Storage performance
Buying wisely and tuning your storage infrastructure for the best possible storage performance is vital to ensure the business is adequately supported. Understanding storage performance starts when you begin to evaluate manufacturers’ products and continues as you set up, configure and tune storage hardware to suit your workloads.
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Feature
19 Dec 2024
Top 10 AI and storage stories of 2024
In this 2024 review, we look at the impact of AI on data storage, what’s needed to support AI during training and inference, and storage suppliers’ responses to the rise of AI Continue Reading
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News
18 Dec 2024
Top 10 Kubernetes and storage stories of 2024
In this 2024 review, Computer Weekly looks at Kubernetes’ evolution from stateless application runtime to enterprise-ready environment for cloud-native with persistent storage and data protection Continue Reading
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Feature
31 May 2018
Storage 101: The final flash generation? QLC vs MLC, TLC, SLC
QLC flash products have arrived in the market, but with a limited performance profile, has NAND flash come up against the realities of the physics that make it possible? Continue Reading
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News
29 May 2018
Pure debuts new FlashArray //X arrays with NVMe across the range
Pure is set to replace //M series boxes with FlashArray //X arrays in which NVMe is standard with NVMe-over-fabrics connectivity to servers and expansion shelves Continue Reading
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News
23 May 2018
Technicolor speeds up movie production with Excelero NVMe flash
Film giant Technicolor had to duplicate workstreams or schedule access to movies being worked on, but Excelero NVMe allows concurrent access to 10 or more workstations at a time Continue Reading
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News
21 May 2018
Micron first to market with QLC flash drive 5210 QLC SSD
Micron’s 5210 QLC SSD is aimed at analytics and content delivery in cloud and web-scale operations that currently use 7,200rpm spinning disk in huge Raid sets to gain IOPS Continue Reading
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News
21 May 2018
IBM adds deduplication to Spectrum Virtualize, and Storwize arrays
IBM has added data deduplication to Spectrum Virtualize and array products that run it. It has also upgraded array analytics and the cloud version of Spectrum Virtualize Continue Reading
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News
09 May 2018
Nutanix builds hooks to SDN and cloud with Flow, Era and Beam
Hyper-converged pioneer builds in functionality from acquisitions with Flow software-defined networking, Beam cloud monitoring and Era database provisioning and data protection Continue Reading
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News
07 May 2018
ASEAN seeks to tame data deluge with object storage
Led by Singapore and Thailand, the object storage market in Southeast Asia is expected to grow at a double-digit rate in the next few years Continue Reading
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Podcast
01 May 2018
Podcast: How the internet of things affects storage and compliance
We look at the impact on storage and compliance of the rise of IoT, with tips from Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, on how to manage endpoints in an internet of things environment Continue Reading
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News
24 Apr 2018
Unitrends launches ‘Veeam killer’ VM Backup Essentials
Backup specialist Unitrends says Veeam has become “arrogant” and abandoned large elements of its customer base. VM Backup Essentials aims to fill gap for VMware users Continue Reading
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Feature
20 Apr 2018
Storage class memory set to upset hardware architectures
Storage class memory and persistent memory products are set to add a layer of superfast storage media between bulk drives and memory, pushing performance to five million IOPS Continue Reading
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News
18 Apr 2018
Backup 101: Incremental vs differential backup
In this Backup 101 article, we look at incremental versus differential backup and walk through the advantages and disadvantages of these two key backup strategies Continue Reading
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News
12 Apr 2018
Security Center of Iceland dumps EMC big iron for StorMagic SvSAN
Icelandic security company threw EMC VNXe “in the bin” and deployed StorMagic software-defined storage SvSAN to gain 4x boost in IOPS and slashed admin overhead Continue Reading
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Feature
05 Apr 2018
Who needs hybrid cloud object storage?
