcome them.” Murphy adds that healthcare, for example, has specific data privacy regulations that may hinder cloud adoption. However, partnering with a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) like WEI can help organizations navigate these complexities and accelerate modernization.

Theresa Payton, former White House Chief Information Officer and currently the CEO at , emphasizes the importance of human-centric stories in aligning technology initiatives with business strategies. She believes that understanding the human element is crucial for successful secured digital transformation.

In this context, a strategic and holistic approach to IT modernization takes center stage. Prioritizing robust cybersecurity measures becomes essential to safeguard and enhance business operations.

To connect technology effectively with people, she suggests the following:

• Prioritize The Human Element: Understand who you serve and their needs. Whether it’s employees, customers, or any other user group, identify their goals and challenges.
• Position Technology As A Solution: Instead of merely listing features, explain how technology addresses specific needs and improves the user experience.
• Tailor Your Message: When communicating with executives, frame your message around “secured digital transformation” that supports the human user story.

By keeping the human element at the center and demonstrating how technology serves it, organizations can bridge the gap and ensure that technology empowers the people it’s meant to serve. Understanding your audience and enhancing user experiences are critical steps in achieving organizational goals through advanced solutions.

The Crucial Role of Secure Data Storage

Data-driven insights are now the cornerstone of a successful business strategy. In fact, research shows that enterprises leveraging these insights are . However, complexities mentioned by Murphy can arise from data collection, analysis, and infrastructure management. Trusted partnerships with experienced technology providers, such as the case between HPE and WEI, can be crucial in navigating these hurdles.

Data security should be a paramount concern from the very beginning, meticulously woven into every aspect of the infrastructure, from the initial capture of data all the way through to its disposal. By prioritizing data security throughout the entire process, businesses can ensure they’re building a foundation of trust with their customers and stakeholders.

The concept of “secure by design” aligns with this need. It means cybersecurity is built into technology from the start and seamlessly aligns with business objectives. As we delve into the challenges faced by organizations like yours, our experts also explore the critical security considerations surrounding data storage. Leal reinforces this by pointing out that “modern solutions are often the most secure,” underlining the importance of embracing innovation to combat evolving threats.

One such secure and adaptive modern solution is HPE Alletra. This storage platform is designed for the complexities of the modern IT landscape, functioning as an ally against data breaches. Built on the sturdy foundation of and powered by 4th Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, the Alletra series delivers on performance, scalability, and crucially, security.

By assuming breaches will happen at any time, organizations can build stronger systems. This means having good checks and balances, clear rules for data, and even special techniques to protect it.

While data security is important, Payton argues organizations have a bigger responsibility to protect everyone involved. This means thinking about how data affects people, the risk of breaches, and what they owe those who trust them.

The best companies practice a culture of “care” for data. This ensures it’s always used and stored ethically and responsibly. Organizations need to ask, “Is this data really needed, or are we just collecting it because we can?” A culture of care makes companies consider the ethical side of things too.

Final Thoughts

The key to success in today’s digital world lies in embracing innovation, leveraging data effectively and responsibly, and prioritizing far-left cybersecurity throughout your operations. Navigating modernization isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. WEI can help by offering tailored solutions and expert guidance for businesses, from implementing cutting-edge technologies to developing robust cybersecurity strategies.

Reach out to our experienced team for more insights and assistance on your modernization journey.

Next steps: In a digitally connected hybrid world, security is a shared responsibility. The weakest link can potentially expose everyone connected. That is why HPE has created a vision to make security an inherent part of all operations as it manages more than two million devices and over one exabyte of data through its expansive HPE GreenLake platform.

In this , we identify: 

• Hybrid’s impact on cybersecurity
• HPE’s vision of security
• Siloed vs. shared security
• New approaches to cybersecurity talent
• Creating your own talent pipeline
• Resilience through Zero Trust

Download:

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Picture yourself as the proud owner of a classic car, a vintage beauty you’ve painstakingly restored with a significant investment of resources. It’s more than just a car; it’s a symbol of your dedication. Data, like your classic car, is a business’s most valuable asset. Just as you wouldn’t leave the car exposed to the elements, you need to securely store and protect your organization’s information.

You wouldn’t just throw a tarp over your precious vehicle. You would place it out of the elements, away from opportunists who might see your car as an easy steal. Managing and maintaining mission-critical applications demands that same level of care and protection for your data. This is where HPE Primera comes to the rescue.

Unmatched Data Storage And Performance

When looking for a data storage solution, your enterprise needs to prioritize operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. HPE Primera stands out by offering cloud-like agility, unified data management, and new standards for resiliency and performance in an enterprise storage solution. It possesses a set of features well-suited for the modern data center environment, such as:

1. Extreme Resiliency

HPE Primera provides a 100% Availability Guarantee to ensure your data’s constant accessibility. Think of it like an easy-to-operate and reliable garage for your classic car. With automatic weekly updates and upgrades, downtime is minimal, and your data stays secure and intact.

2. Intelligent Operations

Investing in a vintage car demands a garage capable of proactive issue resolution. HPE Primera, powered by HPE InfoSight, an AI-driven intelligence platform, excels in this regard by resolving storage problems in real-time. This, in turn, reduces workloads and eliminates human errors to ensure continuous data safety.

Additionally, the HPE Primera OS offers advanced data services with simplicity and enhanced resiliency for mission-critical applications. Unlike monolithic operating systems (OS) that pose upgrade risks and necessitate node reboots, HPE Primera utilizes a services-centric OS which allows for independent deployment, upgrading, and restarting of each data service.

3. Timeless And Cost-Efficient Storage

HPE Primera provides guaranteed data reduction ratios at a flat support price, with a technology refresh every three years. This eliminates the need for costly upgrades and ensures businesses benefit from updated data storage technology.

4. Scalable Architecture

HPE Primera’s modular design offers flexibility and customization for modern businesses. It seamlessly scales to meet evolving requirements, just as your garage flexes to store more tools that contribute to maintaining your car collection.

Its container-based architecture offers:

• Streamlined multi-node configurations and provisioning.
• Effective management of both traditional and next-generation applications.

As a result, these guarantee a seamless I/O for predictable performance and low latency.

5. Hybrid Cloud Capabilities

HPE Primera is equipped with the following features to manage and migrate various workloads, including:

• Seamless integration and mobility of mission-critical apps (such as SAP HANA, VMWare, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server) to primary, secondary, and private/public cloud tiers like AWS, Scality, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
• . Businesses can restore data in mere seconds, rather than minutes or hours.

