SharePoint is used by corporations as one of the primary platforms to manage and gain value from enterprise content. The increased reliance on SharePoint and the growth of this content in the form of unstructured data presents a challenge to IT managers: how do you architect the underlying infrastructure to not only match but to grow with business usage and needs in a cost effective manner?
Today at the Dell Storage Forum in London, Dell announced the Dell Solution for Microsoft SharePoint Infrastructure Optimization. This solution is comprised of Dell’s DX Object Storage Platform, Dell Microsoft SharePoint assessment, design, and deployment services, and AvePoint’s DocAve Software. The solution was designed to help IT organizations achieve:
- Reduced migration project times and associated costs
- Robust SharePoint data protection and reduced restore times
- Intelligent SQL optimization and increased performance
- Fully integrated SharePoint management and protection
- Scalable storage solutions for full SharePoint product lifecycle
The solution has the capability to interoperate with and optimize existing SharePoint deployments seamlessly with no disruption to SharePoint usage. The solution enables IT to consolidate SharePoint back-end data (BLOBs, backup datasets and archived content) into one repository which allows IT to scale the infrastructure according to business demands.
The solution leverages the Microsoft RBS (Remote BLOB Storage) API and provides backup of SharePoint in a way that adheres to Microsoft’s requirement of keeping BLOBs consistent with SQL in a way that does not require BLOBs to be duplicated. Leveraging the RBS API allows IT to proactively capacity plan for a SharePoint environment resulting in lower tier 1 storage capacity needs and costs.
Dell has done some performance testing, and here’s what we found this solution can provide if you are managing a SharePoint environment:
- A decrease of backup and restoration times of up to 29X and 32X respectively.
- End user upload/download SharePoint performance increases of up to 40%.
- Reduction of SQL Server capacity requirements by as much as 90% which alleviates backup and performance challenges. The solution can also provide SharePoint aware data in place capacity optimization for SharePoint content by utilizing the DX600G Storage Compression technology.
Dell’s SharePoint Infrastructure Optimization solution empowers IT to take a comprehensive SharePoint infrastructure approach which can seamlessly grow with the business, support tier 1 applications and their SLA’s, improve end user performance, reduce manageability challenges, and consolidate SharePoint unstructured content, backup, and archive datasets resulting in lower CapEx, OpEx and improved SharePoint service quality.
To learn more about the solution and how the measureable value is achieved check out this whitepaper.