Hybrid cloud object storage products are an emerging category. But what use cases are driving their emergence? And which suppliers lead the way? Continue Reading
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News
27 Mar 2018
Pivot3 Cloud Edition adds backup from hyper-converged to AWS
Hyper-converged infrastructure node maker dips its toes into hybrid cloud operations with Pivot3 Cloud Edition on Amazon Web Services to add cloud backup to HCI Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Mar 2018
Storage 101: How to create, share and manage a LUN in SAN storage
Despite pronouncements from some, the days of the logical unit number (LUN) are not over. We look at the LUN in SAN management: How to create, share, provision and manage a LUN Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Mar 2018
Disaggregated systems try to unlock the NVMe conundrum
NVMe can unlock the true potential of flash, but storage controllers put a bottleneck back in the I/O path. We look at how suppliers are trying to solve the problem Continue Reading
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News
20 Feb 2018
Load Dynamix is now WorkloadWisdom and adds more NAS support
Virtual Instruments enhances NAS testing and monitoring capabilities with SMB and 25GbE support in WorkloadWisdom but hybrid cloud monitoring will remain off limits for now Continue Reading
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News
13 Feb 2018
Siemens’ Datrium NVMe flash speeds customer software deployment
Siemens utility metering group deploys Datrium DVX in place of cumbersome LUN-based block storage and cuts customer software roll-outs to a few minutes and data restores to seconds Continue Reading
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News
21 Jan 2018
Cloud firm speeds customer analytics with Pure Storage arrays
Cloudhelix replaces Pernix Data storage with Pure Storage FlashArray products to provide “brute force” performance approach for unpredictable customer workloads Continue Reading
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E-Zine
19 Oct 2017
CW ASEAN: Juggling in the cloud
More businesses in ASEAN are adopting a multi-cloud strategy to avoid supplier lock-in and take their pick from the best cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure offerings that work alongside in-house systems. In this month’s issue of CW ASEAN, we take a look at what organisations need to do to overcome the complex task of pulling together a seamlessly integrated data management strategy, one that will integrate disparate cloud services and automate movement of data across their cloud ecosystems. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
19 Oct 2017
CW ANZ: Rise to the big data challenge
Like their counterparts in other parts of the world, Australian businesses are facing a data explosion as they roll out more digital services for customers. Take IAG for instance. A year ago, the insurance giant had a data store of just over 80TB, but today it manages a collection of 2TB, which is growing by 14TB a month. In this month’s issue of CW ANZ, we look at how Aussie organisations are fine-tuning their storage strategy to keep up with the demands of big data without compromising performance and service levels. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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E-Zine
01 Aug 2017
The fields of Athenry – how Apple’s datacentre plans are causing turmoil in a small Irish town
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look into Apple’s controversial plans to build a huge datacentre in a small town in the west of Ireland, and hear the local arguments it has caused. We find out how the Met Office is managing the vast quantities of data it uses for weather forecasting. And we examine Google plans to bring artificial intelligence tools to the job recruitment market. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
19 Jul 2017
Charity swaps SAN for Hypergrid hyper-converged to save £1m
Tearfund saves £950,000 by deploying Hypergrid hyper-converged in place of HP servers and SAN, cutting costs on space, power, staff and hardware, and avoiding VMware Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2017
NVMe flash blocked by array architecture, says Kaminario CTO
Flash pioneer CTO says array controllers are built for a different era and must scale-out as clusters to provide the CPU power needed to allow NVMe to realise its potential Continue Reading
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News
06 Jul 2017
Tegile launches Intelliflash tiered all-flash arrays with NVMe
Hybrid flash turned all-flash maker Tegile adds tier of NVMe to SAS-connected flash with all drives encrypted and an all-NVMe array planned for later in 2017 Continue Reading
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News
06 Jul 2017
Tape here to stay, says Spectra Logic with LTO-8 2x capacity gain
LTO-8 tape to boost capacity by leveraging HDD head read technology TMR. Spectra gets in early with offer to customers, “buy LTO-7, get LTO-8 when it ships” Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2017
Finnish government scraps paper and digitises archives
The government in Finland is digitising 94 shelf kilometres of documents to save millions of euros and make the information easier to access Continue Reading
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E-Zine
15 Jun 2017
CW ASEAN: Hyper-convergence offers simple yet scalable storage
In this month’s CW ASEAN, we take a look at how TAL Apparel has reaped significant savings in storage and server resources by switching to hyper-converged systems, and we explore the key drivers for the development of hyper-converged systems and how they will transform the way applications are delivered. We also hear from a senior Veritas executive about why extracting more metadata to improve business processes and data management will become more important. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Jun 2017
NVMe flash storage: What are the deployment options?