6. Security

HPE Primera prioritizes data privacy and compliance. By default, it encrypts your data and employs tamper-evident security measures to maintain data integrity. This system not only secures your data, but also actively detects and alerts you to any unauthorized access or tampering attempts.

7. Green Storage Solution

HPE Primera is not just a high-performance garage. With its , the appliance operates with minimal carbon footprint and has lower cooling costs than other Tier 0 storage solutions.

Final Thoughts

As the volume of data continues to grow, managing and maintaining mission-critical applications for your business requires high-performing and resilient storage solutions. HPE Primera is a comprehensive service that seamlessly combines cloud storage’s agility with high-end storage system performance and security.

This intelligent choice is perfect for businesses seeking efficient and reliable storage solutions. Whether you require a platform for intensive applications, hybrid cloud capabilities, data privacy, or energy efficiency, HPE Primera has you covered. Contact the storage experts at WEI and take the first step to secure your data and unlock your business’s full potential.

Next steps: In the meantime, download our free tech brief,

The post How HPE Primera’s All-In-One Solution Transforms Your Data Storage Game appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Your organization’s lifeblood – it’s data – will only grow in volume. IT leaders everywhere are managing mounds of it at their respective enterprise, but that doesn’t require owning expensive and complex hardware to store it. The focus shouldn’t be on the intricacies of data infrastructure maintenance, but rather focusing on easy, secure, and uninterrupted access to your information. In an era where many services are consumed on-demand, your data management should be no different.

Traditional storage solutions are challenging to manage, configure, and maintain. As data grows exponentially, incorrect forecasts for storage requirements leads to over-provisioning and capacity shortfalls. Data storage’s long history features expensive TCO due to required maintenance, support, and forklift upgrades.

Fortunately, the landscape of data storage has evolved, with more options and capabilities than ever before. Leading this transformation is the built-for-cloud experience, HPE Alletra Storage solutions, formerly HPE Nimble Storage.

Intelligent Data Storage

Data powers the precious analytics your business relies on for informed decision-making. Imagine if your data storage solution were intelligent as well? Imagine if it could remove the time-consuming tasks typically assigned to your data support team. This is precisely what HPE Alletra Storage delivers:

• Leveraging HPE InfoSight, the system proactively identifies and resolves 85% of issues before your team becomes aware of them.
• Alletra offers a comprehensive view across the entire infrastructure, allowing it to troubleshoot issues beyond just storage.
• Prescriptive forecasting simplifies planning by providing insights into capacity, performance, and bandwidth needs.
• By continuously learning from its installed base, the system elevates infrastructure intelligence and reliability.

AI-driven recommendations simplify data infrastructure management by accurately identifying issues between storage and VMs while pinpointing underutilized virtual resources without the need for human intervention. By proactively resolving common issues, the need for routine support is minimized, ensuring you only engage with Level-3 support specialists when necessary. This seamless transition to higher-level support ensures efficient assistance whenever required.

Resilient and Secure

It doesn’t matter how intelligent your data storage solution may be if the data it hosts is vulnerable to a cyberattack, compromise, or hardware failure. Always-on business operations hinge on the unwavering resilience of your data storage. Here’s how HPE defines resilience:

• HPE Storage All Flash Arrays offer a compelling 99.9999% guaranteed uptime.
• HPE’s Triple+ Parity RAID is engineered to withstand up to three simultaneous drive failures.
• With native app-aware backup and recovery, HPE storage arrays effortlessly send snapshots to on-premises locations or to the cloud, while also integrating with top-tier backup software.

HPE Alletra provides App-granular, FIPS-certified encryption that provides data-at-rest and over-the-wire protection along with built-in data shredding. Additionally, its Role-based Access Control empowers you to specify user account access levels based on predefined roles.

Cloud Native Storage

The and storage arrays are built for the cloud. But what does that mean? Well, it doesn’t necessarily reside in the cloud. In fact, it sits in your own rack. Here is what HPE means by cloud-ready:

• Saying goodbye to time-consuming LUN configurations by hand.
• The storage arrays can be managed from anywhere through a SaaS-based interface.
• Setup takes less than an hour. All that is required is to unpack, rack, and plug in required chords and cables. Power on and in a few clicks your new system is configured.
• Gain access to new innovative features and enhancements as soon as they are released through self-service upgrades.

The cloud is a mode of consumption and with HPE GreenLake, you can opt for data infrastructure as a service, bypassing crippling upfront capital costs. Whether you choose a pay-per-use approach or a transparent subscription model, both pave the way for improved cash flow and heightened financial agility, ensuring IT expenditure aligns with current and future business requirements.

Lower Cost and Greater Efficiency

The HPE Alletra storage arrays offer cost savings throughout their entire product lifecycle. Beginning with swift and straightforward installation, these storage arrays quickly transition your investment to production mode. These storage arrays are engineered for accelerated performance for higher throughput or I/Os per second and sub-millisecond latencies that help ensure low latency data performance.

Additionally, data written to these arrays is efficiently compressed onto dense, capacity-optimized disks. In the case of the HPE Alletra 6000, your storage footprint could be reduced anywhere from 30-75 percent due to its higher storage efficiency. Thanks to the intuitive management interface and its integration with InfoSight, administrative overhead is minimized throughout the product’s lifespan, all translating into lower costs.

Which Array Works Best For You?

In addition to the new HPE Alletra offers two other very viable storage products that were formerly under the Nimble Storage umbrella: The and the The 5000 is ideal for general purpose workloads such as VM farms, testing and development, or disaster recovery. For those who need a solution optimized for workloads with extreme latency and availability requirements, the 6000 is designed to deliver mission-critical reliability without sacrificing agility.

And of course, there is the 9000 Series, which offers these new capabilities:

• Eliminate complexity by unifying infrastructure management silos under a cloud managed single pane of glass.
• Easily manage your fleet of data infrastructure across its lifecycle with an intuitive SaaS-based user experience – accessible from anywhere and from any device.
• Developed from the foundation of HPE Primera architecture, proven to deliver ultra-low latency with 75% of I/O within 250 μs latency.
• Delivers performance density with All-NVMe for over 2 million IOPs in 4U. 1
• Support for NVMe Drive Enclosures and NVMe-oF host connectivity over Fibre Channel

As a longtime HPE partner, we are proud to showcase another example of the choice that HPE is delivering to its customers. Ultimately, HPE Alletra Storage stands as a testament to modern storage innovation, seamlessly marrying performance with simplicity, making it the ideal choice for companies looking to thrive in today’s data-driven landscape.

