Top 10 ways to trim storage costs

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/management/article.php/3908676/Top-10-Ways-to-Trim-Storage-Costs.htm


Software Virtualization
There are many ways to virtualize storage. In some cases, the vendor suggests throwing away old hardware to buy a brand new virtualization array. A cheaper way is to leave legacy disk in place and incorporate it into a shared storage pool using software-based virtualization.
“With software-based storage virtualization, you can take full advantage of disk resources already in place before you spend any money on additional capacity,” said Augie Gonzalez, director of product marketing, DataCore Software.

Virtualization Review SuperCast: The Time to Virtualize Storage is NOW!

In this FREE supercast event, now available on demand, learn why storage virtualization is quickly moving from nice-to-have to need-to-have status and how to successfully deploy and optimize virtual environments.

Title: The Time to Virtualize Storage is NOW

Keynote: Jon Toigo, CEO Toigo Partners International, Chairman Data Management Institute
Storage expert Jon Toigo is a columnist for Enterprise Systems and contributing writer for Virtualization Review. He is a consultant, blogger and author of 15 books on business technology, disaster recovery and data storage.

Join industry leaders for a free supercast designed to help you understand the growing need and value of virtualized storage, as well as tips and strategies for implementation and optimization.

Featured Presentations include:
Secrets to 100% Uptime in a Virtualized Environment by DataCore

Virtualization Begets Virtualization: Extending Efficiency and Business Agility

Interesting article:
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/08/virtualization-begets-virtualization-extending-efficiency-and-business-agility/

Storage virtualization is often combined with server virtualization. Storage virtualization (functionality that takes multiple storage systems and treats those devices as a single, centrally-managed pool of storage) provides an additional opportunity to reduce IT costs and optimize efficiency—especially as server virtualization proliferates. ESG research indicates that among current server virtualization users, 86% report they have storage virtualization initiatives as a top spending priority over the next 12 to 18 months. The combination often amplifies the benefits of both forms of virtualization: lowering costs, improving resource utilization, increasing availability, simplifying upgrades, and enabling scalability.

As organizations become more comfortable with one form of virtualization, they don’t have to make great intellectual or philosophical leaps in order to grasp the concept of virtualizing other data center domains. Oftentimes, IT organizations undertaking complete data center refresh initiatives have virtualization as top of mind and would look to extract all possible efficiencies in one fell swoop by deploying virtualization in multiple technology areas.

Educational Institutions of All Sizes Benefit from DataCore Virtualization Software at the Heart of Their Virtualization Infrastructure

For more information, contact a DataCore partner for details or go to http://www.datacore.com/education .

Schools and universities worldwide are using DataCore storage virtualization software to complement their server and/or desktop virtualization projects

The education sector continues to beat a path to DataCore as the cornerstone of a virtualized infrastructure. “DataCore has been an excellent solution that enabled us to virtualize our new and existing storage solutions on the back-end while keeping a single interface and single management point for managing all of our different SAN environments,” states Dustin Fennell, vice president of IT and CIO, Scottsdale Community College. “Beyond this, we have attained better performance with DataCore and we now have the benefit of high-availability.”

DataCore’s software solutions enable the data centers and IT departments within educational institutions to better manage and maximize storage capacity and leverage existing hardware to protect and serve storage assets to Microsoft, VMware and Citrix virtual servers and desktops.

Moreover, because DataCore cares about education and sees it as a strategic investment for the future, it therefore provides qualified academic institutions with access to special promotional offers and extra discounts of up to 50% on DataCore virtualization software packages: http://www.datacore.com/education .

Educational institutions of all sizes are embracing DataCore’s software-based approach to storage virtualization in order to enable them to overcome storage-related funding roadblocks, downtime and performance issues. A sampling of the very newest institutions in the US to embrace DataCore at the heart of their virtualization infrastructures are: American River College, Arizona State University, Bellarmine University, Berkshire School, Capital Community College, Louisburg College, Midwestern University, Mount Anthony Middle School, NY Network, Notre Dame Academy, Rogue Community College, North Star Charter School, Sacramento City College, Scottsdale Community College, Shenandoah School Corporation, Spalding University, University of California San Francisco, Three Rivers Community College, Utica College, Virginia Wesleyan College, Wittenberg University, and others.

In addition to these newer customers, in the USA a host of educational organizations have already deployed storage virtualization using DataCore’s SANmelody™ and SANsymphony™ solutions. These include Auburn University, Daytona Beach Community College, Georgia Institute of Technology, Los Rios Community College District, Midway College, Mount St. Mary’s University, Sullivan University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M University at Kingsville, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Illinois, University of Utah - Education Network, University of Utah, School of Medicine, and many, many more – spanning the globe and spanning all levels of education.

The needs of IT departments that support educational institutions can suffer from the same shortfall that every other IT department can: a virtualization project that stops at servers and desktops and therefore misses an important component – storage. “In a K-12 setting, if the school districts are not looking at virtualization, they are cutting their legs out from under themselves,” states Steve Gumm, IT director, Barren County Schools.

Oxford University –

“The DataCore and VMware solution allows us to plug in and support storage and virtual servers as and when we need; ultimately DataCore provides a cost-effective storage solution that we are happy to recommend.”- Jon Hutchings, Oxford University Computing Services (OUCS).

Read full case study: Storage Virtualization at Oxford University