Storage

CW Nordics – May 2015 Edition

Nordic countries top list of digital nations in the EU, outperforming others in the areas of broadband infrastructure, IT skills, web use, business digitisation and tech-based public services. Continue Reading

EMC plots managed cloud push with $1.2bn deal to acquire Virtustream

Storage giant claims latest purchase will reinforce its hybrid cloud proposition for enterprises Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Government cloud adoption hit by ongoing legacy tech investments

IT supplier Eduserv wants government departments banned from investing in legacy tech to drive up cloud adoption Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

LTFS tape NAS: What it is and how to build it

In storage, cost is everything. So, imagine a storage medium with the frugal cost profile of tape and access times of NAS. Well, it already exists. Since 2010 the Linear Tape File System (LTFS) has allowed access to tapes as if they are spinning disk. Part of the LTO-5 tape format, LTFS partitions the tape, with one containing indexing information for all the data on the cartridge and the other contains the actual data. Marry this capability to a hardware NAS protocol front end with a disk cache and you have the potential for rapid access to massive amounts of data held on tape. Tiered storage is now mainstream. We have super-rapid flash for virtual machines and their data; Fibre Channel and 15k SAS for other fast access use cases. After that there is high-capacity SATA for bulk data, but here is where LTFS could start treading on the toes of disk vendors. That’s because, in some cases, where the use profile of data requires long retention and infrequent but relatively quick access, LTFS tape now rivals large capacity SATA as a nearline store. Maybe that’s why LTFS has failed to set the world on fire; there are just too many disk vendors who see it as a threat. Nevertheless, LTFS is worth looking at. And in this ComputerWeekly.com Guide you’ll find articles on why LTFS should be taken seriously and explanations of how tape NAS works and who sells products. Continue Reading

Erasure coding vs Raid for disk rebuilds

Erasure coding as a means of data protection has emerged with object storage and offers an alternative to Raid systems Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Former nurse’s career blighted after blowing whistle on IT problems

Southwark's continuing care database included names of patients who had been dead for several years, a tribunal is told Continue Reading

By

• Julia Gregory and Bill Goodwin

EMC predicts return to double-digit sales growth

Storage giant's EMEA chief claims downbeat first quarter results are as bad as things will get for EMC, and that normal service will soon resume Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

VCE takes wraps off "hyper-converged" VxRacks to fast-track users to the cloud

EMC-owned converged infrastructure specialist expands portfolio of cloud-enabling platforms Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Veeam upgrades Availability Suite to support VMware VVOLs

Virtual machine backup specialist Veeam upgrades Availability Suite version 8 to support VMware Virtual Volumes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Amazon first-quarter results value Amazon Web Services at $5bn

Amazon's Q1 results confirm Amazon Web Services – AWS – as its most profitable business, valuing the cloud services provider at $5bn Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Load DynamiX adds OpenStack protocols to storage testing product

Storage testing and validation provider adds OpenStack Swift and Cinder support to existing protocols in its Enterprise version 2.6 hardware Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Craig S. Mullins, Mullins Consulting

Docker storage 101: How storage works in Docker

Docker nails some of the shortcomings of virtualisation, but what about Docker container storage? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Taking stock of e-commerce systems

In this week's Computer Weekly, the first of our three-part buyer's guide to next generation e-commerce looks at managing inventory in multi-channel retailers. We highlight the six technology companies that are threats to the dominance of high-street banks. And we examine the top five issues in virtual machine backup. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Mobile device management (MDM) vs backup

MDM tackles the challenge of mobile devices flooding the enterprise, but it doesn’t mean you can stop worrying about mobile data protection Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

Talon upgrades MobileFast for web and Windows file sync and share

Enterprise file sync and share provider Talon Storage adds web browser and Windows workstation access to MobileFast Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

VM backup down as a priority while disaster recovery still tops to-do lists

Our survey finds VM backup increasingly “job done”, while disaster recovery, cloud storage, flash storage and mobility remain high priorities; but where is mobile backup? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Chris Evans

How to ensure your hot-desking colleagues keep their data secure

Once hot-desking is implemented, data security suddenly demands greater attention Continue Reading

By

• Christian Cawley

$/GB vs $/IOPS and how to compare enterprise storage pricing

While raw drive prices are pennies per GB, the actual cost of enterprise storage is much higher. Finding a baseline can save you money Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Dell adds Nutanix-powered XC630 and XC730 hyperconverged systems

Dell targets range of use cases with XC630 and XC730 Nutanix-powered server/storage nodes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

