Portal:Storage

Wikitip

Negotiate on-demand storage contracts

On-demand storage contracts are agreements with suppliers to install storage capacity in anticipation of use but not charge until the usage actually occurs. The charge will occur at rates consistent with the time of use and not the time of install. Suppliers will often offer this type of arrangement in exchange for preferred status as one of the top two suppliers at the customer. The tradeoff is fewer suppliers and less supplier flexibility, although many customers are trying to reduce the number of vendors.

This approach is a good first step in providing service models comparable to consumer-oriented suppliers.

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Featured Case Study

Virtualization Energizes Cal State University

John Charles is the CIO of California State University, East Bay (CSUEB) and Rich Avila is Director, Server & Network Operations. In late 2007 they were both looking down the barrel of a gun. The total amount of power being used in the data center was 67KVA. The maximum power from the current plant was 75kVA. PG&E had informed them that no more power could be delivered. They would be out of power in less than six months. A new data center was planned, but would not be available for two years.

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Featured How-To Note

Storage Virtualization Design and Deployment

A main impediment to storage virtualization is the lack of multiple storage vendor (heterogeneous) support within available virtualization technologies. This inhibits deployment across a data center. The only practical approach is either to implement a single vendor solution across the whole of the data center (practical only for small and some medium size data centers) or to implement virtualization in one or more of the largest storage pools within a data center.

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