How Can Businesses Overcome Common Challenges in Data Storage Performance?

Did you know fixing poor data storage performance might be as simple as replacing an old hard drive? Data storage can experience issues like bottlenecking, hot spots, and slow load times for various reasons. Luckily, there are some easy strategies you can employ to optimize your system for success.

Distribute App Workloads

One of the most common causes of data storage performance challenges is poorly distributed app workloads. Sometimes, the software pulls all its computing resources from a single drive. This often leads to long load times and poor performance.

It's easy for an issue like this to go unnoticed, especially if you have poor visibility into how your network uses data storage resources. Luckily, resolving the issue and improving your storage optimization is straightforward.

Disk pool load balancing is an ideal solution to poor app workload distribution. You allocate a "pool" of disks for the apps you want to run. The disk pool automatically distributes workloads for the apps across all of the disks in the pool rather than a single disk.

This setup prevents hot spots and performance issues like slow load times. You can even use the TCP/IP protocol to set up load balancing on the server level. One benefit of this strategy is the ability to customize the allowed load for each server, which adds some flexibility.

You can also allocate more drives or bandwidth for resource-intensive workloads. For example, data backups are likelier to experience bottlenecking than other processes.

If a data backup is taking longer than usual, it may be because there isn't enough room for the large data transfer. Ensure enough drive space is available, and consider giving the process more bandwidth to speed things up.

Inspect Drive Hardware

It's easy to focus on software-related features when trying to improve your data storage performance. However, your physical disk hardware may be the root of performance issues. This is especially true if you use RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) groups.

So, take some time to conduct a physical inspection of your disks. If even one disk in a RAID or disk pool is malfunctioning, it can hinder the entire group's performance.

The likeliest cause of drive failure in most network environments is age. Drives can wear out faster if the network is regularly overtaxing them. However, in most cases, the hardware simply ages out of its reliable lifespan.

You can measure your disks' health by checking their SMART status, which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology. There are plenty of free apps and tools to check SMART status and monitor disk health over time. Make sure you replace aging disks before they start failing SMART checks.

In some situations, it may help to switch to a different type of drive. For example, HDD storage may not have the speed an application or server needs. Instead, you could shift to SSDs, which are more expensive but have higher read/write speeds.

Increase Storage Visibility

Poor data storage performance is often due to small inefficiencies that go unnoticed for an extended period. When you have limited visibility of your storage and computing environment, it's easy to miss red flags.

In fact, limited visibility is one of the top cloud security threats, particularly for handling sensitive data like financial and accounting info. When you can't effectively see how your storage is operating, you can miss significant security vulnerabilities in addition to performance inefficiencies. It's more likely to be an issue in cloud and hybrid environments since users often allow their cloud provider to manage their storage.

Luckily, you can improve visibility regardless of what type of storage or computing environment you're working in. Data management software is typically the easiest solution. A good DMS should have a user-friendly interface, analytics features, automation options, and security tools like encryption.

Using a DMS can simplify storage organization and significantly improve visibility. The analytics features can also help you watch for aging hardware, hot spots, and bottlenecks.

Analyze VM Traffic and Allocation

Virtual machines have exploded in popularity over recent years. They're great for simplifying cloud computing, shared servers, and even hybrid environments. Using hybrid computing can be highly beneficial for scaling your computing and storage environment, and it helps with data security.

Unfortunately, virtual machines and virtualized servers are at a high risk of concealing data storage inefficiencies. Some users may make the mistake of using a "one size fits all" approach to VM resource allocation. This can result in a poor distribution of resources where a few particularly busy VMs overtax your whole system.

Analyze each VM's traffic and app workloads individually. Before changing anything, monitor all the VMs over a test period. This should reveal which VMs are consistently maxing out their allocated resources and which VMs are underutilizing their resources.

You can use this data to reorganize your VM resources to fit each one's needs better. This is a more efficient use of your storage and computing resources, and it should improve performance on all of the VMs.

Resolving Common Data Storage Performance Challenges

Poor data storage performance is frustrating, but resolving issues and optimizing your network is often easy. Start by integrating good data management software into your system to improve visibility and access analytics. Conduct a thorough inspection of your physical hardware, as well, and make sure you replace any aging drives.