Data storage management consists of tiered storage initiatives, data storage compliance, data archiving, remote and offsite data storage, storage virtualisation and having the right data management tools.

Data storage refers to the methods employed by a company to store business data either on or off the network. The smooth running of your business relies on access to critical data and files which are usually stored on your servers or hard disks. If these files are not backed up, your business will suffer in the event of data loss. Best practise data storage ensures minimal loss of data in the event of failure.

The storage area network (SAN) and network-attached storage (NAS) Let you share storage resources among a much larger number of processing systems and users for improved efficiency and simplified management. Networked storage technologies also let you access data more quickly, since you can share the data across multiple platforms regardless of the device or operating system you're using.

A NAS is a specific product that sits between an application server and a file system, but SAN refers to the architecture. A SAN is its own network, connecting all storage devices and all servers.

SANs can solve connectivity problems among multiple storage devices and servers. A SAN also offers new approaches to storage, such as disk and tape pooling, heterogeneous data sharing, and off-the-network/serverless backup and restoring. This secondary network relieves the main network of massive data transfer loads because backup traffic occurs only between storage devices inside the SAN.

A NAS, on the other hand, lets you add storage without taking the network down. And because the NAS is a file-system agnostic, clients can share and access the same information, even if they're using different operating systems. NAS appliances also have the ability to share a data instance on multiple application servers to create cross-platform, collaborative capabilities.

 

Data storage ranges from simple plug in USB devices to tape libraries, scaling up to fibre channel SAN(Storage Area Network)environments. The SAN environment offers the advantage of consolidating servers, increases speed of backups and data availability, it also provides online data recoverability. SAN environments have traditionally been utilised by large companies, but with lowering costs even the SME can avail of the advantages gained in employing a SAN environment.

There are simpler NAS (Network Attached Storage) solutions that provide additional storage capacity for straight forward file sharing, archiving and backups. Numerous vendors now offer 1 or 2 Terabyte storage boxes that are RAID enabled, providing additional redundancy against disk failures and are network enabled, removing the reliance to be ‘plugged in’ to another device such as a PC or server. This type of storage provides a stable and reliable disaster recovery solution for the SME.

Storage solutions can be accessed both locally and remotely, thus providing the safety of offsite backup solutions, and the additional data resilience of the potential for disaster recovery and business continuity planning. Hosting data offsite also lends itself more effectively to wider sharing of data. For example it allows multiple contractors working on a project using online data storage to share the resources of the project.

Data management policies should cover the needs of the business in terms of how available your data needs to be and this can probably be answered by asking a few relevant questions such as – could you tolerate the loss of your data or part of it? If so, for how long could you operate effectively? Do you have legal requirements on your data storage? Answering these questions can quickly lead to the development of your data management policy.