Data Storage: It's Time to Grow Up

There are two types of data living in the data center: transactional data and reference data. Transactional is dynamic and evolving; reference is mostly static. Application policies can immediately ascertain whether data will be static or transactional, and the most efficient ways of storing each type are very different. But IT managers continue to manage information as they did 20 years ago. Why?

Today's data-storage customer has lost his voice in a sea of vendor jockeying and positioning. This glut of vendors creates a noisy industry and a crowded marketplace, where all vendors sound the same and marketing materials are nearly indistinguishable from vendor to vendor.

Directly because of this confusion, many data storage customers have chosen to stick with practices that they are familiar with, regardless of whether those behaviors prove detrimental to their storage environment. Customers have often maintained poor storage practices because the alternatives are unclear and confusing.

Even today, storage practices haven't evolved significantly since they were first implemented over 20 years ago, although the characteristics of the data being generated and stored has substantially changed. Bloated backups are causing pain, headaches and budget issues in data centers around the world. The theory that "data is stored on disk and backed up to a less expensive media" simply isn't enough anymore.

By Bobby Moulton

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