Server hardware
Servers are the workhorse of every IT infrastructure, and new developments are constantly delivering greater processor power, higher performance, more storage capacity and better energy efficiency. From mainframes to blade servers, we analyse the trends and technologies that matter in server hardware.
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Feature
19 Nov 2024
Storage technology explained: Ransomware and storage and backup
We look at ransomware attacks, and the importance of good backup practice as well as immutable snapshots, air-gapping, network segmentation, AI anomaly detection and supplier warranties Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Nov 2024
Storage technology explained: Flash vs HDD
In this guide, we examine the differences between flash storage and HDD, the rise of NVMe and much denser formats such as QLC, and whether or not flash will vanquish HDD in the all-flash datacentre Continue Reading
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Blog Post
03 Nov 2021
Moore's Law is anti-sustainability
The tech sector is laser-focused on driving upgrades. For decades the sector has rewarded shareholders with high growth, thanks to the prophecy that every 18 months to two years, computing doubles ... Continue Reading
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News
02 Nov 2021
Electronic waste excluded from COP26 agenda
Data sanitation industry group calls on UK government to add electronic waste to the climate summit’s agenda Continue Reading
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News
01 Nov 2021
No cloud storage for Belfast City Airport in Nutanix hyper-converged switch
George Best Belfast City Airport ditches ageing Dell iSCSI SAN for Nutanix HCI for half the price of nearest contender, and gets DR site into the bargain. Cloud storage was a no-go for cost reasons Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Oct 2021
Five ways the hyper-converged infrastructure market is changing
We look at changes in the hyper-converged infrastructure market as suppliers go cool, go soft, disaggregate HCI nodes, provide as-a-service options and look to containers Continue Reading
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News
27 Oct 2021
Google’s server life extension delivers $1.7bn revenue boost in nine months
Although its public cloud market share is way behind AWS and Azure, GCP is forging ahead with its industrial cloud strategy Continue Reading
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News
20 Oct 2021
Alibaba Cloud to open datacentres in Thailand and South Korea
Chinese cloud supplier is expanding its regional datacentre footprint to Thailand and South Korea in 2022 alongside technology investments that include a custom Arm-based server chip Continue Reading
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News
17 Oct 2021
Graphcore opens Southeast Asia hub in Singapore
The AI chipmaker is looking to expand its sales teams and hire more engineers to support customer deployments in Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia Continue Reading
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News
30 Sep 2021
NUS and Thales to develop quantum technologies
The National University of Singapore and Thales have joined hands to test quantum technologies for commercial applications in security and sensing Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Sep 2021
NVMe-over-fabrics: Five need-to-knows
We look at five need-to-knows about NVMe-over-fabrics, such as its implementations – RDMA, Fibre Channel and TCP – use cases, hardware and operating system support Continue Reading
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News
20 Sep 2021
Kioxia revisits SLC flash to power FL6 and rival Optane
SLC flash storage – mostly consigned to the ‘where is it now?’ pile – has been given a lease of life by Kioxia as capacity for rapid access storage-class memory applications Continue Reading
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Feature
14 Sep 2021
HDD support and Zoned Namespaces: Key takeaways about NVMe 2.0
We look at new capabilities in the most recent iteration of the NVMe flash storage standard Continue Reading
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News
06 Sep 2021
Room for improvement in UK right to repair laws
The UK government introduced right to repair legislation earlier in 2021 to combat the growing issue of electronic waste, but data sanitisation firm Blancco says that while it’s a step in the right direction, there is definitely scope for improvement Continue Reading
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News
31 Aug 2021
More NAND SSD in fewer hands as WD $20m Kioxia bid likely
The NAND flash market could soon go from six major players to four, but the fusion of Kioxia into WD and SK Hynix with Intel’s NAND business will still leave Samsung atop the pile Continue Reading
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News
13 Aug 2021
UN special rapporteurs call for surveillance tech moratorium
In the wake of revelations about NSO Groups Pegasus spyware, a number of special rapporteurs from the United Nations are re-igniting calls for a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of surveillance technologies Continue Reading
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News
11 Aug 2021
Microsoft fixes seven critical bugs on light Patch Tuesday
All seven critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s August Patch Tuesday were related to remote code execution, and there was one zero-day related to Windows Update Medic Service Continue Reading
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News
10 Aug 2021
New machine learning algorithm to detect quantum errors
University of Sydney and quantum control startup Q-CTRL have developed a new way to reduce quantum computing errors using custom machine learning algorithms Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Aug 2021
Disaster recovery for SMEs: Five key areas to consider
We look at key disaster recovery considerations for SMEs, including why backup is not enough, how to create a disaster recovery plan, best-practice DR testing and DR as a service Continue Reading
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News
03 Aug 2021
Intel hails data analytics-powered GB Olympics swimming success
Intel has claimed its part in the GB swimming team’s Olympics success, with the analysis of ‘data pools’ and the use of its servers and workstations Continue Reading
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News
23 Jul 2021
Can India become a global manufacturing hub?
