The Data Back-Up Plan For The Modern Enterprise

Data storage is an important agenda of an enterprise. In fact, you can observe that every corporation scandal for the last few years would not have happened if data were being properly stored. As the world and the Internet become highly dependent on information, more and more technologies are being developed to organize and manage the overwhelming bulk of data needing storage.

Previously, we use file servers not only to store data but to do other tasks as well, such as computing or to managing company database. As computing tasks became more sophisticated, however, the computing industry thought it would be best to separate the functions for data storage from computing tasks. Not only did it streamline the running of computing tasks, it also made it easier for an enterprise to manage the data.

Enterprise can plan on investing on server appliances, which has pre-configured software and hardware systems and are solely used for data storage. Of course, these appliances have the standard functions of a normal server such as e-mail, File Transfer Protocol, file and print and web. An example of a server appliance is the Network Attached Storage or NAS. Not only is the NAS easy to handle but it also has easy-to-use interfaces that even a user without knowledge of computers can understand. This set-up is useful for enterprises with remote offices. The remote offices can request information from the NAS remotely and conveniently. Examples of NAS device manufacturers are Celerra and Exanet.

There is also the Storage Area Network or SAN. A block-based architecture that includes segregation of different data storage devices such as disk drives in disk arrays, tape drives in tape libraries, optical drives and other servers. This architecture is best for a small enterprise wherein data storage devices are locally attached to the network.

A promising development for a data storage plan is the NAS head. A NAS head offers the integration of both the NAS devices and the SAN architecture. It acts as a translator between the NAS and SAN protocols. An example of the NAS head concept is the ONStor Bobcat.

Manufacturers of data storage devices are also launching new lines of data storage devices that introduce the Open Storage concept. The concept is basically the standardization of acquiring data regardless of access or architecture.

This means that the end-user, for instance, the employee is unaware that data is being provided to him from a host of different brands of NAS devices and through different protocols of the SAN architecture. This seamless scalability is an advantage to the enterprise because being a consumer, it will have the option to choose the most storage-effective and yet cost-conserving strategy for a data back-up plan.

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