Learning from Cloud: Changing the Storage Area Networks Game

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One of the big challenges facing IT organizations today is the explosion of demand for storage, which results in both rising costs and increasing management challenges. More data is being collected and mined than ever before. For most organizations, supporting the exploding demand for storage with high cost traditional storage solutions just isn’t realistic.

The good news is that this is another place where cloud computing is changing the game. Like other cloud service providers, Microsoft has faced the challenge of providing cost-effective storage to customers at scale.  We brought storage innovation from Microsoft Azure to Windows Server in the form of a highly available, low-cost storage virtualization solution for on-premises storage, built on Storage Spaces.

Windows Server 2012 R2 creates highly available storage using only “just a bunch of disks” (JBOD) enclosures and hard disks.  This gives you enterprise-class storage on industry-standard hardware. These file-based storage configurations can deliver 1,000,000+ IOPS while providing uninterrupted service to workloads like Hyper-V and SQL Server – even through the loss of a disk or server. You can reduce the cost of storage dramatically without sacrificing performance.

Download this datasheet, which has more details about software-defined storage in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Another option for managing rapid data growth is a hybrid cloud approach.  StorSimple hybrid storage arrays are deployed in on-premises datacenters, using Microsoft Azure Storage for low-impact incremental capacity expansion and for automated off-site data protection.  StorSimple arrays feature highly-efficient disaster recovery (DR) that completes quickly and provides fast DR testing.

As you think about your strategy and approach to storage, it’s critical to remember that cloud is changing the game, even in your on-premises datacenter.

Visit Microsoft’s storage solutions page to learn more about datacenter and cloud storage options.

Download the e-Book “Rethinking Enterprise Storage: A Hybrid Cloud Model.”