India can be a major player in the global manufacturing supply chain by shoring up IP protection and tapping opportunities in contract manufacturing and firmware design Continue Reading
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Feature
07 Jul 2021
Five things you need to know about NVMe over Fabrics
We look at NVMe-oF, which extends fast flash across the network – what it is, how it works, use cases, benefits and limitations, and the suppliers of NVMe-oF products Continue Reading
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News
07 Jul 2021
Forrester finds companies confounded by data deluge
A Dell-commissioned study by analyst firm Forrester finds organisations overwhelmed by mounds of data Continue Reading
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News
23 Jun 2021
Time to patch increases significantly during pandemic
New data from US-based endpoint management specialist Automox reveals some of the challenges security teams face in keeping up with endpoint security Continue Reading
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News
22 Jun 2021
GlobalFoundries to open new fab in Singapore
US chip foundry GlobalFoundries is building a $4bn semiconductor fabrication plant in Singapore to expand its manufacturing capacity as chip demand surges worldwide Continue Reading
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News
21 Jun 2021
Opera house shuns cloud for Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure
The Royal Opera House considered moving all its infrastructure to the cloud, but a hybrid setup with Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure came in 35% cheaper Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Jun 2021
Storage performance metrics: Five key areas to look at
We look at the essentials in storage performance metrics: capacity, throughput and read/write capability, IOPS and latency, and hardware longevity measured by failure rates Continue Reading
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News
02 Jun 2021
Oracle debuts low-cost Arm compute instances
Oracle is offering Arm instances powered by Ampere’s Altra processors at one cent per core hour as enterprises look to deploy more Arm-based workloads Continue Reading
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News
02 Jun 2021
HPE latest quarterly filing hints at ProLiant shift
Installed base of ProLiant server customers on a path to consumption-based, as-a-service subscription for hardware modernisation Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Jun 2021
Gartner: How to turn old datacentres into critical IT assets
IT infrastructure and operations leaders are increasingly focusing on new ideas and technologies alongside ways to deliver business value Continue Reading
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Feature
25 May 2021
Where to run containers? Bare metal vs virtual machines
We look at the key differences between running containers in virtualised environments and on bare metal servers and focus in on the main trade-offs and decision points Continue Reading
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News
19 May 2021
Flexxon bakes AI into SSDs to fight unknown threats
Singapore-based Flexxon has developed a solid-state drive that uses artificial intelligence to fend off malware and other unknown threats Continue Reading
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News
13 May 2021
Portworx gets container-native array management for Pure hardware
Container storage player Portworx builds in container-native functionality to allow discovery, provisioning and management from inside Kubernetes cluster, but only on Pure arrays so far Continue Reading
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News
04 May 2021
Nebulon helps DCI offer high-performance edge hyper-converged
Cambridge-based cloud and colo provider DCI will offer DataQube servers with Nebulon, which marries a cloud control plane with local PCIe-connected flash storage Continue Reading
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03 May 2021
Ecolabels and data sanitisation key to recycling and reusing IT assets
Ecolabels on hardware and data sanitisation of devices are key to recycling and reusing old IT equipment respectively, helping enterprises avoid unnecessary asset destruction and contributing to increasingly high levels of electronic waste globally Continue Reading
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News
29 Apr 2021
Intel seeks broader platform play with Ice Lake
Company is counting on performance improvements from its third-generation Xeon ‘Ice Lake’ chip and its broader platform strategy to regain its mojo in the market Continue Reading
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E-Zine
27 Apr 2021
Justice at last in Post Office IT scandal
In this week’s Computer Weekly, 12 years after we broke the story, victims of the Post Office IT scandal finally have their criminal convictions overturned. We take a virtual tour of a Microsoft datacentre and meet a server called ‘Mega-Godzilla Beast’. And we find out how technology is transforming Nationwide Building Society. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
26 Apr 2021
French legal challenge over EncroChat cryptophone hack could hit UK prosecutions
