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Storage device: Before you purchase

Greg Schulz EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Greg Schulz

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QUESTION POSED ON: 14 May 2007
I'm interested in purchasing a storage device. What are the principal issues I should consider before making my selection?

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EXPERT RESPONSE
There are many points to consider when purchasing a storage device. The short answer includes, among other items:
  • What are your application and technical requirements in regards to performance, availability, capacity and energy (PACE) consumption?
  • What servers and operating systems will you be attaching the storage to and do you need block or file-based access?
  • What features -- such as point-in-time (pit) copy, snapshot, local and remote mirroring, RAID and thin-provisioning, among others -- do you need?
  • Will you be buying or leasing the storage resources?
  • What other technology do you need to co-exist and interoperate with?
  • What are your growth plans along with data protection requirements?
  • What IT initiatives or pain points are you trying to address?
  • What applications including SQL, Exchange, Oracle and VMware, among others, need to be supported by the storage?

There are many other items and factors to consider when purchasing a storage device, and the list above is far from comprehensive. However, it should form the basis of what to look for and consider before you make your storage device selection.

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