6 Common Infrastructure Storage Pitfalls to Avoid

FlashStack is cloud-smart infrastructure from Pure Storage and Cisco that takes the burdensome challenges of running hybrid cloud environments and makes them simple.

Infrastructure

Recently, my colleagues on the database solutions team created this fascinating list of Storage Pitfalls to Avoid for Oracle Databases. If you think about it, each of the six pitfalls could apply to (or be solved by) your FlashStack® database and application infrastructure overall.

Let’s explore why—but first…

What Is FlashStack?

FlashStack is cloud-smart infrastructure from Pure Storage® and Cisco. We redesigned it in 2021 from the ground up to be more flexible, scalable, and sustainable. FlashStack is unique because all its infrastructure layers—storage, compute, and networking—can be discretely scaled for on-demand capacity but are holistically managed by Cisco Intersight, a cloud-native AI management solution.

FlashStack is supported by Cisco Validated Designs (CVDs), which are predefined architectures for the industry’s most common workloads. CVDs take the guesswork out of deployment, so your IT team can worry about exceeding their SLAs instead of managing hybrid cloud landscapes. And with non-disruptive EvergreenTM upgrades, FlashStack can become your forever infrastructure.

FlashStack was designed to help our clients run their most sensitive, mission-critical workloads like ERP, supply chain, virtualization, and analytics—each of which only becomes more complicated with time.

With more complex applications come more demanding SLAs and shrinking budgets and resources. The last thing your admins and DBAs can afford to do is introduce additional complexity and build additional technical debt.

FlashStack takes those burdensome challenges of running hybrid cloud environments and makes them simple. Here’s how.

FlashStack Defeats Six Pitfalls

1. Outdated Legacy Architecture

Databases and enterprise applications require top performance and fail-proof resiliency. Unfortunately, infrastructure enhancements cannot always keep up with the demands of modern applications.

FlashStack’s new AI-driven hybrid cloud architecture offers superior flexibility and agility, with total observability of your landscape. Scale capacity on-demand so you’re never surprised by insufficient resources to run your business.

2. Ubiquitous Database and Application Storage Silos

Databases and apps can proliferate faster than tribbles. Mergers and acquisitions, fiercely independent business units, and workloads that don’t share nicely with others can all cause silos to proliferate out of control, creating a management nightmare for IT staff.

Consolidate and manage all your databases and applications on FlashStack with Pure FlashArray//XL. Reduce costs and the IT bandwidth required to manage all those silosconsolidate them and give IT time back for innovation.

3. Risky Ransomware Strategies

Fear of natural disasters used to be what kept you up at night. Now it’s cunning cybercriminals out for your company’s lifeblood—your data.

But FlashStack has a unique “depth-in-defense” strategy. FlashStack supports one of the strongest cybersecurity suites in the industry, Cisco Secure, guarding the network gates to the kingdom. FlashStack can also layer on best-of-breed data protection from partners such as Veeam. And finally, FlashStack customers enjoy the peace of mind of immutable protection with SafeMode™ snapshots.

4. Sluggish Setups for DevOps

Your DevOps teams are probably busy building new apps and restructuring existing ones for digital transformation. This means your infrastructure will be called upon to support more applications and more users. Meanwhile, impatient developers may be blaming your infrastructure for their project delays.

Accelerate your infrastructure projects with infrastructure as code on FlashStack. Give both your admins and your DevOps team the tools they need to maximize their productivity without impacting day-to-day business operations.

5. Wasting IT Staff Time

Most organizations’ IT teams are lean and mean. They don’t have time for constant infrastructure management and monitoring.

FlashStack can automate routine and redundant tasks. FlashStack leverages the power of Cisco Intersight, a cloud-native, AI-driven management solution, to ensure infrastructure runs smoothly without disruptions, so IT staff can meet challenging SLAs and still free up resources for more productive line of business–focused innovation.

6. Skyrocketing Power Bills

Data centers are notorious power guzzlers. Utility rates are soaring worldwide. Improving data center sustainability has become a corporate mandate and often a regulatory or compliance requirement.

FlashStack was redesigned from the ground up with the goal of reducing energy consumption and improving sustainability. Superior density dramatically reduces the data center footprint. An innovative new power management design and the adoption of new cooling technology reduces energy consumption. One customer, PNC Bank, reduced its data center footprint by 86% with FlashStack and saved over $1M as a result!

On October 27, join our webinar to hear FlashStack and Oracle experts recap the recent Oracle CloudWorld 2022 conference and talk about the six common pitfalls IT teams face when deploying Oracle databases and Oracle-based applications.

https://www.purestorage.com/events.html