Lawyers are challenging the legality of a French police operation to harvest tens of thousands of messages from the EncroChat encrypted phone network in a move that could overturn criminal prosecutions in the UK Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Apr 2021
Five reasons to look at hyper-converged infrastructure
HCI promises easy setup, purchasing flexibility, low procurement and operation costs, reliability and all in one box – but there are challenges too Continue Reading
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News
14 Apr 2021
AET gets Ctera to smooth hybrid cloud access to big files
Remote locations with unreliable WAN connections needed to share large files, which was a real headache until US engineering firm got Ctera edge filers with Azure cloud as a tier Continue Reading
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News
13 Apr 2021
EncroChat lawyers raise questions over use of PII secrecy orders on UK decryption capabilities
Lawyers claim that public interest immunity certificates may have been used to withhold information on UK intelligence agencies’ ability to decrypt encrypted communications Continue Reading
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News
05 Apr 2021
How Lenovo is tackling HCI workloads
Lenovo has teamed up with AMD to address mission-critical workloads such as in-memory databases as APAC organisations look beyond VDI in their hyperconverged infrastructure deployments Continue Reading
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News
01 Apr 2021
Project Monterey returns to haunt IBM and Red Hat
A tech initiative from the late 1990s has become IBM’s nemesis, as the owner of UnixWare and OpenServer file a copyright complaint Continue Reading
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Feature
30 Mar 2021
Data warehouse storage: Has cloud made on-premise obsolete?
There once was no alternative to building a data warehouse on-premise, but with cloud providers targeting analytics, building data warehouses on-site is looking obsolete Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Mar 2021
Ecolabels and data sanitisation key to recycling and reusing IT assets
Ecolabels on hardware and data sanitisation of devices are key to recycling and reusing old IT equipment respectively, helping enterprises avoid unnecessary asset destruction and contributing to increasingly high levels of electronic waste globally Continue Reading
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Feature
26 Mar 2021
Backup appliances the hot topic for Pas-de-Calais fire brigade
With requirements for strict, long-duration backup and archiving, French fire brigade set out to replace optical media with a StorageCraft appliance and disaster-proof storage Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Mar 2021
QLC flash storage: What it costs and its best use cases
QLC flash brings high capacities at costs coming down close to spinning disk. So what are the use cases for QLC solid state, which make best use of its relatively low endurance Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2021
Survey: Backup failures hit a high as pandemic working hits home
Veeam survey finds distributed working plus operations that span on-prem and the cloud the background to high numbers of failures in backup and restore, with 40% of SLAs not met Continue Reading
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Feature
15 Mar 2021
Containers for a post-pandemic IT architecture
One of the positive effects of Covid-19 is that it has put IT at the top of the business agenda – and containerisation is part of that strategy Continue Reading
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News
12 Mar 2021
NCSC issues emergency alert on Microsoft Exchange patch
UK’s national cyber agency calls on organisations affected by the ProxyLogon vulnerabilities to patch their Microsoft Exchange Servers immediately Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Mar 2021
Ski firm dumps ‘motley’ storage for DataCore software-defined
Eurogroup cuts power usage by 70% and rackspace from 84U to 7U as it consolidates multiple physical servers and storage protocols onto SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading
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News
11 Mar 2021
Scottish farm subsidy body slashes dev time with Pure all-flash
Rural directorate ditched hybrid flash EMC SAN for Pure all-flash storage and cut developer time in half, while beta testing Cloud Block Store and planning container project Continue Reading
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News
05 Mar 2021
Clarification needed on IT ‘super-deduction’ allowance
Chancellor announces that companies investing in qualifying new plant and machinery assets will be able to claim a ‘super-deduction’ allowance Continue Reading
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News
03 Mar 2021
IBM eyes hybrid cloud opportunity in ASEAN
The hybrid cloud message is resonating among Southeast Asian enterprises that are looking to modernise their applications and systems, says IBM’s general manager for the region Continue Reading
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News
19 Feb 2021
Oracle unveils final cog in cloud strategy
Oracle’s Roving Edge Infrastructure is getting interest from mining companies in Australia and manufacturers in ASEAN that are looking to run cloud-based workloads in edge locations Continue Reading
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News
26 Jan 2021
Saudi IT spending to hit $11bn in 2021
Saudi Arabian organisations will spend about $11bn on IT this year, with emerging technologies high on shopping lists Continue Reading
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Feature
14 Dec 2020
Five hyper-converged infrastructure use cases to watch
We look at workloads ripe for hyper-converged infrastructure deployment. These include virtual servers and desktops, SMEs/remote offices, Kubernetes, and analytics and machine learning Continue Reading
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Blog Post
10 Dec 2020
Throwback Thursday: x86 Server virtualisation check point
As our contribution to the bit of fun that is Throwback Thursday, we're taking a weekly stroll in the Freeform Dynamics archives. To say that server – and indeed data centre – virtualisation has ... Continue Reading
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News
09 Dec 2020
HPE offers on-demand high-performance computing managed service via GreenLake
HPE claims its preconfigured HPC service can speed up the deployment of high-performance computing projects and reduce capital expenditure Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Dec 2020
Paris post-product studio uses Atempo Miria for live restores
France-based À La Plage Studio decided on tape as a medium to store its visual production work, with Atempo ADA/Miria as a means to access and restore data to work on Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Dec 2020
RAID, flash and erasure coding: What works best with solid state?
We look at RAID and flash to highlight key choices when it comes to drive data protection. What RAID levels work best with solid state and when is erasure coding a good choice? Continue Reading
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30 Nov 2020
Spinning disk hard drives: Good value for many use cases
When it comes to storage media, all talk is of flash, but there are plenty of use cases where – far less costly – spinning disk can do a perfectly adequate job in the enterprise. Continue Reading
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News
27 Nov 2020
NI police unable to delete data seized unlawfully from journalists for 10 years
The Police Service of Northern Ireland is unable to delete terabytes of unlawfully seized data taken from journalists who exposed police failings in the investigation of the Loughinisland sectarian murders Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Nov 2020
Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t
We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Nov 2020
Spinning disk hard drives: Good value for many use cases
When it comes to storage media, all talk is of flash, but there are plenty of use cases where – far less costly – spinning disk can do a perfectly adequate job in the enterprise Continue Reading
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News
05 Nov 2020
Slot of the Antarctic: Tape the best option for polar survey backup
Tape deemed the best medium for backup on board the Antarctic research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough, with Quantum’s Scalar i3 chosen in a fully redundant deployment Continue Reading
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News
02 Nov 2020
HPE to build new Pawsey supercomputers
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise has snagged a A$48m deal to deliver a supercomputer for Australia’s Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Continue Reading
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E-Zine
20 Oct 2020
Why is IBM splitting in two and what does it mean for CIOs?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, IBM is splitting in two, hiving off its services business to focus on hybrid cloud – we examine what it means for CIOs. Our new buyer’s guide looks at how intelligent workload management can cut cloud complexity. And we analyse how getting backup right can help tackle ransomware threats. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
13 Oct 2020
DBS to deploy IBM z15 mainframes
Singapore’s DBS Bank has signed a seven-year deal with IBM to run and modernise mission-critical applications on z15 mainframes Continue Reading
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News
07 Oct 2020
Carhartt shifts old data to the cloud with Komprise
US-based workwear manufacturer cuts storage costs from $1 to $0.25 per gigabyte as it deploys data management software and shifts old files to Microsoft Azure Blob and Cold storage Continue Reading
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News
07 Oct 2020
Nvidia reveals its plans for Arm
Nvidia intends to acquire Arm for £31bn, as part of its plan to “create the computing company for the age of AI” Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Oct 2020
NVMe-over Fabrics: How NVMe-oF revolutionises shared storage
NVMe brought super-fast flash storage to the datacentre, but it needs NVMe-oF to allow it to bring the benefits of rapid access and low latency to SAN and NAS shared storage Continue Reading
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Feature
02 Oct 2020
Backup audit: What is a backup audit and why do we need them?
