In Depth

In Depth

Datacentre capacity planning

• HDD specs: Assess SATA vs SAS, sustained data rates and block size

  In part two of a two-part series, we look at sustained data rates in hard disk drive specs, SATA versus SAS, drive security, and how HDD makers pack density into products by shingling  Continue Reading

• HDD specs: Assess MTTF, AFR and UER to get the drives you need

  In part one of a two-part series, we look at key hard disk drive specs, including mean time to failure, annual failure rate and unrecoverable error rate, and how they relate to each other  Continue Reading

• Unstructured data and the storage it needs

  We look at unstructured and semi-structured data and find increasing amounts of production workloads that have their own storage hardware – file and object – needs, including flash  Continue Reading

• Schneider Electric on why datacentre operators need to close the ‘sustainability gap’

  Datacentre operators sometimes have a hard time ensuring their actions match their words and pledges on sustainability matters, which could put the industry at risk of greenwashing accusations, Schneider Electric warns  Continue Reading

• Green storage: Savings to be made but tricky to achieve

  Storage upgrades can bring energy savings. New hardware, the cloud and as-a-service procurement models all cut costs, but can need careful tweaking to get right  Continue Reading

• Why the devil’s still in the detail in the race for energy efficiency

  Energy-efficiency credentials are surely a step in the right direction, but cloud and datacentre providers must look at the sustainability equation from all angles  Continue Reading

• Storage hardware shortage causes and how to mitigate them

  We look at the IT supply chain shortages that have hit data storage equipment, their causes and what organisations can do to work more smartly to mitigate them  Continue Reading

• Reverse cloud migrations: Why some enterprises are shifting their IT back on-premise

  With a steady trickle of customer organisations returning on-premise, a need to plan better may not be the whole story  Continue Reading

• Datacentres in the dark: How the sector is preparing for the prospect of planned winter power cuts

  Against a backdrop of ongoing uncertainty in the energy market, the UK datacentre market is readying itself for ‘worst case’ planned power cuts this winter  Continue Reading

• Expensive datacentre outages: Untangling messy collaborations, contributing costs and complexity

  Even if outages in the datacentre are trending down, Uptime data this year traces rising costs per outage. So what can be done?  Continue Reading

• Cloud bursting: Six key steps in planning and decision-making

  We explore the key stages in a cloud bursting project: assessing the data and workflows, variants in the mechanism, application suitability, having the right resources, and planning and testing  Continue Reading

• Cloud bursting: What is it, what workloads, what technologies?

  We look at cloud bursting, its benefits and how to deploy it, as well as the limitations in terms of suitable workloads, the technologies needed and the skills to make it happen  Continue Reading

• Air gaps for backup and how they help against ransomware

  The air gap is a basic of backups and storage. We look at what’s meant by an air gap, the rise of the logical air gap, and its place in the fight against ransomware  Continue Reading

• What cloud users need to know: Ensuring greater end point engagement for improved cloud delivery

  Although early-adopter worries about cloud may have dissipated, the end-user experience can still leave much to be desired  Continue Reading

• Carbon copies: How to stop data retention from killing the planet

  Our society has a serious digital hoarding problem, which is coming at a cost to the environment. But what can be done to address it?  Continue Reading

• AIOps for storage: Potential huge benefits, but lots of lock-in

  Applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to storage can help to predict bottlenecks, diagnose I/O issues and recommend upgrades, but suppliers’ products are largely limited to their own hardware  Continue Reading

• Cloud bursting: What it is and what it’s good for

  We look at cloud bursting, which allows organisations to meet demand by bursting compute and storage to the cloud  Continue Reading

• Burning up: Mitigation should sustain datacentre operations during extreme heat

  July’s temperature spike put headline heat on regional operations at Google and Oracle. Datacentre operators must side-step similar mistakes to avoid climate change-related collapse in future  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage TCO: Key pitfalls and how to avoid them

  Cloud’s flexibility is part of the attraction, but it can also lead to costs that spiral. We look at key elements in cloud TCO and how to intelligently make use of the cloud  Continue Reading

• Bfloat16: What it is and how it impacts storage

  Bfloat16 is an emerging way to handle very large numbers, developed by Google for its machine and neural learning and prediction. We look at what it means for IT and storage  Continue Reading

• Data classification: What it is and why you need it

  To be compliant, to ensure data is optimally protected, that it is available, that it can be analysed and that it is stored most cost-effectively – these are reasons why data classification is vital to organisations  Continue Reading

• Icelandic datacentres may lead the way to green IT

  Iceland may soon become even more attractive to companies wanting to minimise their carbon footprint while using high-performance computing services  Continue Reading