PernixData FVP boosts RAM as host storage with up to 4x compression

Flash caching firm PernixData adds compression to FVP 2.5 for more scope to use RAM as host-based storage for high-performance datasets Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Banks take the fight to the web giants

In this week's Computer Weekly, with internet giants like Google, Apple and Facebook offering banking services, Santander is leading the fightback by launching a cloud storage service; but can it win? Our latest buyer's guide looks at cloud-optimised IT. And we examine how the economic trends will affect CIOs this year. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

IBM moves to MLC in FlashSystem 900 and V9000 all-flash arrays

IBM boosts density with new Micron MLC flash drives in revamped all-flash arrays, the FlashSystem 900 and the V9000 that includes SAN Volume Controller storage virtualisation hardware Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Suse launches Ceph-based cloud software-defined storage

Suse launches commercially-supported object, block and file Ceph distribution Enterprise Storage, software-defined storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Symantec continues cloud investment in spite of poor Q3 results

Symantec has reported third quarter 2015 revenue of $1.64bn, a drop of 4% compared with $1.70bn over the same period in 2014 Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

How to combat VM sprawl

VMs are easy to create, but when unmanaged they proliferate around your infrastructure. Here, we explain VM sprawl and how to combat it Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Cloud storage: The top five things that go wrong – and how to avoid them

Cloud storage provides cost savings and ease of management, but there are pitfalls – and here are the top five things that can go wrong Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

EMC launches VSPEX Blue EVO:Rail hyper-converged appliances

EMC announces VSPEX Blue EVO:Rail hyper-converged appliance in general purpose and performance variants Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Wellcome Trust builds 1,728-core grid for DNA analysis

The Wellcome Trust Centre has deployed a high-performance computing cluster based on Fujitsu servers Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

UK's fastest supercomputer upgrades to 2Pflops and 5PB of tiered storage

The UK's fastest supercomputer upgrades to 4,920 nodes and 2 Petaflops performance with tiered storage including 5PB of direct-attached disk Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

Thin provisioning – hypervisor vs array

Thin provisioning can be done at the storage array or virtualisation hypervisor. We look at the pros and cons of each – or both Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Top five issues in VM backup

Virtual machine backup is a vital task for IT departments. But pitfalls abound. We look at the top five issues encountered in VM backup Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Hero Group uses vMotion to replace SAN and servers with Nutanix

Baby food, fruit and cereal bar company Hero Group has migrated its Holland operations over to a single virtual platform Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

The future of networking

In this week's Computer Weekly, our latest buyer's guide looks at emerging networking technologies and assesses their impact on IT infrastructure. After Microsoft's major Azure outage, we look at the resilience of the public cloud. And we discuss the future of banking technology with the CIO of HSBC's investment banking arm. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Flash storage 101: How solid state storage works

Why flash writes are troublesome, why endurance is limited and what suppliers are doing to overcome these issues Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Key challenges in storage and virtualisation, and how to beat them

Server virtualisation brings benefits but increases storage-capacity needs. Here we survey the key challenges and what to do about them Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Migrating away from Windows Server 2003

In this week’s Computer Weekly, as Microsoft prepares to end support for the popular Windows Server 2013 operating system, we assess the risk for organisations that fail to migrate in time. We hear from IT leaders delivering benefits from enterprise social media use to improve staff collaboration. And we look at criticisms from Oracle users about the supplier’s software licensing practices. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Interview: The IT powering animated movie-making

Video special effects require similar processing to oil and gas, but lack the budget, says head of technology at Illumination Mac Guff, Bruno Mahe Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Google joins enterprise cloud battle with additions to its cloud platform

Google made a raft of announcements at its GCP Live event, including enhancements to its networking stack and storage price drops Continue Reading

By

• Janakiram MSV

BBC takes iPlayer video production to AWS cloud to beat bottleneck and storage woes

Having run Video Factory on AWS for over a year, BBC's Robert Shield explains how he overcame iPlayer bottleneck and availability challenges Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

EMC buys out Cisco’s stakes in VCE as year-on-year revenue jumps 9%

Storage giant EMC has reported a 9% increase year on year for the third quarter of 2014, thanks to revenue rises across its divisions Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Backup and disaster recovery in the age of virtualisation

One of the benefits of using virtual machines is the scope for improved backup. We look at the product offerings from traditional and new suppliers Continue Reading

By

• Bob Tarzey

Why has HP split?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, HP has announced plans to split the company in two – we look at the reasons and assess the future prospects for the IT giant. We examine the best practice in security policy to support a bring your own device (BYOD) scheme for staff mobile technology. And we find out how one company moved its entire datacentre from Berlin to London. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Symantec splits storage and security

Symantec is splitting its storage and security business, following just days after HP announced its split Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

