Storage

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

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