Virtualisation and storage

CW Middle East: Internet of things can help Gulf countries to diversify

The Middle East’s push towards economic diversification is driving innovation in internet of things (IoT) applications for emerging services sectors, such as transport and logistics, telecommunications, financial services and tourism. Also read how the Dubai Health Authority is rolling out Salama, a unified electronic medical record (EMR) system, and a survey shows organisations in the Middle East are not offering IT staff enough training and don’t employ enough women in IT. Continue Reading

Syneto aims Hyperseries 2100 at hyper-converged for SMEs

European startup targets customers with two-node hyper-converged appliance, with built-in disaster recovery and capacity for up to 15 VMware virtual machines Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

OpenStack vs hyper-converged: Open-source cloud in the datacentre

We look at how to deploy OpenStack on hyper-converged infrastructure and how HCI suppliers’ products can support deployment of the open-source cloud in the datacentre Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Legal services firm gets 54TB of NEC Hydrastor NAS as backup target

Quislex has cut backup windows by a third and will roll out 700TB of NEC Hydrastor to Hyderabad datacentre to provide a grid of deduplicated storage for backup and archive Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Hyper-converged choices: DIY HCI software deployments

What are the advantages of do-it-yourself hyper-converged infrastructure deployment and who are the key suppliers of HCI software? We run the rule over the DIY hyper-converged market Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

How banking technology has changed since the crash

In this week’s Computer Weekly, 10 years after the financial crash, we examine how banking technology has changed as a result of the economic crisis. We look at how GDPR, the EU’s new data protection laws, will affect your data storage strategies. And we ask if the cryptocurrency boom will remain a niche pursuit or whether the underlying technologies can bring benefits for enterprise IT. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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

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

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Scality Zenko.io brings hybrid cloud storage virtualisation

Zenko.io is a control layer that allows customers to manage data in on-site Scality ring object storage and multiple public clouds but falls short of full data portability for now Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Nutanix makes hybrid cloud push with Calm and Xi Cloud

Hyper-converged pioneer to extend on-premise OS to the cloud with plans to span the datacentre and public cloud using Calm, plus forthcoming hybrid cloud services via Xi Cloud Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Datacentre decisions: Converged vs hyper-converged infrastructure

Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure are ready-tested ways to put compute and storage into the datacentre. But which should you choose for your deployment? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Red Hat launches open source hyper-converged infrastructure

Infrastructure bundles OS, hypervisor and storage software components from the open source distributor and is aimed at SMEs and remote office use cases Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW ANZ: Flash arrays make a splash

In this month’s CW ANZ, we find out why a growing number of Australian enterprises are turning to all-flash storage technology to replace spinning disk storage systems, thanks to lower costs and reduced complexity. We also hear from a senior Veritas executive about why extracting more metadata to improve business processes and data management will become more important. And we take a look at how public cloud services have empowered Australian startups to scale up and go global from day one, and identify the key drivers for the development of hyper-converged systems and how they will transform the way applications are delivered. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

NetApp to launch SolidFire-based HCI hyper-converged appliances

NetApp HCI will comprise hyper-converged infrastructure appliances based on SolidFire flash storage with QoS and compute from an unnamed supplier later in 2017 Continue Reading

CW Nordics: The trouble with connected things

In this issue, Finnish cyber security expert Mikko Hyppönen talks about security in the Nordics, Russia and the trouble with connected devices. Also read how Icelandic airline Wow Air averted disaster through the use of application performance monitoring software when it embarked on a major expansion. And find out how, since December 2015, anyone playing popular sandbox game Minecraft has been able to build their worlds on the actual map of Sweden. Continue Reading

Dell EMC all-flash XtremIO X2 gains I/O boost via software upgrade

Dell EMC’s XtremIO X2 all-flash arrays got a performance jump from ungraded hardware, but the real performance boost comes from changes to the way I/O is dealt with Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Backup testing: What to test, when to test, how often to test

We run the rule over what’s involved in backup testing in virtual and physical server environments, how often you should test and the key pitfalls to avoid Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

StorageOS goes to market with persistent Docker container storage

StorageOS is now available on the Docker marketplace with software product that manages stateful storage for containers, with advanced storage features such as data protection and encryption Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW Middle East: UAE faces IT recruitment challenge

