What is storage management?

There are 3 main forms of data storage:

• File storage: File storage is the leading form of storage for hard drives and network-attached storage (NAS) devices and features a management system composed of files and folders. It is easy to use but works best for projects operating on a smaller scale. File storage lends itself well to collaboration due to its hierarchical folder structure. Probably the ideal application for file storage would be an archival spreadsheet that isn’t accessed very often but can be shared by staffers when needed. File storage is often manifested in files like documents and other types of text files.

• Block storage: Block storage provides a less orderly approach to storage management that places data in blocks ranging in data capacity from 256 KB up to 4 MB. Block arrangement is assigned randomly. A typical use of block storage might involve a smaller data set but one that’s needed for quick access (as well as high performance and low latency). Common usages of block storage often include high-priority, mission-critical workloads like databases, media rendering, containers, forms of analytics, caching and backend storage for virtual machines.

• Object storage: Information in object storage is reconfigured as objects that use metadata and other identifiers to set them apart from other objects. Object storage houses large amounts of unstructured data, which it accommodates within large data-storage pools. Pools can be shared among multiple locations, and this boosts scalability and improves data resilience and data availability. Cloud-based object storage offers another key plus—lower overall pricing—since object storage is offered as a specialized cloud service that operates at greater economies of scale.

Storage management is such a basic concept that it’s unsurprising that there are other meanings of the phrase. Another type of “storage management” relates to the burgeoning industry that provides additional physical storage of personal property when individuals own more possessions than they can possibly contain in their living space. The fact that such storage rental facilities are popping up everywhere speaks to the fact that increasing numbers of people are accumulating more objects than they know what do with.

This situation is analogous to the expanding number of data workloads facing most organizations. Like people besieged by boxes of their outdated personal belongings, some companies are often tripping over themselves to amass more and more amounts of data. Then, just as often, these companies don’t know what to do with this extra data. Sometimes, it even falls off their radar completely, and organizations lose track of data sets in which they’ve invested.

The cause of storage management is capably supported by different types of storage devices and systems:

• SSD and flash storage: Solid-state disk (SSD) flash drives use flash storage, in which data is written and stored on flash memory chips. Solid-state systems offer key advantages by having no moving parts and experiencing less latency than hard-disk drives (HDDs).

• Hybrid storage: While SSDs and flash display higher throughput than HDDs, all-flash storage arrays can cost significantly more to implement. A hybrid storage approach mixes flash storage with the extended (and more affordable) storage capacity of HDDs. 

• Cloud storage: For companies wishing to avoid the labor and investment associated with on-premises options like hard disks or storage networks, cloud storage often proves an easier and economical option. Data and files are saved off-site through a subscription service.

• Hybrid cloud storage: Hybrid cloud storage lets organizations prioritize their cloud usage according to the sensitivity of the data being stored. Highly regulated data can be guarded in a private cloud environment while less sensitive data can be kept in the public cloud.

• Storage backup software and appliances: Backup practices protect data from loss by disaster, failure or criminal activity. Backup storage software and appliances such as tape drives and servers regularly make data and application copies for use in disaster recovery efforts.
  

When organizations find themselves drowning in data and don’t have an effective storage management strategy, 2 problematic scenarios play out simultaneously. First is the lost opportunities that transpire when acquired data resources go undeveloped. There’s no telling how much a company could be sacrificing by not sufficiently working its collected data. Somewhere in that assembled data could be the key to the organization’s future or the path to game-changing revenue savings.

There’s also another essential reason why it’s not advisable to maintain large supplies of data that are going unused. Data has a certain value, and that makes it a target for cyberthreats.

Data can be corrupted, either for the sake of its own destruction or as part of a cyberattack on a company and its operating systems. So, any data that is maintained must be kept safe, lest it become a definite liability.    

Comic Steven Wright had a gift for injecting mind-bending absurdities into his humor. 1 of his classic observations speaks directly to the heart of storage management: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”

Wright’s one-liner sums up both sides of the storage management issue that faces a large and increasing number of companies. This is the core problem: When it comes to computer data, organizations have been led to believe that they can have everything—or at least all the data they could possibly want. Of course, the IT industry supports these efforts by producing new products to cater to every organizational need, such as storage. So now, there’s an app for this, and a platform for that. Consequently, the boom in computer data coincides with an explosion in the number of applications, programs and platforms that providers design to help manage, dissect and analyze this rampant influx of computer data.

So that’s the situation. There are vastly more reams of data being created now. Companies are amassing this data constantly. There is now data evaluating the data, which studies the assembled data from various angles to glean all possible information from it. This leads us directly to the second part of Wright’s “equation”: Now that you have all the data in the world, where will you possibly keep it?

There are many potential answers because along with the increase in data management and data processing software, there are now multiple types of storage resources and myriad places to store data. But it’s not as simple as grabbing any storage solution. Management software should not be viewed as a “one size fits all” proposition. Different companies have various data storage needs.

And then there’s money. Storage presents many opportunities, but very few are offered free of charge. Whether the storage solution depends on an investment of on-premises servers and other types of storage hardware, or if storage management software is being used or if cloud storage options are being pursued, there is always a pricing aspect that must be weighed.

Plus, there are other key questions to ask yourself beyond those around cost:

Q: Not all storage solutions function identically, especially when it comes to data access. Do some storage environments offer faster retrieval of warehoused information than others?

A: Yes. In general, high-performance storage management reflects a commitment to maximized efficiency, which is manifested by system optimization, reduced latency, high throughput and faster data access speeds.

Q: Which types of artificial intelligence (AI)-based functionality can be applied to data being stored and how easy is it to do that?

