Computer storage hardware

Cache vs tier: What’s the difference between cache and storage?

We look at the key distinctions between cache and tiers of storage, and where the line has become blurred with fast flash, 3D Xpoint and storage class memory technologies Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Flash storage tiers: Performance, cost and use cases

We look at performance, cost and potential use cases for the key flash storage types available, such as Nand flash, 3D Xpoint and Intel Optane, plus SAS, SATA and NVMe connectivity Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Rook 101: Building software-defined containerised storage in Kubernetes

Rook – think castles, not birds – uses the principles of containerisation and the methods used in Kubernetes to build storage that’s abstracted from the hardware it lives on Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

IT Priorities 2020: Cloud storage key but SAN/NAS alive and well

In the Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities survey cloud dominates storage spending priorities for 2020, but on-premise technologies such as SAN and NAS are still key to IT Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Kubernetes storage 101: Container storage basics

We look at the basics of creating storage and specifying it for applications in container storage using Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Veeam Availability Suite v10 adds NAS backup and cloud tiering

Availability Suite is mostly about consolidating the company’s data management platform idea, but it has added incremental forever NAS backup, cloud tiering and recovery to vSphere Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

China’s tech sector to shrink by 10% in Q1 amid virus outbreak

Hardware makers will be hit more badly than software houses, but the decline in China’s ICT market will be limited to the first quarter Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Isilon’s multi-dot upgrade to OneFS 8.2.2 masks big changes

The latest quarterly update to OneFS sees maximum file size grow to 16TB, brings in data deduplication in real time for HDDs, better load balancing and a new Kubernetes CSI Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Forget emerging tech, consumption-based pricing booms in 2020

Cloud storage's appeal is based less on tech or total cost than on the value that comes from Opex pay-as-you-go pricing. Now you can get that cost model for on-premises storage. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

IBM unifies storage arrays under FlashSystem brand

IBM to bring together all non-mainframe storage arrays as FlashSystem product, with options from entry-level to petabyte-scale with NVMe flash and storage class memory Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

US hotel group ditches datacentre for Nasuni cloud NAS

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts got rid of its datacentre and put everything in the cloud, with Nasuni cloud NAS providing storage from which any user can restore files Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Caribbean island hospital rebuilds after hurricane with DataCore

Hurricane Irma tore the roof off a server room and flooded IT hardware, but that was an opportunity to rebuild redundant IT using DataCore’s SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Acronis CEO bullish as specialist goes beyond backup

Acronis is set to launch Cyber Protect as it rides a wave of confidence based on increasing revenues and investor funding. Will the backup-plus-cyber protection calculation pay off? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Formulus Black Forsa turns memory into block storage

Forsa allows customers to bring application data into memory, by provisioning DRAM or persistent memory as block access storage with latency several times better than NVMe flash Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Podcast: How to boost staff awareness of compliance

Employee awareness of compliance, of the laws and regulations that affect your business, is vital, in some cases even mandatory. We look at the key ways to achieve it Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top four compliance considerations for SMEs

We look at the key data compliance regulations that affect smaller companies – such as GDPR, the Data Protection Act, PCI-DSS and PECR – and some key industry-specific frameworks Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Disaster recovery failover choices: Synchronous mirrors, P2V and the cloud

We survey the key options in disaster recovery: whether to failover to an on-site location or off-site facility. We also look at the cloud as an option in disaster recovery Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Six disaster recovery pitfalls and how to avoid them

We look at some key pitfalls in disaster recovery, such as failing to plan, not testing the plan, not protecting backups, poor communication and neglecting the human element Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Spread of Kubernetes spurs backup and disaster recovery products

Growth of containerised applications brings with it the need to back up and provide disaster recovery. But what do you need to protect, and who provides the products? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Do you use cloud storage for these use cases yet?

We look at the use cases most suited to a quick transition to the cloud: backup, archiving, disaster recovery, file storage and cloud bursting – cloud storage’s low-hanging fruit Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Big storage meets cloud in the datacentre 'as-a-service' revolution

Cloud is mainstream but the datacentre’s here to stay. This has resulted in a trend towards as-a-service in the datacentre where big storage array makers and the cloud giants meet Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

$5bn buy-out set to make backup giant Veeam a US company

Veeam’s founders are out as investment fund gets its hands on a pioneer of virtual machine backup. Now it will be a US company and eligible to target US government customers Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

DRaaS decisions: Key choices in disaster recovery as a service

We examine the key decisions when considering DRaaS. Whether to go full self-service, assisted or managed will depend on what you need to protect and your in-house resources Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Five ways that backup has changed since the days of tape

Back in the day, all this was tape, but times have changed, with cloud-to-cloud backup, cloud storage, virtual and physical backup appliances and myriad endpoint hardware Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Scale’s HE150 the first of a big push to small edge HCI hardware

