Storage

Flash storage alternative MRAM takes another step forward

MRAM, a likely successor to flash storage, takes a step toward easier manufacture and longer life with new structures theorised by scientists in Singapore Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW500 Club in 2013

Computer Weekly's CW500 Club attracts the top IT leaders in the UK to talk to their peers about the topical challenges they face Continue Reading

By

• Computer Weekly Staff

Top 10 storage stories of 2013

Users tackle virtualisation and growth of data and suppliers battle over flash storage and software-defined storage, while big data and hyperscale emerge into the mainstream Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

What’s new in ISO 27001: 2103 for storage and backup?

This year, ISO 27001: 2013 was published, putting more emphasis on mapping risk to an ever-expanding and mobile IT infrastructure. But what is new in ISO 27001: 2013? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Can Europe give the world cloud coverage?

This month’s issue of CW Europe investigates how Europe could become the “trusted cloud region” according to the European Commission (EC) after the Prism revelation. Read how the EC believes cloud providers in the region can turn this to their advantage by, developing cloud services that global customers would view as more secure and transparent. Continue Reading

Virtualisation continues to drive European server purchases

TechTarget survey finds 97.3% of large organisations plan to expand their deployments in 2014, with consolidation the main driver Continue Reading

By

• Jim Mortleman

SMB 3.0 brings enterprise-class storage to Hyper-V deployments

SMB 3.0 is Microsoft’s replacement for the “chatty” CIFS file access storage protocol that offers enterprise-class storage to Hyper-V deployments Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Investec CISO warns that legacy tapes will fail on new hardware

Many organisations may find that years of irreplaceable tape backups are inaccessible because modern machines cannot handle legacy format Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

School gets Nimble hybrid flash and Barracuda hybrid cloud backup

Berkshire private college has revamped data protection with Nimble hybrid flash storage and Barracuda hybrid cloud backup Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Business-defined storage will help reconnect businesses with IT, says Forrester

Business-defined storage and datacentres will make IT more business-centric, according to Forrester Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Baldwin, Freelance editor and journalist

Wellcome Trust maps big data genetics with DDN HPC storage

The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has invested in DDN SFA10K HPC storage to support petabytes of big data generated by genetic mapping and research into diseases such as malaria Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Emulex ExpressLane and CrossLink boost HBAs for flash and Hadoop

Storage card maker Emulex has added QoS prioritisation for flash storage and leveraged RDMA via Fibre Channel to increase server performance in clustered operations such as Hadoop Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

NTT Europe saves time with Sepaton data deduplication VTL deployment

NTT Europe was sick of tape libraries “shoeshining” so went for a $2.5m deployment of Sepaton data deduplication virtual tape libraries to slash backup and restore times Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Big data storage: Hadoop storage basics

Hadoop changes the game for enterprise storage. We look at how Hadoop crunches big data, its key storage requirements and survey the vendors Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Lotus F1 Team invests in converged datacentre to support race strategy

Lotus F1 Team is about to go live with a converged datacentre infrastructure as it begins the development of a championship-winning car for 2015 Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Array-based or vSphere Replication for VMware SRM?

What’s the best replication method for VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)? GlassHouse Technologies’ Paul Grimwood runs the rule over array-based replication and vSphere Replication Continue Reading

By

• Paul Grimwood, GlassHouse Technologies (UK)

What if your cloud provider shuts down?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, after a major US cloud provider collapsed, we consider the exit strategies and business continuity plans needed when buying cloud services. We learn how big data analytics helped uncover an offshore tax avoidance scandal. And we examine the role of collaboration in successful IT security. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Fibre Channel vs FCoE. Fibre Channel rules. For now

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and converged network adapters (CNA) offer storage and networking on one infrastructure, but what are the pros and cons of moving to FCoE? Continue Reading

By

• Andy Wragg, GlassHouse Technologies (UK)

Will project Baadal stimulate India’s MSME engine?

The Indian government wants to help its massive community of small businesses become more competitive in the age of the internet through a cloud computing resource, known as Baadal. Continue Reading

By

• Satarupa Bhattacharya

Nirvanix failure – a blow to the cloud storage model?

Cloud storage firm Nirvanix has given customers a deadline to retrieve their data. Are the reasons for its failure specific to Nirvanix or a real blow to cloud storage overall? Continue Reading

By

• Simon Robinson, Principal Analyst

Disaster recovery planning: Don’t be fooled by suppliers

Disaster recovery planning is all about good preparation and not falling for supplier hype. Build appropriate systems, test them and train people well Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Quantum upgrades big data storage to StorNext 5

Quantum’s StorNext big data tiered architecture operating software gets a boost to five billion files and a claimed 10x performance jump via multi-threaded CPU ops Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud file-sharing for enterprise users

Cloud file-sharing services have become near-ubiquitous among enterprise users. We survey the risks, benefits and alternatives to Dropbox Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

iSCSI switch selection and configuration

iSCSI switch selection means looking out for the type of features that matter to iSCSI SAN traffic. We run the rule over the iSCSI switch market to see what’s available Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

When to use flash SSD instead of SAS or SATA?

