Network Communications News (NCN) August 2017 | Page 6

INDUSTRY NEWS
Lack of testing putting
IT infrastructures at risk
Research conducted by the Enterprise Strategy
Group (ESG) has found that IT teams across
Europe are putting their IT infrastructures –
and businesses – at risk by failing to profile
application workloads and test data storage
systems before purchase and deployment.
Mark Peters, the ESG’s Practice Director &
Senior Analyst, said that assessing application
workload profiles before acquiring storage
solutions provides critical insight into what’s truly
needed by application end-users.
Mr Peters s a id: ‘Wit h o u t p rof il ing p ro d u ct io n
appli catio ns a n d a n a l y s ing t h e ir I/ O b e h av io u r,
prope r ly eva luating a nd s iz ing s to ra ge s y s te m s
can be extremel y dif ficu l t a s IT te a m s l a c k
acc u rate information re ga rd ing t h e s to ra ge
per for ma n ce needed to ke e p t h e m wo r k ing
opt i mall y a n d to protect a ga ins t s l ow- d owns
and ou ta ges .’
Of the 412 IT professionals surveyed, only 41%
said that they will profile their workloads before
buying their next storage system and 56% trust
either storage vendors or their VARs to advise
them on the right solution.
Solely depending on vendor recommendations
or partners who are aligned with specific vendors
could leave IT teams vulnerable, the ESG said.
‘Assuming that upgrading to flash-based
storage will solve all data-related application
performance issues is a myth,’ stated Mr Peters.
‘Application performance is heavily impacted
by the I/O characteristics and patterns employed
by the application itself and its interactions with
other applications that might be sharing the same,
invariably virtualised, infrastructure.’
For further information contact:
www.esg-global.com
Ethos Technology signs distribution
deal with Big Switch Networks
Ethos Technology, a leading value-added distributor specialising in
converged technologies throughout the UK and Europe, has announced
a new distribution agreement that adds Big Switch’s data centre
networking and monitoring solutions, Big Cloud Fabric (BCF) and Big
Monitoring Fabric (BMF) to its portfolio.
Through this partnership, Ethos will distribute both BMF and BCF
products. By combining open networking hardware, with an intelligent
SDN-based data centre switching fabric, Bi