The challenges facing HP as it splits in two

HP is splitting its business in two - but it is a reaction to the changing way that businesses and consumers buy IT Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

DDN launches scale-out NAS GS7K GPFS product bundle

DataDirect Networks launches the GS7K, a pre-configured GPFS scale-out NAS/parallel file system storage product Continue Reading

A guide to scale-out NAS: The specialists and startups

Specialist suppliers and startups in scale-out NAS, a technology that’s gone mainstream for its superior ability to scale capacity and performance Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

The IT challenges facing an independent Scotland

In this week’s Computer Weekly, as Scotland goes to the polls to vote on independence, we assess the IT challenges the country would face. We look at the products available in the fast-growing market for object storage. And we ask if it will be worth migrating to future version of Windows given the rise in mobile usage. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Virtual backup appliance pros and cons

Computer Weekly examines virtual backup appliances that run backup and restore from a virtual machine Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Scale-out NAS product survey: The big six

We survey the big six storage array makers’ scale-out NAS product ranges Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

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

By

• Chris Evans

Going mobile in financial services

In this week’s Computer Weekly, in a highly-regulated sector such as financial services, enabling staff mobility is a challenge – we hear from IT leaders that have made it work. We ask why small businesses are so poorly prepared for cyber attacks. And we examine the key storage technologies in the Openstack cloud platform. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

CIPD ditches 20-a-day tape habit for Exagrid data deduplication

HR professionals organisation the CIPD replaces tape backup with disk-based data deduplication backup hardware from Exagrid Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Microsoft adds StorSimple hybrid storage arrays to Azure cloud service

Azure users get more storage, archiving and disaster recovery from 1 August 2014 with Microsoft's StorSimple 8000 series hybrid storage arrays Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Google I/O: Extending Google's enterprise reach

At its annual developer conference last month, Google extended its enterprise portfolio boosting its security, storage and MDM products Continue Reading

By

• Clare McDonald, Business Editor

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

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Airbus deploys modular datacentre strategy to boost HPC capacity

The aircraft manufacturer has deployed HP's performance optimised datacentres (PODs) to increase its high performance compute capabilities for its engineers Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

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

By

• Manek Dubash

CW Europe - July 2014 Edition

In this issue of CW Europe we investigate how changing your storage can make the world of difference to your company’s carbon emissions. Continue Reading

Security must change in Indian digital marketplace

More than 25% of large digital marketplaces will have explicit strategies for consumer computing and security by 2018, according to Gartner Continue Reading

By

• Anup Basti

Betting on World Cup success

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we talk to gambling site Betfair about the IT challenges of preparing for the football World Cup. We examine the strategy of cloud software pioneer Salesforce.com as it grows its role in the IT department. And we explain erasure coding – an emerging method for protecting storage hardware. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Voice recording compliance: What it is and how to achieve it

Voice recording compliance is subject to the regulation by the FSA, PCI, and Data Protection and Freedom of Information Acts Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Backup vs replication, snapshots, CDP in data protection strategy

Best practice data protection strategy combines backup with snapshots, CDP and replication for different levels of recovery Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Facebook shares lessons learnt from deploying Raid in HDFS clusters

Facebook deployed Raid in large HDFS clusters to increase capacity and reduce data replication, but it faced many challenges Continue Reading

OpenStack storage: Cinder and Swift explained

is a rising star in private cloud infrastructures. But what about OpenStack storage? We run the rule over OpenStack Cinder and Swift Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

How big data brings big donations for charities

In this week’s Computer Weekly, hear how big data is helping charities to improve their fundraising by better targeting potential donors. We find out how the UK’s biggest newspaper publisher is moving its IT to the cloud. And we examine the options for datacentre cooling technologies to cut your energy costs. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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

By

• Chris Evans

Principles of compliance in the financial services industry

Compliance in financial services can appear a staggeringly complex web of laws and regulations, but some key principles apply, says Mathieu Gorge of Vigitrust Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Facebook debuts ‘Rapid Deployment Data Centre’ design in Swedish facility

Facebook is expanding its Luleå datacentre in Sweden by deploying Rapid Deployment Data Centre (RDDC) design developed in collaboration with Emerson Power Network Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Erasure coding vs Raid as a data protection method

Erasure coding is mooted as a potential successor to Raid and backup software Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

HDS upgrades its mainframe-friendly VSP G1000 enterprise storage array

Hitachi Data Systems launches the Virtual Storage Platform G1000 enterprise storage array, which boosts capacity, performance and lifespan for the storage virtualisation platform. Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

