Data center storage is the collective term for the hardware, software and processes that manage and monitor data storage within a data center, on site. It includes all IT assets that store, retrieve, distribute, back up or archive computer data and applications inside the data center facility. Whereas “IT storage” refers to both on-site and off-site storage assets, “data center storage” refers specifically to on-site assets. These may include hard disk drives, tape drives, direct-attached storage (DAS) devices, storage and backup management software utilities, storage networking technologies such as storage area networks (SAN), network attached storage (NAS) and redundant array of independent disks (RAID) devices.
Data center storage also includes the policies and procedures that govern data storage and retrieval such as data collection and distribution, access control, storage security, data availability, storage quotas, backup schedules, data retention schedules, and so on. In financial, medical and other highly regulated industries, data center storage must comply with government and industry regulations for data storage, information privacy and data security.
Enterprises that need flexible storage provisioning and a secure data storage environment will be best served by a software-defined storage solution (SDS). SUSE Enterprise Storage uses off-the-shelf servers and disk drives and enables the creation of on-site private clouds for data center storage. Private clouds provide storage-as-a-service to business units, and all data is stored on premises behind a firewall. Designed as a distributed storage cluster, SUSE Enterprise Storage provides unlimited scalability. Additional storage capacity can be quickly provisioned and delivered as business needs change, and data placement is automatically rebalanced.