How to choose a storage platform

You want to choose a storage platform that can be flexibly scaled to meet your capacity requirements in the lifecycle of your infrastructure. Another option is to select a storage pod, or an infrastructure pod that includes storage. In this way, you need to buy pod or infrastructure pod based on the performance of the service level protocol, such as IOPS, virtual machines, etc. The key to this approach is the need for an automated/organizational platform that can manage multiple pods.

Performance is significant for any storage deployment platform. In a typical private cloud deployment platform, performance is divided into several levels, in general, can be divided into silver, gold and platinum level. You want your storage platform to have multiple levels of service without running out of resources (that is, you don't want to spend every service on the top level). Some of the stored functions like automatic layering (the array reads data from disk frequently, or vice versa), computer high-speed buffering processing (the front of the high-speed buffer memory bar), can meet at low consumption to achieve high performance. In addition, features such as data de-duplication, replication, and snapshots are also worth considering.

The most critical factor is manageability, which plays an important role in the overall cost of storage deployment platforms. For a private cloud, you must want a system that can be managed and tested simultaneously by local tools and the automated/organizational platform of your choice. The more open the storage management platform is, the more powerful the application interface or software partner ecosystem is, and the more convenient it will be for you to use it.

When you make a decision, you must make sure that the software you choose for your Automation/organization platform is well adapted to your storage platform. These tools are often used and expensive, and it is important that they have little restriction on your choice of hardware.

In short, the choice of storage platforms is complex and important for a private cloud. Even if you're only considering virtualization now, you need to think carefully about your options for future storage platforms to evolve in the cloud. For a similar storage deployment platform, you can verify your concept where possible and listen to the customer's response, because everything is fine on the slide.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)