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Today’s virtual machine (VM) administrators are tasked with an immense challenge. They must have a wide range of experience to manage their complex VM system and support both traditional and modern applications. Additionally, they must work continuously to reduce VM sprawl. These tasks become exponentially more complicated when you factor in financial concerns. Fortunately, HPE has a solution: dHCI and GreenLake.

If you’re looking for a dHCI storage solution that helps boost the performance of your system, HPE’s and GreenLake services are worth considering. Nimble Storage provides disaggregated hyperconverged infrastructure that leverages flash and object storage to improve performance and scalability. GreenLake is also a set of services that helps you manage your Nimble Storage environment in an efficient and cost-effective way.

What Is dHCI?

HCI brings dispersed aspects of your data center together, meaning that servers, hypervisors, storage, and data management are controlled from a central platform. In other words, HCI simplifies administration duties while creating a more agile data center.

The idea of something being both disaggregated and hyperconverged might sound antithetical, but in this case, disaggregated refers to the ability to independently scale compute, network, and storage. In other words, dHCI provides a centralized administrator with increased adaptability.

With dHCI, your business can enjoy the benefits of an integrated, easily managed system without the potential complications that come from aspects of your business growing at different rates.

The Benefits Of dHCI

HPE Nimble Storage dHCI is designed for maximum efficiency and resilience. If your enterprise opts into dHCI, you can expect:

• Native, full-stack intelligence for virtualized environments. This, along with policy-based automation, makes management much easier for enterprises.
• Flexibility in your enterprise’s growth. With dHCI, enterprises scale compute and storage independently without disruption. This leads to a significant boost in efficiency and guarantees that your business’s growth matches your needs.
• Centralized data from edge to cloud. dHCI allows you to keep data in your environment for privacy and control while still benefiting from the utility of the cloud.

In addition to these benefits, HPE also employs , artificial intelligence that helps balance out potential problems that arise from always-on and always-performing applications. With HPE Infosight, your data center identifies and diagnoses performance problems and automatically resolve 85% of the issues without human intervention.

That will free your IT team to focus on aspects of your enterprise that generate and maintain business.

How GreenLake And dHCI Work Together

While dHCI offers enterprises the flexibility to implement upgrades that scale to their business, deciding which areas to prioritize is complicated. HPE’s GreenLake can help.

Here are a few of the ways GreenLake can improve what your business gets from dHCI:

• Quickly Evaluate Performance. With GreenLake, administrators can immediately evaluate the performance of new application deployments. This also helps businesses easily identify areas that need support. With this performance evaluation, GreenLake helps your organization build your VM as-a-service model.
• Unify Management. Use VMware vCenter to deploy applications and manage the resources of your enterprise.
• Get The Most From Your Data. Use flash-optimized storage to maximize responsiveness and reduce latency, providing ultra-fast I/O operations.
• Gain Reliable Access To Data. GreenLake provides up-to-date information with 9999 percent measured data availability.

With GreenLake and HPE’s Nimble Storage dHCI working in tandem, enterprise admins can rest assured knowing that they will be able to grow their data center in a way that matches the needs of their business.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a more flexible solution to match your growing enterprise’s data center needs, Nimble Storage dHCI and HPE GreenLake offer the greatest flexibility for new and established businesses. Contact the experts at WEI to start the process on lowering costs and gain better control over the data in your environment.

Contact us today to discover which tools are the right fit for you!

Next Steps: Download WEI’s executive brief, The asset expands on the tangible ways that real companies have come to use scalable intelligent storage to achieve a very real impact on their operations and bottom line.

Determining whether this type of solution fits the most pressing needs of your environment may be another story, however. That’s why there are several intelligent storage solutions worth exploring in this landscape.

The post Boost Your VM System With HPE’s DHCI and GreenLake appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Keeping your data, applications, and services up to date is a challenge made even more complex by cloud migration strategies that spread capacity across multiple on- and off-premise environments. This can make it difficult to ensure you always have enough storage for everything. However, imagine having the ability to manage your data storage effortlessly and securely across all locations with a single, unified console. This tool would not only provision and configure your arrays, but also provide you with the flexibility of choosing pricing models that best suit your company size and budget. This is where comes in. Let’s explore.

Simplifying Data Storage & Infrastructure

HPE Alletra offers a comprehensive data infrastructure solution that enables customers to move from managing and maintaining data storage in-house to accessing it as an on-demand service. With hybrid cloud data protection, users can access their datasets anywhere with maximum agility while maintaining security across multiple environments from edge-to-cloud. This makes the process of storing large amounts of data easier than ever before.

Businesses can transform their data infrastructure with HPE Alletra and free themselves from the hassle of owning, upgrading, and fine-tuning on-premise storage. With this service, you can access data anywhere while without compromising on efficiency – leading to operational time savings.

HPE Alletra storage solutions offer a wide range of options for customers, depending on their specific application and workload requirements. Three array families are available – the 5000 series, 6000 series, and 9000 series – each featuring various drive configurations to ensure maximum performance in any environment. is the latest addition to their portfolio, and revolutionizes data storage with hybrid cloud data protection, giving customers the ultimate capacity and consumption options at competitive prices. With this leading-edge solution, businesses can now store their data more securely while significantly reducing costs. The luxury of accessing and utilizing as you go is becoming more and more commonplace in the consumption model era.

Improving Financial Agility

The HPE Alletra portfolio improves data storage and hybrid cloud data protection with the assistance of . Enterprises can access a flexible as-a-service consumption model that supports overcoming CapEx budget constraints and complex procurement cycles with HPE GreenLake. With guidance from partners like WEI, HPE Alletra makes it even easier for organizations to get the storage resources they need with optimized tiers delivered in just days – providing scalability on-demand as well as buffer capacity for surprise workloads or sudden usage spikes. Businesses get the best of both worlds with these data storage solutions: pay-per-use flexibility or a managed turnkey solution that helps companies free up cash flow while increasing financial agility.

Furthermore, companies can say goodbye to hefty upfront costs and hello to a convenient, monthly subscription with HPE Alletra 5000. Cloud consumption allows you to speed up project deployment times while freeing up both capital and IT resources. By aligning spending with business needs, this system provides financial flexibility as well as improved operational agility.

