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Top 10 storage stories of 2019

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019, with the latest trends in enterprise storage arrays, hyper-converged, object storage, scale-out NAS, and more

Antony Adshead
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Published: 19 Dec 2019 12:00

Computer Weekly’s storage content decodes trends and offers practical and technical advice. So, looking at the key storage stories of 2019, we see all the main developments reflected.

The big iron array is nowhere near dead, despite a relative decline. But now enterprise storage area network (SANs) are invariably offered as all-flash and often with non-volatile memory express (NVMe) flash as an option. Super-fast storage-class memory is also increasingly available, while capacities into the petabyte range are the norm.

Meanwhile, nibbling away at the “traditional” storage array are hyper-converged infrastructure – which bundles compute, storage and hypervisor into clusterable nodes – object storage and scale-out network-attached storage (NAS).

Object storage is a growing method of storage suited to large amounts of unstructured data. Meanwhile, NAS in its scale-out form is emerging from the doldrums and looks set for a battle with object storage over those datasets.

Meanwhile, there is always a flash storage, with efforts to squeeze ever more from NAND at both ends of the performance scale: NVMe for speed and QLC for capacity at low cost.

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019:

1. Enterprise and midrange SAN survey 2019: Dell and HPE

Part one of two: All-flash is mainstream, with NVMe also offered. Dell offers NVMe drives while HPE reserves it for use as storage-class memory as a cache layer.

2. Hyper-converged infrastructure vs NAS and SAN shared storage

Is compute, storage and networks in one box a better option than shared storage? And which organisations can most benefit from it, and for what scale of deployment?.

3. On-premise object storage: Key products and use cases

We run the rule over on-premise object storage, key use cases and suppliers, take a closer look at an organisation that has deployed object storage, and assess cloud compatibility.

4. Scale-out NAS hits the spot for large datasets, AI and machine learning

Despite the rise of cloud and object storage, scale-out NAS is a key choice for the big datasets increasingly prevalent in artificial intelligence and machine learning scenarios.

5. Scale-out NAS bounces back to fight for unstructured data against object storage

There’s a scrap breaking out between object storage and scale-out NAS. The battleground is the market for customers that need to deal with very large amounts of unstructured data.

6. Is NVMe flash the right choice for you?

NVMe flash storage boosts performance for I/O-hungry operations, but how does it work, where can organisations best deploy it, and what are the key uses cases where it can make a difference?.

7. What is QLC flash and what workloads is it good for?

QLC flash offers low per-gigabyte costs and lots of capacity, but can be limited by endurance and I/O performance. It can be a good disk replacement for several workloads, however.

8. Docker backup: Deciding what to protect and how

Docker is a simplified form of virtualisation whose popularity has rocketed. We look at the key decisions about what parts of Docker you need to backup and how to do it.

9. Storage and DevOps: What is required for agile development?

DevOps brings continuous and agile application. Storage has to fit in and make itself just as responsive to development that does away with the inertia of stifling hierarchies.

10. Cloud storage 101: Specifying for cloud storage

We run through key questions to ask when specifying cloud storage, such as disk type, performance, availability and the possible hidden cost of getting data out of the cloud.

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