In this issue, read how organisations in the UAE face a challenge to attract and retain top-quality CIOs and other key IT staff as the region seeks to tackle a technology skills gap. Also, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority has revealed that plans to unveil passenger-flying cars are in the final stages, with the initiative expected to launch in July 2017. Meanwhile, the UAE is mirroring global trends by eagerly adopting virtual reality technology. Continue Reading

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

By

• Chris Evans

Virtual reality in healthcare

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out how virtual reality technology is starting to be used to improve health and patient care. We examine the new UK tax laws that are causing IT contractors to quit government digital projects. And we analyse the software licensing issues arising from SAP’s recent court case over indirect access to its applications. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Analytics, internet of things to drive data volumes to 163ZB by 2025

IDC study predicts consumers as creators of data will decline as the enterprise, analytics and “life critical” scenarios push total volumes to a tenfold increase by 2025 Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Making the UK fit for 5G

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at the government’s new 5G strategy and assess whether it’s enough to stimulate development of next generation mobile networks. We meet some of the Silicon Valley startups hoping to revolutionise big data analytics. And we examine how to prevent the move to DevOps from harming work-life balance for IT professionals. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Red Hat adds Gluster metadata cache and container deployment

Scale out NAS parallel file system speeds operations with client-side caching, and allows container deployment and faster self-healing volumes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW Europe: Technology poses new risks to jobs, economies and society

Rapid advances in technology could have destabilising effects on employment and economic growth, and could exacerbate social unrest, the World Economic Forum (WEF) warned. Society’s failure to keep pace with technology change was a key risk under discussion at Davos in January. Continue Reading

CW Nordics: Top IT priorities for Nordic CIOs in 2017

In this first issue of CW Nordics in 2017 we take a look what CIOs in the region are expecting in the year ahead. We asked a select group of CIOs and analysts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden what IT projects are at the top their priority lists. Also read about the Nordic region as a hotspot for IT startups, with Sweden punching above its weight in financial technology. And find out how board executives at healthcare company Elekta are analysing workforce data to make better strategic decisions. Continue Reading

Private cloud: Orchestration, storage and containers

We look at the key requirements and components of private cloud – including the use of container platforms – and the impact of private cloud on storage in the datacentre Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

CW Benelux: Is there a Dutch digital delusion?

On government and business levels, the Netherlands aspires to be a digital leader in Europe, but it may be losing ground because of a lack of research and development investment. Also in this issue, IT decision makers based in the Benelux region are less confident than their European neighbours that IT budgets will increase in 2017, and Dutch bank ING, which used digital technology to reinvent itself after the financial crash, is about to reinvent itself again. Continue Reading

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

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

HPE buys hyper-converged pioneer Simplivity for $650m

Hardware giant pays out for hyper-converged market number two, and says it will keep existing Simplivity products, moving them all to its ProLiant servers by the end of 2017 Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Nutanix, Simplivity and Pivot3 lead hyper-converged pack: Forrester

Forrester rates 12 hyper-converged infrastructure providers according to products, company strategy and market presence, with Nutanix, Simplivity and Pivot3 coming out on top-line Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW Middle East: UAE takes lead in autonomous car trials

Self-driving cars are one of the most exciting developments in technology. Companies like Google and Tesla are pioneering the technology. But it might be countries in the Middle East, with the poorest road safety records in the world that could benefit most. Despite significant regional spending on safety campaigns, the UAE still clocks up 12.7 road deaths per 100,000 people, with 30.4 in Oman, 24.8 in Saudi Arabia, 16.5 in Kuwait, 14 in Egypt and 13.2 in Qatar. In September Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) trialled a public driverless vehicle in the city’s Downtown area, running along a 700-metre trial route. Continue Reading

Top 10 virtualisation and storage stories of 2016

Flash storage has held onto the headlines in 2016, but hyper-converged infrastructure, containerisation, software-defined storage and VMware’s plans for the hybrid cloud are rising themes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