When to use flash SSDs instead of SAS or SATA spinning disk is all down to application requirements, says David Boyle, senior consultant at GlassHouse Technologies (UK) Continue Reading

By

• David Boyle, senior consultant, GlassHouse Technologies (UK)

UCAS adopts public cloud to process university admissions

Ten days before the A-level results, UCAS adopted a public cloud infrastructure to scale up its IT and to make admission process efficient Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

The data fragmentation challenge

Few organisations have policies to guide where data should and should not be stored. The result: data fragmentation Continue Reading

By

• Tony Lock, Freeform Dynamics

Essential guide to disaster recovery and business continuity

Everything you need to know about business continuity and disaster recovery, planning and prevention. Continue Reading

LUN storage management for vSphere and Hyper-V

LUN storage partitioning has been transformed with the advent of virtualisation. Find out how it differs between VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V implementations Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Avamar and NetWorker to merge for 'backup-less backup'

EMC looks forward to backup as an embedded process, with apps and hypervisors copying versioned replicas in native format Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Podcast: Virtual server backup fundamentals

Virtual server backup is different to traditional backup. This podcast looks at the differences and examines key choices in selecting backup products Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

What’s wrong with flash storage: And what will come after?

Flash storage has taken the enterprise by storm, but its days are numbered due to an unfavourable combination of technological obstacles and manufacturing economics Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

Virtualisation and the LUN: Storage configuration for VMs

Virtualisation and the LUN: Storage admins used to match LUNs to physical servers, but that’s all changed. Find out how in this guide to the basics of VM storage Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

The challenges of information governance in our increasingly litigious age

Formulating the right enterprise-wide information governance policies is essential in heading off potential legal and compliance costs Continue Reading

By

• Doug Miles

Inadequate datacentre infrastructure is a barrier to big data analytics

Inadequate datacentre infrastructure and siloed work practices are preventing UK enterprises from benefiting from big data analytics, shows study Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Users’ top datacentre pain points

Storage, network bandwidth, cost and scalability are among the biggest datacentre concerns, say users at Dell Enterprise Forum US Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

VDI and the enterprise app

Over 200 attendees headed down to Briforum recently for two days of in-depth discussions on VDI, application virtualisation, etc including a look at the current state of the market across Europe. CW Europe looks at how European businesses are utilising the technology. This month’s digital magazine brings you the leading stories and expert tips from across Europe. Continue Reading

VMware storage: SAN configuration basics

For VMware storage basics start here – the fundamentals of configuring SAN storage for VMware, such as VMFS, VMDKs, connectivity options and VMware storage features Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

UCL turns to private cloud to solve its data storage woes

University College London is building a storage infrastructure in the cloud that will scale up to 100PB Continue Reading

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

By

• Chris Evans

Big data security: getting a grip on multiple data sources

Big data analyses multiple data points, but how do you ensure that ecosystem is secure? In this podcast, Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, outlines the key steps in achieving big data security Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Storage Through the Looking Glass

This analyst report aims to help you take a much needed step away from the technical detail of storage to create some strategic perspective. Continue Reading

World’s fastest supercomputer gets 40PB of DDN storage

The US Oak Ridge lab builds home-grown HPC NAS for 40PB DataDirect Networks with 1TBps of throughput as a SAN to back-end Spider II file system on Titan supercomputer Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Real-life disaster recovery boost at video firm with HDS clustered NAS

Special effects video firm The Mill boosts HDS/BlueArc clustered NAS capacity to cope with HD movies and build disaster recovery site at London’s Docklands Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Big data storage: Defining big data and the type of storage it needs

Big data storage: What is big data, what compute/storage system configurations are used for big data analytics, and what type of storage infrastructure does it require? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Best practice in enterprise storage

Sean Sadler, head of infrastructure solutions at Kings College London, gives best practice advice on enterprise storage for big data. Continue Reading

Six security issues to tackle before encrypting cloud data

Concern about security and privacy is likely to drive adoption of cloud encryption, but there are six security issues businesses should tackle Continue Reading

By

• Warwick Ashford, Senior analyst

How to tackle big data from a security point of view

Before leaping into big data, companies must be clear what they are trying to achieve, otherwise their investment will be wasted Continue Reading

By

• Peter Wood, First Base Technologies LLP

DDN launches hScaler Hadoop appliance for enterprises

HPC and clustered NAS supplier Data Direct Networks aims at enterprise customers with Hadoop appliance comprising its SFA12K storage and commodity compute components Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

IT budgets to grow in 2013 as economy bumps along

UK IT departments are planning to spend more on IT in 2013 despite the downturn, a worldwide survey of IT managers has revealed Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

In-house tape vs cloud archiving: What are the pros and cons?

