Use Storage Analytics to Meet Modern Storage Management Challenges

The amount of data generated by business every day continues to grow. Because big data and analytics projects find value in every byte, all that data needs to be kept longer than ever. Managing that volume is one of the biggest challenges facing IT teams. Storage analytics can help tackle that challenge, along with other major storage management issues.

Storage Management Challenges

There are other major challenges storage teams face in addition to that sheer data volume:

• constant change. The demands for storage don’t just grow; they change. New projects and IT transformation mean the environment isn’t stable. Developing agility, whether in-house or in the cloud, is vital.

• complexity. There isn’t one type of storage and one storage vendor in your data center. The multitude of data platforms makes it difficult to track usage and identify problems. Resource pooling means ownership isn’t clear. Self-service, often used to provide agility, makes it even harder to keep on top of storage usage.

Storage Analytics to Aid Storage Management

Storage analytics can help you get a handle on your storage, both real and virtual, ensuring it’s used efficiently and backed up effectively. Potential benefits from storage analytics include:

• storage optimization. Analytics help you answer important questions about your storage, starting with the most basic: how fast is your storage being used up and who is using it. Trend analysis ensures you don’t purchase storage too soon or wait too long; you can better align your storage purchasing with utilization and demand.

• risk management. Identify where you’re at risk of failures, whether due to aging storage media or capacity utilization, and take just-in-time steps to address. Storage analytics can also help you oversee your backup process, ensuring critical data is effectively protected.

• improve performance. Analyzing disk load and average write speed helps you decide how to allocate storage to ensure applications and users receive the performance they need.

• increase visibility. Review details of storage performance and usage, including rates of data generation, types of data stored, and length of time data is kept. Analytics let you keep a closer eye on your storage. An effective analytics program provides a consolidated view of all your storage, both in the cloud and in the data center, giving you an integrated view of your storage resources.

• manage spending. Because storage analytics can help you improve your utilization, they also can help you improve your spending. Insight into trends makes budgeting more accurate. In addition, with the usage details provided by analytics, you can improve your storage chargebacks.

Storage analytics are a key tool to improve your storage management. VAST IT Services supports Aptare, which provides analytics across your entire IT infrastructure. Contact us to learn how storage analytics can help you build a more efficient storage environment.