Building a Reliable Data Storage Infrastructure in 2026

Today, information (or data) is not just a resource; it is the foundation of business management. It influences the speed of decision-making, competitiveness, forecast accuracy, and the quality of customer experience.

By 2026, the volume of corporate information is expected to continue growing rapidly, as companies will generate, analyse, and transfer terabytes of data daily. This creates new challenges, from storage and scaling to ensuring continuous access and protection from cyber threats.

Therefore, modern data storage infrastructure must be more than just a place to store information. It must be a strategic platform that supports analytics, automation, and artificial intelligence development.

In this article, we will examine how to design an architecture that combines flexibility, reliability, and cyber resilience. We will also explore the technologies shaping the new standard for data storage in 2026.

The Importance of Reliable Data Storage Infrastructure

Today, every company works with a large volume of digital information, including customer records, financial reports, analytics results, system logs, and technical documentation. This information forms the basis of daily business processes, so any failure in data access can paralyse a company's operations.

In addition to economic risks, companies face significant regulatory pressure. They must comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements, International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 27001 standards, and the National Bank of Ukraine's regulatory rules, which require them to ensure business continuity, reliable backup and recovery, and protection of confidential information.

Thus, a reliable data storage infrastructure is not merely a technical issue for the IT department but also a key element of business strategy. It determines the stability of a company's operations, customer and partner trust, and the continuity of important processes.

Data loss due to technical errors, cyberattacks, or human error can have catastrophic consequences. These consequences include direct financial losses, reputational risks, loss of customer trust, and regulatory violations.

According to IBM, the average cost of a data breach reached a historic high of over $4.8 million in 2024. For many companies, this amount could be critical. However, by 2025, this figure had fallen to $4.4 million for the first time in five years, demonstrating the effectiveness of modern data storage and protection approaches. Below, we will examine solutions that help companies reduce risks and build reliable infrastructure.

Key Elements of a Modern Data Storage System

A modern data storage infrastructure encompasses more than just servers and hard drives. It encompasses a variety of technologies and solutions that ensure the system's reliability, scalability, and flexibility. Let's take a look at the key elements:

Servers, networks, and storage:

• SAN (Storage Area Network): A high-speed network for corporate storage. It is used for critical applications and databases where access speed and security are important.
• NAS (Network-Attached Storage) is a system for sharing files on a local network or in the cloud. NAS is suitable for teamwork and document sharing.
• DAS (direct attached storage) connects storage directly to a server or workstation. It is often used for small systems or as backup storage.

Cloud solutions for business

Modern companies are increasingly combining traditional storage with cloud services — private, public, or hybrid. This allows them to:

• quickly scale resources to meet demand,
• optimise equipment costs,
• ensure flexibility and access to data from anywhere.

Virtualisation and containerisation

Virtual servers and containers make systems more mobile and manageable. This allows you to:

• quickly transfer applications between environments,
• make optimal use of resources,
• simplify backup and recovery management.

Thus, a modern data storage system becomes a comprehensive solution where hardware, cloud, and software work together. This allows companies not only to store large amounts of information, but also to ensure its availability, security, and processing speed — key requirements for data storage in 2026.

How to Choose the Optimal Architecture

Trends show that, by 2026, companies will increasingly opt for a hybrid approach, combining on-premises infrastructure with cloud services (hybrid cloud storage). This approach allows you to maintain control over critical data while enjoying the flexibility of cloud solutions.

The main advantages of this approach are:

• Storing critical data on your own servers provides complete control, high security, and low latency for important applications.
• Secondary data can be migrated to the cloud to conserve resources and enable rapid scaling of corporate storage to meet evolving business needs.
• You can also respond flexibly to changes in load. In case of peak data volumes, you can quickly add capacity in the cloud without expensive local upgrades.

When choosing an architecture, it is important to strike a balance between performance, security, and cost. For example:

• IBM storage solutions offer versatile, high-performance platforms with robust security capabilities. They work with block, file, and object storage and support FlashSystem for mission-critical workloads. These solutions integrate with AI and analytics and offer flexible scaling for different business needs.
• The Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series is a unified storage solution that provides medium and large companies with high performance, ease of use, security, and high availability. Powered by ONTAP, it supports hybrid and all-flash configurations and offers connectivity options, flexible disk configurations, and advanced data management capabilities.
• The Hitachi Vantara VSP is a high-performance enterprise storage solution that provides reliability, scalability, and efficient management of large amounts of data. The platform supports virtualisation, cloud integration, and the unified management of block, file, and object storage, increasing the flexibility and security of enterprise systems.

Thus, the optimal storage architecture and data protection in 2026 combine local and cloud resources, providing a balance between security, performance, and cost. Using a hybrid approach allows companies to keep critical data under complete control, scale secondary resources in the cloud, and respond quickly to changing workloads. Modern solutions such as IBM Storage, Lenovo ThinkSystem DM Series, and Hitachi Vantara VSP provide reliability, flexibility, and integration with analytics and AI, transforming data storage infrastructure into a strategic business asset.

Backup & DR

Backup is the foundation of any reliable data storage infrastructure. It allows you not only to store information, but also to quickly recover it after failures, cyberattacks, or accidental user errors.

The classic 3-2-1 backup strategy works like this:

• three copies of data — one primary and two backup copies;
• on two different types of storage — for example, disks and tapes or SSD and cloud;
• with one copy outside the main infrastructure — this can be cloud storage or a remote data centre.

