Storage solutions for Small business

HP vs. EMC

When businesses   grow, they create data – which needs to be protected and stored.  Buying and managing storage hardware and software can be huge challenge.  Virtualization, file sharing data protection and email are four features of storage solutions.  This analytical feature reviews solutions from HP and EMC on these aspects.  There are other solutions like IBM, NetApps, Dell and Oracle which offer small business solutions as well.

Small businesses are in a constant dilemma – in terms of investing in the right technology which will address their immediate and future needs.  The requirement comes in terms of holding data as storage is a primary need.  But what should be kept in mind is the evolution of the storage technology, where it is not only a repository of bytes of data, but can do a lot more – how best to   leverage technology advances.   The idea is to eliminate two major problems that small businesses have – technical knowhow to implement and funds to purchase. For a small business, these two can be grow impediments.  Technology vendors have worked on these two challenges.   This analytical feature covers some of the features which address these challenges and see how the technology vendors address this. Ashok Subramanian, along with Gunasekaran Ramaswamy, Storage expert and Channel Manager of NetApps, EMC and HP during his corporate career, provide this analysis.

Virtualization

[ezcol_1half]HP combines its HP MSA Storage, HP StoreVirtual, Virtual Storage Appliances and HP StoreVirtual Converged Storage Appliances for its small business storage solution. Entry level consolidation and virtualization is within the small business’ reach, says HP.  Their thin provisioning features allows the applications to take up space only when consumed by an application.  Customers have the flexibility to move their data to low costs SAS hard disks when the data is not used.   HP’s Redirect-on-Write technology to provide better snapshot performance and the ability to create more complex snapshots with simplified snapshot management.   Users can leverage wide striping technology to simplify volume expansion and to facilitate full utilization of all resources allocated to a specific volume.[/ezcol_1half]EMC offers its VNXe series of storage that allows virtual instances for test and development environment.  No dedicated storage is needed as EMC says.   The benefits are virtual unified hybrid storage, software defined, free community edition download, with NAS and SAN support and works with VMware.   Further integration with Data Domain 2200 protection suits helps data protection.  EMC also offers expansion through its disk expansion suites.  All solutions are ready to be integrated with Microsoft and VMWare Virtualization solutions.[ezcol_1half]

HP addresses file shares beyond the normal file systems.  Files can be attached directly or put in unprotected cloud for collaboration.  In other cases, files are currently stored on users’ desktops and laptops.  There is a clear need to protect business critical data from failures, accidents, or malicious acts.   And as the business grow, the need is to secure and protect data across all sites, including remote locations, and there are large amount of files requiring increased storage performance and capacity.[/ezcol_1half]

Syncplicity from EMC is a flexible, scalable and secure enterprise file sharing and collaboration solution.  It offers business (with minimum 3 users) and department editions.   It offers collaboration through network file sharing and Microsoft share point.  It allows secure mobile editing, and pdf annotation and can sync with any desktop folder.   It allows real time document protection, and admin controls for file protection and management.   EMC offers NAS solutions from its Iomega series as a file server and can also be part of a larger file sharing system.

 

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File sharing

HP addresses file shares beyond the normal file systems.  Files can be attached directly or put in unprotected cloud for collaboration.  In other cases, files are currently stored on users’ desktops and laptops.  There is a clear need to protect business critical data from failures, accidents, or malicious acts.   And as the business grow, the need is to secure and protect data across all sites, including remote locations, and there are large amount of files requiring increased storage performance and capacity.

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Data protection

Data, is the most critical asset for a business as it grows.  With its low cost hard disks and tapes, archiving, backing up and recovery are easy ways.  HP says that there is no need for IT staff, and no experience required for backing up.  For slightly larger organizations might be used for protecting IT staff, and multiple server might need to be protected. If there are virtualized ecosystems then backup is needed for both virtual and physical infrastructure.   HP offers a range of StoreEver Tape Storage, Media, Autoloaders, along with HPStoreOnce Backup software as a comprehensive set for these solutions.[/ezcol_1half]EMC offers fast and scalable deduplication software optimized for virtual environments, network attached storage, enterprise applications, remote offices and desktops.  There are also archival solutions from EMC- called SourceOne, which enable governance and facilitate rapid response to discovery requests.  Cloud based data backup and recovery is possible through EMC MozyEnterprise. Centralized backup and recovery, bridging traditional and next generation data protection to safeguard information is achieved through EMC NetWorker. EMC Data Protection advisor enables powerful and unified data protection management with automated monitoring, analysis and reporting across backup, replication and virtual environments.

Organizations, irrespective of size would need email access.  Emails are formal means of business communication and also create transaction records.  The need to protect email data is imperative therefore.If you are migrating to Microsoft Exchange for the first time and you have less than 500 mailboxes, HP offers a variety of low cost storage solutions.  An extended solution for high availability and Exchange virtualization helps the organization to seamlessly grow without any hassles.  HP offers its MSA series of storage solutions for Exchange Mail server.Through its EMC VNXe series, EMC offers seamless storage solutions for Microsoft Exchange.  These solutions are low cost, allow virtualization and can add more low cost disk storage for expansion, when needed.

Both HP and EMC offer multi-site configuration, and replication at storage level for Exchange.   In addition, both solutions work with SQL server as database.

Both HP and EMC offers flexible solutions on three major aspects of storage solutions – Virtualization, file protection and collaboration / sharing.  There are other solution providers like IBM, NetApp, Dell and Oracle who offer email, virtualization, file sharing and data protection solutions for small businesses.  With cloud based applications come to the fore, both the technology solution providers have geared up to offer solutions for small businesses which want local storage or cloud based storage.  Normally the small business can approach a cloud based service provider as an alternate, but the above features of the underlying technology will be part of the service features offered by cloud service provider.