As with any major technology purchase, it's important to do your homework when shopping for a SAN. Download this eBook for a review of the most important aspects of a SAN and get guidance to help IT managers make an informed purchase. »

Businesses dealing with a growing amount of electronic data to store can get more from their storage investments by consolidating their storage on a centralized storage resource like a SAN. This issue of Data Storage Insights explores storage consolidation, asks if a SAN is the right choice for your business, and also examines unified storage and the role it can play in your business. »

Organizations continue to find themselves locked into proprietary storage platforms that cant be easily expanded or upgraded. This lack of flexibility and scalability leads to early obsolescence and costly forklift upgrades. Ultimately, administrators are left to coerce rigid storage systems to address core business needs, only to repeat the cycle with each inevitable system overhaul. This paper discusses eight must-have technologies that create new levels of efficiency and flexibility while cutting cost now and in the future. »

Traditional hardware vendors have failed to deliver on the promise of SANs. By relying on proprietary hardware designs, imposing restrictions on the types of technology that can be used and prohibiting customers from mixing and matching different drive and interconnect technologies, these vendors doom their products to early obsolescence and force their customers into costly forklift upgrades. Download this paper to discuss the advantages of an open, non-proprietary hardware architecture. »

As the use of e-mail expands and combines with voice, fax and compliance requirements many Exchange installations face ever-growing demands for increased storage space, higher performance, and increased recoverability. A SAN can consolidate storage resources and provide a more scalable configuration than DAS or NAS, while also improving performance and simplifying management. »

Dell Compellent engineered its Fluid Data architecture from the ground up to include Automated Tiered Storage. This approach enables organizations to move data dynamically, intelligently and efficiently among multiple storage tiers and RAID levels. »

The proliferation of standards and affordable equipment has led to an enterprise video boom. While diverse in their applications, all video files tend to share two common characteristics. First, video files typically require a great deal more storage - orders of magnitude more, in some cases - than image, email, or other digital data. Second, because video operations usually require large-block, sequential streaming input and output (I/O), applications that ingest, edit and play back video can be extremely sensitive to performance constraints within server, network or storage segments. »

This issue of Data Storage Insights focuses on how growing businesses can manage their data growth. Get expert advice on how to use storage tiering to save your IT budget, how to expand your storage capacity, and how to tell if your organization has outgrown its backup strategy. »