HPE Strengthens Hybrid Cloud Data Protection

As data becomes more valuable and critical to businesses, the difficulties of backing up, recovering, and managing it are growing. Data growth is accelerating exponentially, which increases pressure on costs while intensifying risk. As IT infrastructures move toward a hybrid cloud model with applications spread over various environments (data centers, private clouds, and public clouds), protecting them has become an increasingly complex task.

is a comprehensive solution designed to protect VMware virtual machines (VMs) across hybrid cloud environments with the convenience of software as a service (SaaS). HPE Alletra customers can benefit from this service as well as local snapshots for fast data restores, on-premise backups for rapid recovery, plus cost effective long-term storage in the cloud.

With HPE Alletra and HPE Backup and Recovery Services, organizations can enjoy peace of mind knowing their valuable information won’t be compromised. HPE’s advanced security solutions protect VMs from potential or malware attacks while offering a cost-effective approach across hybrid clouds.

Learn More About HPE’s Data Storage Offerings

HPE has transformed the way businesses operate, offering cutting-edge cloud solutions that maximize productivity and minimize costs. For more than 20 years, WEI has proudly partnered with HPE to access their latest storage offerings – allowing us to help enterprises gain maximum value from their data infrastructure investments. Get in touch today for more information on how you can manage your data with these powerful data infrastructure solutions.

Next Steps: In a recent WEI study, 52% of IT decision makers indicated plans to invest in upgrades and maintenance of storage solutions in the next two years. Our experts have identified four smart storage strategies to compete in today’s digital world. Download our free tech brief below!

The post Unlock Financial Agility, Data Protection For Your Hybrid Storage Needs appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Enterprises modernizing their IT infrastructure to keep up with the demand of a changing workforce need more from their storage providers. With the work-from-anywhere model here to stay, an enterprise storage solution that offers on-demand, always-on, and easy-to-use services is a must.

As more enterprises move forward with their modernization efforts to support this shift in the workforce, agility is a key requirement of high-end storage. It is clear that the more purpose-built, statically defined scale-up designs of the past need to give way to more software-defined, modular scale-out designs.

Modern enterprises need a high-end storage solution that leverages AI/ML technologies, in combination with automation and continuous availability, to improve and simplify routine management tasks at scale. It is also important to be able to operate in hybrid cloud environments while also delivering a rich, secure storage management operating system.

There is one high-end storage solution that meets all these requirements and more: HPE Primera Intelligent Storage. Keep reading to learn 10 reasons why HPE Primera meets your enterprise’s high-end storage needs.

10 Reasons Why Your Enterprise Needs HPE Primera Intelligent Storage

1. Global Intelligence: With HPE InfoSight embedded into HPE Primera, disruptions are predicted and prevented in real-time to help optimize performance.
2. Services-centric OS: Mission-critical apps benefit from reduced risk and enhanced resiliency with HPE Primera’s simplified and unique OS for high-end storage without node reboots for most updates.
3. 100% availability guarantee: Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, HPE Primera analyzes application patterns while also predicting and preventing disruptions across the infrastructure. The solution also provides business continuity with automatic site failover. With no disruptions, corruptions, or delays using app-aware resiliency across all models, HPE Primera provides a 100% availability guarantee.
4. Timeless storage: This all-inclusive software provides a unique ownership experience with unending value. You won’t pay for additional features and enhancements, and the software will update every three years.
5. Radical simplicity: With HPE Primera, your time spent deploying, managing, and scaling your storage needs is reduced up to 93%. HPE Primera is able to tune itself and implement upgrades without slowing your ability to serve your customers.
6. As-a-service consumption: Using HPE Primera with HPE Greenlake offers you the ability to consume IT on your terms. Get exactly what you need when you need it with its ability to use high-end storage-as-a-service capabilities.
7. Intelligence and composability: HPE Primera’s integration with HPE Synergy advances the cloud experience, providing a foundation of composability for any workload.
8. All-active architecture: Every volume within your storage architecture is able to access every SSD, node, and port, providing nonstop availability and low latency for fast performance at scale.
9. Extreme scalability: HPE Primera has made scaling high-end storage a breeze using multi-node transparent upgrades. Your storage needs are able to grow with the needs of your enterprise, intelligently adjusting to your unique business demands.
10. Hybrid cloud mobility: Extend your protection to the cloud. With less cost and complexity, HPE Primera’s cloud mobility delivers:

• Flash speed
• Application-integrated data protection
• Copy data management
• Data mobility

Seamlessly, securely, and cost-effectively move your enterprise’s data across primary, secondary, and private/public cloud tiers. With a simple cloud-based archive or disaster recovery option, you’re able to use your on-premises infrastructure for fast, reliable operational recovery.

Ready To Redefine Your High-End Storage?

HPE Primera is redefining high-end storage to ensure that modern needs are being met as simply and easily as possible. Problems that plague more traditional storage systems, such as risky upgrades and complex management systems, are fixed through intelligent design to keep enterprises going strong through their modernization efforts. If you’re ready to make the change now, contact WEI to begin building a custom solution for your business.

Next Steps: As the title of our refreshed executive brief eludes to, we have identified four smart storage strategies to help your company compete in today’s digital world. Such strategies have already proven to help companies be better prepared for their new normal. Click here to read and download

The post 10 Reasons HPE Primera Meets Your Enterprise High-End Storage Needs appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Companies have spent the past decade racing to achieve their digital transformation. One of the primary means of achieving this objective is through the cloud – a simple solution to a complex problem.

The problem is that there isn’t just one cloud. The found that “84% of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy.” Hybrid cloud environments are challenging enough by themselves, but things have grown even more complex due to the adoption of another IT architecture, edge computing. In a rush to migrate everything to the cloud, we found the cloud isn’t the optimal environment for everything in an enterprise.

Problems With Configuring Modern Environments

When it comes to cloud migration the hybrid cloud environment doesn’t necessarily equate to multi-cloud interoperability. Enterprises face challenges when it comes to integrating all their clouds into a single ecosphere in order to create a framework that routes workflows in an automated fashion amongst themselves.

The practice of uploading all data to the cloud for processing adds too much latency for some mission critical operations. Additionally, many companies have had to face real costs that often exceed those anticipated. While OPEX cost modeling has significant advantages over CAPEX, it doesn’t always equal lower expenses. Now, IT leaders find it cheaper to run things back on-premises. Enterprises need to attain a multi-cloud infrastructure in order to define and create policies to improve efficiencies, accelerate deployments and minimize security risks across their entire cloud portfolio.

