Storage

Primary Storage

Primary Storage (sizing, deploying, and maintaining) can prove to be a difficult task for many organizations. Utilizing best-of-breed OEM’s, TCAT helps customers to plan and deploy solutions which are tailored to meet their mission goals. Whether it be for extremely low latency storage, massive storage throughout, or incredible IOPs, we can put a cost-effective solution together. Some typical business requirements are met through various channels:

• Video surveillance/satellite imagery – Characteristics include massive sequential write throughput.
• Unstructured data – Object based storage with typically a single namespace for ease of retrieval and usage of metadata tags to help identify the types of data.
• Virtualization/VDI – Low latency shared storage (either traditional SAN/NAS or Hyperconverged) to ensure the virtual machines perform as anticipated.
• Big data/machine learning – Massive scalability and the ability to scale horizontally vs. vertically eliminating the “forklift” upgrade/data migration.

Backup Storage

Selecting the correct storage model for retention of backup data can be a challenging task. As the cost per GB continues to decrease and the capacities continue to increase, organizations are quickly changing their backup strategies to incorporate disk to disk (D2D) as the primary target for backup data and replication to another site or a Cloud provider. TCAT leverages its close alliance with OEM partners and our deep understanding of backup environments to design and deploy solutions meeting the customers’ requirements. Whether it be an on-premise appliance/virtual machine or an offsite/Cloud backup target, we have been delivering backup storage solutions for over ten years.

Hybrid Cloud Storage

Leveraging the cost savings and high availability of Hybrid Cloud Storage can be a very attractive idea to organizations but there are multiple items to consider including:

• What type of data is being stored and where? Frequently accessed files and applications requiring low latency access are typically best handled by on premise storage whereas long term retention and archival data can be cost effectively stored in the Cloud.
• What processes are in place to automatically manage the lifecycle of the data and move it from hot to cold tiers and in reverse?
• What are the costs associated with reading and writing data to a Cloud provider’s storage? Some pricing models have no charge to write to the Cloud but can have significant charges when reading that data back out. Other plans may offer no charge to read the data but charge on writes.
• What is the impact of storing data in the Cloud to an organization’s security stance and/or compliance? If/when the data is encrypted, who distributes/controls the keys? Does the Cloud provider offer a Key Management Service (KMS) or does the end user want to maintain control of the keys?