SAN, NAS, solid state, RAID

SSD for laptops and desktop computers: What type and how to install it

Adding SSD to laptop and desktop computers: What form factor, MLC or SLC, SATA or AHCI, and what are the key stages of installation? We answer your questions in this podcast. Continue Reading

The reasons for missing hard drive space on storage arrays

If you installed disk and didn’t get the capacity you expected, the missing hard drive space can be a result of operating system calculations, formatting, RAID and use of hot spares. Continue Reading

By

• Spencer Huckstepp, Bell Microsystems Ltd

Adding an old hard drive to RAID sets on servers

When adding an old hard drive to RAID sets on servers, it’s important to account for factors such as the number of drive bays in the host. See how to configure the drives to the appropriate RAID format for the workload. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

Virtual machine storage and block vs file

Virtual machine storage requires greater performance, capacity and resiliency than with physical servers and requires a careful choice between block and file access. Continue Reading

Free SAN sizing template and useful guidelines

With the explosion in data volumes, optimal SAN design and SAN sizing is key. Use these practical SAN sizing tips and SAN sizing template to get there. Continue Reading

By

• Anuj Sharma

How to choose a NAS

Choosing a NAS might be complex but there are a few things you can do to simplify the choice Continue Reading

By

• Anthony Caruana

ATA over Ethernet offers SAN storage on a budget

ATA over Ethernet offers SAN storage on a budget, at 20% of the cost of Fibre Channel and half that of iSCSI SANs. But, does being a one-vendor protocol mean it’s a non-starter? Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

Key steps for a successful SAN migration

For a successful SAN migration, it’s key to understand your current environment and the future state of the SAN, as well as to carry out a testing phase against each platform and migration strategy. Continue Reading

By

• Marc Brooks

Bad sectors – Storage news from Dell, Zerowait and Waikato District Health Board

Dell plans to bring its vStart pre-packaged infrastructure stacks to Australia later this year, while ZeroWait has scored an Australian customer for its SimplStor product. Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood

SAN migration strategy, preparation and execution

Learn what preparation goes into a SAN migration, how to handle the execution of the migration as well as the most difficult challenges, such as recabling in a fabric replacement. Continue Reading

Choosing a RAID level depends on capacity needs and data criticality

In this Ask the Expert, Steve Pinder talks about which RAID level to choose, depending on the criticality of your data or the capacity required. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

Planning a NAS migration project

NAS migration requires careful planning around the needs of your organization. In this Ask the Expert, find out which approach to use for an effective migration. Continue Reading

By

• Ronny Front, NetApp

RAID 5 explained: Sharing a 10 MB file among 5 drives

Find out how RAID 5 handles sharing data shares data in a 10 MB file among five drives, including how striping and parity data figure into the equation. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

Clustered NAS vs traditional NAS solutions

Clustered NAS offers file visibility across petabytes of storage and is hugely scalable with the ability to increase throughput, IOPS or disk space by adding extra nodes. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Glassborow, BSkyB

Object-based storage promises scalability and flexibility for static, unstructured data needs

Object storage gets rid of traditional file system hierarchies and puts in place a flat access structure that provides a good basis for hugely scalable unstructured data access. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

How to set up a Dell EqualLogic configuration in a VMware environment

Find out what the key steps are for setting up a Dell EqualLogic configuration for an iSCSI SAN in a VMware virtual server environment. Continue Reading

By

• James Carty, Cisco Systems

SAN troubleshooting: What are the key steps and best practices when troubleshooting a SAN?

Learn which tools you need to perform SAN troubleshooting, which metrics point to a sign of trouble, and why granular and regular data collection is important. Continue Reading

By

• Allaster Finke

How does the RAID 5 calculation work?

Learn how to determine how much capacity you'll have in a RAID 5 drive configuration. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

MLC vs SLC: Which flash SSD is right for you?

Which flash SSD you choose depends on the performance you need and the price you want to pay, but the differences are not as great as you may think Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

EMC won’t sell one VNX product in Australia

EMC has officially launched its new VNX and VNXe products, but will leave one of the new products out of its local range and sell a Clariion system instead. Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood

What does the parity bit do in RAID?

Find out how the use of a parity bit protects RAID groups and how it's used as a method for error detection. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

ISCSI replacing Fibre Channel as dominant storage network technology

ISCSI is well on its way to replacing Fibre Channel as the de facto technology for SANs. Continue Reading

By

• Jo Maitland, TechTarget

ISCSI storage gets performance makeover

Vendors, including Ibrix, Mellanox, Alacritech and EqualLogic, are offering juiced-up new iSCSI configurations, while 3PAR, CipherMax and NeoScale boost data security products. Continue Reading

By

• SearchStorage.com Staff

RAID 5 recovery: What is the maximum number of physical drives in a RAID 5 configuration?

