At the beginning of their cloud computing trip, many chief information officers of public sectors know that cloud computing should be part of their overall storage strategy, but not sure how much it should play a role. Therefore, they are often difficult to figure out where to start.

The first thing to do is to make a thorough inventory of the current data center infrastructure, which is usually a combination of heterogeneous server, network, and storage platform. According to the survey agency Gartner, it is estimated that storage capacity’s needs grow at an annual rate of 50%, and storage budget is expected to grow by less than 10%.

At present, enterprises can get huge benefits, save cost and space through three kinds of storage efficiency technology. And they can effectively use storage space and investment in new technologies, including the release of cloud storage resources. It also allows companies to make actual comparisons between the cost of their own data centers and that of cloud services. Therefore, the use of these technologies is an important first step towards cloud computing.

1. Deletion of duplicate data

The biggest obstacle in any data storage system is the related redundant data. Using intelligent compression technology, you can delete duplicate data, leaving the data instances on disk only. Redundant data is replaced with a pointer to let the system know where to find a single stored version of the data. Depending on the amount of work, deletion of duplicate data means that there is a lot of savings in disk storage and network communication. The technology of deletion of duplicate data can also reduce the backup window. In a variety of ways to maximize the efficiency of existing storage architectures, deletion technology of duplicate data is always a wise choice.

2. Automatically simplified configuration

All enterprise applications are assigned a stored amount of settings to operate, which is called configuration. In the event of a problem, these storages’ forecasts are either estimated too low, causing performance problems or configure is too high, resulting in insufficient utilization. And too high configuration may also lead to oversupply, and IT departments will buy more than the actual need for more storage.

The automatically simplified configuration allows the storage team to flexibly allocate disk storage space among multiple users, saving money by streamlining unused applications and saving storage of large amounts of storage space. In the storage team plan, it is expected to use the application cycle, and automatically simplified configuration makes them locked or stranded, not being used, which can improve efficiency and cost savings.

3. Compression

The next storage tool is compression. Compressing the encoded information more effectively represents the number of bits and bytes required by the data, and the compression can compress the text file to half of its original size, enabling faster data transfer, less expensive storage, and helping to free valuable network bandwidth. It can be enabled in primary and secondary storage volumes or both.

These three storage efficiency technologies of deletion of duplicate data, automatically simplified configuration and compression combine to significantly reduce the total amount of storage required while reducing capital and operating expenses. Using a separate technology, you can save up to 87% of the space, depending on the application. And if these three technologies are implemented at the same time, you will save more space.