Scale Computing aims to scale to micro-sized hyper-converged with a lightweight operating system it claims its competitors can’t match for edge and remote location deployments Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 storage deployment stories of 2019

Here are ComputerWeekly’s top 10 storage deployment stories for 2019, which see quite a move away from traditional SAN and NAS to hyper-converged, software-defined storage and object storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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 Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Public sector still losing user devices in high numbers

The Ministry of Justice has lost 354 smartphones, PCs, laptops and tablets in the past 12 months, according to a Freedom of Information request, and other government departments are in the same boat Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

How to buy hyper-converged infrastructure

Simplicity, high availability, scalability and reduced cost are among the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure. We survey the benefits, pitfalls and the key suppliers Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

China bans foreign computing kit from government contracts

All government offices and public institutions must eliminate foreign hardware and software within three years, according to a leaked directive dubbed 3-5-2 Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

NetApp’s Keystone hybrid cloud storage ‘try-before-you-buy’ for on-prem

Keystone on-premise and cloud subscription model will cost more than buying hardware so will be best suited to customers that want to try NetApp on-site before committing to purchase Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Survey finds most firms don’t respond to GDPR requests in time

Most organisations do not respond to requests for GDPR data in the one month allowed, while many return incorrect data. The education sector does best, but the public sector lags behind Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Security Think Tank: In-depth protection is a matter of basic hygiene

The belief that effective perimeter security is the best way to protect data is a fallacy that is being repeatedly exposed. We must recognise the need for a data-centric security model to protect data from both internal and external threats, but what does this mean for security professionals? Continue Reading

By

• Petra Wenham

Five essential steps to a sound disaster recovery plan

We walk through the key steps to develop a disaster recovery plan – from risk assessment and setting recovery objectives, to the plan itself and a testing regime to keep it fresh Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

University of Leicester dumps SANs and LUNs for Cloudian object storage

One-to-one mapping between Dell SANs and media servers had passed their sell-by date and caused vulnerabilities for the University of Leicester, which fixed the problems by a move to “stateless” object storage on Cloudian Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Figeac Aero manages growth with DataCore software-defined storage

Global roll-out sees DataCore software-defined storage deployed on Huawei hardware to HQ and 14 worldwide sites as aero parts maker copes with acquisition and expansion Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

SME disaster recovery made easy with cloud, hybrid and HCI

Disaster recovery is a lot easier for small businesses than it used to be, with use of the cloud, hybrid cloud, physical and virtual appliances, and hyper-converged infrastructure all among the choices on offer Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Swedish hospitals suffer IT crashes

Hospitals in Sweden’s West Götaland region have suffered computer problems because of as-yet unexplained hard drive crashes Continue Reading

By

• Jane Hamrin

Datrium boosts VMware protection but won’t add more hypervisors

NVMe flash pioneer turned DR-as-a-service-focused data platform provider Datrium says VMware and Kubernetes have “won the market” and it won’t extend support beyond those two Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Businesses failing to wipe data from old endpoints

Organisations are not taking adequate precautions to sanitise data held on endpoints when refreshing their PC or mobile device estates Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

DevOps and storage: APIs and flexibility key

The details of back-end storage are irrelevant to DevOps engineers, but they need enough of it, when they want it, and the ability to manage it programmatically is key. Continue Reading

DataCore adds file and S3 object storage with vFilO

Software-defined storage specialist DataCore has added file storage and S3 object storage access with vFilO, which lets customers create virtual pools from on-site and remote datastores Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

NVMe-over-TCP brings super-fast flash over standard IP networks

TCP is the latest transport protocol that can be used to connect NVMe flash storage. We explain how NVMe-over-TCP works and the key advantages for datacentre customers Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

What is QLC flash and what workloads it is 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 Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Scality APIs connect Azure Stack to Ring object storage on-site

Object storage specialist continues its cloud integration journey by adding Microsoft Azure Blob API connectors to allow use of Ring as bulk storage for Azure edge data Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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? Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Qumulo gets HPE upgrade as customers ‘come back from object’

Distributed file system maker Qumulo benefits from HPE Apollo hardware upgrade in a market where Qumulo exec says customers are coming back from object storage for unstructured data Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

NordVPN enlists ethical hackers, launches bug bounty programme

Breached consumer VPN supplier details steps it is taking to shore up its cyber security posture after an unknown actor gained access to one of its servers Continue Reading

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

Key storage choices: Cloud vs tape for archive storage?

