HOW DATA STORAGE MANAGEMENT HAS CHANGED IN 2020

12/26/20 - storage

The pandemic of COVID-19 has caused IT teams to change their resolution of data storage management. Their feedback to the disruption, groups have moved ‘en masse’ to the cloud, migrated storage operations and have deployed virtual desktop environments in response to the situation.

But it is not the same for all storage administrators and engineers, as those dealing with enterprise environments and large masses of end users working from home are putting in a lot of work and effort to migrate to the cloud, many smaller businesses are likely making do with their current setup and perhaps just utilizing a dial-in VPN solution to access onsite resources.

Despite this, the majority of administrators have changed their practices to meet changing requirements for data storage management. Let us look at a few different tendencies that have resulted, and what that may spell out after the pandemic is over.

Migration to the cloud

The largest impact on storage management has easily been the expedited migration to the cloud, generally (hopefully) coupled with a redesign of infrastructure and handling instead of a simple “lift and move” operation. What better time to redesign your infrastructure to work better than during a move to an entirely new system? Companies which have been hesitant to move to the cloud in a proactive manner are now finding themselves in a rush to adapt to what is now largely considered the present – cloud storage. But what businesses are also finding is that scaling in the cloud is much easier than making commitments and future planning of physical resource allocation.

The trend of adopting cloud computing and storage is expected to continue post pandemic, including to many end users – and administrators – will continue to work remotely when the pandemic subsides. Cloud storage simplifies operations, leaving administrators open to work on other tasks and clear up existing technical debt. The caveat of simplified infrastructure and scaling using cloud resources, however, is offset with the weight of a change in price model by utilizing the cloud with their subscription fees.

Accepting multi-platform architecture

Even with the increased move to cloud resources, many businesses have retained at least some of their storage infrastructure on premise. This has led to instituting some form of hybrid infrastructure planning, or even such solutions as relocating some storage for specific usage cases to the network edge. Due to this, teams have been necessary to institute new ways to deliver data, while also continuing to provide performance and security.

While many groups were already migrating (albeit, slowly) to a mixed cloud infrastructure pre-pandemic, the events of this year have led many to align most of their efforts in to expediting their solutions to properly provide for their business needs.

The remote workforce

With the move for users to work remotely, a large strain has been put on existing on-premise environments to meet their needs – sometimes in vain, due to either inadequate storage or network infrastructure to meet demands coming from the edge. I bet the technical debt of that 100Mbps switch near the edge has finally been pushed to the top of the list. But even with that, remote users with their own limited bandwidth at home have introduced their own challenges, along with poor security practices and work conventions.

Couple this with storage administrators also working remotely, their jobs become ever more complicated. Despite this, many benefits come with a remote workforce, and many businesses are already planning to not return everyone to a fully inhouse aspect. To support this, administrators will need to continue planning for cloud utilization, and plan to present the required performance and security for their remote workforce after the pandemic is over.