Latency that a vendor's own tool cannot explain
The array's own dashboard is green while the application it serves is visibly slow.
Enterprise infrastructure consulting
Make storage decisions around the workload.
Kritical helps organisations assess enterprise storage performance, architecture and change across hosts, fabrics, virtualisation, arrays, data protection and the applications that depend on them — so a migration or upgrade improves the thing that matters to the business.
On this page
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Jump to the part that matches the problem or decision in front of you.
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Who asks for a storage assessment.
This service is usually bought in one of three situations.
A migration or refresh you cannot afford to get wrong
You need the compatibility, cutover and rollback plan checked by someone who has done this before.
A resilience question with real consequences
You need to know what happens — to performance and to recovery — when a path, host or array fails.
Start with the workload, not an isolated array metric.
Latency and throughput must be interpreted against the application operation, I/O shape, concurrency, cache behaviour and the complete host-to-storage path. We can assess where requests wait and whether the constraint is in the host, virtualisation layer, network or fabric, storage platform, replication path or workload design.
- Performance investigation Correlate application timing with host, path and platform evidence.
- Capacity and growth Separate usable capacity, performance headroom, protection overhead and forecast assumptions.
- Architecture and resilience Review failure domains, multipathing, replication and recovery dependencies in context.
- Migration and lifecycle Plan data movement, coexistence, validation, rollback and operational handover.
Platforms we work with, and what we have run.
We work across the main enterprise storage platforms, so the advice you get is about your environment and not one vendor's catalogue. It comes from people who have run these systems for critical operations, not only designed them.
Pure Storage, including ActiveCluster
Design, change and day-to-day operation, including ActiveCluster active/active, where two sites serve the same data and either can carry the load.
NetApp ONTAP
Operation and support of NetApp ONTAP environments.
Dell EMC and VxRail
Operation of Dell EMC storage and VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure.
Five-nines active/active, run for real
We have run five-nines active/active storage for critical operations: 13 years across active/active data centres. If you are weighing up a design like that, we can show you what it takes to keep it that way.
Connect architecture to failure and recovery behaviour.
Resilience depends on hosts, paths, services and operating procedures working together. We map failure domains, recovery order and the scenarios your organisation needs to handle, then show where backup, replication and high availability each fit — and where they overlap and quietly duplicate cost. A design that looks resilient on a diagram can still fail together if two paths share the same switch, the same power circuit or the same administrator's mistake, so we test the design against realistic failure combinations.
What you get from an engagement.
A written assessment your team, and your board, can act on.
A workload-aware performance finding
Where requests wait, not just which counter is highest.
A migration or change plan with rollback
Compatibility, cutover order, validation checks and a defined way back.
A resilience map
Failure domains and recovery order stated plainly enough for a non-technical board to follow.
Control migration without losing the operating picture.
Storage change can affect performance, data protection and recovery. We plan compatibility, data movement, cutover, validation and rollback, then leave your team with the configuration, monitoring changes and remaining actions needed to operate the new environment.
Compatibility
Plan compatibility before data movement changes the operating path.
Data movement
Sequence data movement with protection and recovery in view.
Cutover & validation
Agree cutover checks and validate the new environment.
Rollback & handover
Retain rollback, then hand over configuration, monitoring changes and remaining actions.
How the work is priced.
An assessment is scoped and fixed-price once we know the platforms, workloads and access involved. Migration and remediation work is quoted separately, once the assessment has established what needs to change.
Get a scoped quote
Send the platforms involved and the problem you are trying to solve.
What happens once we understand the workload.
The first call establishes the platforms, the workload and the question you need answered, and ends with a scoped, fixed-price plan before any assessment starts. Subject to the agreed scope and available evidence, an initial phase can move from evidence gathering to a workload-aware finding and, where needed, a migration or change plan with rollback.
Make the storage decision with performance and security in view.
Storage evidence must be read alongside workload ownership, access paths and recovery responsibilities. Set those boundaries first, then follow the specialist path that matches the measured risk.
Make the storage decision with performance and security in view.
- Confirm storage, workload and recovery ownershipUse the responsibility boundary to identify who approves changes and who owns evidence, operations and recovery.
- Check security controls on the storage pathMove from storage performance evidence to cybersecurity when identity, access, segmentation or response controls affect the result.
Questions before you enquire
Do you sell storage hardware?
Kritical can help define a requirement and investigate sourcing routes, but product availability, authorisation, pricing and delivery terms are confirmed for each quotation.
Can you assess an existing storage performance problem?
Yes. The scope should include the affected workloads, timing, topology and available evidence across hosts, paths and storage platforms.
Can you plan a storage migration?
Yes. We establish compatibility, data movement, outage constraints, validation, rollback, protection and the teams or vendors required for delivery.
The array vendor says performance is within spec. Now what?
“Within spec” and “fast enough for this workload” are different claims. We test the second one, using the actual application transaction rather than a synthetic benchmark.
Can you review a design before we buy anything?
Yes. A pre-purchase design review is one of the more cost-effective ways to use this service — checking failure domains, sizing assumptions and recovery behaviour before money is committed, not after.
What evidence do you need from our current environment?
Topology, host and path configuration, representative I/O evidence and whoever owns the array, the fabric and the affected application. We will tell you exactly what is missing once we see what is available.
Related services
Performance
Kritical investigates difficult performance problems: the slow application, the intermittent stall, or the storage array that looks fine on the dashboard while the business waits.
Data centres
When a room needs planning, filling or maintaining and your own people cannot be on site, Kritical plans the commissioning and decommissioning of physical data centres, then puts hands on the equipment: rack and stack, cabling, backup media changes and remote hands.
Infrastructure & resilience
Kritical works across data centres, virtualisation, operating systems, networks and recovery.
Managed backup
A backup job that completes overnight tells you nothing about how long a real restore takes, or how much work you would lose along the way.
Backup & recovery
Kritical assesses backup and disaster-recovery arrangements against the systems your organisation needs to restore.
Networks
When connectivity, segmentation or platform integration is limiting the business, Kritical assesses and changes the network around application requirements, so your team can resolve the constraint and operate it with confidence afterwards.
Critical applications
Kritical helps application owners investigate slow, unstable or capacity-constrained services by connecting the user experience with application, data and infrastructure evidence — so the fix targets the actual constraint, not the easiest metric to change.
Let’s define the next step.
Tell us what you want to achieve, what you have today and when it matters.