NASessor
Working With Reciprocal GroupNetwork Attached Storage (NAS) is at the heart of most companies’ unstructured file storage. NAS file storage ranges from small one-box systems, or Windows servers, to bigger systems like EMC VNX and NetApp. Users often just ‘consume’ file storage with few controls or regard for what it costs, often leaving IT administrators with a continuing burden of providing more and more storage.
While Cloud Storage offers virtually limitless capacity, it’s just not as easy to use as a local NAS – you can’t just ‘map a drive’ to Cloud Storage. And although there are several technologies which make Cloud Storage much easier and more secure, it still might not be right for you.
But how do you know?
Reciprocal has the solution to this problem, in the form of our new NAS Assessment tool – NASessor.
NASessor can scan your file system to gather statistics across your unstructured file data. This will tell you what proportion of your data users are actually accessing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis – and just as importantly, how much data they’re not accessing frequently. Often, around two thirds of unstructured data stored isn’t accessed within a year. If this is the case, then Cloud Storage could be a good option. NASessor can help with sizing a Cloud Solution too, as it provides a month-by-month breakdown of the last year’s data creation rate – so you know exactly how much new data would need to be copied to the Cloud each month.
But NASessor can also show you a break-down of your unstructured file data by type; e.g. Office files, Video files, Music, Pictures, etc. Sometimes, users store files on their home drives which you might not want them to, and which sometimes consume a high percentage of your usable capacity. Once you have this visibility, you can put controls in place – and you may find you suddenly have lots more capacity again!