Two key indicators are used to evaluate the effectiveness of a recovery plan:

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective) — the maximum time during which the system can be restored after a failure;
• RPO (Recovery Point Objective) — the maximum allowable amount of data that can be lost since the last backup.

In 2025, more and more companies are choosing cloud-based DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) solutions. They automate the recovery process after technical failures, virus attacks, or other incidents. This trend will continue in the coming years. Advantages of DRaaS:

• instant scaling of resources to meet business needs;
• fast and accurate data recovery;
• reduced costs of maintaining your own emergency infrastructure;
• ability to test the recovery process without risk to real data.

Thus, backup and disaster recovery are not just a technical operation but an extremely important elements of a data protection strategy that ensures business continuity and minimises the risks of financial and reputational losses.

Cybersecurity of Storage Infrastructure

Modern data storage infrastructure is constantly exposed to various threats, ranging from ransomware and DDoS attacks to internal user errors. In order to effectively protect corporate data storage by 2026, companies are using a multi-layered security approach.

Key principles of protection include:

• Data encryption at all stages, from network transmission to storage on disks or in the cloud. This ensures confidentiality, even in the event of physical theft of the storage medium.
• Access control is based on the "least privilege" principle, whereby each user or application receives only the necessary rights to perform specific tasks. This reduces the risk of accidental or malicious actions.
• Zero Trust security is a concept in which no one is trusted by default. Every access is verified, and authentication and authorisation are performed continuously.
• SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) systems monitor user behaviour, track anomalies, and immediately flag potential threats.

This comprehensive approach allows you to:

• minimise the risks of data loss or compromise;
• respond quickly to incidents without harming business processes;
• comply with international standards and regulatory requirements for information security;
• maintain the trust of customers and partners.

Today and in the coming years, corporate data storage cybersecurity will not be just a technical task for the IT department, but a strategic component of business stability and sustainability.

Automation and analytics for data storage

Automation and AI-driven data management systems are gradually becoming the standard for modern storage infrastructure. They don't just keep storage running, they make it smarter, more efficient, and more secure — helping companies predict failures, optimise resources, and make informed decisions based on real-time data.

Modern systems are capable of:

• Predict potential failures — machine learning algorithms analyse logs and system metrics to identify signs of future problems before they turn into critical incidents;
• Automatically reallocate resources — in the event of increased load, the system can independently adapt its capacity to maintain stable performance.
• Analyse disk space utilisation — identify inactive or duplicate data, optimising storage costs.

These capabilities form a new approach to infrastructure management: storage becomes a self-learning system capable of adapting, predicting, and making decisions in real time. This ensures greater operational stability, reduces IT maintenance costs, and increases business readiness for any challenges.

2026 trends in data storage

Data storage technologies are constantly evolving. New performance, flexibility, and security standards for enterprise storage may emerge in 2026. The main areas of development currently are as follows:

• NVMe-over-Fabric extends the capabilities of the NVMe protocol to allow its use over network interfaces, such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and InfiniBand. NVMe-over-Fabric provides access to NVMe storage devices over long distances with minimal latency and maximum performance. This approach overcomes the limitations of traditional network protocols and is ideal for high-load environments such as those involving artificial intelligence, virtualisation, and high-performance computing (HPC).
• Edge storage distributes data storage closer to where the data is generated. For instance, factories, company branches, and remote offices can store critical information locally, thereby speeding up access and reducing the load on central data centres.
• Modern data storage systems integrate with AI platforms, becoming part of analytical and intelligent systems. This enables the processing of large amounts of data in real time, the identification of patterns, the prediction of trends, and the conversion of information into practical business insights.

Thanks to these trends, companies will obtain faster, more reliable systems and flexible data management tools that support digital transformation. Infrastructure is becoming more "intelligent" and ready to address modern business challenges, from processing large volumes of data to ensuring the continuity and security of critical processes.

Conclusion

By 2026, establishing a reliable data storage infrastructure will be a strategic imperative for any company, not just a technical task. According to the IBM Data Breach Report, the average cost of a data breach fell to $4.4 million in 2025 for the first time in five years. The main factors behind this improvement were automating data storage processes and using artificial intelligence to manage infrastructure. These changes allow for faster threat detection, resource optimisation, and potential failure prediction.

Companies that implement hybrid storage models and use AI-driven data management and Zero Trust principles ensure business continuity and increase resilience to cyberattacks and technical failures.

Investing in modern enterprise storage, backup and recovery, automation, and analytics protects data and improves business process efficiency, reducing costs and gaining a competitive advantage in the market.

FAQ

What are the main principles for building a reliable data storage system in 2026? —

A combination of hybrid architecture, automation, backup, and cybersecurity.

What are the differences between SAN, NAS, and DAS systems? —

• DAS is storage connected directly to a single server or computer. It is suitable for local storage or backup.
• NAS is network file storage for sharing files and backup over a local network.
• SAN is a high-speed network for block-level storage that provides performance and reliability for critical systems and databases.

How can you ensure the cybersecurity of corporate storage? —

Use encryption, a zero trust approach, access control, and SIEM analytics.

What technologies help automate data storage management? —

Technologies that help automate data storage management include artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) systems, automatic resource allocation, performance monitoring, and disk space usage analytics.

Want to build a reliable, future-ready data storage infrastructure? Contact Solidity’s experts today to design a scalable, secure, and high-performance solution tailored to your business needs.