Using CloudArray for Multi-Site Consolidation

Imagine running a business where data storage is distributed across 20 geographically separated sites. What happens when one site runs out of storage capacity? What if one site was hit with a disaster? Surely there ought to be a centralized disaster site to protect against site outage or data loss, right? And who manages each site? Would there be an administrator at each site or traveling from site to site? What can you do to ease this management burden?

Cloud Storage Can Simplify Your Multi-site Infrastructure

Public and private cloud storage, accessed through a CloudArray cloud storage gateway appliance provides:

  • An unlimited pool of storage that's accessible from each site and never runs out of capacity
  • A centralized disaster site with unlimited bandwidth and multi-datacenter redundancy, network optimization and data security
  • A centralized portal that monitors and proactively alerts the health status of each site — without an onsite presence

cloud san diagram for remote branch office storage

Cloud storage does this via software or hardware cloud storage gateway appliances like CloudArray, that provides optimized data access from each site combined with a central point of management. CloudArray lets you recover your data virtually anywhere, on-premise, off-premise or even in the cloud using pay-as-you-go compute resources, all in minutes. There is indeed a better way to manage growing data storage needs across multiple locations.

DR Anywhere™

For a business that already spans multiple sites, using one of the sites for disaster recovery (DR) may be beneficial, although, it may not be best if the fixed storage capacity would have to be doubled. With cloud storage, secondary data copies can reside in the cloud on a pay-as-you-go basis. The CloudArray cloud storage gateway allows instant access to data from any site if a primary site experiences a disaster. With Cloudarray’s automatic and secure configuration backup, a quick download is all it takes to restore access to data from any site. CloudArray virtual appliances can also be started and run in the cloud, allowing accessing to the cloud data from any location.

Compute Anywhere™

For data volumes that need to be accessed from multiple sites, volumes access points can move across multiple CloudArrays located across multiple physical locations or in the cloud.

Not every cloud storage solution supports the capability to access your data for compute tasks anywhere. Some gateways make cloud storage look like a local storage array, with only a single local point of access. Other appliances appear as storage arrays, with an extra tier of storage in the cloud that is only accessed internally. CloudArray gives you all of the benefits of cloud storage, with local-speed performance, seamless interoperability and a multi-site distributed storage model.