The third consideration is budget. Fortunately, there are a plethora of storage choices that can be effectively and affordably deployed, but SMBs should establish an initial budget range. Using a multi-tiered storage approach allows a business to make cost/availability tradeoff decisions at multiple points during the data lifecycle.

The ideal to shoot for is a flexible, robust storage infrastructure that provides end-to-end management and of data. In order to build an infrastructure that incorporates the flexibility and management options needed for a growing business, SMB IT teams should consider building in these important features:

* Scalability. As your business continues to grow, so will your data infrastructure needs. Having a storage infrastructure that is as scalable and agile as the amount and type of growing pertinent business data is a must. Look for appliances that support increased capacity media cartridges or the easy addition of new appliances or arrays.

* Active archiving. Data archiving requirements are usually defined by company policy or industry and government regulations. These policies and regulations will dictate retention and retrieval time requirements. Certain industry requirements may demand a business to reproduce data in a very short period of time, along with "chain-of-custody" audit trail data. There are now technologies that increase efficiencies of active and multi-tiered archive you can incorporate into your infrastructures including new storage media formats.