European law enforcement seeking smart ways to fight cyber crime

Cyber criminals are always likely to be better resourced than law enforcement. Now, national and regional police forces in Europe are switching tactics to even the odds. Under-resourced law enforcement needs a smarter approach as cyber crime becomes increasingly prevalent and sophisticated, backed by the money and expertise of organised crime groups set up and run as well-resourced and efficient professional business organisations. Cyber crime operations typically have teams dedicated to looking at open source intelligence, targets’ physical environments, weaknesses in supply chains, and potential collaborators inside target organisations to enable sophisticated, blended attacks that involve a combination of actions against a range of vulnerabilities, making them difficult to detect and defend against. Continue Reading

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

By

• Chris Evans

Top 10 ANZ enterprise IT stories of 2016

Here is a rundown of Computer Weekly’s most popular ANZ enterprise IT articles for 2016 Continue Reading

By

• Karl Flinders, Chief reporter and senior editor EMEA

CW ASEAN: Building a digital future

In this month's CW ASEAN, read how Singapore is investing in technologies and skills to become a leader in the digital age. We analyze how the government has reorganized two departments to help digital technology prosper and hear from those in the finance and education sectors backing the move, as well as the man heading the newly formed department. We also look at how desktop virtualization will continue to grow in the Asean region, and focus on one example in Thailand, where the country’s health ministry is embracing virtualization in a push towards e-health. This issue also covers how organisations in Malaysia and Singapore are facing tough competition to attract the right skills to drive their IT strategies. Continue Reading

CW ANZ: Virtually effortless storage

In this month's CW ANZ, we look at how although Australia was an early adopter of server virtualisation – with 85-90% of Australian servers already virtualised, compared with about 75% globally – Gartner predicts more virtualisation to come. This is a surprise to many. We also hear from freight forwarder IFC Logistics, which has completed a virtualisation journey to benefit from improved uptime, performance and peace of mind. We also cover Australia's adoption of an internet of things standard to help improve security, and how thousands of significant cyber incidents are hitting Australian organisations. Continue Reading

Disaster recovery testing: A vital part of the DR plan

Disaster recovery provision is worthless unless you test out your plans. In this two-part series, Computer Weekly looks at disaster recovery testing in virtualised datacentres Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Australia’s IFC Logistics virtualises storage to prevent further outages

Australian logistics firm moved to virtualised storage through a managed service after a serious outage Continue Reading

By

• Stuart Kennedy

Software-defined storage: The pros and cons, and what is available

Software-defined storage is a rapidly rising trend in the datacentre, but what are the advantages and disadvantages of building your own storage, and is it suitable for all organisations? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

The march of the robot workers

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at how artificial intelligence is being used to automate existing jobs, including roles as varied as IT administrators and customer service agents. Capital One’s European CIO talks about how to create an agile business. And we offer tips on how to deal with an Oracle software audit. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

The future of connected cars

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine how software is reshaping the car industry, with internet-connected cars presenting challenges and opportunities for the sector. IT suppliers are putting up prices in the UK as the value of the pound falls – we look at the implications. And Eurostar’s digital chief talks about overhauling IT to meet demanding passenger expectations. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

VMware VSAN 6.5 supports containers and physical servers via iSCSI

VMware Virtual SAN now supports containers with persistent storage and allows physical server storage access to its shared pool of capacity via the iSCSI SAN protocol Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW ANZ: Harnessing the power of server/storage architecture

In this month’s CW ANZ, read about how a council in south-east Queensland swapped its compute and storage systems for cloud services. Redland City Council CIO Glynn Henderson explains why the organisation went for a hybrid cloud system. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

CW ASEAN: The power of all-flash arrays

In this month’s CW ASEAN, we take a look at how efficiencies from storage suppliers and enhanced benefits to total cost of ownership have made the commercial and technology value propositions for all-flash arrays the choice for primary workloads even more compelling to customers. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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

By

• Jim Bahn, Virtual Instruments

Docker storage: how to get persistent storage in Docker

Docker, by default, doesn’t come with persistent storage, which presents an issue to some workloads customers that want to run in containers – however, there are ways to achieve persistent storage Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Digital knowledge at the British Library

