The storage foundation hasn't kept pace with increased growth, protection and availability requirements of the modern data centre, said Steve Sicola, VP of Xiotech USA.
"The next-generation centre must run on the principles of reliability, availability and performance," he added, speaking at the 2008 ITWeb Xiotech Intelligent Storage Forum 2008.
Stafford Masie, MD of Google SA, said the fundamentals of storage needed to be rebuilt to effectively and reliantly store the large volumes of information that organisations have to store. "Even though Google has the largest data centre in the world, the popularity of You Tube has turned storage into a headache for Google."
Compounding the problem of ineffective storage systems for most companies are new innovations that are embraced by companies. "Devices know more than people because people are storing more of themselves in their devices and this is not going to stop," Masie said.
The result of this, according to VMWare technical director, Niall Kritzinger, is the gap that exists between what IT delivers and what business expects. "We need to reach a point where business drives business and uses dynamic IT infrastructure to keep up with this growth," he said.
"Storage is key to the solution sets VMWare is providing. Virtualisation can close the gap between IT and business", says Kritzinger. He says because a virtualised machine can outperform a physical machine, it becomes an essential part of the creation of effective storage systems. "It is possible to turn 300 servers into eight servers using VM software."
According to Sicola, this new storage foundation should "target failure avoidance and service avoidance, focus on efficiency, provide a balanced performing storage system and the automation of systems management".
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