How Software-Defined Storage Supports Agency Modernization
Here’s an interesting blog about how storage needs to evolve to support modernization.
With the recent explosion in mobile device use, government agencies are facing a deluge of data. As a result, they need to rethink their data storage solutions and consider one that can alleviate capacity concerns and centralize storage management.
Migrating to Software-Defined Storage (SDS) can give agencies a more modern and reliable storage infrastructure that offers greater visibility and control over their networks. SDS allows administrators to monitor network performance across numerous storage devices, providing a centralized dashboard view of IT assets. It is also designed to deliver deeper insight into what types of data employees are storing on agency networks.
SDS abstracts storage resources to form resource pools, which can help agencies increase scalability and simplify administration of the network environment. It also makes storage infrastructures hardware-independent, which can lead to more efficiency, greater security, and increased agility.
SDS is hardware-agnostic, allowing data to be stored regardless of from where it emanates. In addition, SDS utilizes a very non-specific mechanism for data security and enables users to have multiple tiers of storage, which is managed from policy to automation. If it were necessary to make a security-relevant change on server message blocks, from version 2 to 3, for example, admins could make the adjustment at the software level without having to restructure and migrate government data.
One of the biggest benefits of SDS can be enterprise infrastructure scalability. SDS can be configured based on an organization’s needs, improving flexibility. Switching to SDS can also reduce both provisioning time and human interaction with the system through the implementation of automated policy and program processes, empowering people to do more with the same resources.
Another advantage of SDS is that it reduces the number of management interfaces that users are required to use. While single-pane orchestration is not yet here, SDS can simplify storage administration significantly. Also, SDS can work in a multivendor environment.
SDS can require significant upfront investments of time and money to migrate data, particularly in an enterprise that operates at government scale. However, it’s not a matter of if migration to SDS will occur, but rather when.
To begin realizing the efficiencies of SDS, IT managers must do some upfront planning. For starters, they should evaluate the kind of storage they currently have and perform a gap analysis between their starting point and their goal. It’s important to determine the types of data on the network, its criticality, and the services accessing that data. Infrastructure services like virtual desktop environments or Exchange (as an example) have different performance requirements and may need different storage.
As government heads toward large, complex enterprises, legacy storage infrastructures must modernize to adequately handle agencies' data growth. Traditional architectures can be too costly to maintain and lack scalability, but fortunately, SDS can help.
Find the full article on Government Computer News.
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