Do Small and Medium-size Businesses IT Pros Dream of Affordable SANS?

tonysoper_MSFT

16 May 2005 11:05 AM

Comments 0

OK, I am really impressed in advance if you get the obscure geeky sci-fi (PKD) reference in this blog title. Now that I have your attention, Microsoft is betting that with the advent of iSCSI SANs that can be accessed over their IP network, small and medium-sized businesses (10-500 PCs, 1-10 servers) are going to find benefit in simple SANS. Directions on Microsoft has an article on it here. Give us feedback - how likely is this scenario? How important is it that we get technical information out there specifically focused on the small and medium-sized business IT Pro that tells how to deploy and maintain simple SANS? Use the comments on this post to let us know. Thanks in advance for your feedback.

IT Pro, MidMarket IT

Comments

Xavier Ashe

16 May 2005 1:15 PM

I think that SANs and NAS see their biggest return in Virtualized enviroments. You can build a nice, afforable cluster when you can offload the storage neeeds. But without it, it still has some merits. Since I resell Unitrends, I boast reguarally about the need of network attached storage and disk to disk backup.

The first step most small business would take is to offload thier Exchange data. The second task would be to offload thier file server. These are the two server on which data needs grow the quickest. Then there is Data Protection Manager around the corner. So I give a strong yes, once the price come down a bit more.