Very few institutions starts out with hundreds of servers and a centralised storage area network, these are grown over time as new applications are brought on line.

IT systems are now integral to every aspect of the working day with users demanding ever increasing levels of performance in order to achieve more in less time. Key to this has been an increasing demand for readily available data. This information is the life blood of every organisation, ensuring suppliers are paid on time, customers receive their goods and the next Mars space probe lands on target.

In order to achieve this, each application relies on stored information being delivered correctly and in a timely fashion. Over time, applications grow and mature using more resources in varying degrees. This growth costs, in terms of resources and management time. Yet tightening budgets require costs to be driven down so the need to make better use of existing infrastructure has never been more prevalent.

As technology develops to keep up with this demand and the ever increasing cost of delivery, colossal progress is made in the way we manage, store and deliver this data.

Consolidation brings together existing resources making better use of them, helping deliver a better service to users at a lower cost of ownership.

By consolidating server disk groups into larger pool of disks, allows for a reduction of overall capacity and wastage by allocating volumes from larger arrays of disk pools, increasing performance, reducing wastage from empty/parity disks whilst allowing you to leverage enterprise features such as replication, cloning and snapshot technologies.