How Nutanix Supports A Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environment

It’s obvious that enterprises can’t regress back to on-premise infrastructures. Too many executives have witnessed the enormous impact digital transformation has had in terms of greater innovation and profitability. The solution is a next-generation hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) HCI is cloud-like technology, but it isn’t restricted to the cloud.

is a combination of servers and storage in a distributed infrastructure platform with intelligent software to create flexible building blocks that replace on-premise infrastructure. It consists of separate services, storage networks, and storage arrays. Advanced HCI solutions today can manage enterprise applications in a hybrid cloud environment. No more choosing between public or private cloud. The unifying nature of today’s leading HCI solutions puts you in charge of what goes where. Latency sensitive processes and compliance abiding applications can reside on local infrastructure while other apps can be assigned to their optimum cloud environment. On top of that, admins can then manage both their private and public cloud infrastructures through a single management plane, eliminating the need to bounce between interfaces and portals to manage everything.

Today’s advanced HCI solutions can create a borderless IT estate in which silos are a thing of the past. No need to purchase a bunch of servers and pair them with an external storage solution while connecting it all together with a network switch. Because they were purchased separately you never benefited from purchasing the best of breed for every component. You may have ended up with a complex mesh of compartmentalized equipment that required training and kept you in a proprietary lockdown. Additionally, the implementation and upgrade processes were so expensive, enterprises embraced the practice of oversizing their infrastructures for future growth.

How HCI Continues To Grow

The recent challenges presented by the global pandemic showed how critical the need for great elasticity really is in the . This has accelerated the transition to multi-cloud infrastructures that utilize the appropriate mix of both private and public clouds.

Today’s advanced Nutanix’s HCI solutions are designed for this new era. HCI allows you to create heterogeneous clusters that can accommodate hybrid cloud environments that include multiple CPU generations, all-flash storage, and multiple hypervisors. Additionally, HCI significantly condenses the footprint of your data center or edge computing environment. You also have the ability to choose your hardware preference. You can select the most optimal cloud for your apps and business needs. HCI has the potential to deliver turnkey infrastructure for any app at any scale, across any location, whether it’s an on-premises data center, computing edge location or public cloud service. This cross-platform mobility gives enterprises the duality to run enterprise applications through multi-cloud infrastructures without any code change.

In a world without borders, you need an enterprise hybrid cloud environment that is void of borders as well, one that provides frictionless agility, management simplicity and fractional consumption of services regardless of where they reside, Nutanix’s HCI is innately designed for this.

Next Steps: We’ve helped countless enterprise IT teams transform their business with Nutanix. Leverage our team’s knowledge and expertise to discuss how you can achieve a next-gen HCI solution customized for your business needs. Sign up for a commitment-free conversation with our Nutanix expert, Mark Gabryjelski today!

The post Next Gen HCI: How Nutanix Can Support Your Hybrid Multi-Cloud Environments appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

How much data is your enterprise creating and what are you doing about it? For most companies, data is being created, and subsequently stored, at faster and faster rates. However, many enterprises lack the tools to properly utilize and take advantage of their data, especially those that are still struggling with just the part of the equation.

As technology has advanced, we’ve moved from storing information on tapes to disks and now, in modern times, the cloud. By utilizing the cloud for data storage and processing, enterprises gain great benefits, but no solution is without its costs.

The main issue comes when the data stored on the cloud needs to be utilized by services on-prem or in the data center. is helping to solve this problem and liberate enterprises from the confines of data siloes with their new Keep reading to learn how this solution is redefining cloud data storage.

Find Freedom In Data Management

While a vast majority of enterprises are utilizing the cloud for some amount of data storage, few have utilized it for critical file data, often citing difficulties in moving it one way or the other. As a result, the data lives separately than the applications that need it, reducing the effectiveness and utilization of this data. To get around this problem, some IT teams have re-built workflows to use data while it’s in the cloud, but this comes with its own set of problems.

The bottom line is there hasn’t been a simple solution to solve these cloud data storage and utilization issues… Until now.

Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 allows IT teams to fluidly move data to and from Amazon S3 with just a few clicks, simplifying the cloud storage process and streamlining interactions with other Amazon Web Services as well.

“I like to think of [Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3] as the easiest way for customers to put their file data to work with all the amazing marketplace apps and cloud native services on AWS,” said Qumulo Technical Marketing Manager David Sniderman, with ESG Senior Analyst Scott Sinclair. “Our file system is designed to help users take advantage of the cloud’s scalable infrastructure for high performance data processing and content creation. Shift lets customers take that data, wherever they create it, and use it with AWS Cloud Service.”

With Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3, Qumulo customers, whether cloud native or creating data on prem, can take that valuable file data and use it with Amazon’s full suite of cloud services.

Why Enterprises Choose Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3

In addition to this simplified data management, enterprises will experience a variety of other benefits, including:

• Improved data availability for your users, wherever they might be located. In a time when many businesses are utilizing remote or , this is a benefit that cannot be overestimated.
• Realtime visibility and control over data and users. Potential issues can be found quicker and any decisions that must be made regarding the management of data will benefit from a full and accurate picture of the current data environment.
• Better data reliability and protection. Thanks to Qumulo’s distributed file system, which aggregates and protects cloud storage, enterprises never have to worry about files lost in the cloud. Secondary copies of data are created by native replication, which adds an additional layer of data protection.
• Lowered total cost of ownership (TCO). In comparison to legacy solutions, Qumulo Shift for Amazon S3 costs less and offers a higher percentage of provisioned capacity.
• Flexibility. Qumulo offers a flexible deployment model, allowing enterprises to create the environment that best suits their performance and capacity needs.

At the heart of it, is making it easier for enterprises to keep their data next to their applications, allowing it to be utilized to meet business objectives.

Are You Interested In Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3?

As a leader in data management, Qumulo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, and some of the largest research facilities around the world. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo. Our team has experience implementing Qumulo for enterprise companies that process and analyze vast amounts of mission-critical data across several industries. today to learn more about how Qumulo can quickly add value to your data storage environment and strategy.

NEXT STEPS: Check out our latest infographic which shares 7 ways Qumulo is making cloud data storage radically simple. PLUS it includes a case study example of how one of our customers found success leveraging Qumulo with AWS. Click below to learn more.

The post How Qumulo Shift For Amazon S3 Can Revolutionize Your Data Storage appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

It’s no secret that HPE has been on the forefront of storage innovation for some time. Even with that knowledge, HPE’s is still an exciting moment for IT leaders everywhere.

In this article, we’ll break down the most important points of HPE’s recent announcements and new offerings, as well as how they can help you leverage your data to make decisions that will drive your business forward.

What Are The Specific Problems HPE Is Trying To Solve?

To really understand HPE’s goals with their new storage offerings, it’s important to have a clear idea of the specific data storage problems they set out to solve when designing them.

