Data centres re-emerge as cure for storage stress
Data centres re-emerge as cure for storage stress
A recent survey by StorageTek has revealed that medium and large organisations are planning on consolidating and relocating their server and storage infrastructure inside data centres.
It is hoped that these centres will reduce costs, provide better operational control and improve data protection.
The survey, which covered 138 medium and large Australian organisations, found that the reason for these data centres is to help businesses deal with growing storage requirements and declining storage budgets.
Philip Blecher, Managing Director of StorageTek Australia/New Zealand said: "Server and storage consolidation is being driven by the need for better management of the IT environment. Almost all organisations are experiencing data storage growth in 2004, with the vast majority having to accommodate this within a static or shrinking storage budge. Like last year, organisations have to find ways to store more for less."
"The reality of IT disasters and the risk posed by inadequate business continuity plans have sunk in. Organisations are realising that these are better managed in a data centre environment. Additionally, the huge increase in storage and proliferation of servers needs to be controlled from a cost management perspective, and centralising can bring about economies of scale in hardware, software and operational costs. Most importantly, the data centre environment allows trained IT staff to manage the IT equipment."
He added that it was a serious concern that four in ten organisations had some of their mission critical servers or storage outside a data centre when research has shown that the most common causes of major down-time are not earth shattering events like earthquake and fire but mundane things like power failure, storm damage and flooding from burst pipes. According to Belcher, most data is lost, not from disaster or virus attack but from human error, software failure or device failure, but data centres allow organisations to do a better job of managing these risks.
StorageTek's survey has revealed that more than seven in ten medium and large organisations in Australia were planning or considering consolidating or relocating more server and storage infrastructure into a data centre. Less than three in ten said they weren't.
David Cowell, StorageTek's Principal Consultant for Global Data Centre Services explained why data centres are so valuable: "They provide a much more secure and robust environment for mission critical data because the hardware and software are far more protected. We are living in an age where is it so important to take care of SLAs, so Data centres provide an area where the data is least likely to be lost. Dual power supplies, dual CPUs in servers and lockable power points, for example, provide better protection in the case of a natural disaster, power or air condition failure which would cause the data to be lost in other systems."
He added that multiple back-up systems and tighter monitoring disciplines are another reason why organisations are beginning to favour these data centres again.
Related Article: