Blade.org, a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the development and adoption of open blade server platforms, announced a new member-driven study on Storage Consolidation, the third of its kind in a series focusing on data center efficiency. This Blade.org White Paper is available for download for free at the Blade.org website at http://www.blade.org/tech_hot_topics.cfm. Blade.org member companies NetApp, BLADE Network Technologies and Double-Take Software each made contributions that showcase the advancement of technologies allowing IT professionals to reduce the amount of equipment needed to run an efficient data center.

“Blade.org provides a forum for companies active in the blade server ecosystem to come together and share best practices that benefit the industry as a whole,” said Jason Blosil, Product Marketing Manager for NetApp and participant of the Blade.org Solutions Architecture Committee. “This study’s results are especially relevant in today’s economy where IT budgets are constantly under close watch.”

Key Highlights:

• Benefits of Storage Consolidation: Efficiency across storage area networks (SAN) has been increased greatly by sharing data across multiple servers on private networks. Operational benefits from storage consolidation include: reduced power and cooling costs, increased capacity sharing, storage provisioning, network boot, software updates, performance, data protection, scalability, simplified backup and recovery, and improved lifecycle management.
• Server and Storage Virtualization – Complimentary Technologies: Storage virtualization compliments server virtualization by increasing storage efficiency and by enabling rapid deployment of storage resources. The result is increased overall operational efficiency, improved asset utilization, and accelerated business processes.
• Storage Virtualization: Storage virtualization is delivering dramatic increases in storage utilization. Deduplication, thin provisioning, and rapid cloning, as examples, are greatly reducing the physical storage required to store the exploding data collection and retention in today’s business environment.
• Storage Consolidation – Before You Start: By utilizing a combination of virtualization and SAN-based or host-based replication technologies, IT personnel can minimize data and application down time during storage migration while allowing users to still access applications with little or no downtime.

“Storage consolidation is paramount to an efficient data center,” said Brent Mosbrook Senior Product Manager for Emulex Corporation and Chairperson of the Blade.org Solutions Architecture Committee. “As the fiscal challenges from an economic downturn increase, Blade.org member collaborations continue to shine a spotlight on cost-saving techniques, paving the way for the modern IT professional’s needs.”