Storage – Still Worry Free #cetpak20

nimble2

I was thinking about backups the other day and realized we haven’t had any storage issues in a while. I’m sure that’s thanks to our relatively new Nimble Storage Array. I also find myself wondering why our wifi system can’t be more like the nimble. Human understandable GUI, cost effective, plays well with everything, just works and can be mastered in an afternoon. But I digress.

Looking at moving forward with an offsite backup strategy, we have two solid options: buy a second nimble array and host it at one of our school sites or rent space on the County Office’s nimble and snapshot over to it from ours.

Part of me likes the idea of not having to manage another box but honestly with a nimble array, it’s a minor concern. Hosting at the county has an appeal for their better backup power and redundant network connections. It’s also nice to have someone else to call when things go wrong. But then, we lose some capability going hosted and no one every got fired for buying too much storage. But do we need it?

With our move to gmail and Google docs, local storage is becoming less and less important however some applications still have the potential to suck loads of data. When we start installing IP cameras and steaming HD video back to the SAN, we’ll start filling up all that storage, unless I can find way to stream it to Google Drive.

Nimble Storage has made it almost too simple to not locally host our own backup solution. If I still weren’t aiming for a Zero Server Server Room, buying another array and housing it locally would be a no brainer. Or maybe we will buy another Nimble but host it in the County Office’s new data center instead of at one of our sites and get the best of both worlds.

Data backups used to be a major concern for technology departments before services like Google Vault came around. Given that Vault is now free to schools and Google Drive storage is unlimited, it seems silly to still be talking about local storage. The real challenge now is uninterruptible Internet access. We’ve become so dependent on the Internet for core services that not having a backup connection through an alternate route is the real worry. Too bad Nimble doesn’t make a magic box for that.