With a software-based approach, IT organizations see a better return on their storage investment. DataCore’s software-defined storage provides improved resource utilization, seamless integration of new technologies, and reduced administrative time - all resulting in lower CAPEX and OPEX, yielding a superior TCO.

A survey of 363 DataCore customers found that over half of them (55%) achieved positive ROI within the first year of deployment, and 21% were able to reach positive ROI in less than 6 months.

Download this white paper to learn how software-defined storage can help reduce data center infrastructure costs, including guidelines to help you structure your TCO analysis comparison.

The emphasis on fast flash technology concentrates much attention on hot, frequently accessed data. However, budget pressures preclude consuming such premium-priced capacity when the access frequency diminishes. Yet many organizations do just that, unable to migrate effectively to lower cost secondary storage on a regular basis.
In this white paper, explore:

•    How the relative proportion of hot, warm, and cooler data changes over time
•    New machine learning (ML) techniques that sense the cooling temperature of data throughout its half-life
•    The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in migrating data to the most cost-effective tier.

Companies have NAS systems all over the place—hardware-centric devices that make data difficult to migrate and leverage to support the business. It’s natural that companies would desire to consolidate those systems, and vFilO is a technology that could prove to be quite useful as an assimilation tool. Best of all, there’s no need to replace everything. A business can modernize its IT environment and finally achieve a unified view, plus gain more control and efficiency via the new “data layer” sitting on top of the hardware. When those old silos finally disappear, employees will discover they can find whatever information they need by examining and searching what appears to be one big catalog for a large pool of resources.

And for IT, the capacity-balancing capability should have especially strong appeal. With it, file and object data can shuffle around and be balanced for efficiency without IT or anyone needing to deal with silos. Today, too many organizations still perform capacity balancing work manually—putting some files on a different NAS system because the first one started running out of room. It’s time for those days to end. DataCore, with its 20-year history offering SANsymphony, is a vendor in a great position to deliver this new type of solution, one that essentially virtualizes NAS and object systems and even includes keyword search capabilities to help companies use their data to become stronger, more competitive, and more profitable.

DataCore vFilO is a top-tier file virtualization solution. Not only can it serve as a global file system, IT can also add new NAS systems or file servers to the environment without having to remap users of the new hardware. vFilO supports live migration of data between the storage systems it has assimilated and leverages the capabilities of the global file system and the software’s policy-driven data management to move older data to less expensive storage automatically; either high capacity NAS or an object storage system. vFilO also transparently moves data from NFS/SMB to object storage. If the user needs access to this data in the future, they access it like they always have. To them, the data has not moved.

The ROI of File virtualization is powerful, but it has struggled to gain adoption in the data center. File Virtualization needs to be explained, and explaining it takes time. vFilO more than meets the requirements to qualify as a top tier file virtualization solution. DataCore has the advantage of over 10,000 customers that are much more likely to be receptive to the concept since they have already embraced block storage virtualization with SANSymphony. Building on its customer base as a beachhead, DataCore can then expand File Virtualization’s reach to new customers, who, because of the changing state of unstructured data, may finally be receptive to the concept. At the same time, these new file virtualization customers may be amenable to virtualizing block storage, and it may open up new doors for SANSymphony.

IT organizations large and small face competitive and economic pressures to improve structured and unstructured data access while reducing the cost to store it. Software-defined storage (SDS) solutions take those challenges head-on by segregating the data services from the hardware, which is a clear departure from once- popular, closely-coupled architectures.

However, many products disguised as SDS solutions remain tightly-bound to the hardware. They are unable to keep up with technology advances and must be entirely replaced in a few years or less. Others stipulate an impractical cloud- only commitment clearly out of reach. For more than two decades, we have seen a fair share of these solutions come and go, leaving their customers scrambling. You may have experienced it first-hand, or know colleagues who have.

In contrast, DataCore customers non-disruptively transition between technology waves, year after year. They fully leverage their past investments and proven practices as they inject clever new innovations into their storage infrastructure. Such unprecedented continuity spanning diverse equipment, manufacturers and access methods sets them apart. As does the short and long-term economic advantage they pump back into the organization, fueling agility and dexterity.
Whether you seek to make better use of disparate assets already in place, simply expand your capacity or modernize your environment, DataCore software-defined storage solutions can help.