NVMe offers to unleash performance potential of flash storage that is held back by spinning disk-era SAS and SATA protocols. We run through the key NVMe deployment options Continue Reading
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News
23 May 2017
Racetrack Memory products in five years, says IBM fellow
Millennium Prize winner Stuart Parkin says flash and 2D methods of storage are fatally limited – Racetrack Memory offers 100x the capacity without flash’s wear issues Continue Reading
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Feature
04 May 2017
Understanding analytics and storage performance
Analytics workloads place specific demands on storage. We take a look at the workload profiles of analytics use cases and the storage platforms available to support them Continue Reading
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News
03 May 2017
3D XPoint et al to force architecture and software changes
New solid state technologies such as 3D XPoint will be a second tier of memory, bringing change to hardware architectures and software to be rewritten, says SNIA solid state group chair Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Apr 2017
How to tune storage performance for different workloads
We run the rule over what’s needed to get the best storage performance for databases, virtual servers and desktops, web and email servers and analytics use cases Continue Reading
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News
12 Apr 2017
Pure Storage launches FlashArray//X with NVMe drives
FlashArray//X has NVMe drives but end-to-end storage-to-host NVMe connectivity will have to wait for an NVMe-over-fabrics (NVMf) version planned for release later this year Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Mar 2017
Storage performance 101: Server, array and fabric/network basics
We look at the key performance attributes of storage media in use today, and the choices and basic tuning steps you can take to get the most from your storage Continue Reading
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News
07 Mar 2017
HPE buys Nimble Storage to fill an all-flash and hybrid gap
Hardware giant buys Nimble Storage for $1.2bn and plugs a gap below its high-end flash retro-fitted 3PAR arrays with ground-up solid state-based hardware Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Feb 2017
Storage 101: Queue depth, NVMe and the array controller
We look at queue depth and fan-out and fan-in ratios. With NVMe they could become a thing of the past, but for now there’s still a bottleneck at the storage array controller Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Feb 2017
Moore’s Law is running out – but don’t panic
Can system performance continue to improve to cope with the burgeoning needs of datacentres Continue Reading
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Feature
03 Feb 2017
NVMe: PCIe card vs U.2 and M.2
We talk NVMe form factor choices – add-in card vs U.2. vs M.2 – and their uses, for primary storage or cache, with Server StorageIO founder and analyst Greg Schulz Continue Reading
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News
12 Jan 2017
IBM refreshes all-flash DS8880 series with PCIe 3.0 enclosures
IBM adds an F to existing DS8884, DS8886 and DS8888 all-flash and hybrid arrays with addition of PCIe 3.0 disk connectivity, but stops short of NVMe capabilities Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Dec 2016
Disaster recovery testing: technology systems to test DR
In this concluding part of a two-part series, Computer Weekly looks at ways of testing disaster recovery plans, with methods including array-based replication and hypervisor-based approaches Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Dec 2016
Storage briefing: NVMe vs SATA and SAS
NVMe brings blistering performance gains over existing HDD-era disk protocols, and is a straight swap-in for PCIe server-side flash with array and hyper-converged products on the way Continue Reading
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Opinion
06 Oct 2016
Enterprise NAS performance challenges and how to resolve them
NAS storage can be used for mission critical workloads but NFS-based storage comes with performance challenges. Jim Bahn of Virtual Instruments outlines the main ones Continue Reading
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Feature
23 May 2016
PCIe SSD: Cache vs storage tier
Adding PCIe flash is a popular way of speeding up application response times, with more rapid I/O guaranteed, but should PCIe SSD be added as cache or as a tier of storage? Continue Reading
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News
29 Mar 2016
OSNexus unlocks Ceph object storage in QuantaStor v4
Software-defined storage maker OSNexus adds Ceph-based object storage to its QuantaStor product, adding it to block and file storage from ZFS, Gluster and Ceph Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Mar 2016
Examining the Teradata Data Warehouse
With both relational and columnar options, the Teradata Active Enterprise Data Warehouse gives companies an efficient, scalable appliance they can deploy in-house or in the cloud. Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Feb 2016
What to expect from Oracle Exadata Database Machine
Oracle Exadata Database Machine combines hardware and software to enable analytics, batch, reporting and other tasks to run simultaneously within and across databases. Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Jan 2016
NAS vs object: Which one for large volumes of unstructured data?
Both NAS and object storage offer highly scalable file storage for large volumes of unstructured data, but which is right for your environment? Continue Reading
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News
24 Jun 2015
NetApp adds AFF All-Flash FAS 8000 series storage arrays
NetApp boosts its SSD array portfolio with the addition of AFF All-Flash FAS 8000 series storage arrays built on Data ONTAP, but still no sign of FlashRay general availability Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Jun 2015
Which in-memory DBMS best fits your company's needs?
Database expert Craig S. Mullins examines some top in-memory DBMS software offerings to help you determine which is the best fit for your organization. Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Apr 2015
How to determine if an in-memory DBMS is right for your company
Database expert Craig S. Mullins examines the pros and cons of the in-memory database management system, and the criteria you should consider during the request-for-proposal and evaluation period. Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Mar 2015
Top five things you need to know about VMware Virtual Volumes
VMware’s Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) promise a revolution in storage for virtual machines, but what are the key things you need to know? Continue Reading
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News
15 Jan 2015
Amatis Networks waves goodbye to LUN woes and deploys Tintri hybrid flash
Managed service provider Amatis Networks deploys Tintri hybrid flash to slash latency and cut time-consuming LUN storage management overheads Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Aug 2014
Scale-out NAS product survey: The big six
We survey the big six storage array makers’ scale-out NAS product ranges Continue Reading
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Feature
31 Jul 2014
Key storage performance metrics for virtual environments
We run the rule over storage performance metrics – latency, throughput and IOPS – that are key to optimising virtual machines Continue Reading
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News
08 Jul 2014
EMC XtremIO, VMAX and Isilon get new CPUs and data services
EMC boosts XtremIO, VMAX and Isilon with Ivy Bridge CPUs and advanced data services including flash array snapshots Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Jul 2014
Big players target object storage at cloud and archive
All but one of the big six storage vendors have object storage products that target public and private cloud environments and/or archiving use cases Continue Reading
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Feature
28 May 2014
In-memory databases - what they do and the storage they need
In-memory databases offer high performance data processing, but how do you protect data in volatile DRAM and what kind of storage is needed for longer term retention? Continue Reading
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Feature
16 May 2013
SSD RAID essentials: What you need to know about flash and Raid
With the advent of flash and high-capacity HDDs, what do today’s storage professionals need to know about Raid and its new variants? Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Dec 2012
Deduplication and single instance storage cut primary data storage costs
Data deduplication and single instance storage can cut costs in primary data environments, but implementations vary between suppliers. Continue Reading
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Feature
14 May 2012
Server SSD guide to form factors and implementations
Server SSD offers immense gains in IOPS and throughput. We look at how it works, form factors available and its advantages and pitfalls, and we survey key vendors in the market. Continue Reading
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Feature
15 Sep 2011
Encryption techniques and products for hardware-based data storage security
Encryption techniques can be applied to data on the drive or array, at the host or in the fabric. We survey the key hardware-based methods and products available for data storage security. Continue Reading
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Feature
24 Jan 2011
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