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out about the technology plans at the British Library as it aims to store the UK’s printed and digital history. Graph database technology is being used to help improve food safety throughout the supply chain – we examine how it works. And tech leaders tell us how to architect IT infrastructure for moving to the cloud. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Hypergrid adds metered usage and networks to hyper-converged kit

Hyper-converged appliance maker will allow customers to pay for what they use in hardware that will now add networking Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Italian bottle maker deploys 88TB of Syneto hyper-converged storage

Serioplast gets reliable disaster recovery as it replaces NetApp plus remote physical servers with Syneto hyper-converged infrastructure at factories across Europe, Africa and Asia Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Australian council removes costly bottleneck with traditional storage architecture

Redland City Council chose to return to a traditional storage architecture when it was struggling to get rates notices out in good time Continue Reading

By

• Stuart Kennedy

Cloud firm Backbone relegates X-IO SAN with Atlantis tiered storage

London-based Backbone uses Atlantis USX as storage virtualisation layer on top of PCIe flash and X-IO and as a stepping stone to hyper-converged infrastructures Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Rubrik backup appliance adds physical platforms to hybrid cloud

Flash-powered backup appliances add MS SQL and Linux physical server to VMware backup and hybrid cloud archive in Firefly release, with more physical and endpoint support promised Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Nutanix adds storage for containers, physical servers and all-flash

Hyper-converged infrastructure maker Nutanix adds container support with persistent storage, offers block iSCSI storage for physical servers and allows all-flash across the product range Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW ANZ: June 2016

Read how scientists at a major Australian university are benefiting from the latest storage technology to help them get the most out of advanced IT already in place. More than 100 scientific teams share the sophisticated high-performance computer facilities at Monash University’s eResearch Centre in Melbourne, Australia. To help scientists get the best from the computing facilities, Monash built a state-of-the-art software-defined storage cluster using open source technologies and cost efficient hardware from Dell. Continue Reading

CW ASEAN: June 2016

In this issue we look at a software-defined approach to storage management that combines storage, compute, networking and virtualization technologies. We find out how popular these hyper-converged and converged storage systems are among organizations in Southeast Asia and consider why organizations would move production systems to these. Also read whether Asian CIOs are ready for Docker and container technology. Containers are all the rage among developers. They are well suited to DevOps best practices due to their portability, fast deployment times and standard units of operations. We look at whether Asian CIOs are ready to use this open source technology to build, test and run applications in their organizations. Continue Reading

It makes sense to go hyperscale/hyper-converged

Hyperscale computing and storage are the norm for web giants. Hyper-converged scenarios make it possible for small and medium-sized enterprises to gain the advantages of combined server/storage nodes Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

Software-defined storage the power behind Monash University microscopes

Australian academic institute uses the technology to help it deal with huge – and still growing – storage demands Continue Reading

By

• Bill Bennett

IBM all-flash family gets cloud and enterprise A9000 and A9000R

IBM announces two all-flash arrays – the modular A9000 and rack A9000R, aimed at service providers and enterprises – and the mainframe-connected DS8888 Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How IT in a portacabin supports £1bn London Bridge station overhaul

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out how a temporary IT set-up based in a portacabin is supporting the UK’s largest critical infrastructure project – the £1bn redevelopment of London Bridge train station. Our latest buyer’s guide looks at converged infrastructure products. And we analyse research showing data protection topping the list of UK security priorities. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

SimpliVity adds Hyper-V support to hyper-converged products

Hyper-converged appliance maker adds Hyper-V support to VMware ESXi capabilities and upgrades OmniStack software to support workload optimisation on SimpliVity clusters Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Zerto adds file level recovery to Virtual Replication

Cross-hypervisor, storage-agnostic Zerto Virtual Replication version 4.5 allows customers to recover files to any point in time, such as prior to deletion, virus or corruption Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Unaligned I/O: A storage performance killer

As the stack piles higher – with virtual servers, their virtual disks and guest operating systems – the scope for unaligned or misaligned I/O to affect performance increases Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

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

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

Top 10 storage stories of 2015

The year 2015 in storage was dominated by the continued rise of flash and Dell’s purchase of EMC, but there were steady upticks in trends such as hyper-converged and software-defined storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Case study: Airbus sets out challenges of changing IT supplier

Aircraft manufacturer sets out what it learned from switching IT provider after 12 years of working together. Continue Reading

