What Are Enterprise Data Storage Solutions?
Enterprise data storage solutions are systems to store, manage, and retrieve large volumes of data that supports business operations. These systems provide the scalability, security, and reliability required by large enterprises. Typically, this involves centralized storage solutions that integrate with data management tools to ensure access and manipulation of data.
These solutions handle structured and unstructured data, supporting applications, and maintaining data integrity. Many enterprises invest heavily in data storage infrastructure to improve performance, meet compliance requirements, and mitigate risks associated with data loss or breaches. They commonly use technologies like SAN, NAS, and cloud-based or on-premises object storage.
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Key Features of Enterprise Data Storage Tools
An enterprise data storage solution typically offers the following capabilities:
- Scalability: Enables systems to grow with the expanding data needs of the organizations. Scalable storage solutions ensure that enterprises can increase their storage capacity without compromising performance or disrupting existing operations.
- High availability: Ensures that data storage systems remain operational with minimal downtime, even during unexpected events. This is achieved through redundancy and failover mechanisms that automatically switch to backup systems when primary ones fail. Implementing high availability typically involves using clustered storage environments, redundant power supplies, and reliable network connections.
- Data protection and security: Protects data against unauthorized access, breaches, and corruption. Security measures include encryption, access controls, and regular audits to detect and address vulnerabilities. Data protection also involves the use of backup and recovery solutions to restore information in case of data loss or corruption.
- Data management and automation: Simplifies operations, reducing manual intervention and enhancing efficiency. Data management features include data deduplication, compression, and tiering to optimize storage use. Automation tools in enterprise data storage solutions enable routine tasks such as backups, data migration, and system monitoring to be performed automatically.
- Disaster recovery: Allows organizations to quickly recover from catastrophic events. Disaster recovery plans typically incorporate off-site backups, replication, and failover systems to quickly bring operations back online.
5 Expert Tips that can help you better leverage enterprise data storage solutions
Jon Toor, CMO
With over 20 years of storage industry experience in a variety of companies including Xsigo Systems and OnStor, and with an MBA in Mechanical Engineering, Jon Toor is an expert and innovator in the ever growing storage space.
Leverage hybrid cloud for data sovereignty: Utilize hybrid cloud solutions to manage data sovereignty and compliance by keeping sensitive data on-premises while leveraging cloud scalability for less critical data.
Integrate AI for predictive maintenance: Implement AI-driven analytics to predict hardware failures and optimize maintenance schedules, reducing unexpected downtime and extending the lifespan of storage hardware.
Enable data lifecycle management: Implement policies for data lifecycle management to efficiently archive and purge obsolete data, reducing storage costs and improving system performance.
Optimize data tiering and placement: Continuously analyze and optimize data placement across storage tiers, ensuring frequently accessed data resides on high-performance storage, while archival data is moved to cost-effective tiers.
Invest in cross-platform data mobility: Ensure data can move seamlessly between on-premises and various cloud environments. This flexibility supports business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.
Notable Enterprise Data Storage Solutions
1. Cloudian
Cloudian HyperStore is an on-prem, enterprise storage solution that uses a fully distributed architecture to eliminate single points of failure, and enable easily scalability from hundreds of Terabytes to Exabytes. It is cloud native and fully compatible with the Amazon S3 API.
The HyperStore software implementation builds on three or more distributed nodes, allowing you to replicate your objects for high availability. It lets you add as many storage devices as needed, and the additional devices automatically join an elastic storage pool.
Key features of Cloudian HyperStore:
- Scalable Object Storage: Seamlessly scales from a few terabytes to exabytes, with no disruptions, making it ideal for growing storage needs.
- 100% S3 Compatibility: Fully supports the Amazon S3 API, ensuring compatibility with existing S3-enabled applications.
- Multi-Tenancy: Offers secure, isolated environments for multiple users or departments with granular access controls and usage reporting.
- Geo-Distribution: Provides data replication across multiple locations for improved data availability and disaster recovery.
- Cost Efficiency: Optimized for cost-effective storage with support for various storage tiers and policy-based data lifecycle management.
- Immutable Storage Security: Protects data from ransomware attacks and unauthorized changes with WORM (Write Once, Read Many) technology, ensuring data integrity and compliance.
Dell PowerScale
Dell PowerScale is a high-performance, scale-out file storage solution to handle the needs of enterprise AI workloads. It uses technologies like NVMe all-flash storage and Intel Xeon processors to accelerate AI workflows. PowerScale provides data access across on-premises, edge, and cloud environments.
Key features of Dell PowerScale:
- High performance: Uses Intel Xeon processors and NVMe all-flash storage to boost AI workflows and deliver high-speed data access.
- Multi-cloud agility: Offers consistent on-premises experience and interoperability across edge, core, and cloud environments.
- Federal-grade security: Provides data protection with real-time API-integrated ransomware detection and protects against data poisoning and AI model inversion.
- Scalability: Supports up to 300 PBs of storage to scale and accelerate AI pipelines, preventing GPU idling and ensuring uninterrupted model training.
- High availability: Ensures 99.9999% uptime with optimal performance per watt.
IBM
IBM offers data storage solutions tailored to meet the demands of modern enterprises leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics. These solutions provide high-speed access, scalability, and efficient resource utilization, addressing the challenges of distributed workloads and data.
Key features of IBM data storage solutions:
- IBM Storage Scale: A scale-out file and object, software-defined storage platform to support AI, ML, and high-performance computing workloads. It provides a unified data platform with a single universal namespace, abstracting multiple data sources and locations.
- IBM Storage Scale System: A hardware implementation of the Storage Scale software, optimized for demanding AI, analytics, and hybrid cloud workloads. It offers high-performance, low-latency access to data, ensuring efficient processing and management.
