It’s the start of a new decade and with it, the storage options to host your business applications are changing. The question is: What’s right for your business? The pain points your business was facing in the past decade haven’t changed. What has changed is the solutions that can solve them.
Why haven’t those annoying pain points gone away? A number of businesses have started on their cloud journey and discovered not all their critical and non-critical workloads are right for cloud, but they still need to put these workloads somewhere. It is this requirement that is driving the continued need for storage in both its traditional and modern forms.
2020 storage pain points:
When a business is choosing between traditional or modern storage platforms, these are the pain points it is facing:
• Do I still need a dedicated storage platform?
• How do I improve ongoing visibility of my storage and underlying capacity?
• How do I remove the staff upskilling requirement when using a specific vendor’s equipment, or feeling locked-in to a vendor my staff are comfortable with?
• How do I avoid the exorbitant price associated with purchasing additional drives to extend capacity?
• What type of drives should I go with? Can I finally leverage the performance of solid state and NVMe drives?
Advantages of modern storage platforms
A modern hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) storage platform such as Microsoft’s Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) running on Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition is able to solve these pain points because:
• You no longer require a dedicated storage platform or the associated hardware support costs.
• You have constant visibility of the storage layer as it is tied into the operating system that your operations team interacts with daily.
• You can remove the five-year storage platform forklift requirement and associated operations team effort.
• You can take advantage of the lowering costs of solid state and NVMe drives. In addition you’ll benefit from the blistering performance that comes with these storage media types.
• You can have all your required compute and storage in an HCI solution with a small physical footprint. You can also remove the requirement for expensive switches in smaller implementations.
Most IT professionals agree that choosing a modern storage platform such as Microsoft’s S2D has definitive business benefits.
Appropriate workloads for modern storage platforms
What business workloads fit a modern storage platform? General-purpose workloads such as running:
• Business applications contained within virtual machines.
• Microservices housed in containers.
• A virtual desktop fleet.
• Remote office/branch office workloads.
Most IT workloads of NZ businesses fit into what globally would be considered general purpose. Therefore, a modern storage platform such as Microsoft’s S2D, powered by Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition should definitely be an option when looking at your next storage platform.
PB Tech’s unique modern storage platforms
If you’re in the market for a modern storage platform, PB Tech is providing a unique offering in this space. We’re putting together solutions leveraging Microsoft’s S2D technology customised for the various workloads of New Zealand businesses.
Our 2-node Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) on-premise solution is designed for small-to-medium businesses wanting a customisable HCI power plant to run their IT workloads. This solution also compliments larger businesses looking for a neat solution for branch offices.
The highly available S2D 2-node all-flash solution is a workhorse built out of quality certified componentry, running on Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Datacenter edition.
Automate code provides optimal configuration right out of the box, meaning our solution is ready to run your applications.
We offer three and five-year post-sales warranty and support. We want New Zealand businesses to rest assured that we stand by our solution to ensure it meets your business' required uptime.
PB Tech wants to enable businesses to get the benefits of utilising a modern storage platform while also removing the required upskilling that goes with putting it together.
If you’d like to know more about our offering, get in touch with our business specialists today.