Tape still has benefits, such as an ‘air gap’ that can insulate archives from threats to data integrity. But what are the opportunities for cloud in tape’s traditional use cases? Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Total saves £95,000 a year with Nutanix hyper-converged

Gas and electricity supplier struggled with ageing traditional infrastructure, but moved to hyper-converged for projects that include containers and DevOps deployments Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Microsoft vs Google – who’s winning the cloud email race?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, there’s a two-horse race for dominance in the cloud email market between Microsoft and Google, but they are not alone – we examine the runners and riders. Our latest buyer’s guide looks at governance, risk and compliance solutions. And we assess the progress of public cloud in the banking sector. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Virtual Instruments is now Virtana and aims at cloud, containers

Searches for “Virtual Instruments” returned too many synthesizers, so storage monitoring pioneer went through a blue sky ordeal. It has new plans for cloud and container capability, too Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Commvault adds Metallic SaaS backup and Hedvig features

Backup software maker adds software-as-a-service Metallic, which can protect on-premise, cloud and hybrid platforms. Meanwhile, Hedvig gets datacentre features and erasure coding Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Key differences between cloud storage offerings

Cloud storage offerings are often largely similar. We run through the key areas where they can differ, such as location, range of services and data protection Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

DevOps and storage: APIs and flexibility key

The details of back-end storage are irrelevant to DevOps engineers, but they need enough of it, when they want it, and the ability to manage it programmatically is key Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

PLC flash: A solid state candidate for analytics and archives?

We thought flash would end at QLC, but storage media makers are working on penta-level cell, which could push capacity to double figures, but at a further performance cost Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Data storage: The top five storage deployment pitfalls

Key pitfalls in data storage include silos, under-utilisation, backup and disaster recovery, plus neglect of skills and application requirements. We ask analysts how to avoid them Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Intel previews Optane persistent memory, QLC SSD and even PLC

Intel sets out roadmap for second-generation Optane persistent memory – between SSD and DRAM – as well as QLC SSD, with talk of PLC (penta-level cell) after that Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

HPE refurbishes legacy IT assets to make money for users

HPE Financial Services is giving old IT assets a new lease of life at its tech renewal site in Erskine, near Glasgow, as part of a promotion of the circular economy Continue Reading

By

• Brian McKenna, Senior Analyst, Business Applications

National Library of Scotland says aye to Scality object storage

National digitised archives move off Hitachi SANs and Qualstar tape, object storage is embraced and a “no backup” strategy put in place with petabyte-scale Scality S3/file deployment Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Pure adds Optane and QLC flash to boost performance and capacity

Flash storage player adds Intel Optane modules performance, a capacity flash range based on QLC drives, plus rebranding and GA of its on-premise/cloud leasing service Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud provider sweeps away legacy storage for 1PB of Infinidat

Core DataCloud decommissions storage from several vendors to consolidate to 1PB on Infinidat Infinibox, with DRAM and flash to accelerate hot data in front of disk back end Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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 Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

Northwestern cuts storage costs in half with Komprise

Komprise’s Deep Analytics helps university classify and migrate research data to cheaper disk and cloud as it cuts storage costs from $1.1m to $680,000 per annum Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Podcast: The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload – Episode 30

The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast team returns from its brief summer hiatus to discuss HPE’s hardware refresh processes, the financial services industry’s changing relationship with cloud and a charity that is helping people with chronic illnesses find work in tech Continue Reading

By

• Brian McKenna, Senior Analyst, Business Applications
• Clare McDonald, Business Editor
• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Top five cloud storage pitfalls

Cloud storage offers apparent simplicity, but unexpected costs, complexity, data movement and integration challenges can arise. We look at how to avoid common cloud storage pitfalls Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Hop jumps to Pure Storage to avoid big storage complexity

 Continue Reading

Spectra tilts at HSM with StorCycle storage management software

Spectra Logic unveils newly-developed storage management platform and two-tier file access and object storage with all data visible to all users for restore Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Ctera launches hybrid cloud HC2400M at media use cases

Edge filer specialist hits up the media and entertainment market with its NAS-like hardware that caches data locally, syncs with other nodes and stages data to the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Commvault buys Hedvig in push for global storage player status

Backup player Commvault aims to bring together datacentre and multi-cloud operations with software-defined storage that can unify access to almost any storage medium, anywhere Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Virtual Instruments brings automated VM right-sizing in v6.2

Storage and app performance specialist can now change virtual machine compute and network resources according to workload, with increased shift to analytics and proactive monitoring Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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 Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

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 Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

French national research centre insources with Rubrik backup

France’s national research organisation wanted to insource IT back from Atos and built its private cloud on VMware across two locations with Rubrik appliances for backup Continue Reading

By

• Pierre Berlemont

How to deploy NVMe flash storage for artificial intelligence

We run the rule over NVMe flash as a storage choice for AI applications and the key decision points in form factor and hardware specification Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

Storage: How ‘tail latency’ impacts customer-facing applications

Henry He of Virtual Instruments looks at tail latency, the small percentage of storage I/O that could be causing big and costly problems for business applications Continue Reading