First and foremost is the amount of data that organizations are faced with. New digital efforts have resulted in more data than ever before, and with increased cyber threats, as well as rising expectations to utilize data, enterprises are left with a very complex situation that requires manual management for many IT organizations. , this complexity “creates risk and comes at a cost to innovation and time-to-market.”

For those organizations that have transformed their data storage to reduce the burden on IT through artificial intelligence (AI), self-service, policy-based automation or other strategies, the problem of complexity still remains.

This complexity is exactly the challenge HPE has tackled with their latest cloud-native storage offerings, which aim to streamline operations and provide simplicity for .

The latest in As-A-Service: HPE’s New Cloud Console

The new is a SaaS-based console that delivers unified data operations as a service, drastically reducing the need for manual data and infrastructure management.

When designing the console, , “a unique, cloud-native architecture, shared with the Aruba Edge Services Platform, and is designed to abstract and control infrastructure and data workflows across the data lifecycle and infrastructure lifecycle from edge-to-cloud.”

By utilizing as its technological foundation, the console ensures enterprises experience the secure management experience of on-premises environments, but with the agility of the cloud.

The Data Services Cloud Console is also helping organizations focus less on managing their data and more on utilizing it to their advantage by speeding app development and deployment, eliminating data silos, and offering the cloud experience regardless of the location of the data.

Maintain Data Infrastructure With HPE Cloud Data Services

Through this suite of software subscription services, data administrators can simplify and automate data infrastructure management, regardless of the location or scale of the data.

Among its other benefits, these subscription services will:

• Enable self-service
• Offer on-demand provisioning
• Eliminate guesswork
• Allow enterprises to optimize service level objectives

Master Edge-To-Cloud With HPE Alletra

With all of their new storage offerings, HPE is simplifying and reducing the need for manual management of data, and is no exception.

is a portfolio of cloud-native data infrastructure solutions that can support data no matter where it lives, from edge-to-cloud. Powered by the aforementioned Data Services Console, HPE Alletra is also delivered as-a-service, helping enterprises stay financially flexible.

Best of all, the portfolio has been built with today’s diverse application and infrastructure needs in mind, delivering the architectural flexibility enterprises need, without the added complexity of legacy data infrastructure.

HPE Is Changing The Storage Game

With these innovations, it’s clear that HPE is committed to helping customers leverage their data to make decisions that propel businesses forward.

Other advancements in their storage solutions over the past few years, including HPE Infosight, and now these new storage-as-a-service offerings, give enterprises a way to finally conquer the data management problem and get out from underneath the mountains of data that today’s digital world creates.

Questions about HPE’s New Storage Offerings?

As a global, edge-to-cloud company, HPE is helping enterprises implement solutions that improve productivity and reduce costs through cloud solutions. Here at WEI we get access to new HPE offerings thanks to our Platinum Partner status so we can fully understand how these solutions will benefit our customers. Contact WEI today to start a discussion about HPE’s game-changing storage announcements.

NEXT STEPS: Spend less time managing infrastructure and more time focused on the projects that matter most. Find out how HPE’s Intelligent Data Platform powered by HPE InfoSight can keep you in the know about infrastructure performance and how it can proactively heal and patch problems before you even know they exist! Read our tech brief below for more information.

The post Why HPE’s New Storage Offerings Matter To You appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

One of the greatest challenges faced by today’s enterprises is managing their ever-increasing volumes of data. Over time, the volume, location and importance of data have all evolved, and legacy solutions can no longer keep up.

Enterprises need a solution that can offer the support for not only the volume of data, but also differing file types, data locations, applications, and workloads. To meet this need, Qumulo has built a that directly fulfills the data-related needs of today’s enterprises.

In this two-part series, we are discussing the top 8 reasons should be a part of your cloud strategy. Check out part one for the first four ways that Qumulo is helping enterprises manage data.

5. Qumulo is a leader in data storage

Beyond the many customer reviews and testimonials in favor of the solution, Qumulo has also been recognized as a leader for the third year in a row in the .

by 2024, “large enterprises will triple their unstructured data stored as file or object storage on-premises, at the edge or in the public cloud, compared to 2020.”

For this and many other reasons, it’s more important than ever for enterprises to take charge of the way their data is handled, stored, and utilized.

6. Immense return on investment

Data management is often a time and resource sink, with many hours of administration needed from IT to properly secure and store it. For this reason alone, brings customers immense ROI just by reducing the amount of time typically needed by IT to administer the data platform.

Because Qumulo is programmable and infinitely scalable, Qumulo lets customers take advantage of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to move data as needed, making sure your applications and users have access whenever they need it.

Additionally, as helps enterprises simplify data management, customers will find that in addition to cost and time savings, the enterprise will be able to better utilize data to direct and improve business objectives.

7. Qumulo provides freedom of choice

When it comes to cloud computing, enterprises rarely utilize just one cloud platform. Qumulo supports this by offering customers the and the ability to choose environments on public cloud, in the data center, or at the edge.

File data can be integrated with any application on Windows, Mac, or Linux, and customers are not locked in with one specific vendor or infrastructure.

8. Qumulo lowers operational costs

In addition to the massive return on investment that Qumulo offers to customers, it also lowers operational costs in general. Data storage costs are lowered as customers use the full capacity of their storage, and there is no penalty for small files. This means that customers utilizing Qumulo in their data center will have more storage and less cost per-rack.

Other cost savings come from reduced staff time for data management and reduced hardware maintenance costs, as well as cost-effective performance supported by AI and machine learning.

Qumulo is revolutionizing data management

When building , Qumulo zeroed in on exactly what challenges IT professionals face when it comes to data management and set out to address them. With this customer-first approach, Qumulo is changing the data management game and transforming the way enterprises view data.

With the smarter data management provided by Qumulo, enterprises can see in real time what is happening with their data and make better business decisions. Should problems arise, the platform offers the visibility IT teams need to diagnose and fix them, instead of just buying more storage as a stop gap solution.

Are you interested in Qumulo?

As a leader in data management, Qumulo has helped enterprises around the globe manage over 200 billion files. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo.

This blog post is part of a 2-part series about the benefits of leveraging Qumulo for enterprise data management. If you missed the first post, click here to read part one.

NEXT STEPS: Continue reading about Qumulo in our tech brief below to learn how Qumulo is enabling high performance productivity across distributed enterprises and remote workforces.

