LONDON, UK: Files and other unstructured data are the main source of data growth within storage environments, finds a survey of more than 180 customers at Compellent's annual user and partner conference, C-Drive.

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While over half (51 percent) of those surveyed cited unstructured data as their biggest source of data growth, more than a third (37 percent) still identified structured data, such as databases and customer applications, as their biggest growth challenge, underlining the need by most organisations for a fluid, unified storage strategy encompassing SAN and NAS.

Meanwhile, a high proportion (67 percent) of users surveyed have chosen to replicate their business-critical data to remote sites for disaster recovery, with only a small subset of users relying on traditional server-based replication solutions (18 percent).

Least surprising was the fact that every Compellent customer (100 percent) is using thin provisioning, a key technology for driving greater storage efficiency while reducing total cost of ownership.

Due to the efficiency and granularity of Compellent's automated tiered storage, the survey found that the vast majority (81 percent) of disk upgrades were for cost-effective, high-capacity drives rather than for more expensive, high-performance drives.

Phil Soran, president and CEO, Compellent, said: "The results of C-Drive polling reinforce the trends we're seeing in the storage industry at-large, validating the need for a more flexible environment where companies can easily manage the growth of structured and unstructured data, as well as utilise an automated, intelligent data movement engine with disaster recovery capabilities."