"We're looking for something that's easy to connect and disconnect, and iSCSI just plugs in like any other device and any server there can look at it," says Mark Rawson, a senior storage analyst at Southern. "iSCSI has a better remote capability. Someone down there just plugs it into an Ethernet hub, and we do the rest from here."
WHEN ARCHIVING IS ESSENTIAL
Archiving isn't the easiest storage project to sell. It's not sexy like a SAN, and it doesn't have a clear bottom-line payoff. But prior to the installation of their archival system, the IT team at Southern Co. couldn't meet its backup windows. Failures were common.
The company's vulnerability hit home last winter when several executives at the Atlanta-based utility lost their shared folders during a backup. That was the last straw.
Plus "the amount of data being backed up was growing so quickly," says Gail Commer, manager of enterprise storage at Southern Co. These factors made the archival piece of the storage strategy a simpler sell. The power company didn't disclose what it spent on the archival system, which is based on Veritas Software Corp.'s Storage Migrator.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