The post 8 Reasons Qumulo Should Be Part Of Your Cloud Strategy, Part 2 appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

When it comes to challenges faced by today’s IT organizations, there are few as universal as data management. In the last two decades, the volume of data that enterprises are expected to utilize, secure, and manage has increased exponentially. The location of that data has also changed, with much of it moving to the cloud or hybrid environments.

Raising the stakes even further, the value of data has increased as well. An enterprise that isn’t making use of the data it has, isn’t securing it properly, or isn’t ensuring users have access to the data they need to be productive will fail.

To stay on top of this constant flow of data, enterprises require a solution that can offer the support for not only the volume of data, but also differing file types, data locations, applications, and workloads.

In this two-part series, we’ll discuss the top 8 reasons should be a part of your cloud strategy. This first article will share our first four reasons. (Read part 2 here.)

1. Qumulo simplifies management of enterprise data

Complexity is a major factor in the amount of time and resources IT must dedicate to data management. When it comes to managing cloud data, which may exist in a combination of private and public clouds, it gets even worse.

With Qumulo, enterprises gain a unified data management experience across on-premises, private, and public environments, offering , regardless of scale.

Several key features, including the ability to migrate applications to the cloud without rewriting/refactoring, the ability to automate DevOps workflows with advanced API, and a quick and easy setup process, all contribute to this simplicity.

Enterprises who make the switch will immediately see and experience the time and cost benefits of Qumulo’s simple management system.

2. Manage the full data lifecycle

To fully take advantage of the data collected by the enterprise, it can’t be inert. Data has its own lifecycle and through Qumulo, enterprises can manage each stage of it.

The cycle, , is as follows:

• Capture – The data is first captured by the enterprise
• Interact – The data begins to be interacted with by users at the enterprise
• Transform – The data is utilized and transformed for use by the enterprise
• Publish – The data is published for consumption by the enterprises target audience
• Archive – After running its initial course, the data is archived for later use or reference

With Qumulo, enterprises can manage data throughout its lifecycle with a single solution, giving IT unparalleled visibility across the enterprise and making it easy to find and catalogue individual pieces of data as necessary.

3. Proven in every industry

Data management is a problem for every enterprise, regardless of scale or industry, and Qumulo can assist with them all.

Whether your enterprise is in healthcare, media and entertainment, manufacturing, or anything in between, Qumulo can provide the cloud data management solution you need to be successful.

4. Qumulo has a broad range of use cases

Just as Qumulo can provide for enterprises in every industry, it also has a broad range of use cases.

Beyond just helping enterprises manage business data, Qumulo has a wide range of use cases from helping customers analyze data to develop new technologies, to providing support for video surveillance systems responsible for student safety, to supporting aerial imaging that is key to disaster response.

More than just data management

As detailed above, . By engaging with Qumulo, you can finally tap into the true potential of the data you collect and utilize it to not only inform your strategic decisions, but completely transform the way you do business.

Stay tuned for part two of this article series where we will discuss the next four reasons Qumulo should be part of your cloud strategy.

Are you interested in Qumulo?

As a leader in , Qumulo is trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major film and animation studios, and some of the largest research facilities around the world. From building smart cars, to vital disease research, enterprises around the world are changing the way they store and utilize data thanks to Qumulo.

This blog post is part 1 of a 2-part series about the benefits of leveraging Qumulo for enterprise data management. Continue on to part 2 here >>

NEXT STEPS: Learn 7 ways Qumulo can meet your data needs as you grow and scale in our tech brief below, “Critical Data Storage for a Distributed Enterprise.”

The post 8 Reasons Qumulo Should Be Part Of Your Cloud Strategy, Part 1 appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

We all make mistakes. Some of them have consequences that are more lasting than others are. When it comes to choosing a data storage solution, you can make many common scale-out mistakes. These mistakes can turn your new data storage infrastructure into the gift that keeps on giving. One of the biggest challenges when purchasing data storage is predicting how much storage capacity you really need. It is the most fundamental of considerations. Failing to account for future data growth will leave you scrambling to purchase additional storage sooner than you want to. However, it is just as detrimental to pay for more storage than you need in the near term, especially if that extra space is never used. Overpaying for storage today ties up capital that can be better utilized investing in current opportunities that can return value to your organization.

Scale-up vs Scale-out storage

One of the reasons that people make the mistake of paying for far more storage than they need is that they do not understand the difference between scale-up and scale-out storage. Most IT admins are familiar with the concept of scale-up storage even if they do not recognize the term. Also referred to as vertical scaling, it has served as the traditional architecture for block and file storage platforms. The typical system consists of a pair of redundant controllers that manage multiple shelves of disks. As your storage needs grow, you simply purchase more shelves. The concept sounds simple. While purchasing additional shelves does provide access to new disk technology and price efficiencies, your I/O performance remains throttled by the technology and resources of the stagnant controllers. And there is the fact there is a hard limit to how many shelves the controllers can manage. Once that shelf threshold is reached, you must purchase a new complete controller/shelf package. Then, there comes the day when you must upgrade the system. That is when you bring in the forklift and migrate all of your data to the newer system.

Scale-out storage is known as horizontal scaling and utilizes network-attached storage architecture. Rather than utilizing a series of controller-based shelves, scale-out storage consists of a series of interdependent appliances with each one serving as a complete system by itself. At the same time, you can configure these modules to act as a single cluster. Much like , you can add additional storage appliances like Lego blocks. Capacity of the cluster is automatically then expanded and new data is distributed. There is no need for separate controllers however as all of the required resources reside in the module itself. This means you get more than just added capacity. Additional RAM, CPU and networking resources can be leveraged to improve overall performance of the cluster.

Dell EMC Isilon

If the concept of scale-out storage sounds interesting, then you should become familiar with Dell EMC Storage. That is because according to IDC, Dell EMC Isilon is the industry’s #1 family of network-attached storage systems according to IDC in 2019. Some of the available choice in the Isilon family include the following:

• For those who want the high performance of an all flash array (AFA) there are the Isilon F800 and F810 models that feature up to 250K IOPS and up to 924 TB capacity per chassis
• Those who want the agility of a hybrid architecture will want to learn more about the Isilon H series that offers both SSD and SATA drives within a dense chassis design that can save you 75 percent in rack space
• For those seeking an archiving solution there is the Isilon A200 and A2000 units that are designed to safeguard data with encryption, data protection and efficiency at a lower cost

The right storage solution

Dell EMC has other storage architectures as well. If the need for speed is imperative, then Dell’s SCM persistent storage class memory line of primary storage solutions may be perfect. The PowerMax 8000 holds the title of the fastest storage array and delivers end-to-end NVMe storage class memory. It features 4 PB of effective storage capacity and a blazing 350GB per second bandwidth. For those seeking a simple next generation midrange storage solution there is the Dell EMC Unity XT family, built from the ground up to deliver unified storage speed and efficiency. Next generation means that it is built for a multi-cloud world and comes in both AFA and . In fact, Dell has a solution for just about every storage need, of any organization. What’s more, has solutions specifically designed for industries such as healthcare and media as well as defined workloads such as SAP and AI.

