EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
FLORIAN MALECKI , INTERNATIONAL PRODUCT MARKETING SENIOR DIRECTOR AT STORAGECRAFT
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TODAY , AS A ROLE IN STORAGE IS FAR MORE COMPLEX , STRATEGIC AND CRITICAL TO WIDER BUSINESS SUCCESS , IT CAN BE CHALLENGING FOR DATA CENTRE LEADERS TO FIND THE RIGHT PROFILES .
Historically , it ’ s safe to say there hasn ’ t been much glamour or glory in a career in storage . In many organisations , it ’ s a role that went largely unnoticed , at least until the data backup system failed .
Recently though , this has changed . Data storage used to be a question of simply managing structured data in known , secure environments . This has changed , and with it , the skill set required from those managing it .
Driven by explosive data growth , especially the growth of unstructured data , businesses need storage infrastructure that is highly scalable and flexible . In some ways , these are also the skills that are needed from storage professionals ; a person that is able to quickly adapt to frequently changing demands from the business , understand what is needed , where it is needed , how the data can be accessed and protected , and propose a solution that meets all these requirements .
Additionally , it ’ s essential that today ’ s storage professionals are security conscious . The rise of ransomware combined with an increasing quantity of data being generated and stored , present challenges when it comes to security .
It is no longer only about capacity , but about deploying storage infrastructure that safeguards data and ensures its constant availability and recoverability . Furthermore , it ’ s important to also consider threats from other factors , such as app failure , hardware failure or human error .
Today , as a role in storage is far more complex , strategic and critical to wider business success , it can be challenging for data centre leaders to find the right profiles .
To overcome this situation and as one option to solve the challenge , professionals have to choose the right storage vendor for their data centre ’ s requirements . Here ’ s what they should look for :
Ease of use . With the right storage solution , such as scale-out object-based storage appliances , they can simply plug and play with the ability to ‘ bring your own disks ’, mix-and match drive types ( SAS , SATA ) and capacity within the same bay with zero configuration ( no RAID , volume or LUNs to configure ). This means they spend less time on managing storage and more time on driving strategic initiatives .
High scalability . Choose a highly scalable data storage solution that can keep pace with customers ’ data growth , which is often more than 100 % per year . The right storage solution will allow them to cost-effectively add any number of drives , anytime and in any granularity to meet the storage requirements of the customers . And they can grow their global storage pool with zero configuration and no application downtime .
Intelligent analytics . Look for a selforganising storage solution that applies analytics and Machine Learning to the management of information . Ideally , such a storage system will use analytics to identify the data that should be backed up and the data that should not , giving you in an intelligent , tiered data architecture that provides rapid access to mission-critical information .
Strong data protection . It is very important to ensure that the data storage solutions include the ability to protect business data wherever it lives and guarantee that it ’ s always available no matter what happens . The best solutions use snapshot , replication and encryption technologies and can also recover individual files , entire systems , or fail over a whole data centre very quickly .
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