In days of old, scale-up storage was the best–and sometimes only–option for a growing data center. This meant adding expensive devices to the storage pool that often disrupted the workflow and complicated management. Now, scale-out storage is a more viable option for the enterprise due to its inherent simplicity to add and manage capacity. Not to mention it costs less and is easier to maintain in the long run. This is echoed by Mark Peters of Enterprise Strategy Group in a recent brief. He says, “Scaling-out has the potential to change the face of data center operations by displacing large, costly enterprise storage equipment with a pool of less expensive devices.”
The brief details the differences between scale-out and scale-up solutions. While each has its own benefits, Mark says the best choice depends on the nature of the application and that scale-out can “improve IT management’s ability to provide timely provisioning, greater resource utilization, required performance, and higher levels of data and system availability non-disruptively.”
What’s your preference: scale-out or scale-up? Leave a comment below.
