What is your Storage Plan?

Every Storage Plan is not the same

Having an updated 3 tier storage plan is great and often enough for most facilities.

However, again you must ask your organization:

      •  How protected are you from data loss?

      •  How quickly can you restore and get back up and running?

Those two questions are at the core of every Storage Plan. If the answer to either or both of these questions keeps you up at night, then you need a better plan. Below are some concepts and ideas to think about when creating or reevaluating your Storage Plan.

3 Tiered Storage

The most common and accepted Storage Plan in the creative space and general IT is referred to as

‘3 TieredStorage’. This type of plan can be sectioned into three types of storage:

Tier 1 / Online | This is your main active workspace. It is what you load media to and perform your creative work on. If you are a facility, this is likely some type of SAN or NAS; if you are an individual this could be anything from a firewire drive to a locally connected SAS RAID. The most important considerations for this type of storage are:

         •  Speed – This storage must be able to handle individual workstation

             requirements as well as group performance requirements.

         •  Workflow Specific Needs – Different applications have specific requirements

             as far as what kind of storage is supported. Tier 1 must adhere to these

             requirements to meet the needs of the users. An example would be if you are

             in an Avid work group, Bin locking, is a requirement for your Tier 1 storage.

Tier 2 / Back up  | This is storage space that you do not work on. This should be easily accessible with

fast transfer rates to and from your Tier 1 storage. This storage can and should be used for a couple of

core reasons. The most important considerations for this type of storage are:

         

         •  Cost – Tier 2 storage allows you to use less feature-rich, less performance-based storage.

             Many facilities will put much higher quality storage as Tier 1, then move projects to their cost

             effective Tier 2 storage when a project is complete.

         •  Uptime – Tier 2 acts as a readily available back up of your Tier 1 storage. This ensures that

            in the case that your Tier 1 storage is having issues you can maintain some level of uptime.

Tier 3 / Archival  | Generally, this is LTO archival, as LTO is still the default standard in long term archival storage in all IT industries. There are three primary reasons for Tier 3 storage.

          •  Keeping Tier 1 & 2 Storage Clean – At a certain point, which varies from project to

             project, data simply does not need to be immediately accessible. If a project becomes

             active again, it may be reasonable for a client to wait a day or two for the files to

             be located and restored. Generally archival / LTO has a cost of around $50 / TB

             which is a very low cost considering the level of protection and will free space on

             Tier 1 / Tier 2 storage.

          •  Long Term Asset Retention – Over a period of time, most facilities find that the

             benefits of long term archival outweigh the costs. With file based workflows, it is

             possible to archive complete projects containing all assets and have them available

             20 to 30 years from now.

          •  Catastrophe Protection – If set up properly, current projects can be storage and

              updated on Tier 3 storage. If combined with protected or offsite storage this can

              give a high level of protection from catastrophic events, such as fires & earthquakes.

Every Storage Plan is not the same

Having an updated 3 tier storage plan is great and often enough for most facilities.

However, again you must ask your organization:

      •  How protected are you from data loss?

      •  How quickly can you restore and get back up and running?

Let’s explore each of these questions.

How protected are you? It’s not common in Media & Entertainment, but with many enterprise organizations (Banks, Hospitals, Insurance Companies); 3 Tiers is simply not enough. For example, it is not acceptable for Wells Fargo to lose your data because there was a fire at their corporate IT. In these cases organizations get into more levels of data protection. You may have heard or seen things like Data Duplication and Off Site Replication.

There are endless levels of data protection that can get to a level of ‘nuclear protection’ for your data. Truth be told, if you’re working on the latest Reality TV hit; it’s probably not worth the cost to protect the data. However, it does raise the point of where your data lives and how protected you are from catastrophe. Many facilities have found it cost effective and worth the effort to store Tier 3 archival offsite or in fire-safe vaults.

The point is, it is important to know your level of protection.

How quickly can you restore uptime? There is a secondary question here as well, which is “how much uptime is required?” If you have 10 creative workstations, do you need all 10 up and running within an hour or would it be reasonable to have 2 workstations running in an hour, then the others within a day?

This is really where Tier 2 storage comes in. Like it or not, all storage has the potential of failure. The good news is that many times failure does not result in data loss. However, the bad news is that it often does mean days of troubleshooting with specialists to get your Tier 1 storage up and running.

A very good rule of thumb is the “2 / 3” rule. Every two years expect 3 days of downtime with your Tier 1 storage. No one likes to talk about this, but if you talk to anyone that has been in charge of storage for their facility, they will likely (hesitantly) agree that this is reality.

So the question of uptime comes down to, what happens in those 3 days? For most, limited uptime is reasonable, but it is important to understand exactly what that is for your facility and if that is acceptable.

Using Your Storage Plan as an Asset (not a Liability)

It’s easy to see storage as a cost of doing business, but our most successful

clients leverage what they are doing to protect themselves and their clients

as competitive advantages. Here are a couple of ways we have advised

clients do just this.

Offering LTO tapes as a service to your clients:  This has been a revenue generator for many companies. Some facilities charge to keep the data, some facilities charge to offer clients an LTO with the final product; some have options for both. This is a simple way to give your clients more options while generating more revenue.

Using your Data Plan as a selling point for your company and services is one of the most brilliant ways to leverage your investment. Clients love safety. The safer their data is, the better choice your facility is for their project. Showing that you protect your data and the benefit they have working with you can be a huge selling point.