Choosing the right storage server for your organization is an important decision that requires careful consideration of various technical, operational and business factors. As organizations increasingly rely on data and digital assets to power their core functions, the underlying storage infrastructure becomes ever more critical.
From supporting mission-critical applications and databases to housing large archives of multimedia content, storage server product needs continue to grow in both capacity and performance requirements.
Let’s explore 9 key ways to evaluate and select storage servers that best meet your unique organizational needs both now and in the future.
1. Define Your Performance and Capacity Requirements
The first step is gaining clarity on your organization’s current and projected storage needs in terms of input/output operations per second (IOPS), throughput, capacity, and data growth over time. Do you need high performance for database applications or large file transfers? How much raw storage is required for your file shares and archives?
Getting granular on your usage profiles today and modeling trends will help narrow your options to server products appropriately sized without overspending. Consider flash, hard disk drive (HDD), or hybrid architectures, along with scaling headroom for the future. Define service level agreements for uptime, response times and other performance metrics to align with vendor specifications.
2. Assess Your Workload and Application Needs
Closely related to performance is understanding your specific workload characteristics, like random versus sequential access patterns or mixed environments. Storage optimized for databases has different requirements than video surveillance footage, for example. Evaluate your mix of transactional, archive, file server and other applications to identify optimal hardware.
Look for server products designed for virtualized environments if you have a high virtual machine density. Specialized accelerators can boost performance for tasks like machine learning inference. Knowing your software and protocols is also key, as servers support varying operating systems and connectivity standards.
3. Evaluate Security, Data Protection and Compliance Needs
Concerning storages, they are as strong as their weakest link; thus, employ a risk assessment to see what particular procedures and policies need to be revised to ensure that the compliance mandates are adhered to. Lots of things, like encrypted storage, role-based access controls, network segmentation and auditing, are also musts. Recognize the hazards associated with hardware damage, software glitches or human error that could result in data loss.
4. Consider Management and Integration Requirements
Manual labor, along with built-in tools for capturing, reporting, and automating, saves on cumulative costs over the long term. It is worthwhile to review server product tools that are easy to operate with features such as multisite synchronization.
- Look for APIs and scripting support to let you collaborate with storage and release workflows. Virtualization and software-defined hot assets make things easily available (pooling) by means of live migration.
- It is necessary for a migration framework to be compatible with hypervisors, including VMware and Hyper-V, as well as with cloud platforms, applications and future upgrades, so that existing investments and the ease of migration can be facilitated.
- Overlapping repair, safety and backup systems gives the field better control over operations.
5. Review Support and service Options
World-class support delivered by experts can significantly reduce risk of outages and expedite resolutions should issues arise. Consider 24/7 coverage, response time commitments, remote assistance capabilities and training and certification offerings. Evaluate bundled service-level agreements and professional and managed services.
On-site engineers provide faster mean-time-to-resolution for mission-critical infrastructure. Look for flexible and consumption-based support terms to align with operational budgets. Partnerships with resellers and integrators streamline procurement, implementation and lifecycle management for a turnkey experience.
6. Analyze the Cost of Ownership
While upfront hardware costs factor prominently, total cost of ownership over a 3-5 year period provides a fuller financial picture. Energy efficiency and density optimize real estate utilization. Maintenance and software licensing models impact long-term budgets. Consider the cost of downtime from outages and the complexity of do-it-yourself maintenance.
Consolidation of server products may lower sprawl. Cloud and hyperconverged options deliver operational simplicity at a predictable monthly fee. Subscription, utility or consumption-based pricing smooths expenses. Used or refurbished equipment cuts costs but has less warranty coverage.
7. Evaluate Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability is crucial to future-proofing your storage investment and avoiding costly forklift upgrades. Look for architectures designed with vertical and horizontal scaling in mind.
- Scale-up infrastructure allows non-disruptively adding resources like CPU, memory or SSD caches to existing nodes as demands grow. This protects initial hardware investments by prolonging their useful life.
- Scale-out expands the cluster by adding new nodes that join the pool of resources. This allows scaling computing and storage resources independently according to changing needs. Scale-out designs deliver near-linear performance gains as nodes are added without rearchitecting applications or migrating data.
- Some scale-out file systems also support elastic capacity, where storage tiers can be swapped in and out on demand.
- Modular building block designs accommodate scaling smoothly over time in incremental stages. Start with a small deployment and add shelves, server products or enclosures separately as capacity or throughput requirements increase.
Disaggregated infrastructure takes this a step further by decoupling compute, storage, networking and other resources. Each component can then scale independently according to unique usage profiles.
8. Consider Environmental Factors
Data center footprint, power and cooling requirements impact real estate costs and sustainability objectives. Energy efficiency minimizes operational expenses. Density optimizes space utilization. Remote and branch office requirements necessitate compact designs. Harsh operating environments require ruggedization and fail-safes.
Acoustic and thermal management avoid noise pollution and equipment damage. Recyclability and the use of renewable/reclaimed materials enhance your green credentials. Geographic location determines disaster recovery and data sovereignty needs. Supply chain transparency ensures ethical sourcing. The full-lifecycle carbon impact must be considered for long-term sustainability goals.
9. Validate Interoperability and Migration Options
With the potential for future server product, platform or infrastructure changes, ensure seamless integration of new and legacy systems. Test compatibility with hypervisors, operating systems, backup platforms and cloud services. Look for multi-path storage protocols, virtualization APIs and migration tools that simplify transitions.
Non-disruptive upgrades safeguard uptime during refreshes. Cloud tiering and bursting capabilities accommodate spikes without over-provisioning on-premises capacity. Consider data portability to avoid vendor lock-in risks. Pilot migrations validate support for complex environments before production cuts over.
Final Words
By thoroughly evaluating your organization’s unique storage needs and priorities across these nine key categories, you can make an informed choice for servers tailored to optimize operations now and in the future. With careful planning and consideration of both technical and business factors, the right storage infrastructure lays the foundation for efficient, compliant and cost-effective digital asset management that supports your strategic business objectives.
