NetApp SANscreen Simplifies Multipetabyte Environments

As customers struggle to manage costs in an age of virtualized infrastructures and shrinking budgets, SANscreen from NetApp, Inc. can help to both reduce costs and maximize productivity and availability in a globally distributed, multipetabyte environment.

Angelica Brown, managing partner of Data Storage Science, recently led a storage team responsible for managing a major Web services company’s global storage infrastructure. Given the size and distribution of the network, efficiency and stability were always top of mind. Brown leveraged the SANscreen software suite so that the storage network functioned as expected and complied with company standards. As a result, she dramatically sped the hardware upgrade processes while minimizing business impact.

SANscreen helps organizations decrease storage costs with several unique features. SANscreen enables near real-time visibility from the virtual server environment to the storage environment, which lowers operational costs through improved management capabilities and lowers capital costs through more effective capacity planning. Additionally, the SANscreen discovery, monitoring, and reporting capabilities allow a holistic view of the data center. With this broad view of their infrastructure, organizations can take the guesswork out of capacity management, which reduces operating and capital costs and enables better business processes.

"Global enterprises have incredibly complex infrastructures with limited visibility when it comes to managing efficiencies and availability," said Brown. "Keeping the pathways optimized and data on the most efficient storage can be overwhelming, and we relied on SANscreen to get the greatest return on our significant hardware investment."

Once the infrastructure was in place and configured, Brown relied on SANscreen to keep the storage network optimized by identifying storage usage patterns. When data no longer required a high-end array, it was moved to less expensive storage, freeing resources for higher-need projects. Automated notifications enabled Brown’s team to proactively address potential storage availability issues and identify costly unused storage for immediate reclamation and reuse. Combined, these SANscreen features reduced hardware purchases and minimized the number of employees required to monitor the SAN environment.

"NetApp brings speed and efficiency to all our customers," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions and Alliances at NetApp. "Beyond the cost and storage savings, SANscreen also helps data center customers accelerate and automate their administration processes so they can focus on their business, not their infrastructure."

Angelica Brown is managing partner of Data Storage Science (DSS) providing data storage subject matter expertise. Established as an LLC, woman-owned, small disadvantaged business in July 2008, DSS specializes in data storage solutions and records and information management. Based in the Washington, D.C. metro area, DSS was formed as a partnership of well-established and respected data storage experts who are fully engaged in the industry.

Brown’s story of using SANscreen to extract the most out of her enterprise environment is only the latest validation for the software suite.