Enterprise resource planning apps often hold a company's most important information and have unique storage requirements. In this first installment of a three-part series, we look at ways to protect ERP data while improving performance.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications are typically entrusted with a company's crown jewels--key information that can range from accounting to human resources records. But many storage administrators see ERP as a minefield where critical information, multiple upgrades and competing priorities among database administrators, application managers and system administrators can collide. The result is a volatile environment that can produce inconsistent performance and become a management nightmare.

Recent advances in storage offer more efficient ways to manage ERP applications. Replication, snapshots, clones and disk-to-disk-to-tape (D2D2T) backup are technologies that can be leveraged to help manage an ERP application. But before these are used, a basic storage infrastructure must be configured to support the ERP application. The configuration can then determine the overall performance of your ERP application.