• Unstructured data storage – on-prem vs cloud vs hybrid

  We look at storage for unstructured data on-premise, in the cloud and across multiple locations. There are advantages to a hybrid approach, but there can be hidden costs, too  Continue Reading

• Data gravity: What is it and how to manage it

  Data gravity can attract increasing amounts of data, and brings with it onerous management overheads. We look at how to mitigate data gravity in datacentre and cloud  Continue Reading

• Looking ahead: How to create a multi-year datacentre capacity plan

  Datacentres and cloud providers without a crystal ball can make educated guesses on future requirements to right-size resources and infrastructure  Continue Reading

• Unified file and object storage: Three suppliers and their approaches

  We look at unified file and object storage products from NetApp, Pure Storage and Scality, the differences, the workloads aimed at, and how unified they actually are  Continue Reading

• Hydrogen’s promise: How fuel cells might power lower-carbon datacentres

  Could UK datacentre operators soon adopt emerging hydrogen technologies to reach expanding energy and emissions requirements?  Continue Reading

• The time is now: Edge datacentres come of age

  After years of hype and speculation, could the post-pandemic period see a resurgence in interest in the build-out of edge datacentres and compute environments as enterprises look to dust off projects that Covid-19 forced them to shelve?  Continue Reading

• Weighing up the nuclear option for powering datacentres

  Resourcing energy-hungry IT through the race to reduce carbon emissions means looking objectively at all the options, including nuclear power  Continue Reading

• Datacentres and climate change: Operators accused of being all talk and no action on sustainability

  Datacentre operators talk a good fight when it comes to tackling climate change, but there is far more they should and could be doing to make their operations more sustainable, say experts  Continue Reading

• Decarbonising datacentres: Turning the hot air about heat reuse into real-life use cases

  Reusing waste heat from datacentres to warm local businesses and homes could bring about considerable reductions in carbon emissions and lower energy costs, so what needs to happen to make this a more widespread practice?  Continue Reading

• How to beat the heat: What can datacentre operators do to meet emissions targets?

  With new mandates around sustainability proliferating, datacentres must find ways to meet their environmental goals while remaining competitive and meeting customer service-level expectations  Continue Reading

• Stakes raised for hybrid cloud as complexity challenges continue

  Hybrid cloud may be with us for some time, so what does that mean for cloud provision in 2022?  Continue Reading

• Object storage: How research institute got 850TB for €150,000

  French scientific research institute had its budgets cut and to meet the new cost constraints, it settled on Swarm software-defined object storage from DataCore  Continue Reading

• Sharp end of the edge: Managing micro-datacentres in a shared environment

  Ongoing diversification in datacentre types gives rise to management challenges for operators, prompting a rethink about how they run their sites  Continue Reading

• Evolving datacentre chipsets put cooling, power and software management techniques under microscope

  New processor designs that could revolutionise approaches to supporting higher power densities at the rack still look years away, it appears  Continue Reading

• Scale-up vs scale-out: Horizontal vs vertical scaling for storage

  We look at the differences between scale-up and scale-out in storage – or horizontal vs vertical scaling – and the key ways it can be carried out on-prem and in the cloud  Continue Reading

• Clouds gather over Chinese providers – but is there a silver lining?

  With the geopolitical outlook chillier than for some time, Computer Weekly explores the future prospects for UK-China approaches to technology and business  Continue Reading

• How can enterprises avoid datacentre supply chain issues affecting IT upgrades?

  With analysts predicting that the current datacentre component shortages could last for at least two years, CIOs are being advised to act now to prevent the situation affecting their IT upgrade plans  Continue Reading

• Riskier business: How Brexit could be changing downtime risk and resilience in the datacentre

  As the UK enters the final quarter of its first year from the Brexit transition period, the risk picture for local datacentres remains unclear  Continue Reading

• Could Iceland be the best place in the world for high-performance computing?

  Most of Iceland’s cheap, sustainable energy is currently used by aluminium smelters, but recognising the need to diversify, the Landsvirkjun power company now promotes other uses  Continue Reading

• The second coming: The Nordic datacentre market comes of age

  As concerns mount about space and power constraints within several of Europe’s largest datacentre hubs, enterprises are being urged to consider shifting more of their energy-intensive workloads to the Nordic countries  Continue Reading

• APAC datacentres gear up for the future

  Datacentre operators in the Asia-Pacific region are dabbling in advanced power and cooling solutions, along with machine learning and edge computing, to keep pace with growing demand for their services  Continue Reading

• Post-pandemic IT: Are virtual datacentre tours here to stay?