Adding drives to a RAID 5 set increases your ROI and the likelihood of simultaneous drive failures, and lengthens RAID rebuild times. So what should be your physical drive limit? Continue Reading

By

• David Boyd

Do all drives in a RAID 10 array need to be the same specification?

We tell you the one requirement when matching drive specs in a RAID 10 array. But will mixing drives of various performance levels compromise your RAID level? Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

RAID 10 vs RAID 50: What is the best way to configure a storage array with 16 1 TB drives?

Learn the characteristics of RAID 10 and RAID 50, as well as which RAID level is appropriate for your applications. I/O and protection needs contribute to your RAID choice. Continue Reading

By

• Allaster Finke

Small storage devices a hit at big hotel

Riverbed working to optimise iSCSI performance over wide area networks, to boost storage systems’ performance in cloud computing rigs. Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood, Contributor

How to evaluate and purchase a SAN

The Royal Horticultural Society's network manager Martin Taylor guides users through the process of evaluating and purchasing a SAN. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

Hard disk drive specifications guide: What to look for when buying disk storage

Seek times, latency, data transfer rates, error correction codes and cache are important hard disk drive specifications. Learn the key features of hard disks drives so you can specify the right one for your data centre. Continue Reading

By

• Bilal Mehdi

RAID 10 vs. RAID 1: Mirrored drives matter

While RAID 10 and RAID 1 are both mirroring technologies that utilise half the available drives for data, a crucial difference is the number of drives they can use in a RAID group. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

RAID 10: How many disk drives should you use?

The minimum number of drives required for RAID 10 is four. RAID 10 should not be confused with RAID 0+1, which involves creating two RAID 0 stripe sets and then mirroring them. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

Which RAID level has the best price-to-performance comparison?

Configuring disk in RAID arrays brings a variety of benefits, most notably data protection and I/O performance. But which RAID level wins in terms of price vs. performance? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

BlueArc challenges NetApp in the enterprise with Mercury 50, Mercury 100 network-attached storage (N

With NetApp distracted by Data Domain and late delivering Ontap with clustered NAS capabilities, BlueArc targets the enterprise NAS market with Mercury 50, Mercury 100 NAS systems. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

What is a LUN and why do we need storage LUNs?

 Continue Reading

By

• Allaster Finke

RAID 5 configuration: How to calculate disk space for data storage and parity storage

Find out how to calculate the disk space available for data storage and how much disk space is utilised for parity storage in a RAID 5 configuration. Continue Reading

By

• Allaster Finke

NAS Backup: What are my options?

 Continue Reading

By

• Brian Sakovitch, Symantec

LUN storage and its role in SAN management

Explore logical unit number (LUN) storage and its role in SAN management. Learn how to create a LUN, how to share a LUN, and find out about LUN provisioning and LUN masking. Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Thin provisioning FAQ

Tony Lock, programme director at analyst group Freeform Dynamics, answers common questions on thin provisioning. Continue Reading

How to evaluate and purchase a SAN

The Royal Horticultural Society's network manager Martin Taylor guides users through the process of evaluating and purchasing a SAN. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

Clariion array update blurs line between EMC platforms

A bigger, faster Clariion with advanced features, which first appeared in the Symmetrix line, has industry observers wondering about the increasing overlap between EMC systems. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Pivot3 consolidates physical servers onto storage arrays

Pivot3's IP SAN offers Serverless Computing, which eliminates the need for application servers by running them as guests on its storage arrays. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NAS virtualization explained

NAS virtualization can refer to the ability to virtualise multiple NAS heads into a single virtualised file system or the ability to spawn multiple virtual file servers within a physical file server. Either way, performing NAS virtualisation via a virtualised file system gives a storage administrator greater flexibility in responding to the needs of the enterprise. Continue Reading

iSCSI SANs getting enterprise boost by shared storage, virtual servers

Enterprises are increasingly considering iSCSI SANs for departmental applications, server workloads that aren't bandwidth-intensive, and virtual servers. In fact, the connection between shared storage and virtualised servers is changing the iSCSI SAN game. Continue Reading

Optimising iSCSI SANs with the right Ethernet switch

iSCI SANS are now within the reach of many small businesses. Here's how to make sure the SAN works best, by optimising the supporting network. Continue Reading

