At last – data storage as easy as turning on the tap!

The data storage industry has long sought a plumbing-type solution that turns storage into something invisible and dependable—something users don't have to think about or spend lots of time and money managing.

Data storage should be just like the plumbing in a house or office. Want water, turn on the tap. Want colder or hotter water, turn the faucet and the result is near instant. No need to think about the infrastructure behind it—simply expect water to flow at the correct temperature.

In the same way, if a business wants increased data flow or performance for an application, users should simply be able to turn it up without worrying about how it is delivered or how it will affect the rest of the network. They just want it to work.

But we are talking data, rather than simple plumbing, so let's consider an elegant and simple ultra-high performance tiered software architecture. It will hide all the complexity and plumbing under the hood, regardless of storage vendor, to ensure a quick and simple implementation of Quality of Service (QoS) policies.

Advanced vendors are now offering such technology.

Storage virtualisation, including software-defined storage, QoS for data, intelligent hyper-converged infrastructure, Docker, and SAN extension are all part of it. Too good to be true? So I thought at first…

The new technology is a disruptive game changer in storage. It is able to transform storage into something a business can simply depend on. Regardless of whether they use EMC, NetApp, HDS, Dell, HPE, Nutanix, Nimble or an All Flash Array such as Pure Storage or Tintri, imagine the entire enterprise being able to see and address any and all of those environments to deliver awesome performance to the business. Such technology can enable a business to innovate, rather than simply manage storage.

Even better, for those who have already invested in an All Flash Array, imagine the flash becoming addressable by all their other applications to deliver stunning performance to the entire business.

The new technology is capable of adding QoS across all data so that no user or application uses more than their fair share of premium storage—yet it ensures that critical applications receive the performance required. An additional layer of latency across an entire storage infrastructure ensures that the data is available as needed, and when it's needed.

Sounds too good to be true?  Certainly not – the intelligent technology actually learns data behaviour and places required data on the medium for best performance, or lowest-cost storage, or cloud as defined in the management console, regardless of where the data is.

Exciting times lie ahead for anyone looking for a major performance boost from their existing storage without the traditional costs!