Companies are finding new ways to combine physical, virtual and cloud environments to control costs in new-generation data centers. Traditional clusters based on shared storage (namely, storage area networks) are no longer the de facto choice for protecting business-critical applications in these new environments. SAN-less cluster packages, which are able to pool a large amount of unstructured data across a variety of storage configurations, have attributes that work well for both new-gen and older IT systems. These features enable data center managers to utilize the flexibility and cost savings of cloud, virtual and high-performance storage, and mixed infrastructures without sacrificing availability or disaster protection for business-critical applications. This eWEEK slide show, using industry insight from Jerry Melnick, chief operating officer of San Mateo, Calif.-based SIOS, presents 10 questions to ask that will help determine if a SAN-less cluster solution is right for your enterprise. SIOS makes both SAN and SAN-less software that protects data and applications from downtime.