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The best prospects for IP storage are IT shops that are primarily using the Direct Attached Storage (DAS) model and are nearing capacity limitations or are in need of a hardware refresh. These customers have never had the need to think outside the box, so the benefits of a pooled storage (as represented by a well-designed IP SAN) could open up new opportunities for the VAR.
There are many scenarios in which the IP storage can really play well and show the desired ROI. For example, the VAR can guide the customer into future server purchases with either minimal storage to load the OS, or even with no internal hard drives to boot off the SAN instead. The benefits of such design are cost savings, reduced maintenance and -- in the case of disaster -- the speed by which the customer and the VAR can provide business continuity. It is a lot easier to point new servers to the SAN to load the OS boot image than to reinstall or re-image servers.
Overall, the IP storage will not only provide cost savings when consolidating servers and storage, but also savings in ongoing management and the ability to provide storage on demand, as opposed to the traditional method of weekend backup and restore to expand a DAS-based RAID.
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