Have cloud archiving services reached a tipping point that makes them cheaper and easier to manage than in-house tape archives? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Global cloud survey: the implementation challenge

The journey to cloud is proving more complicated and challenging than many had originally anticipated, senior executives reveal in this report from KPMG. Continue Reading

Businesses wasting billions storing unnecessary data

CIOs are urged to rethink their backup strategies following warnings that companies are wasting billions on unnecessary storage Continue Reading

By

• Bill Goodwin, Computer Weekly

Interview: Alan Clark, chairman, OpenStack Foundation

Alan Clark, chairman of the board of the OpenStack Foundation, talks to Computer Weekly about the future of cloud and the role of open source Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

Whiptail tops the class with flash array plus SAN two-tier strategy

School slashes virtual desktop login times with two-tier Whiptail flash array plus budget Huawei SAN Continue Reading

EMC seals deal with Chinese server giant Lenovo for desktop NAS

Storage giant EMC completes joint venture that will see it provide desktop NAS and SME rackmount storage hardware to Lenovo Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 storage stories of 2012

Top storage stories from 2012 reflect the rapid pace of virtualisation, big data, the proliferation of mobile devices and new twists on storage technologies such as tape and RAID Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Data to grow more quickly says IDC’s Digital Universe study

IDC’s annual Digital Universe study finds data set to expand to 40 Zettabytes by 2020. Emerging markets and machine-generated data will account for increasing proportions of it. Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Manek Dubash

Whiptail promises four million IOPS all-flash array performance

All-flash array maker Whiptail has upgraded its Racerunner operating system so Invicta arrays can scale to four million IOPS and 360TB of capacity Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Digitising the BFI National Archive

The BFI has the largest film archive in the world, with 200,000 films and nearly 900,000 TV shows in its collection. Of that, 75% is British. The institute is undergoing a major digitisation programme in under to preserve its wealth of social history and bring the archive’s treasures to millions. Continue Reading

By

• Kathleen Hall, TechTarget

Software-defined datacentres demystified

As datacentre managers increasingly rely on software and automation, what can a software-defined datacentre bring to the enterprise? Continue Reading

By

• Archana Venkatraman, Datacentre Editor

DataDirect Networks takes aim at clustered NAS with SFA7700

DataDirect Networks (DDN) makes a play for clustered NAS customers with big data needs on its journey from HPC to scale-out supplier Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Disaster recovery: An essential part of any business strategy

The November 2012 edition of CWEurope focuses on what should always be one of your top IT priorities: Disaster recovery. Without a plan B, you risk the continuance of your business in the event of a natural disaster, hardware malfunction, human error or digital threat. It's disaster recovery or disaster devastation - the choice is up to you. Continue Reading

Cheshire Constabulary polices network with SolarWinds

Police force in Cheshire uses SolarWinds’ infrastructure monitoring tools to keep its IT out of trouble Continue Reading

10 robust USB drive security tools for India Inc

USB drives are ubiquitous in Indian businesses, but pose security threats as they are easily lost/stolen. Here are 10 tools to ensure robust USB security. Continue Reading

By

• Karthik Poojary, Amazon

CERN turns on new NetApp ONTAP clustered NAS capability

CERN turns on NetApp Data ONTAP 8.1.1 clustered NAS functionality for easy scaling and maintenance on its 2PB LHC data storage cluster Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Six business continuity audit guidelines for Indian businesses

In order to be fully prepared to tackle disasters it is important to conduct BCP audits. Use these guidelines for effective business continuity audits. Continue Reading

By

• Ashish Dandekar

Lamborghini slashes web costs with Amazon Web Services

Supercar maker Lamborghini has revamped and accelerated the performance of its website by running it on Amazon Web Services Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Storage briefs: Tape library just the ticket for car park firm

Tape library for car park firm; IT departments fail on email compliance; Record HDD shipment after Thai floods; Veeam supports Hyper-V Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

We need European datacentres to 'be successful' says Box CEO

Computer Weekly speaks to founder and CEO of cloud storage firm Box about why enterprises are embracing this type of technology and what his firm has to do to keep them happy Continue Reading

HMRC becomes first major department to use G-Cloud

HMRC is the first major government department to procure through the G-Cloud in a deal with Skyscape for centralised data storage. Continue Reading

By

• Kathleen Hall, TechTarget

Big Data Analytics

IDC explores the initial impact that Big Data is having on organisations, its impact on IT architectures, delivery models and future roadmaps. Continue Reading

The future of computing at IBM Zurich research labs

Chips powered by the sun and cooled by water are just some of the long-term research projects at IBM's Zurich labs Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Glick, Editor in chief

Tune Raid performance to get the most from your HDDs

Tune Raid performance at the storage controller to match application I/O demands to optimal hard drive (HDD) performance Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

Guide to Windows Azure: Part 3 - How to configure local storage resources

Our Windows Azure tutorial series continues with an explanation of usage of local storage in Azure cloud services. Learn how to best configure local storage. Continue Reading

By

• Saranya Sriram

Business continuity strategy: Employees are the vital link!