By

• Jerome Wendt

EMC gives Centera a software refresh

EMC has tweaked the software for its Centera archiving system with an emphasis on handling more pieces of data rather than sheer bulk of information stored. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NAS product specifications

NAS is so easy to install and manage that NAS sprawl is a common problem. This is why NAS is often a prime candidate for consolidation initiatives. Learn how to purchase NAS appliances with an eye toward NAS storage consolidation. Continue Reading

VMware, LeftHand offer iSCSI SAN as virtual machine

Channel partners will bundle LeftHand's virtual SAN appliance with VMware licenses for an ESX infrastructure that can run on one piece of physical hardware. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

HP exec: Storage blades may replace disk arrays in data center

An HP storage executive predicts that storage blades -- storage devices using the form factor and plug-and-play philosophy of blade servers - may replace disk arrays in the next 18 months Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood, Editor, TechTarget ANZ

Learn all about LUNs

A LUN is the unique address for a SCSI device or a virtual hard disk partition in a RAID configuration. This handbook tells how to manage and partition LUNs. Continue Reading

How to integrate iSCSI and Fibre Channel, and make it work

Learn about eight best practices for integrating iSCSI into a Fibre Channel SAN, as well as best deployment practices for iSCSI. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

LeftHand adds hardware to iSCSI SANs

LeftHand makes its iSCSI SAN software available on two prepackaged appliances; sources indicate the hardware comes from Dell. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

NetApp releases $3K iSCSI SAN

NetApp is continuing a push down-market with the release of the S300, the latest SMB iSCSI SAN in its StoreVault line. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Virtual appliance lets users convert DAS to iSCSI SAN

NetApp is continuing a push down-market with the release of the S300, the latest SMB iSCSI SAN in its StoreVault line. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Download NAS Upgrades Buying Guide: Chapter 2 -- NAS management software

You asked for it, so here it is -- a printable version of our NAS Buying Guide. Continue Reading

Storage Basics Part 3: Getting the most out of iSCSI

The Storage Basics series continues, with a look at how to get the most out of iSCSI. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

Storage Basics Part 2: What is iSCSI?

Day two of our storage basics special explains iSCSI. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Bigelow, Contributor

New iSCSI SAN/NAS box touts better performance

Agami's new low-end iSCSI SAN/NAS box is pricier than other scaled-down offerings, but has a few more high-end features Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

Users make iSCSI SANs with USB keys

Users say that Open-E's iSCSI SAN software, which is delivered on a USB stick, is more affordable than prepackaged systems and has more support than free iSCSI target products. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

LeftHand refreshes iSCSI SAN software

Version 7.0 of LeftHand's iSCSI SAN software contains dozens of new features, including support for four-way replication and brushed-up thin provisioning. Continue Reading

By

• Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer

EMC upgrades hardware range, goes green - UPDATE

EMC has upgraded its five main hardware lines, introduced power-saving technology and hinted at enhancements to its data de-duplication tools. Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood with Beth Pariseau

Sun reveals open appliances

EMC has upgraded its five main hardware lines, introduced power-saving technology and hinted at enhancements to its data de-duplication tools. Continue Reading

By

• Simon Sharwood with Beth Pariseau

Temp agency moves hundreds of terabytes to iSCSI SAN

Adecco replaces 120 TB of Fibre Channel storage with an iSCSI SAN from LeftHand, including storage for large production databases; Exanet adds search; NetApp unleashes Topio. Continue Reading

LUN management at the heart of SAN configuration

Disk drives are the foundation of modern data storage, but operating systems cannot use physical storage directly. The physical drive must be translated into a logical space that an operating system sees as a linear address space comprised of fixed-size blocks. Storage networks must also partition their physical disks into logical entities so that host servers can access storage area network (SAN) storage, and each logical portion is called a logical unit number (LUN). This article explains essential LUN concepts and the role of LUNs in SAN technology. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

ISCSI TCP/IP TOE card specifications

One means of improving iSCSI traffic performance is to include TOE (TCI/IP Offload Engine) capability on the Ethernet card itself. An iSCSI TOE allows the network adapter to process iSCSI traffic (often all Ethernet LAN traffic) locally -- relieving those burdensome processing tasks from the host server or other computers connected to the LAN. To implement this capability, iSCSI servers must be upgraded with Ethernet NICs that include a TOE chip onboard. Although the selection of iSCSI TOE cards is generally limited to just a few manufacturers, it's important to consider the available ports, host interface, and other card characteristics before making a purchase. The product snapshots in this segment highlight key specifications for a cross-section of popular iSCSI TOE cards. Continue Reading

