Trends Report

Do You Really Need A SAN Anymore?

Dedicated Application Storage Proposes More Simplicity And Lower Cost

December 4th, 2008
Andrew Reichman, null
Andrew Reichman
With contributors:
Stephanie Balaouras , Lauren Nelson , Christian Kane , Ben Echols , Alexander Crumb

Summary

It's been the conventional wisdom of the past 10 years that to provide the best performance, protection, and capacity utilization for applications and databases, you need a robust storage array in a storage area network (SAN). But with low capacity utilization, the inability to prioritize application performance, long provisioning times, and soaring costs, SANs haven't lived up to their promise. SANs also leave application, database, and system administrators at the mercy of storage administrators for all their storage-related needs, such as capacity, data copies, and backups. To regain control and get better results, application vendors are starting to subsume more storage functionality into the application itself, giving IT buyers the option to spend less on commodity storage and get their high-value features from the application. The time has come for buyers to question the value of their SAN and consider simpler options that fit better with the applications they truly care about.

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