The mid-market conundrum

Analysts Bob Tarzey and Bob Brown look at how mid market organisations can achieve 'best in class' IT applications with limited resources. Continue Reading

BT and Microsoft to offer secure fast lane to Azure cloud

Microsoft’s UK cloud chief hails service as critical step in supporting CEO Satya Nadella’s ambitious plans for global cloud dominance Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

Data set to grow 10-fold by 2020 as internet of things takes off

IDC’s Digital Universe study predicts the world's data will amount to 44 zettabytes by 2020, 10% of it from the internet of things Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Law Society advises legal industry's IT teams over cloud

The Law Society has published best-practice advice for legal firms' IT teams that are considering using cloud computing, following increased use of the cloud to store data Continue Reading

VMware versus Hyper-V storage comparison

VMware versus Hyper-V storage: How do the two leading hypervisors compare when it comes to deploying storage and in terms of their key storage features and functionality? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Would the real flash storage successor please stand up?

Flash storage will hit a wall in development terms by around the end of the decade. But which successor is best placed to replace it: Memristor, MRAM or phase-change memory? Continue Reading

By

• Tim Stammers and Simon Robinson

EMC upgrades Avamar, Networker and Data Domain products

EMC boosts application and hypervisor integration on Avamar, Networker and Data Domain as part of a strategic push to "backup-less backup" and a "data protection continuum" Continue Reading

Case study: How John Lewis conquered the web

An in-depth look at the inside story of John Lewis' £40m e-commerce strategy. Continue Reading

Global taskforce agrees on green datacentre metric

DCeP hopes to win widespread support as a useful and meaningful standard for measuring datacentre efficiency Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

Cloud archive pros and cons and the questions to ask providers

A cloud archive offers a flexible and cost effective alternative to in-house archiving where maintenance is outsourced, but what are the key questions to ask a potential supplier Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Converged stacks: What they are and the benefits they bring

We survey the converged stacks market: Servers, storage and networking in pre-configured product bundles for specific virtualisation and application use cases. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Cloud storage options in Scandinavia

It has never been faster or cheaper to store data in the cloud and Scandinavian businesses have taken up cloud storage with gusto Continue Reading

By

• Jane Ruffino

Case study: Virtualised storage adds value to Denmark's tunnel vision

State construction firm Femern selects DataCore system to help speed up Fehmarnbelt undersea odyssey and keep the sharks at bay Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

NetApp slims product family with launch of FAS8000 series

NetApp launches FAS8000 line that will replace FAS3000 and FAS6000 series filers Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

UK IT spending to outpace rest of Europe in 2014

Computer Weekly research reveals the IT spending priorities for UK and European organisations in 2014. Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

The UK’s problem with power

Datacentre power buyers say Britain’s deregulated energy market is as complex as trading in derivatives Continue Reading

By

• Nick Booth

Flash storage: What it is and where to deploy it

A guide to the key decisions in flash storage: MLC vs SLC, all-flash vs hybrid, whether to add flash to an existing SAN, flash as a tier vs cache, and more Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead and Chris Evans

Schneider accreditation aims to boost green datacentre skills

Datacentre supplier offers free vendor-neutral courses and certification through its online Energy University Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

Atlantis joins the software-defined storage fray with USX

Atlantis ILIO USX software-defined storage allows customers to virtualise commodity to create flash, hybrid and hyperscale storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Amazon nets lion’s share of $10bn public cloud market

AWS continues its unassailable domination of the sector, despite recent moves by Google, IBM and Microsoft Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

B&Q owner Kingfisher dumps Raid rebuilds and saves 40% on disk with X-IO

Kingfisher puts X-IO drives behind IBM SVC storage virtualisation to save 40% disk costs and dispenses with Raid rebuilds in £120,000 project Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Survey: Virtualisation the engine for key storage projects

Server virtualisation drives key storage projects for European and UK IT departments, with disaster recovery and virtual server backup high on to-do lists Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

WIll open source save the datacentre industry?

IT rivals stand cheek-by-jowl to praise Facebook’s Open Compute Project, but is the love-in a Damascene conversion or just damage limitation? Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

EMC brings Hadoop into ViPR upgrade and unifies SRM modules

EMC launches version 1.1 of its software-defined storage/big data platform ViPR by building in Hadoop analytics capability Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Microsoft joins Open Compute Project

Redmond giant makes server specs public in bid to influence future datacentre design Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

IBM to open London datacentre as part of $1.2bn global cloud push

New facility first in UK to be based on IBM SoftLayer cloud architecture Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

VDI storage basics and persistent versus non-persistent desktops

A look at the fundamentals of VDI storage and how to specify storage for likely workloads and persistent versus non-persistent desktops. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans