Converged Storage and the Cloud: Getting the Best of Both Worlds

The cloud is now a standard part of every business’s tech stack whether they use online apps, file storage, or for something more complex like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Gartner estimates that IT spending in the United States on public cloud services will reach 16% of overall IT budgets by 2020, suggesting it will continue to gain prominence.

And while businesses are eager to take advantage of the cloud, many are missing out on the advantages of converged infrastructure (CI) storage. When used in concert with the cloud, CI can help businesses reduce costs, better allocate infrastructure resources, and provide them with bulletproof backup and disaster recovery options.

But before we look at how the technologies work together, let’s first unpack the key benefits of CI.

The Power of Converged Infrastructure

The real advantages of CI come down to simplifying infrastructure management (reducing headaches) and the incredible cost savings gained through optimizing storage and infrastructure resources. Admins primarily use CI to:

• Optimize Storage
  CI allows admins to treat all of their data as one single data pool. This helps them fill up every little bit of space on hard drives, no matter where they are physically located.  
• Easily Scale Storage
  With CI you can use any type of storage drive. This makes it easy for admins to scale storage just by adding drives from whatever vendors they prefer, even if they’re different from older drives.
• Simplify Storage Management
  Many CI platforms give admins a single dashboard through which they can allocate storage resources and manage their pool of data. Since data is no longer siloed, CI makes it simpler for admins to then backup data without fear that they’ll miss something.
• Unify Data Storage and Data Protection
  Rather than working with multiple vendors and platforms for data storage and backup, solutions like StorageCraft OneXafe give admins a powerful all-in-one solution. Admins can easily centralize data, then rest easy knowing it’s all safely backed up.

Blending Data Storage With Cloud Data Protection

If CI helps admins optimize the way they store data, adding the cloud gives them powerful ways to protect data. StorageCraft OneXafe integrates with StorageCraft Cloud Services to provide powerful disaster recovery as a service (DraaS). While OneXafe simplifies on-premises data storage and protection, StorageCraft Cloud Services adds redundancy and incredible recovery options. Together, these solutions help admins:

• Add a Layer of Data Protection
  As we’ve explored on this blog, one copy of your data is not enough. Using CI and the cloud allows businesses to store copies of backups safely offsite. This ensures that if hardware failure or disaster affects a primary data center, data loss won’t be an issue.
• Get Flexible Recovery Options
  Downtime is as much a threat as data loss. Using OneXafe and the StorageCraft Cloud, admins can take advantage of instant backup virtualization whether they’re spinning up VMs locally or from the cloud. This gives them comprehensive protection from downtime and multiple avenues for recovery.

Admins looking for a simpler way to deal with storage headaches should consider how converged storage can make life easier. When paired with a recovery cloud, CI is one of the best ways to optimize data storage while also ensuring that downtime and data loss are never a problem.

Not sure how a CI solution fits your business? Schedule a live demo with a StorageCraft sales engineer to explore new possibilities.