By

• Henry He, Virtual Instruments

Hop jumps to Pure Storage to avoid big storage complexity

Air France short-haul and regional brand Hop jumps to Pure Storage after coming up against Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE, which all tried to sell it solutions ill-suited to its needs Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Cisco pays $8.6m after whistleblower discloses security flaws in video surveillance system

James Glenn, a video surveillance expert working for a Cisco reseller in Denmark, alerted Cisco to security faults and stands to gain a share of a multimillion-dollar settlement with the US government Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

HPE reiterates focus on edge computing

Enterprise technology bigwig HPE is trumpeting its ability to help companies better manage edge workloads, claiming that its purchase of Aruba has been its most successful acquisition Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

The pitfalls of hyper-converged infrastructure and how to avoid them

Hyper-converged infrastructure can be an easy win when it comes to datacentre infrastructure upgrades, but there are pitfalls. We discuss how best you can sidestep them Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Analytics and GDPR compliance: How to achieve it

Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, looks at technologies such as pseudonymisation that can help organisations stay GDPR-compliant while gaining value from analytics on customer data Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

BA/Marriott GDPR fines: What they were for and how to avoid them

We talk to Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, about the BA and Marriott GDPR fines and what organisations can do to ensure they achieve compliance with GDPR and similar regulations Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Smartodds bets on Rubrik backup appliance with cloud archive

Betting intelligence analytics firm Smartodds replaced its old tape backup infrastructure with Rubrik appliances to cut management time and database restores from hours to minutes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

University of Bristol upgrades to Nimble as it takes IT off-site

Higher education institution gets trouble-free hybrid flash performance from Nimble and stores 600TB of data at two colocation sites to which it is transitioning from on-campus Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

StorOne brings leasing for high-performance multiprotocol flash storage

To make a name for itself in the SME storage market, startup StorOne intends to innovate in technology and its economic approach, with a subscription model for storage Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Public cloud: A key component in a disaster recovery plan

The key things to consider when creating a disaster recovery plan that uses public cloud: DIY vs DRaaS, native cloud tools vs third party, and how low can you go with RPO and RTO? Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

French baby store modernises backup as Veeam handles 150TB a night

France-based maternity, baby and children’s store Orchestra needed to share IT resources between 700 points of sale across multiple time zones, and backup for 100 applications Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Cloud snapshots and backups: How to protect data in the cloud

You often need more data protection than native cloud services will give. But should you choose backup or snapshots? And what about third-party backup in the cloud? Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Unstructured data compliance: Obstacles and solutions

Stored unstructured data could be a black hole full of unknown risk. We look at the key dangers to compliance in unstructured data and some ways of mitigating the risks Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Steel firm adds steel to resilience with Scale hyper-converged

Carrs Tool Steels had to move on from legacy servers and found hyper-converged infrastructure from Scale Computing the ideal fit for a small business that couldn’t afford downtime Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW APAC: Buyer’s guide to NVMe storage

In this handbook, Computer Weekly looks at how NVMe storage is gaining popularity in the race to reduce latency and speed up application performance, and throws light on seven misconceptions around the use of NVMe. Continue Reading

NetApp ports services to NetApp HCI for multi-cloud storage

NetApp will debut multi-cloud services on its NetApp HCI hyper-converged platform, with the first being its Kubernetes orchestrator service and Cloud Volumes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

University graduates to Rubrik backup appliance with Azure cloud

University of Reading could only back up 20% of its data on an ageing tape library, so it modernised with a Rubrik appliance and Azure cloud storage in a cost-neutral project Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

WekaIO adds enterprise features to scale-out NAS file system

WekaIO has Dell EMC’s Isilon, NetApp, GPFS and Lustre in its sights with its massively scalable hybrid-cloud NAS file system that also runs in the Amazon cloud Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

AI storage: Machine learning, deep learning and storage needs

Artificial intelligence workloads impact storage, with NVMe flash needed for GPU processing at the highest levels of performance – and there are other choices right through the AI data lifecycle Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Scale targets edge workloads with HE500 hyper-converged nodes

Scale Computing adds hyper-converged infrastructure nodes to provide edge compute and storage that is fully compatible with its datacentre-scale HCI appliances Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Western Digital aims to help rethink unstructured data storage

Zonedstorage.io is Western Digital-backed idea to re-architect unstructured data storage with sequential writes to high-capacity media such as SMR HDDs and ZNS NVMe flash Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Enterprise HPC: Why HPE is buying Cray

HPE’s decision to acquire supercomputing pioneer Cray for $1.3bn serves to highlight the growing importance of high-performance computing (HPC) deployments in the enterprise market Continue Reading

By

• Daniel Robinson

Komprise to add Deep Analytics to unstructured data management

New functionality will allow customers to create and interrogate virtual data set from potentially petabytes of unstructured data across multiple shares and physical storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor