Data center storage is the collective term used for defining the devices, equipment and software technologies which enable data and application storage within a data center facility. These are –HDD, tape drives, internal and external storage, storage and backup management software utilities, storage networking technologies such as storage area network (SAN), network attached storage, RAID and many more.
Data center storage also includes data center storage policy and procedures that regulate the whole process of data storage and retrieval. Additionally, data center storage may also include data center storage security and access control procedures and methodologies.
The amount of data users handle, is increasing every day, and so is the storage requirements. It has become major concern for data center managers today. As a matter of fact, about 28% of data center managers identified storage growth as the trend having the greatest impact on their data operations.
Naturally, there will be a need of huge storage, and some companies have started proposing a fundamental change to the way engineers think about and design data center storage systems.