Rising Data Volumes and Demand for NAS Drives Need to Automate Storage Deployments

Data Dynamics, Inc., in solutions for the discovery, reporting, migration, and management of file-based storage, highlighted recent research forecasting the growth in enterprise NAS adoption through 2016.

With unstructured data growth on the rise, enterprises are transitioning from legacy storage systems to the latest file-based storage solutions to improve efficiency and reduce costs. Alerting enterprises to the challenges of migrating to new storage platforms, Data Dynamics cited data transfer complexities, compliance risks and excessive time requirements associated with manual migration procedures.

According to IDC, “The volume of digital data will grow 40% to 50% per year. By 2020, IDC predicts the number will have reached 40,000EB, or 40ZB. The world’s information is doubling every two years. By 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of information and 75 times the number of information containers (IDC, The Digital Universe in 2020: big data, Bigger Digital Shadows, and Biggest Growth in the Far East)… The worldwide file- and object-based storage (FOBS) market continues to gain momentum with revenues exceeding $23 billion in 2013 and forecast to reach $38 billion in 2017. The growth in the overall enterprise storage systems market can be traced directly to the shift to FOBS (IDC, Worldwide File- and Object-Based Storage Market Growth Outpaces Overall Enterprise Disk Storage Systems Market).”

In addition to the exploding volumes of unstructured data, adoption drivers for enterprise NAS solutions include reductions in the price of 10GbE, lower entry costs than alternative platforms, higher scalability, higher utilization rates, more efficient architectures, easier management, improved data availability and higher performance (IOs and throughput). Organizations that deploy new NAS solutions are receiving greater value from their storage investments which is translating into business success. These systems have a compelling value proposition relative to legacy storage systems and put advanced NAS solutions on the radar of anyone focused on increasing productivity.

The advantages of next generation NAS systems are clear and enterprises are increasing adoption. According to TechNavio, “the Global Enterprise NAS market to grow at a CAGR of 22.85% over the period 2012-2016. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the improved cost-efficiency caused by the adoption of NAS solutions.” (TechNavio, Global Enterprise NAS market 2012-2016, August 2, 2013)

While the shift to enhanced NAS technologies can provide substantial benefits, moving file storage data from legacy systems to these systems can be an expensive, time-consuming, labor-intensive and risky process. There are a multitude of manual steps, and migration teams must continually make trade-offs in terms of migration timelines, risks, and business access to data. Cutting access to data on sources while the migration is in process is disruptive to users and the business and often results in productivity loss. However, maintaining user access to sources during migrations can lead to problems with locked files and missing new or recently updated files. As a result, cutovers to new storage platforms rarely go as smoothly as planned.

Automated Versus Manual Storage Migrations
Automating storage deployments gives IT professionals the tools they need to manage their file data, including unstructured file data, successfully. Production-proven across enterprises worldwide, StorageX by Data Dynamics is an advanced solution reducing the complexity of file migration and improving storage resource utilization to simplify and optimize storage upgrades.

“The impact of storage system downtime is a significant concern for enterprises planning to upgrade their operations,” said Simon Robinson, storage system analyst, 451 Research. “StorageX promises the ability to mitigate these concerns, making the transition to advanced file-based storage systems stress free compared to manual migration processes. The solution ensures that all CIFS shares, NFS exports, security permissions, and file attributes are migrated correctly every time for safer and faster access to newly installed hardware.”

“Many businesses are under pressure to accelerate technology upgrades in order to increase productivity,” said Piyush Mehta, CEO, Data Dynamics. “StorageX delivers technology that enterprise storage teams need to prevent excessive business unit disruptions when adopting new storage technologies to transform their file storage environments. With an automated, policy-based approach, StorageX allows IT professionals to use a powerful rules-based engine to discover, view, report, assess, migrate, transform, and optimize unstructured file data locally and/or throughout multi-national IT environments.”