- IBM Storage Ceph: A software-defined storage platform that delivers scalable object, block, and file storage. It is suitable for building data lakes for AI workloads, such as watsonx.data.
- Unified storage platform: Consolidates file, block, and object data services on a single platform, reducing data silos and enabling centralized management. This integration supports collaboration, improves resource utilization, and simplifies operations.
HPE SimpliVity
HPE SimpliVity is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution optimized for edge, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), and general virtualization workloads. It includes HPE InfoSight, an AI-powered feature that offers self-managing, self-optimizing, and self-healing infrastructure.
Key features of HPE SimpliVity:
- Enterprise-grade data services: Provides high availability (HA) with just two nodes and includes built-in data services and security, ensuring performance and protection.
- AI-driven management: Uses machine learning predictive analytics from HPE InfoSight to deliver self-managing, self-optimizing, and self-healing infrastructure, reducing the need for specialist intervention.
- Simplified VM and infrastructure management: With automation powered by HPE GreenLake for Private Cloud Business Edition, it simplifies provisioning, managing, and protecting virtual machines across hybrid cloud environments from a single console.
- Built-in backup and disaster recovery: Ensures business continuity with backup and disaster recovery capabilities, enabling the recovery of a 1 TB VM in 60 seconds.
- Consumption-based model: Offers flexibility through a consumption-based model via HPE GreenLake, providing IT resources on demand and aligning with business needs.
Pure Storage
Pure Storage provides a data storage platform that delivers on-demand storage services tailored to meet the dynamic needs of modern enterprises. By leveraging a unified infrastructure with a single operating system, Pure Storage enables management, scalability, and continual improvement without disruption.
Key features of Pure Storage:
- Storage-as-a-service: Offers flexible, on-demand storage services with SLA guarantees, ensuring enterprises receive exactly what they need when they need it.
- Easy management: Provides a single management plane to oversee all data storage, offering visibility and control across all environments. Features like global policy management, predictive modeling, and self-managing AI ensure efficient and reliable operations.
- Unified infrastructure: Simplifies management with one common OS across every environment, supporting all workloads with a flexible, scalable global storage pool. This reduces the need to learn multiple systems and maximizes efficiency.
- Evergreen architecture: Enables continuous evolution of storage without downtime, thanks to its non-disruptive improvement capabilities. This architecture supports hybrid deployment, allowing for consistent experiences on-premises and in the cloud across Azure, GCP, and AWS.
Fujitsu
Fujitsu offers data storage systems and solutions that enable data availability and manageability across various environments. It helps organizations monetize and derive value from their data. Its ETERNUS storage systems integrate with other Fujitsu services and partner technologies.
Key features of Fujitsu data storage systems:
- Flexible foundation: Provides a scalable and adaptable infrastructure to support growing data volumes and business-critical applications. Ensures faster storage response and stronger fault tolerance to maintain data integrity and availability.
- Business-critical data management: Offers scalable storage systems to handle large volumes of business-critical data with enhanced fault tolerance, ensuring continuous operation and reliability.
- Backup and archiving solutions: Delivers scalable solutions for data backup and archiving, ensuring long-term data preservation and easy retrieval to meet compliance and regulatory requirements.
- Data integration and connectivity: Ensures data integration across different formats and dispersed locations, including user devices, cloud environments, documentation archives, and data centers.
Infinidat
Infinidat supports enterprise storage with its software-defined architecture, offering performance, reliability, and cyber resilience. Infinidat’s solutions provide data protection and scalability across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Key features of Infinidat data storage solutions:
- InfuzeOS: Infinidat’s software-defined storage architecture that underpins its enterprise storage platforms, delivering performance and cost efficiency.
- InfiniBox: The primary storage platform that guarantees high availability and cyber recoverability. It can handle mixed application workloads with ultra-high performance and microsecond-level latency, ensuring optimal real-world application deployment.
- InfiniBox SSA G4: A solid-state storage platform tailored for performance-sensitive, mission-critical workloads. It offers high performance with latency of 35 microseconds, along with cyber resilience capabilities through InfiniSafe.
- InfiniGuard: A data protection solution equipped with InfiniSafe cyber protection technologies. It provides enterprise-class reliability, security features, and fast recovery in the event of a cyberattack.
OceanStor Dorado
Huawei’s OceanStor Dorado is an all-flash storage solution to meet the demands of enterprise workloads. It delivers high performance, reliability, and energy efficiency, making it suitable for scenarios such as database operations, virtualization, and hybrid cloud environments.
Key features of OceanStor Dorado:
- Ultra-high performance: Powered by a proprietary FlashLink® intelligent algorithm and NVMe architecture, offering latency as low as 0.05 milliseconds.
- AI-driven management: Utilizes Huawei’s AI-powered management platform, DME (Data Management Engine), for automated operation and maintenance. This includes intelligent analysis, predictive failure detection, and real-time optimization.
- Reliability and availability: Offers a set of reliability features such as active-active solutions, ensuring zero downtime. Supports data protection with advanced backup and disaster recovery mechanisms.
- Energy efficiency: Designed for sustainability, reducing power consumption through power-saving technologies.
- Hybrid cloud integration: Integrates with public cloud platforms, enabling hybrid deployment models and ensuring consistent data management across on-premises and cloud environments.
Conclusion
Enterprise data storage solutions are crucial for managing the increasing volumes and complexities of data in modern organizations. These solutions offer scalability, high availability, security, and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring data integrity and accessibility.
They also support a range of workloads, from AI and analytics to general business applications, making them versatile tools for maintaining business continuity and optimizing performance. As data continues to grow and evolve, investing in the right storage infrastructure will remain a central aspect of enterprise IT strategy.