Posted on behalf of Derek Gascon, Storage Marketing
Get ready for takeoff to the private cloud with the Dell DX Object Storage Platform
Is all the data you’re carrying around slowing your operational speed and affecting your agility? It’s time to travel lightly by offloading the majority of your data to the private cloud with object storage. Chances are that you are seriously considering or planning to deploy a cloud strategy but may have some concerns over security, skillsets and costs.
After all, building a more cost-effective, scalable and agile IT service that offers flexibility, high availability and fast performance is extremely compelling. But adding enhanced data protection will make it as irresistible as an inexpensive round-trip ticket to Maui.
Object storage itinerary
An object storage platform can provide an ideal cloud storage infrastructure with cost-efficient automation, massive scalability, and self-healing data protection. The Dell™ DX Object Storage Platform can provide you with the flexibility to choose your path to the cloud: private, hybrid or public. You can begin with an on-premise private cloud and then advance to a hybrid or public cloud at your own pace. While cloud computing may require significant virtualization skills, a private cloud storage infrastructure lets you take advantage of your current in-house skillset and learn about the cloud in a safe environment. With the DX Object Storage Platform, you can easily deploy a private cloud with a potentially significant ROI. Whether you need an extensible, secure archive, file sharing and sync for an increasingly mobile workforce, or a Big Data Retention repository the Dell DX Object Storage Platform can help you take flight to the cloud.
First stop: Cost-effectiveness
Where are you storing your data now? Perhaps on expensive primary storage that requires a lot of provisioning or file systems that have limited flexibility. The continual process of buying more primary storage and requiring more time and staff for backup processes can greatly limit your ability to be agile and cost-efficient. The Dell DX Object Storage Platform's intelligent object technology and peer-scaling architecture can reduce your 5-year TCO by up to 38% compared to tape and up to 19% compared to NAS.[1] In fact, as data grows, your overall OPEX savings can actually increase as you scale with the DX Object Storage Platform that was designed to minimize operational costs with automated data management processes.
Second stop: Scalability, agility and flexibility
In today’s dynamic world of social networks combined with constant content creation and data collection with thousands of ways to gather data from sensors, satellites, phones, video cameras and medical instruments, data growth continues to explode. The ability to rapidly expand from terabytes to multiple petabytes from different storage environments, without forklift upgrades or migrations, is critical to manage data growth. The Dell DX Object Storage Platform offers a scale-as-you-grow model which allows you to dynamically add storage to your private cloud without experiencing downtime. With the extensive scalability of the DX Object Storage Platform, you can confidently integrate new lines of business or even support a whole new organization-almost as easy as flying on autopilot.
Third stop: continuous availability and fast performance
In today’s world of immediate answers, data needs to be continually available and accessible to support compliance and e-discovery needs, as well as business analytics activities. The DX Object Storage Platform is built on standard Dell x86 servers to help provide high performance and availability. Each object encapsulates some form of searchable data, so data remains at your fingertips. You can unlock the value of stored content through business analytics applied to the object’s data and metadata.
Destination: enhanced data protection
The DX Object Storage Platform creates exact replicas of your data based on your parameters that can reduce or eliminate backup requirements. Your data integrity is continually verified by a back-end health processor that can automatically replace corrupted objects, if necessary. You can provide secure access parameters and protection – even by group or department. Compliance-ready Write Once Read Many (WORM) options are available to help further protect your data. An additional advantage of a private cloud environment is that your data is stored within your own firewall to help reduce security risks. If you need to check in from the road, consider exploring this blog about enhancing mobile user productivity via secure collaboration capabilities that helps keep data behind the corporate firewall.
Finding the right travel partner to fit your needs
Dell offers a wide variety of solutions like file archiving, file share and sync, collaboration, media asset management, search and ediscovery, Big Data Retention, and email archiving featuring the DX Object Storage Platform matched with software from ISV technology partners that are closely integrated for data protection and content management. The versatile DX Object Storage Platform presents a simple interface employing a RESTful /HTTP Native API integration to allow multiple applications in different solution areas to access, store and distribute digital content for cloud and archive storage.
Bon Voyage
Now is the time to enable business transformation and increased competitiveness with an agile, analytics-ready private cloud storage platform. So fasten your seatbelts and turn on your personal devices, here is your ticket for a safe journey to the cloud with the Dell DX Object Storage Platform. Please visit us at Dell World this week in the Solutions Showcase to learn more about the Dell DX Object Storage Platform and our solutions like Big Data Retention, digital curation and BYOD. Also follow me, @InformaZen, for more updates live from the event! I look forward to hearing about your plans to journey to the cloud in the whisper suite.
[1] G12003736 Results based on “Archive TCO: Five-Year TCO Comparing Dell DX to Tape and NAS for Long Term Archive,” Terri McClure, February 2011 ESG study commissioned by Dell.