No business continuity strategy can ignore the role that employees play in a crisis. Here’s how you can bring employees to the center of your BC plan. Continue Reading

By

• Sanil Nadkarni, Capitas

The pros and cons of NAS as VM storage

Virtual server and desktop environments demand the use of shared storage for maximum efficiency. What are the key advantages of NAS as VM storage? Continue Reading

The benefits of an open source file system for storage

An open source file system can bring huge scalability, parallel file system capability and advanced features compared to those bundled with commercial operating systems. Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

The key capabilities of SAN as virtual machine storage

Virtual server and desktop environments demand the use of shared storage for maximum efficiency, but what are the key advantages of SAN as virtual machine storage? Continue Reading

Storage Radio: Symantec CEO switch, Proximal Data releases AutoCache

In our latest Storage Radio podcast, join SearchStorage.com’s executive editor Ellen O’Brien and senior news editor Dave Raffo as they discuss the future of Symantec. Continue Reading

By

• John Hilliard, TechTarget

Five handy data backup and DR plan best practices

Worried about the ever growing complexity of backup and DR strategies? Here’s our quick guide for backup and DR in the age of virtualization and cloud computing. Continue Reading

By

• SearchDataCenter.in Staff

iSCSI security: Networking and security options available

iSCSI security options include physical and virtual IP/Ethernet networking methods as well as built-in storage and switch device security features. Read about them here. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

10 GbE: iSCSI bandwidth increase improves protocol’s position against FC

With a boost to iSCSI bandwidth with 10 Gigabit Ethernet, products that support the protocol offer features to rival Fibre Channel SANs, including scalability and hypervisor integration. Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

VMware backup and the VMware snapshot

The VMware snapshot is a critical component of VMware backup. In this guide to the basics of VMware backup, we walk you through the key processes and suggest some best practices. Continue Reading

By

• Michelle Laverick

SSD RAID array: What it is and how to use it

An SSD RAID array offers the performance and data protection advantages RAID does with spinning disk, but what levels should you use and can you mix flash and HDDs in the same RAID group? Continue Reading

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

By

• Chris Evans

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

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

Cloud backup options: Pure cloud vs hybrid cloud backup

Cloud backup is increasingly being seen as a flexible and cost-effective option by many organisations, but what are the pros and cons of pure cloud backup and hybrid cloud backup? Continue Reading

By

• Martin Taylor

Prepare for BCP audits with nine best practices

Business continuity plans are ineffective without proper BCP audits. Our expert has some guidelines on how to prepare for BCP audits. Continue Reading

By

• Anuj Sharma

HPC storage requirements: Massive IOPS and parallel file systems

We survey the key vendors in HPC storage, where huge amounts of IOPS, clustering, parallel file systems and custom silicon provide storage for massive number crunching operations. Continue Reading

By

• Manek Dubash

Unified storage goes mainstream

Unified storage has gone mainstream, with full protocol support from the top five vendors. We survey the options available, including single platforms and NAS gateways. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

The best place for SSD in a virtual machine environment

Using SSD in a virtual machine environment is the ideal choice to speed response times to I/O demands, but where should you install it within the server and storage infrastructure? Continue Reading

Virtual machine storage optimisation methods explained

Virtual machine storage for virtual desktops and servers has to deal with heavy and random I/O patterns. We survey the key methods of optimising storage for virtual machines. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Midrange SAN vendors boost solid-state and drive options

With desktop and server virtualisation driving the market, midrange SAN vendors boost solid-state and spinning-disk options to bring enterprise-like performance. Continue Reading

By

• Lindsay Clark

Seven NAS backup best practices

Rapid data growth necessitates optimization of NAS backup procedures. Here’s how you can reduce the NAS backup window and increase NAS backup throughput. Continue Reading

By

• Anuj Sharma

The reasons for missing hard drive space on storage arrays

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

By

• Spencer Huckstepp, Bell Microsystems Ltd

Disaster recovery audit, maintenance and continuous improvement

Drawing up strategies for disaster recovery audit, maintenance and continuous improvement are the key final stages in the development of a disaster recovery programme. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Kirvan

Adding an old hard drive to RAID sets on servers

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

By

• Steve Pinder, GlassHouse Technologies

DDN HPC storage calculates risk

Storage roundup: DDN HPC storage calculates risk; BBC Wales gets Object Matrix NAS; Arkivium to use IBM tape; CommVault expands global support from Reading; and more news. Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor