Software-defined storage
Software-defined storage allows customers to build shared storage with storage software that provides SAN and NAS capability, including in some cases with full enterprise features such as replication, snapshots, integration with virtualisation platforms, tiered storage and flash drives. Software-defined storage products allow customers to build shared pools of storage from commodity servers, existing storage array capacity or unused direct-attached storage.
-
Feature
14 Nov 2024
Storage technology explained: What is S3 and what is it good for?
We look at S3, AWS’s object storage protocol that originated in its cloud services and has now spread as near enough a standard and to third-party on-premise deployments Continue Reading
-
News
12 Nov 2024
Pure Storage CTO: How AI is changing storage demands
Pure Storage’s CTO stresses the need for adaptable IT systems to support AI workloads, advocating for open architectures and flexible storage platforms to avoid supplier lock-in Continue Reading
-
Feature
23 Jun 2022
Global file systems: Hybrid cloud and follow-the-sun access
We look at global distributed file systems that put enterprise data under a single file access namespace so that enterprises and branch offices can get to data from anywhere Continue Reading
-
Podcast
21 Jun 2022
Podcast: The legacy and modern apps that drive object storage
We talk to object (and file) storage vendor Scality about the ways the application and development environment is changing and how that is driving object storage Continue Reading
-
Feature
14 Jun 2022
Unified file and object storage: Three suppliers and their approaches
We look at unified file and object storage products from NetApp, Pure Storage and Scality, the differences, the workloads aimed at, and how unified they actually are Continue Reading
-
Podcast
31 May 2022
Podcast: How to get truly portable Kubernetes storage
We talk to NetApp CTO Grant Caley about what is needed from storage to really deliver in a world of Kubernetes containerisation and microservices portability in hybrid cloud working Continue Reading
-
News
26 May 2022
SoftIron readies Sydney manufacturing facility
Software-defined storage supplier SoftIron is making hardware appliances in Australia to improve supply chain resilience and address security concerns of government customers Continue Reading
-
News
18 May 2022
Portworx adds anti-ransomware to PX-Backup for Kubernetes
Pure’s Kubernetes storage and data protection platform adds object locking to combat ransomware Continue Reading
-
News
17 May 2022
Video effects firm cuts costs by 20% and goes hybrid with Hammerspace
Jellyfish Pictures saves on rising power and office space costs, as well as Brexit difficulties, by using Hammerspace to allow access to large files from any geographic location Continue Reading
-
News
17 May 2022
Hammerspace the ‘missing link’ for a cloud still lacking
The cloud can’t enable true multi-region working so Hammerspace helps make data visible globally and aggregate it as needed between locations with workflows set via customer policy Continue Reading
-
News
10 May 2022
NetApp’s cloud-era storage competitors in ‘world of hurt’
NetApp is busily reinventing itself as a cloud services provider, with its competition years behind, according to its public cloud vice-president Continue Reading
-
News
09 May 2022
Ctera opens up its storage to third-party analytics via APIs
File system software builds pools of NAS-like storage accessible from anywhere, with APIs to third-party tools to interrogate data for business processes, anomaly detection and more Continue Reading
-
News
04 May 2022
PeerGFS to add AI/ML anomaly detection to distributed file system product
Peer will add AI/ML-based anomaly detection as it ramps up security protection in its PeerGFS distributed file management software, with Linux server support also to come in 2022 Continue Reading
-
Feature
17 Mar 2022
Storage suppliers put Kubernetes platforms centre stage
How to orchestrate the orchestrator? Storage suppliers’ Kubernetes management platforms aim to meet storage and data protection challenge in containerised application environments Continue Reading
-
News
22 Feb 2022
Hammerspace offers follow-the-sun access to on-prem and cloud storage
Startup aims to succeed where others have failed and present file, block and object storage data from any and multiple locations as if it were local to the user Continue Reading
-
News
15 Feb 2022
Nebulon gets Ansible collection for datacentre deployment
Provider of cloud-managed and hardware-accelerated – formerly ‘cloud-defined’ – storage makes further moves towards its smartInfrastructure vision, with Terraform support coming Continue Reading
-
Feature
07 Feb 2022
How open source is shaping data storage management
Open source data storage offers a great deal of flexibility, but unlocking its benefits will require strong technical resources to meet requirements such as stability, high availability and security Continue Reading
-
News
31 Jan 2022
Nebulon SmartInfrastructure brings cloud-defined storage to datacentre
Cloud-defined storage allows customers to build private clouds on-site, with pools of storage built from commodity hardware, Nebulon PCIe cards and its browser-based console Continue Reading
-
Feature
24 Jan 2022
Object storage: How research institute got 850TB for €150,000
French scientific research institute had its budgets cut and to meet the new cost constraints, it settled on Swarm software-defined object storage from DataCore Continue Reading
-
News
12 Jan 2022
OVHCloud hit with customer class action over March 2021 datacentre fire
OVHCloud said it cannot comment at this time on the legal action, which is being embarked upon to compensate customers who claim to have lost data as a result of the public cloud firm’s datacentre fire in March 2021 Continue Reading
-
Opinion
11 Jan 2022
Need rapid networked storage? Take a look at NVMe-over-TCP
Lightbits helped develop NVMe-over-TCP to provide shared NVMe storage capacity over existing TCP-based networks Continue Reading
-
News
14 Dec 2021
IT priorities 2022: Ransomware and cloud drive storage and backup
The pandemic and the move to the cloud has driven cloud storage as a key priority Continue Reading
-
News
30 Nov 2021
UK MSP set to use Nebulon cloud-defined storage IaaS
UK service provider Inca to use “cloud-defined storage” to support managed service provider offer in move which shunned hyper-converged infrastructure because of cited costly overheads Continue Reading
-
News
10 Nov 2021
Vast Data: Big shifts promised for an AI future
Purveyor of Universal Storage says AI and GPU-based compute will dominate, and is set to benefit with its (relatively) cheap, deep and quick QLC-plus-Optane offer Continue Reading
-
News
07 Nov 2021
Belfast City Airport: Most apps in the cloud by 2031
George Best Belfast City Airport has already achieved 50/50 cloud and on-premise working, with 80% of workloads expected to be cloud-based in the next decade. We look at what hybrid cloud means in practice Continue Reading
-
News
02 Nov 2021
iXsystems entry-level NAS goes hyper-converged with TrueNAS Scale
iXsystems TrueNAS can be a fraction of the cost of competitors and with a revamped operating system it can be built into clusters that can run virtual machines and containers Continue Reading
-
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
-
Blog Post
22 Oct 2021
Vast Data goes massively larger
As every environmental naturalist and hard core rave fan knows, the jungle is massive and jungle [music] is massive. Data is also massive, so much so that it can easily be described as vast. ... Continue Reading
-
News
20 Oct 2021
Spectra Logic unveils Vail hybrid cloud storage virtualisation
Vail provides single pool of storage overlay to on-premise flash, disk and tape, plus cloud via object storage interface with Posix-compliance promised in future releases Continue Reading
-
News
19 Oct 2021
Want to sidestep public cloud? AuriStor offers global file storage
Built to scale hugely, and built for high performance and security, Auristor offers NAS-like Posix-compatible storage to customers that want to avoid public cloud Continue Reading
-
Feature
13 Oct 2021
APAC expert guide to storage management
In this expert guide to storage management in Asia-Pacific, we unpack the developments shaping storage management and key strategies to extract business value from data Continue Reading
-
News
12 Oct 2021
NetApp adds CloudCheckr to Spot portfolio
CloudCheckr brings multi-cloud audit capabilities as well as visibility of security and governance in an acquisition that adds to its cloud price optimisation in the Spot portfolio Continue Reading
-
News
04 Oct 2021
Nexustorage aims at file and block access to object storage
New Zealand-based startup to release Nexfs, which chops files into sub-file chunks and tiers them off to cheap and deep object stores with NFS and iSCSAI access for Posix applications Continue Reading
-
News
28 Sep 2021
Pure launches Fusion cloud control layer for storage
Pure Fusion is a storage control plane across cloud and datacentre. Portworx Data Services also launches to provide database management for container storage platform Continue Reading
-
Feature
08 Sep 2021
Dell, NetApp and Pure: Healthy results on Covid easing
Dell’s still top of the storage supplier pile with midrange arrays doing well, but meanwhile NetApp and Pure are making gains on the rise of public cloud Continue Reading
-
Feature
30 Jun 2021
Lakehouse concept aims to merge data lake and data warehouse
Data lakes are big, amorphous and difficult to access, while data warehouses are costly and aimed at structured data. The data lakehouse aims at analytics in an age of unstructured data Continue Reading
-
Feature
23 Jun 2021
Cloud storage APIs: What are they and what can be done with them?
We look at the kinds of application programming interfaces (APIs) available to expose cloud storage to applications, from SME-targeted solutions to higher-end hooks Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
21 Jun 2021
CW APAC: Career guide to cloud computing
In this handbook, Computer Weekly looks at the skills required for cloud professionals to succeed in an evolving industry, the risk to jobs posed by automation and the disciplines being taught at Future Tech Academy Continue Reading
-
News
18 Jun 2021
Vast Data will offer containerised storage software, but not yet
Vast Data sticking to its plan to provide no-tier “universal storage” via QLC flash and a 3D Xpoint read/write buffer that uses a containerised control plane Continue Reading
-
News
02 Jun 2021
SA-based MSP shuns HCI for Nebulon cloud-defined storage
SYSDBA needed to refresh its HPE 3PAR arrays, and so looked at hyper-converged but decided on cloud-defined storage from Nebulon that marries local storage with a cloud control plane Continue Reading
-
News
25 May 2021
Valence brings storage virtualisation for the cloud era
Startup 22dot6 launches Valence, software-defined storage that throws a virtualisation layer over any backend storage via multiple nodes that split metadata and storage services Continue Reading
-
Feature
20 May 2021
What digital transformation means for data storage
We survey the key planks of digital transformation and look at the storage technologies emerging to support it, such as NVMe and QLC flash, hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud storage Continue Reading
-
Blog Post
20 May 2021
Computational storage series: Model9 - The cloud + computational storage sweet spot
Software runs on data and data is often regarded as the new oil. So it makes sense to put data as close to where it is being processed as possible, in order to reduce latency for performance-hungry ... Continue Reading
-
Feature
17 May 2021
Container-native storage: A definition, and what to ask suppliers
We look at container-native storage – aka cloud-native storage – what defines it, and its benefits as a way of bringing persistent Kubernetes storage to containerised applications Continue Reading
-
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
-
News
27 Apr 2021
Scality launches Artesca container-native object storage
Object storage specialist gets on a burgeoning container object storage market with Artesca, which runs from Kubernetes to provide persistent storage for containerised applications Continue Reading
-
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
-
News
12 Apr 2021
Ctera KubeFiler to bring Kubernetes storage to its cloud gateways
KubeFiler uses the container storage interface to allow Kubernetes to access persistent storage as if it were from a local NAS device, and while keeping existing access profiles Continue Reading
-
Feature
06 Apr 2021
Where now for storage? Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage
Part II: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading
-
Feature
06 Apr 2021
Where now for storage? Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE
Part I: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading
-
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
-
News
04 Mar 2021
Veritas looks beyond NetBackup for growth in ASEAN
Veritas has seen increased demand for its availability tools as it looks to address backup and recovery requirements from cloud, database and VMware workloads Continue Reading
-
News
01 Feb 2021
Netbackup 9 adds flexibility with hyper-converged backup options
Veritas’s enterprise backup flagship is available in hyper-converged infrastructure and has embraced containerisation, for better hardware and application scalability Continue Reading
-
News
22 Jan 2021
MinIO stakes leadership claims in cloud object container storage
2016 startup MinIO reckons it has first mover advantage as a container-native platform that provides private/cloud object storage in and orchestrated by Kubernetes Continue Reading
-
Feature
18 Jan 2021
APAC buyer’s guide to data management
In this buyer’s guide, we look at the challenges surrounding why enterprises are struggling to deal with data, the use of cloud data management platforms, artificial intelligence, and recommend some best practices Continue Reading
-
News
11 Jan 2021
Malaysia’s storage market dips amid uncertainty
Malaysia’s enterprise storage market declined 9.2% in 2020, but recovery is on the cards this year as business confidence improves Continue Reading
-
News
21 Dec 2020
Top 10 container storage stories of 2020
Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 container storage stories for 2020, when providing persistent Kubernetes storage, backup and disaster recovery became a key challenge for many organisations Continue Reading
-
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
-
News
27 Oct 2020
Commvault launches Metallic backup service in Europe
Backup giant adds backup as a service, with cloud-to-cloud backup and e-discovery functionality that can work across on-site datacentres and the AWS and Azure clouds Continue Reading
-
Feature
23 Oct 2020
Unified file and object storage: The best of both worlds?
Unified file and object storage tackles growing volumes of unstructured data in a way that’s compatible with traditional and cloud-era applications, and friendlier to analytics Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
14 Oct 2020
CW APAC: Trend Watch – storage
Many organisations turn to cloud to cut storage bills, but the options available and potential costs are many and varied. In this handbook, Computer Weekly takes a peek at future storage technologies, such as helium and DNA, and offers some valuable tips on how to keep cloud storage costs under control. Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
13 Oct 2020
The future of storage
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine emerging technologies in storage such as helium disks and DNA. Ransomware is becoming more sophisticated and the attackers more tactical. And as the EU’s top court challenges the UK over surveillance, we ask what this means for data privacy after Brexit. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
News
21 Sep 2020
India’s storage market takes hit but hasn’t lost its shine
The slower growth in storage spending in India amid the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to be mitigated by digitisation efforts by financial services and manufacturing firms Continue Reading
-
News
16 Sep 2020
Pure flashes the cash, paying $370m for Portworx
Flash storage pioneer believes container storage is the next frontier and pays big money for container persistent storage software provider Portworx in deal set to close this month Continue Reading
-
Feature
15 Sep 2020
A peek into the future of storage
Flash-based storage is here to stay and will continue to be enhanced, even as helium and DNA are being primed for use in the distant future Continue Reading
-
News
15 Sep 2020
Scality aims at high-performance object with Ring 8 all-flash
Object storage specialist – with file storage capability – aims at tier-1 use cases such as AI/ML, content delivery and some backup tasks with all-flash upgrade to Scality Ring 8 Continue Reading
-
Feature
25 Aug 2020
Storage analytics: How AI helps storage management
We look at storage analytics products that measure key metrics in storage hardware, single-vendor and multi-vendor tools, and how AI-based storage management and AIOps is emerging Continue Reading
-
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
-
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
-
News
23 Jul 2020
Commvault refreshes HyperScale backup appliances with Hedvig
Backup player set to replace Fujitsu/Red Hat-based backup appliances with new hardware and storage software from Hedvig, which it bought late last year Continue Reading
-
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
-
News
29 Jun 2020
Qumulo Shift opens up scale-out NAS to AWS S3 in the cloud
Qumulo Shift will automatically convert file data on its NAS arrays to S3 object storage format in the AWS cloud. The functionality will be free to customers from July Continue Reading
-
News
25 Jun 2020
Nebulon emerges with software-defined storage, but from the cloud
Startup to offer on-site storage with local I/O and some controller functionality in the cloud, combining software-defined and cloud to bring “fleet management at scale” Continue Reading
-
News
23 Jun 2020
SoftIron aims at data too valuable for commodity storage
UK array maker hopes to be the storage provider of choice for those that really value their data, with highly optimised Ceph-powered hardware aimed at HPC users and enterprises Continue Reading
-
News
16 Jun 2020
QLC + 3D Xpoint = Vast Data’s universal storage
Vast marries cheap-and-deep QLC flash with super-fast 3D Xpoint to bring flash for all data, with a particular eye on analytics and with NAS and S3 object access for now Continue Reading
-
Feature
12 Jun 2020
Cloud storage on-site hardware: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
We look at the big three cloud vendors’ on-site offerings: AWS’s Outposts, Gateway and Snow hardware, Azure’s Stack and Arc appliances, and Google Cloud’s software-defined Anthos Continue Reading
-
News
29 May 2020
Kaminario offers cut-price virtual SAN in the cloud
Flash pioneer Kaminario builds its VisionOS out to the cloud and says its cloud block storage is much cheaper than what is available from the native cloud services of the big three providers Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
26 May 2020
Can Lady Gaga and Madonna get people to take IT security seriously?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, after hackers threatened to release data from a US law firm’s celebrity clients, will people finally take cyber security seriously? Designing software for older users makes systems better for all – we examine how. And the IT chief at TSB explains how the bank recovered from its 2018 IT disaster. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
-
News
04 May 2020
StorageOS v2 puts ‘mini brains’ in Kubernetes storage volumes
StorageOS persistent software-defined storage for Kubernetes distributes control plane decisions to volumes in a cluster and takes away the impact on centralised scheduler Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
28 Apr 2020
Is digital transformation in the public sector making progress?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we assess the progress of digital transformation across the public sector. IT contractors face a double whammy from backdated tax payments and loans being recalled – we explore the growing scandal. And we assess the benefits of computational storage. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
-
Feature
16 Mar 2020
Container storage 101: What is CSI and how does it work?
We look at the container storage interface, which provides an interface to persistent storage in the products of storage array makers, and how it relates to Kubernetes Continue Reading
-
Feature
05 Mar 2020
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
-
Feature
02 Mar 2020
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
-
News
25 Feb 2020
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
-
Feature
21 Feb 2020
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
-
News
10 Feb 2020
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
-
Feature
04 Feb 2020
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
-
News
04 Feb 2020
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
-
Feature
22 Jan 2020
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
-
News
20 Jan 2020
Inside NetApp’s transition into a data management firm
NetApp’s leaders in Asia-Pacific discuss the company’s pivot into data services and its traction in the region Continue Reading
-
News
15 Jan 2020
How container applications are shaping storage management
Persistent storage, backup and recovery were not on the minds of those behind container applications, but that is starting to change Continue Reading
-
Feature
23 Dec 2019
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
-
News
19 Dec 2019
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
-
Feature
09 Dec 2019
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
-
Feature
22 Nov 2019
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
-
News
18 Nov 2019
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
-
News
06 Nov 2019
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
-
News
05 Nov 2019
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