Case study: Airbus sets out challenges of changing IT supplier

Aircraft manufacturer sets out what it learned from switching IT provider after 12 years of working together Continue Reading

By

• Caroline Donnelly, Senior Editor, UK

Disaster recovery planning: Where virtualisation can help

The disaster recovery planning process is not fundamentally technology-centric, so when can virtualisation make it quicker and easier to restore services after an unplanned outage? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

The most influential people in UK IT 2015

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we announce our sixth annual UKtech50 list of the 50 most influential people in UK IT, and talk to this year’s winner – BT chief executive Gavin Patterson, about the challenges facing the telecoms giant in 2016. Also, we find out how the genomics industry is pushing big data technology to its limits. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Snapshots: Hypervisor vs Array

Snapshots are a valuable part of the data protection toolkit, but where is it best to run them from – the hypervisor or the storage array? We look at the pros and cons Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Object storage: Cloud vs in-house

Object storage is a rising star in data storage, especially for cloud and web use. But what are the pros and cons of cloud object storage or building in-house? Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

VMware reacts to the cloud and containerisation

At VMworld Europe, VMware restates products and roadmap visions that see it react to the perceived inevitability of the cloud, while also getting a grip on containers Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Virtualisation and disaster recovery: DR features in Hyper-V

We run the rule over the key functionality in Microsoft Hyper-V that can help with disaster recovery, including backup, migration, high availability and replication Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Keeping up with Cassandra, the NoSQL database

What does Call of Duty, the Hive smart thermostats, Social Weather and the William Hill bookie app all have in common? They are all powered by the Apache Cassandra NoSQL database Continue Reading

By

• Lis Evenstad

Virtualisation and disaster recovery: DR features in VMware

The key areas of functionality in VMware that can help with disaster recovery – including VMware backup, migration, high availability and replication Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Cloudian boosts object storage HyperStore compliance features

Distributed object storage software maker Cloudian upgrades HyperStore with added granularity of data protection features that can help meet compliance requirements Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

OpenStack Swift 101: the object store for OpenStack apps

We run the rule over the OpenStack Swift object storage architecture, its key components, how it achieves resiliency and the data protection methods in use and development Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

All-flash vs hybrid flash for virtual desktop storage

With massive random I/O and a huge bias towards writes, virtual desktop storage – especially for the more feature-rich VDI 2.0 – requires the speed of all-flash and hybrid flash storage Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

Computer Weekly European User Awards 2015 winners revealed

The winners have been announced for the Computer Weekly European User Awards 2015. See who made the top spots Continue Reading

By

• Kayleigh Bateman, Computer Weekly

OpenStack Cinder: Block storage on the open-source cloud platform

OpenStack Cinder 101: The fundamentals of Cinder, how it is implemented, how to provision it, how it works with third-party storage arrays, its features and more Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Council dodges £300,000 NetApp outlay with Atlantis flash caching

Somerset local authority avoids spending £300,000 on extra hard drives for its NetApp arrays and pays half that for Atlantis ILIO flash caching software that runs VDI from RAM Continue Reading

VMware vs OpenStack: How they handle storage

The opportunities and challenges presented by the two virtualisation environments when it comes to storage, backup and disaster recovery. Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

OpenStack Manila: File access storage for the open source cloud

OpenStack Manila is the file level access method in development by the open source cloud platform. What is it, how does it work and when will it be ready? Continue Reading

By

• Chris Evans

Computer Weekly European User Awards 2015 shortlist

Find out who made the Computer Weekly European User Awards 2015 shortlist Continue Reading

By

• Kayleigh Bateman, Computer Weekly

Guide to LUN configuration and virtualisation

LUN storage configuration has long been a cornerstone of storage management. The LUN – a chunk of storage created from RAID partitions on a SAN – presents a logical volume of capacity to an individual server. That’s still relevant today in the era of virtualisation. Many users retain physical servers that need a one-to-one connection between host and LUN. But, the role of the LUN is also changing with the rise of server and desktop virtualisation. It now forms a container for the logical objects used by VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V etc. In this guide you will find all you need to know about LUNs, LUN configuration and management, including their use in virtualised environments. Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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