Data is at the heart of every business today. While only ten years ago it was sufficient to simply store data on PCs, both the volumes of data and their importance have increased enormously. From sales and production to warehousing and shipping, all areas of business are now largely digitized.
In this era, modern storage systems play a central role, acting as a hub where all the company's knowledge capital is guarded. In view of the constantly increasing flood of data, it is of utmost importance to pay due attention to the design of such storage systems and to carry out careful IT dimensioning in advance. The following is a compilation of the aspects that should be analyzed and defined in advance.
IT Sizing - Customized configuration of your IT system
The basis for almost every IT project and for an efficiently and securely functioning IT infrastructure is the implementation of an IT sizing.
We record your requirements and carry out an as-is analysis before IT sizing. In this way, when planning and configuring the new IT infrastructure, existing resources can continue to be used and optimally integrated into the new IT infrastructure, taking into account the planned useful life.
According to the needs and requirements, the selection and configuration of the following items are among the contents of an IT sizing:
- CPU (processor)
- RAM (main memory)
- Storage media (HDD hard disks or SSD)
- Graphics card
- Integration of virtual machines
- Network connections and network speeds
- UPS to prevent data loss in case of power failure
- External storage systems (NAS, tape library, tape drive)
- Backup
- Firewall
- ...
The 5 key criteria for the implementation of a storage system
Before implementing a new storage system, the following five issues should be analyzed as part of IT sizing to optimize data protection and availability:
- I/O requirements of your mission-critical applications:
Every application in the enterprise creates some I/O load on your data storage, which affects performance. To ensure your critical applications get the performance they need, there is a focus on performance. This relates to the choice between SSD and classic SAS disks, as well as the ability to automate distribution through storage tiering.
- Actual data volumes:
There is often a lack of accurate information about the actual amount of data without compression and deduplication. A closer look at current data volumes not only enables informed storage sizing, but also allows conclusions to be drawn about future growth and thus future-proof system scaling.
- Availability:
Despite the enormous importance of data to any business, there are different levels of availability to consider. Issues such as backup recovery time and disaster recovery need to be addressed to balance security considerations and budget.
- SAN or hyperconvergence?
The issue here is whether a traditional storage area network (SAN) solution with disk array, server and tape library or a hyperconverged infrastructure makes more economic sense. The latter uses shared storage at the server level and provides resilience through shared storage.
- Backup capacity (volume and performance):
In addition to current and expected data volumes in production operations, backup capacities and performance must also be considered. Here, outsourcing rarely used data to slower media can optimize the overall performance of the system.
Our IT specialists are available to answer all these questions. Just get in contact with us. The individual points are examined and defined in an IT sizing. On this basis, we then select and dimension your future storage system - tailored to your company and your requirements.
