Small Businesses Need ‘Big’ Storage Too

A major fallacy around owning and running a startup or small business is that if your company is small, then your data storage, backup and protection must be small too. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. Most of these small entities will tell you that they have the same needs as large enterprises, but are required to meet business expectations with a dramatically smaller IT budget and number of employees.

“Businesses of every size and type have emails, documents, spreadsheets, databases, images, video and suchlike, that are crucial to keeping the organisation up and running,” says Ricky Pereira,Dell EMC brand manager at Pinnacle. “All of these things, as well as the applications that support them, take up a considerable amount of drive space. Small businesses require solutions that can manage their storage needs, and grow with the business.”

He says each company has unique needs, and there’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution for every small business or startup. “The idea that there is, is a dangerous one, which will ultimately result in over or under spending, running out of capacity, and issues with functionality. The only appropriate storage solution is one that is tailored to meet your organisation’s technological needs and works well with the existing IT environment.”

According to him, smaller businesses and start-ups don’t have the budgets that their enterprise counterparts enjoy. “These smaller entities need to do more, with less. First and foremost, any solution needs to fit their budget and be economical. However, while this certainly doesn’t mean they need to compromise on quality, value for money is definitely a factor at play.”

Beyond value for money, any IT investments need to prove their worth in the time they save by eliminating mundane tasks, as well as ways they can boost performance and improve operational efficiency. “Most importantly, they need to integrate with existing solutions and help streamline the overall business functions. Any solution has to be fully compatible with all current systems and hardware the business already has in place, and must able to run on its existing physical and service infrastructure. Remember, today’s workforces are often not office based, which means mobile and cloud apps need to be supported too.”

“Small business customers need solutions that offer the top mix of price and performance for business workloads,” says Pereira. “And that is exactly what Dell’s next-generation entry-level PowerVault ME4 Series storage array family brings to these companies.”

He says the PowerVault ME4 Series guarantees that SMB customers will always have the appropriate solution irrespective of the segment of the business or type of workload. “For entry-level storage workloads can range from databases, VDI, backup to disk, all the way to productivity applications that require a solid SAN or DAS solution. This is what Dell had in mind when they designed PowerVault ME4 range. SMB environments are incredibly competitive and have to function regardless of extreme resource constraints, without sacrificing performance. These smaller businesses simply can’t afford to make a mistake when it comes to IT infrastructure investments, data storage in particular. They can’t afford to invest in the wrong solution, as they’ll be stuck with it for a while.”

He says Dell’s solution meets the needs of small customers, offering them a storage portfolio that’s straightforward and easy to understand. “This is all part of Dell’s storage strategy that they are already delivering on with the PowerMax, and improving on with the low-cost PowerVault ME4 Series, their next-generation entry storage solution purpose-built and optimised for SAN and DAS.”

Pereira says the PowerVault ME4 Series is Dell’s most affordable SAN/DAS storage array with excellent performance and all-inclusive software. It features significant enhancements in terms of capacity, performance, simplicity, and features. “It includes the ME4012 (2U/12 drives), ME4024 (2U/24 drives) and the dense ME4084 (5U/84drives) base systems, and can be configured from 0 to 100% flash, expand to 4PB, drive up to 320K IOPs, and include all the software SMBs need to store, manage, and protect their most important information assets.”

One particularly compelling feature is the solutions ability to reduce storage complexity through its approach that enables customers to set it up and let it do all the work. “The company did extensive testing and issued a set of practices for its customers to guarantee they can get up, running and productive in the shortest possible time. Dell also included all the software features customers need to manage and protect their data, there’s no need to buy or install any additional software.”

Best of all, he says, is that ME4 arrays have the ability to be configured and ready for data centre operations in a quarter of an hour, with a new HTML5 Web-based and intuitive interface for management from any location. “Over and above the inclusion of all software, each ME4 array includes multi-protocol flexibility with options for Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and SAS host connectivity.”

“Remember, startups and small businesses have the same needs as even the largest enterprises. They need storage that is easy to use and manage, works with their existing investments, and most of all, is safe. The PowerVault ME4 Series delivers all this and more, at an affordable price tag,” Pereira concludes.