Backup and recovery are vital components to protect against data loss, whether technical or causes such as ransomware. So how can a backup audit help protect our key assets? Continue Reading
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News
29 Sep 2020
Red Hat rivals VMware and Nutanix with hyper-converged OCS 4.5
Red Hat’s OpenShift 4.5 extended container orchestration to virtual machines. The arrival of OCS 4.5 moves the solution into the realm of hyper-converged systems Continue Reading
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News
21 Sep 2020
Iliad Group makes €2.2bn Play acquisition
In a move covering Poland, France and Italy, parent company of French operator Iliad announces public tender offer for leading Polish mobile provider Continue Reading
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News
21 Sep 2020
Nutanix boosts storage performance by 50% with BlockStore
Hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix boosts access to NVMe and potentially Optane storage with BlockStore, which avoids the need to access the deepest layers of the OS Continue Reading
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News
10 Sep 2020
Broadcom launches Brocade gen7 Fibre Channel switches
New generation Fibre Channel doubles performance to 64Gbps with switches and HBAs now available. But what future for Fibre Channel with NVMe-over-fabrics hitting the datacentre? Continue Reading
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News
02 Sep 2020
Nimbus Data launches 64TB of QLC flash in one drive for £8,000
Flash pioneer aims QLC-equipped ExaDrive NL at AI/ML, analytics, media streaming and archiving use cases. Nimbus eschews NVMe for well-established SAS and SATA connectivity Continue Reading
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News
26 Aug 2020
HPE sees IT spending increase – expect server prices to rise
Organisations are buying more tech to keep operations running, but DRAM shortages will lead to server price increases Continue Reading
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News
25 Aug 2020
Intel’s DAOS tops the IO500 speed challenge for HPC storage
Following on from Lustre, Intel’s DAOS is an object storage-based system with that is designed specifically for use with Optane for metadata and SSD for bulk storage in HPC environments Continue Reading
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News
14 Aug 2020
Russia’s Fancy Bear targets Linux environments with Drovorub malware
The Russian intelligence-linked Fancy Bear group is deploying a new malware called Drovorub against Linux environments as part of a cyber espionage operation, according to US warnings Continue Reading
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News
12 Aug 2020
Pure and Cohesity launch FlashRecover for flash-speed restores
Flash market pioneer links up with scale-out backup product maker to provide bundled backup plus super-fast recovery based around Pure FlashBlade storage arrays Continue Reading
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Photo Story
12 Aug 2020
Preview of The National Museum of Computing’s virtual tour
We preview a new exhibition running at The National Museum of Computing Continue Reading
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News
11 Aug 2020
Nutanix launches Clusters in AWS for hybrid cloud hyper-converged infrastructure
HCI pioneers launches Nutanix Clusters, which will provide hyper-converged deployments across customer datacentres and the Amazon cloud, but only in Acropolis and on AWS for now Continue Reading
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News
11 Aug 2020
Nutanix Clusters on AWS debuts in 20 cloud regions
In technical preview since 2019, Nutanix Clusters on AWS will enable unified operations across private and public clouds Continue Reading
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News
05 Aug 2020
Atos signs £5m supercomputing deal to support Oxford University-led AI research push
University-led push to accelerate the pace of machine learning and artificial intelligence research in UK enters new phase with the deployment of a second supercomputer Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Jul 2020
Five on-premise and cloud options for network-attached storage
We look at five options for file access storage, from ‘traditional’ NAS in a standalone appliance to distributed hybrid cloud file storage and NAS cloud gateways Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Jul 2020
Storage pros and cons: Block vs file vs object storage
Despite the many changes in storage, there are still some fundamentals that hold true. We look at the key defining characteristics and use cases of block, file and object storage Continue Reading
