7 questions to ask your vendor before moving to an enterprise flash storage solution
You’ve heard the statistics related to enterprise flash storage: Experience 99.9999% uptime. Reduce your storage footprint by 80%. And, within the next two years, the number of organizations using at least 50% flash storage is expected to triple.
There’s no doubt flash storage drastically improves performance, and some offer features and benefits that can allow for much easier disaster recovery, high resiliency, and unparalleled data mobility. But before you commit to a specific product or vendor, you should assess your organization’s business needs and data strategy to separate the “nice-to-haves” from the critical “must-haves.”
Important questions to ask your enterprise flash storage vendor:
- How well will the solution integrate into my legacy infrastructure?
- How intuitive is the solution?
- What solid performance data can you share?
- Will the storage solution be able to scale up incrementally when and if I need it to?
- How does the overall cost compare to my legacy storage solution and the competition?
- How simple is it to migrate data on and off my new storage array?
- Will my vendor be there to support me in the future?
The last question might be the most important one on the list; you need to make sure that the vendor’s support service portfolio will complement the performance and reliability of whatever enterprise flash storage solution you purchase.
Consider the following support services you will need throughout the lifecycle:
- Advice and integration support – Does the vendor have experience implementing flash and creating a solution that will work in your legacy environment?
- Deployment and implementation expertise – Is your vendor up-to-date with the latest technologies and deployment strategies for enterprise flash storage?
- Personalized customer support – What type of support do they provide?
At Comport, our architects and engineers have partnered with customers to develop customized solutions for the past 30 years. Our insights are based on practical experience and progressive training that has earned our recognition as an award-winning Hewlett Packard Enterprise Platinum Partner, with numerous Elite certifications including Converged Infrastructure.
All-flash solutions, such as the HPE 3PAR StoreServ, provide speed, enterprise resiliency, scale, and affordability. We’re ready to talk to you about how at $1.20 per usable GB, an all-flash data solution would provide a viable alternative.
