Solutions  File Server Consolidation

File Server Consolidation

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File Server Consolidation eases systems management, and improve storage scalability.

As enterprise information needs grow, IT managers remain under pressure to provide reliable, available, scalable, and cost-effective storage. At the same time, managers must balance the current reality of reduced IT budgets and staff—effectively doing more with less. Storage consolidation can help IT organizations to reduce infrastructure costs and simplify management needs.

File servers are file-storage devices that reside on a LAN and store, manage, and maintain files for network users. Network attached storage (NAS) systems are highly optimized file servers that provide platform-independent storage to clients across a network. Designed for ease of deployment and integration into network environments, NAS provides multiple file-access protocol support, ease of systems management, and improved file-sharing performance and storage scalability.

By implementing NAS, systems administrators can help reduce managed servers, increase availability, simplify scalability, and consolidate backup. This article describes how these advantages can significantly improve resource utilization and productivity in an enterprise computing environment.

Realizing the advantages of file-server consolidation

File-server consolidation involves merging or centralizing resources that were previously distributed among non-optimized multiple entities. Centralization greatly simplifies storage management and maintenance, benefiting enterprise IT in the following ways:

• IT staff productivity: Enhanced manageability using fewer managed file servers reduces the time required to maintain network storage resources.
• Storage and backup resource utilization: Consolidation helps improve storage redeployment strategies to track more closely with changing enterprise requirements. File-server consolidation also allows more integrated backup strategies.
• Scalability and availability: Integration allows IT managers to deploy solutions—such as clustered NAS and NAS on storage area networks (SANs)—that are specifically designed for greater scalability and availability.