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News
22 Jul 2020
Inside Intel’s transition into an enterprise tech company
Computing giant Intel is pushing deeper into the enterprise with investments in data-centric and emerging technologies along with partnerships with local firms to develop new solutions Continue Reading
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News
15 Jul 2020
University graduates to Nutanix Files hyper-converged NAS
The University of Reading had already deployed Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure so it made sense to add Nutanix Files when its ageing NAS boxes bit the dust Continue Reading
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E-Zine
14 Jul 2020
Is digital art coming of age during lockdown?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, as the pandemic forces many sectors into a business rethink, digital art is hoping to capitalise on changing times. Chinese supplier Lenovo is dominating the supercomputer market – we examine how it got there. And as datacentre engineers become key workers, we look at the health and safety issues. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
01 Jul 2020
Lenovo, top-of-the-world Chinese supercomputer supplier, sweeps all markets
Supercomputers are not just about computing power, they are a symbol of political ambition. Chinese supercomputer supplier Lenovo is now the dominant supplier across the world Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2020
Inside Lenovo’s transition to a solutions provider
Lenovo’s long-term transformation from a primarily hardware supplier to an IT solutions provider is progressing, but the journey isn’t over yet Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Jun 2020
Vendors investigate chiplets as CPU expansion option
As chipmakers expand the amount of processing power in CPUs, some are considering the use of chiplets. These modular silicon pieces offer a possible option for scalable designs. Continue Reading
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News
03 Jun 2020
Lidl Finland speeds up with new local server racks
Lidl brings server racks to its Finnish stores in a bid to improve connectivity and introduce new services to its customers Continue Reading
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Tip
03 Jun 2020
An in-depth look at calculating server hardware costs for SMBs
Servers can be expensive, but there's more to the purchase than just the price of the hardware. Learn what additional items an SMB must factor into the overall cost. Continue Reading
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Opinion
29 May 2020
The new future of work
We may come to stop talking about ‘remote’ working altogether after the coronavirus pandemic. It could become just ‘working’ – part of the normal mix of how things are done Continue Reading
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E-Zine
19 May 2020
Ocado makes the friendly workplace robot a reality
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out how Ocado is making robot-human collaboration a reality with its Armar-6 smart robot. Unified communications has become a must-have lockdown capability – we assess the key technologies. And as contact-tracing apps emerge to help deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, we examine the data privacy challenges. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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Feature
07 May 2020
Storage 101: Replication vs backup, and synchronous vs asynchronous
Storage 101: Can replication replace backup? What are the pros and cons of synchronous and asynchronous backup? What’s the best way to mix backup and replication? Continue Reading
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Feature
05 May 2020
Storage 101: Crash-consistent vs application-consistent snapshots
We look at crash-consistent and application-consistent snapshots and backup, how they are defined, the pros and cons of each and the benefits and limits of Windows VSS Continue Reading
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News
23 Apr 2020
What comes after flash? Weebit Nano hopes its ReRAM will
Weebit Nano’s ReRAM stores bits by building resistive filaments and promises a 1,000x speed boost over flash in chips that can store data for years and is well-suited to edge uses Continue Reading
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News
22 Apr 2020
How DBS is reaping the dividends of digital transformation
At DBS Bank, the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak has demonstrated the value of technology and the investments it made over the past decade to modernise its technology stack Continue Reading