ABSTRACT
Compartmentalized storage is one of those real-world, commonly encountered, expensive problems that flies below the radar. Reducing compartmentalization is an area where IT departments can both improve service levels and save money in the same motion. Direct attached storage (DAS) means one server, directly attached to storage. For one server or a couple of servers, direct attached storage is perfectly reasonable and useful means to deploy storage attached to a server. Every storage system, including both DAS and storage area network, has some amount of excess, unused capacity. Direct attached storage is offline whenever the supporting server is down, so uptime is a concern. The cost of backup for consolidated storage is less expensive than cost of backups for lots of smaller compartmentalized storage. The typical compartmentalized storage system is usually a server with direct attached disks. The biggest upsides to consolidating backup are improvements in recovery.