A: Numerous types of AI can be applied to data being stored, such as data tiering, anomaly detection (to augment security efforts), data deduplication and storage usage optimization. Ease of use varies by management software product.

Q: How safe is stored information and will that data remain resilient over time? Or does stored data have an “expiration date” based on a unique lifecycle that includes an inevitable slide into data loss?

A: It’s unfortunate, but data does decay over time. All data is subject to data decay, by which it becomes increasingly less reliable and useful. This makes it even more essential that organizations maintain their data assets through a robust storage management program.

As we’ll see, it’s not usually a matter of simply finding a way to work around storage capacity limits or making a provision to gain added storage space. The trick is finding the storage solution that most closely matches an organization’s storage needs, both now and in the foreseeable future.

The key concepts at work in a data storage system aren’t overly complicated to grasp. Essentially, it operates like this: An organization possesses data assets that need to be housed securely but accessibly should staff members need to retrieve that information. The assets are transferred or copied to storage arrays (sometimes called disk arrays) that are based in physical facilities called data centers. Storage arrays are centralized storage systems that rely on multiple disk drives to warehouse data for use in servers and applications.

Once data has been placed within storage arrays, that data needs to be organized in a way that supports fast data access. File systems serve this purpose by imposing a sense of order that uses a standardized method (such as alphabetical organization or the use of branching diagrams) that’s simple for the user to navigate and logically organized so the computer’s OS can easily use it. File systems are found on an organization’s solid-state drive (SSD), hard-disk drive (HDD) or even on other storage media, like flash drives, magnetic tape or optical disks.

The use of application programming interfaces (APIs) is another way to assist storage management goals. APIs allow users to access and work with data stored in cloud-based systems from locally based applications. APIs assist the process in various ways, including enabling automation, data extraction techniques and data sharing between different software systems.

In addition, APIs aid in development tasks, boost scalability and enhance security by acting as a gatekeeper and administering storage access requests from browser traffic. For example, the Windows Storage Management API serves as a bridge between storage management and Microsoft’s Windows OS.

Storage services are another option for organizations that wish to avoid making significant investments in storage hardware or storage software and expenditures of company labor. Instead, these businesses subscribe to storage services, which operate like online subscription services. When a company has a priority, it can use the vendor’s infrastructure to address that need.

Storage services take place in virtualized cloud environments and leverage the utility of virtual machines (VMs), which routinely access storage space from a shared storage pool. Storage management software maintains control over VMs and how they operate.

When storage management is executed thoughtfully, it unlocks so many benefits that it’s helpful to categorize and group them.

Whether an organization’s storage management needs are fulfilled through hardware means or through cloud storage, there are considerable cost savings to be realized through storage management.

On the hardware side, smart storage management can save a company from having to make costly upgrades to their equipment. If the organization bases its storage on a cloud strategy, storage management offers savings by optimizing cloud storage, which can have a direct effect on reducing those costs.

The performance benefits of storage management primarily revolve around operational speed. This translates into faster data access for staffers who need to be able to retrieve information.

In addition, performance benefits include speedier data transfer speeds, which are increasingly necessary as data sets become more full of assets. Other performance perks identified with cloud storage are flexible scalability and a fostered sense of shared collaboration between team members.

Security is becoming (and will continue to be) an increasingly critical part of storage management as the threat from cybercriminals evolves. Data needs constant protection and centralized data storage provides an effective hedge against data loss by instituting safeguards against data breaches. If the worst should happen and a company suffers a loss of critical data, effective storage management can capably assist disaster recovery efforts by storing data in key locations, helping ensure redundancy.

Storage as a service (STaaS) operates through the cloud to provide access to any number of storage and computing resources. Through STaaS, an organization can still derive the various benefits of cloud services without ponying up a full investment in hardware, software or some combination of both.

This type of subscription model for storage offers other benefits, such as ease of use, charging only for storage actually used and increased scalability as needed. In addition, such storage services feature considerable versatility, which they prove during disaster recovery activities, when data replication is of utmost importance.
 
Numerous vendors are offering STaaS-themed products, including Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM, NetApp and Pure Storage.

In addition, there are public cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provide cloud services.

Yet another option—the hybrid cloud model—gives companies the best of two types of storage by letting them use private and public cloud storage, so they can keep different data types in multiple clouds.

The good news is that there are several key principles you can keep in mind that should help you launch an effective plan for an enterprise’s storage management. The bad news is that they all require some form of ongoing participation of 1 type or another. It’s not enough to simply move assets to a larger storage area or adapt to a new type of data management software, although those are normally steps that shouldn’t be ignored or assigned a lower priority.

The following are some ideas worth noting.

Study storage management from a “big picture” perspective. Contemplate the lifecycle of your data and how long your organization truly needs to retain that information.

Further, you need to assess how quickly your company will need to recover or replace data should it be lost in a data breach or other catastrophic event. And what about normal data-retrieval rates? It’s essential that your storage management strategy aligns with realistic data access times.

It’s important that disk usage levels be regularly monitored and storage management be considered from multiple angles, with strategic course corrections made as required. Those corrections typically include the removal of files deemed unneeded for future action, which often means the deletion of cache files, extinct backup information or temporary files. By the same token, programs no longer deemed worthy of retention should be trashed to free up storage space.

After getting rid of unnecessary materials, the effort then becomes to ensure materials being stored are in their best condition. This can be achieved through first making it possible that files be findable, and that’s done by using some type of organized structure to house them.

Once successfully relocated, those assets can be compressed to save storage space. Data should also be protected through encryption and safeguarded through data backups.