Portability, access, and go-anywhere convenience should be the top three goals for small businesses when it comes to the equipment they rely on to operate. From point of sale (POS) tablets and payment processing devices to collaborative, cloud-based applications designed for remote teams, your business is in constant need of online solutions to help manage workloads and offer a better customer experience.
However, these solutions are often disjointed, and they don’t always work together as well as you’d prefer. Your team may have its project management in one system, but store documents online somewhere else, and use yet a different system for inventory management.
Sounds like a bit of a mess, right?
This is where software-defined storage comes to save the day.
Whether you are concerned about future storage capacity needs or you’re already facing current storage infrastructure limits while planning for big data growth, software-defined storage (SDS) options might just be the storage solution you need.
What is software-defined storage?
Software-defined storage solutions separate your hardware storage systems from the software used to access them. This provides businesses with a wide range of options and increased flexibility, along with user-friendly, value-adding functions like automation, data recovery, and data management or cleanup and deduplication.
Additionally, SDS solutions help to eliminate the hard caps on data storage because of outdated hardware or the limited capacities of legacy systems and on-premise storage technology, allowing for continual growth and adjustment of data storage and processing options as your business needs expand.
There are several different types of software-defined storage, but most of the available options fall into categories such as “scale-out object,” “scale-out block,” “block, file, and object,” “storage virtualization,” “hyperconverged infrastructure,” and a few others.
Software-defined storage combines flexibility with programmability, allowing for businesses to establish policies and automation that will make data management easier. Auditing, organizing, accessing, and utilizing the data your business relies on is made easier and more convenient through software-defined storage, helping to reduce time spent on data management.
In addition, the fact that the software and data are independent from each other offers a significant degree of protection from hardware or systems becoming obsolete, along with all of the upgrade costs and time lost to switching data management systems within a traditional storage system.
Finally, SDS are considered to be much more cost-effective for small businesses, not only due to the scalability mentioned above, but because hardware upgrades and extensive maintenance or management costs are eliminated as well. SDS also allows users to regularly shop for better pricing on data storage needs, since you are not limited to one particular manufacturer’s storage hardware system and selection.
Additionally, SDS options introduce the possibility of tiering your data storage needs and only paying for what is necessary now while being able to upgrade later on.
How is SDS different from traditional data storage?
There are a number of differences between traditional data storage and data center operations, and those of a software-defined storage system.
First and foremost, a traditional data center is generally a large facility or collection of hardware (on-premise or external to the business) where data is stored and managed. For a very long time these options had been serviceable for most business needs.
But as the amount of data has grown exponentially over the past several decades, and as the requirements for online business and marketing have expanded, traditional data centers are not always able to keep up with increased demand.
Whether utilizing an off-site server center or network-attached storage (NAS), traditional data storage resources can be limited by the software required to interface with it. Additionally, these setups are difficult and expensive to scale out without the risk of significant downtime and the lack of capacity for necessary replication and backup.
Software-defined storage options separate the data (and its location) from the system or device being used to access it. This separation is a key difference that offers significant flexibility for businesses.
Depending on your use cases, there may be even more benefits with SDS, including data protection, easier storage management, reduced downtime, and more.
Benefits of software-defined storage
Software-defined storage allows data to be stored on multiple servers or in multiple locations while still offering fast, easy access and usability. The ability to swap out hardware independent of the software is one of the biggest benefits, and one of the ways that SDS helps to future-proof a business’ data access.
Second, users and businesses can upgrade their software separately from the storage devices, and can upgrade devices (iPads, laptop computers, etc.) much more easily as well. As mentioned above, the overhead costs of upgrading drives and servers—as well as the software used to operate, access, and manage them—is becoming cost prohibitive for all but the largest corporations. With SDS, these costs do not show up on your company’s tab, which offers significant savings in both the short and long term.
Software-defined storage also allows businesses to access their data as one source, regardless of whether it’s stored on different devices or in different locations, or if those devices are made by different manufacturers. From servers to virtual machines, your data is available and readily accessible at any time (and usually from anywhere). This is especially helpful as virtualization becomes more and more common for business functions and tasks, and as remote teams collaborate from different areas of the globe.
Disadvantages of software-defined storage
While software-defined storage solutions offer many benefits for small- and mid-size businesses, there are potential downsides that must be considered.
First, the flexibility of being able to use hardware and software from different manufacturers or providers introduces added complexity to your network. Ensuring that everything works well with everything else while retaining full functionality can be difficult. Troubleshooting issues after software updates and installing security patches suddenly become much more complicated tasks, for example.
Another consideration is that creating policies and standardizing your data management rules can make things more complicated should you need to make changes, updates, or upgrades. However, the flexibility of most SDS solutions should mean that this issue does not come up often (if at all).
Finally, some SDS solutions are not as comprehensive in their ability to offer full data services yet. Some solutions are not able to offer data replication to separate or remote locations for the purpose of disaster recovery, for example. While this issue is not common in all solutions, it is something to keep in mind as you look into SDS options.
What does software-defined storage mean for SMBs?
Software-defined storage can have a number of implications for businesses, including some of the benefits mentioned above. But there are many other reasons for businesses to switch to software-defined storage options.
One of the primary reasons that many small businesses migrate to SDS is that it allows for more centralized “intelligence,” meaning that the administrative tasks and data management functions can be automated, which saves significant time.
This is possible in part because the software and the data infrastructure are separate, allowing the software to be set up to perform tasks automatically without impacting the data itself. It also means that businesses can choose the software that best meets their needs and the essential functions they want, all without changing their data storage or the way that it is structured.
The flexibility from an SDS also helps businesses to gain more insights from their data and learn more from those insights, which in turn makes it easier for them to identify opportunities, develop stronger customer relationships, and much more.
Best practices for using SDS
According to Microsoft, there are four steps that every business should follow when you are ready to implement a software-defined storage solution:
- Determine storage requirements.
- Review and adjust the design.
- Finalize the design with the help of a hardware vendor.
- Prepare for deployment.
Additionally, getting ready for any large infrastructure change requires a lot of care and attention, and there are some other best practices to consider. For instance:
- Build a plan with both current and projected needs and goals in mind.
- Make the transition in controlled stages rather than all at once.
- Test a failure incident in a controlled environment to help develop responses.
- Get to know your new software-defined storage equipment.
- Start off small and build up your software-defined storage over time.
Most important features of SDS for small businesses
There are numerous benefits for small businesses when it comes to deploying software-defined storage options.
Automation
SDS systems and their programmability allow for automation of data management tasks, saving a lot of time and effort for storage administrators.
Reduced costs
Upfront costs associated with hardware purchases or upgrades are eliminated, but so too are future expenses in terms of ongoing management.
Room to grow
SDS systems are inherently more scalable since they are not tied to one manufacturer or one type of hardware, which gives businesses remarkable flexibility.
Improved performance
In contrast to all-flash arrays or traditional RAID and SAN controllers, SDS nodes have significantly larger capacity for caching data, which in turn speeds up overall performance.
Putting SDS to work for your SMB
As you can imagine, there is a great deal more to learn about software-defined storage solutions, as well as considerations about connectivity, budgets, file systems, latency, and so on.
From industry-standard best practices to low-cost solutions, block storage and object storage, storage architecture and recommended storage services, and much more, reach out to our network of IT service experts to learn more about the options that will most benefit your business and fuel your continued growth.