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05.18.09 Making Storage More Affordable  By Doug Caverly The economy may be getting stronger, but it's still important to keep expenses down. People who deal with enterprise storage can help a lot in this respect, and we'll try to name a few of the most important money-saving moves in this article. Drew Robb actually listed ten ideas in a recent piece that's worth reading. The following represents a sort of "best of"/combination/elaboration article. So, for starters, have you heard of Google PowerMeter? This device, which is still in the works, is supposed to monitor a home's energy usage and then report it to the owner in an understandable fashion. The idea is that people will act more responsibly once they see what's going on. One tip: try to apply the same principle to enterprise storage, showing users a little bit of behind-the-curtain stuff. Then, if people don't clean up after themselves, you can tackle at least part of the problem yourself without breaking a sweat. Robb wrote, "Remove any personal, unnecessary or large file types from expensive corporate storage resources and ensure compliance with corporate directives where certain file types are not permitted. In particular, look for files whose name ends with .mpeg, .mpg, .mp3, .wav, .pst, .log, .bak and so on."
Next, you can consider something that both Google and the economy might approve of: buying new equipment. New equipment is often much more energy-efficient than old stuff, after all, and it's worth your time to at least figure out if the savings would justify conducting some upgrades. Don't forget that advances in technology can sometimes make one-device-for-several swaps possible, too. Finally, in a sort of celebration of "Terminator: Salvation" coming out, here's one more tip from Robb: automate. He wrote, "Take the example of monitoring for exception conditions that will require intervention. Today, this can be accomplished easily, including the establishment of utilization thresholds that, if surpassed, initiate notification for corrective action such as backup, archive or deletion of the offending files." About the Author: Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news. |
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