Connections Matter

Your data storage arrays do not work in isolation however. Your arrays can have the fastest I/O speeds available but without the equitable network infrastructure connecting them, your system cannot achieve optimum performance. It is a common mistake. Cheap connections can breed performance problems. If you currently depend on SANs for your storage needs, then consider the line of Directors and Switches. Connectrix directors and switches are designed to bring the best performance and scalability to your storage networks. Ensure high availability and support for Fibre Channel, FICON, FCiP and NVMe over Fabrics.

How WEI can help

Dell EMC has the storage solution to accommodate nearly any data strategy. Chances are that data strategy has changed quite a bit over the years and it may be time to revisit that strategy. Talk to the WEI data storage experts to ensure your data strategy and its supporting architecture will help drive your desired business outcomes. Storage can be complicated, confusing, and costly without the right strategy in place.

NEXT STEPS: Learn about these six scale-out storage mistakes to avoid in our video below.

The post An Enterprise Storage Solution for Everyone (Thanks DellEMC!) appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.

Some purchases require more planning than others do. This is certainly true when it comes to investing in a data storage solution. While applications may come and go, your company’s data lives on. Your data drives the majority of your business operations. One can argue that outside of your Internet gateway, no other facet of the data center has a greater impact on business operations and workloads.

As a result, your storage infrastructure serves as a functional foundation for your business and choosing a data infrastructure solution requires greater diligence than other enterprise components. Just as there are best practices to implementing a data storage solution, there are best practices when it comes to purchasing one as well. We’ve compiled a few dos and don’ts concerning the enterprise storage purchasing process.

Do buy for tomorrow and not today

There are some things you buy to fill an immediate need. Data storage is not one of them. Just as smart homebuyers purchase a first home that will accommodate the needs of a growing family, data storage is a long-term acquisition. You are buying into the future. A by IDC shows that the amount of data residing in the world today doubles every two years. Though that dramatic growth rate may not be indicative of your own environment, it is a universal truth that your organization will create and ingest more data a year from now. Failure to overlook future data growth has definite repercussions. The purchasing process is too elongated and migrations can be too involved and costly to repeat it all again in a couple of years.

Don’t underestimate data growth

If you are going to buy for tomorrow, you need to know what tomorrow looks like. Most of your company’s data is created outside of the IT department. Make it a point to meet with department heads throughout your company to learn about their needs. Their anticipated application deployments will increase data expansion. Meet with senior executives to discuss possible acquisitions or mergers as events such as these can exponentially escalate storage needs overnight.

Do think about your storage environment as a whole

Your data center is a collective assembly of infrastructure nodes and technologies. You cannot optimize server workloads by only considering RAM and CPU allotment. The same applies to storage. Your storage arrays are not islands. Your storage array may have the fastest IOPs but its surrounding infrastructure environment can undermine its performance potential. Make sure you have the right networking strategy to take advantage of high performance storage across your entire enterprise.

Don’t just compare storage size

While careful consideration of future data growth is an essential step, storage availability goes beyond the mere presence of physical storage space. Modern day storage solutions incorporate a number of data reduction technologies to maximize available space such as thin provisioning, compression and deduplication. Make sure you understand these supplemental technologies and understand that different vendors use different equation sets to arrive at their incremental savings targets. Data reduction methodologies can also reduce your overall storage footprint. equates to lower costs concerning space, power and cooling.

Do compare apples to apples

Data storage is a lot more complicated than it was a decade ago. Make sure you understand the difference between HDD and SSD technology. HDD is cheaper but requires more power to spin the disks. Solid-state drives are much faster and have less moving parts; however, not all of your data will justify the initial cost. There is also hybrid storage that incorporates both types. Make sure you understand the ratio of HHD and SSD and the role that SSD will play.

Don’t let initial pricing restrict your options

We all know that price should never be the sole driving factor for something as important as your storage infrastructure, yet it is an easy trap due to the high cost of storage. CAPEX however, is not the only involved cost for today’s modern data storage solutions. You consider long term operational and support costs as well. Savings initiated from data reduction technologies, drive consolidation and management efficiencies all help to reduce the TCO of modern . Some vendors also offer leasing options as well as flex capacity options in which you only pay for the storage you currently use.

Do plan for long purchasing and education cycles

If you have not kept track of data storage innovation since your last purchase, there is going to be a learning curve to catch up. Common best practices within the data storage industry have changed a lot in the past five years. Chances are that any assumptions made during your last product cycle are outdated today. It is about more than just file or block storage today. Begin the preliminary stages of your next product cycle early enough to educate yourself. Taking the time to speak with your peers about their own experiences will pay off. You can also speak with the storage experts at WEI who will take the time to understand the future needs of your environment to help construct a strategy for you.

Do consider Dell Storage Solutions and WEI

There are many options available today when it comes to storage, and you need a vendor that provides many types of solutions. The portfolio of storage solutions available from Dell Technologies can help you unlock the value of your data. for nearly every conceivable environment:

• Primary storage solutions designed to accelerate your critical workloads from core to edge to cloud
• Managed control of your unstructured data by efficiently consolidating wide ranges of file and object storage at any scale
• Automated management and AI help attain greater efficiencies, performance and reliability
• Data solutions specifically designed for specific environments such as SAP or cloud services
• Data solutions that meet the unique needs of given industries such as healthcare or multimedia

Dell manufactures the solutions, and WEI customizes them to the varying needs of our customers. WEI is a premier technology partner that is also passionate about storage and solving technology problems for our customers. Let WEI educate you about your storage options in order to liberate the value and innovation that lies within your residing data.

NEXT STEPS: Explore more Dos and Don’ts of Enterprise Storage decisions.
Over the years WEI’s storage experts have seen it ALL! Find out what we’ve learned about storage strategies across a variety of industries and check out these helpful tips for planning your enterprise storage needs. Contact us any time for a storage strategy review.

The post Exploring the Dos and Don’ts of Enterprise Storage appeared first on IT Solutions Provider - IT Consulting - Technology Solutions.