ISCSI for beginners

iSCSI is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. Learns the basics in this fast guide. Continue Reading

By

• TechTarget Storage Editorial Staff

NAS appliance purchase considerations

NAS appliances are frequently touted for bringing convenience and simplicity to network storage. Appliances include their own dedicated disks for storage and RAID, and most NAS appliances can be upgraded with more or larger disks for additional storage space. However, NAS appliances do pose some disadvantages. Consequently, the choice of NAS appliance requires careful evaluation. Now that you've reviewed the essential issues involved in any NAS product, this guide focuses on specific considerations for dedicated NAS appliances. You'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors. Continue Reading

NAS gateway purchase considerations

NAS gateways overcome the inherent limitations of scale and flexibility by utilizing externally connected storage as external standalone disk arrays. NAS storage capacity is typically expanded by simply adding more disks to the appliance, but this only allows users to scale up to the capacity limit of the appliance. It's also common for a NAS gateway to share storage through a storage area network (SAN), allowing users to consolidate their NAS data on SAN storage and realize the benefits of high performance and redundancy. Now that you've reviewed the essential issues involved in any NAS product, this Buying Guide focuses on specific considerations for NAS gateway products. Continue Reading

NAS gateway specifications

A NAS gateway offers file-based accesses to external storage on a disk array -- or a SAN, where users can take advantage of superior performance and reliability while maintaining a level of simplicity. Since storage is moved off of the NAS device, interoperability and connectivity are crucial issues, and virtualization is increasingly important for superior scaling and utilization of the storage resources. The product snapshots in this chapter highlight key specifications for a cross section of major NAS gateway products. Continue Reading

NAS management software specifications

Network attached storage (NAS) appliances and gateways must be configured and managed using NAS management software that allows administrators to allocate space, manage RAID and storage behaviors, perform routine maintenance, and other tasks. Management software ideally provides interoperability with a variety of NAS devices from different vendors and can automate many of the routine management tasks that would otherwise demand manual attention. The product snapshots in this chapter highlight key specifications for a cross section of major NAS management software products. Continue Reading

Virtualisation buying guide [Day Two: Virtualisation software examined]

Deploying software on a server or dedicated appliance is often easier for smaller organisations, but the actual product choice demands careful consideration. Now that you've reviewed the essential issues involved in any virtualisation product, this guide focuses on specific considerations for key virtualisation software products. You'll also find a series of specifications to help make on-the-spot product comparisons between vendors, like DataCore Software Corp., EMC Corp., FalconStor Software Inc. and IBM. Continue Reading

By

• TechTarget Storage Editorial Staff

ISCSI gains strength from servers

More powerful servers are helping ease some performance concerns for users considering IP SANs, but others say they still want to see more improvement. Continue Reading

iSCSI network configuration, design and optimization

It's a must to consider more than just cabling when designing an iSCSI-based storage network. Learn to look at the bigger picture when configuring or optimizing an iSCSI-based storage network. Continue Reading

By

• Greg Schulz, The Server and StorageIO Group

Testing iSCSI SAN performance with Iometer

Iometer, a performance test tool for tuning Windows environments, can also be used to tune performance in iSCSI SANs. The tool lets you simulate the SAN's performance by setting many of the parameters and running tests. Repeated runs with different parameters such as block sizes will let you tune your system. Continue Reading

By

• Rick Cook

NAS: How does a client access files?

NAS expert Randy Kerns offers advice to a reader who asked: "How does NAS appear to machines accessing files from it?" Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

NAS: Can you add capacity non-disruptively?

Storage expert Randy Kerns offers advice about adding capacity to a NAS system non-disruptively in this Q&A. Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

ISCSI SANs: How to alleviate the congestion

Careful configuration of an iSCSI SAN will usually preclude most problems. But for slow network performance, adapter and switch settings can help speed things up. Continue Reading

By

• Rick Cook

How to use NAS gateways

What you will learn from this tip: NAS gateways are moving off the array and into the network. Here's how to manage them. Continue Reading

By

• Jerome Wendt

Five ways to secure iSCSI

Storage expert Stephen Foskett outlines five specific ways to secure an iSCSI SAN. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Foskett, Gestalt IT

Microsoft supports iSCSI SAN clusters -- kind of

This expert tip outlines how to get the support you need for iSCSI SANs using more than two clusters. Continue Reading

By

• Rick Cook