- Healthcare Data Storage Options: On-Premise, Cloud and Hybrid Data Storage
- Solid-State Array Supports Future Health IT Infrastructure
H710 is also compatible with VMware vSphere to support virtual environments.
“Digital transformation is accelerating. Every industry is improving and streamlining through digital changes. Software-defined storage is replacing fixed-function infrastructure,” AccelStor Vice President David Kao said in a statement. “We believe data should not be stored in the digital box. It should be reviewed by powerful analytics and artificial intelligence, discovering new insight and business opportunity.”
AFAs are made up of multiple solid-state disk drives that are more stable than the spinning disks found in hard disk drives. The flash drives transfer data faster than hard disk drives and are easier to reprogram.
Flash-based arrays also don’t need the same cooling process as standard drives, making the cost of the data center much less expensive. Many flash-based arrays also include data replication, deduplication, and snapshots for recovery purposes. They are also cheaper to physically deploy because they don’t require as much power to run.
AFA is required for organizations looking to embrace technology with high volume data sets, such as big data analytics, according to an IDC AFA presentation. Hard disc drives (HDDs) can’t meet heavy requirements cost-effectively and flash is needed to maintain an environment as IT infrastructure density increases.
Over the past several years, most enterprise AFA deployments were specific for a single application, according to IDC. The most popular AFA deployments are for databases or virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments.
IDC stated that all of the AFA customers they spoke to were satisfied with the technology and are interested in moving more workloads to flash in the coming years.
AFAs have potential to offer organizations a quick way to get back up and running in the event of an outage. Healthcare organizations are especially vulnerable to service outages and need a primary storage solution that will successfully and quickly duplicate data to get applications back up and running.
Clinicians use digital tools to gain access to patient records and other critical information. The inability to constantly access that information during a service outage can put patients at risk. AFAs can handle the heavy workloads associated with disaster recovery.
IDC advised that organizations consider the future use of their storage infrastructure when considering AFA.
“All systems can deliver extremely high performance and low latency for a single application, but a system's ability to support key multitenant features should be considered for customers that plan to host multiple workloads, thereby maximizing the return on investment (ROI) that derives from the secondary economic benefits of flash deployment at scale,” IDC authors advised. “IDC believes that mixed workload consolidation is the future of AFAs and, by 2019, they will dominate primary storage spend in the enterprise.”
Many healthcare organizations are interested in big data analytics and that data needs to be hosted. AFAs allow organizations to scale up their on-premises storage infrastructure to meet demands rather than having to continuously purchase new servers.
Organizations have a finite amount of space for their on-premise storage and can’t continue to expand their hardware to meet growing data demands.
AFAs use more advanced methods of data storage and retrieval so organizations can use their stored data effectively.
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