  A physical tour of a datacentre has traditionally been a key marketing and selling tool for colocation operators, and the Covid-19 pandemic has forced many to provide virtual alternatives. But how do they compare?  Continue Reading

• Nautilus Data Technologies CEO on building waterborne datacentres in the name of sustainability

  James Connaughton, CEO of waterborne datacentre design champion Nautilus Data Technologies, sets out why the firm is convinced that water-cooled facilities are the answer to the tech industry’s sustainability woes  Continue Reading

• Living on the edge: The enterprises working with distributed cloud

  Distributed public cloud services are seen as driving future advances at the network edge but few companies are as yet enjoying full-fledged benefits  Continue Reading

• The National Security and Investment Act: What datacentre operators and investors need to know

  The incoming National Security and Investment Act will give the UK government enhanced powers to pre-screen and intervene on datacentre M&A deals, prompting concerns it could dampen the sector's soaraway growth rates  Continue Reading

• Five ways to boost systems utilisation in the datacentre

  Datacentre operators are always looking for ways to cut costs and improve the efficiency of their facilities. Here we ask the experts for their top five tips for reducing the operating costs of running a server farm  Continue Reading

• NHS datacentre transformation projects continue apace during pandemic

  NHS trusts have continued to invest in their datacentre estates throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, but the nature of their upgrade projects continues to evolve  Continue Reading

• With connectivity on the rise, Africa is a hotspot for datacentre investments

  We look at opportunities for datacentre operators in setting up or partnering with local firms in Africa  Continue Reading

• How colocation fits alongside a cloud-native architecture

  IT departments are on a cloud-native roadmap to become more agile, but they are constrained by the risks involved in migrating core systems and data  Continue Reading

• Data Dynamics aims at single view of unstructured data

  Data volume is ballooning, and storage is becoming more disparate, which makes the need for a single platform to manage storage and compliance a key requirement for organisations  Continue Reading

• Datacentre energy efficiency: Is the time now for a big switch-off?

  The clock is ticking on sustainable IT and energy use, and much more can be done to save energy, power and reduce emissions at a datacentre level. So why isn’t it happening?  Continue Reading

• Serverless: Weighing up the pros and cons for enterprises

  The concept of serverless computing has been gaining traction within enterprises for several years now, but what is it and how do CIOs know if it is the right fit for their applications?  Continue Reading

• The end is nigh: Are datacentre operators prepared for a potential no-deal Brexit?

  Datacentre operations are resilient and forward-thinking by nature, yet pitfalls and cost impacts are looming large with a potential no-deal Brexit on the horizon  Continue Reading

• A safe bet: How Covid-19 is fuelling investor interest in the datacentre industry

  With demand for cloud and colocation capacity soaring on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic, datacentres are looking like an increasingly attractive bet for the investor community. Computer Weekly finds out why  Continue Reading

• Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t

  We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with  Continue Reading

• CTO interview: Octopus Energy on using cloud power to get consumers to flip the switch on renewables

  Octopus Energy is on a mission to disrupt the global energy market, and is banking on the AWS cloud and an innovative software licensing agreement to help it do just that  Continue Reading

• Storage analytics: How AI helps storage management

  We look at storage analytics products that measure key metrics in storage hardware, single-vendor and multi-vendor tools, and how AI-based storage management and AIOps is emerging  Continue Reading

• Aerospace and satellite comms: The next growth frontier for cloud service providers?

  Space projects of the near future are less sci-fi and more about driving efficiencies through business intelligence, edge analytics and cloud technologies  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Weighing up the responses of the public cloud giants to Covid-19

  The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic had a huge impact on the demand for cloud services from enterprises worldwide, but how have the cloud giants fared behind the scenes?  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: How Covid-19 has elevated the status of the datacentre industry

  The pandemic has served to highlight just how dependent the world is on the datacentre community – and governments, policy-makers and investors are taking note  Continue Reading

• Keeping the lights on: Managing datacentre engineers through Covid-19

  The coronavirus pandemic has seen datacentre engineers reclassified as “essential workers”, but how are their employers ensuring they can continue to do their work in a safe and secure way?  Continue Reading

• The Billion-Year Archive project: A post-apocalyptic disaster recovery plan

  The Arch Mission Foundation’s Nova Spivack opens up about its Billion-Year Archive project, which aims to provide the Earth with an apocalypse-level disaster recovery plan  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Hardening up datacentre equipment supply chains post-Covid-19

  Fears about hardware shortages, staff absenteeism and how to keep sites up and running with social distancing have dogged the datacentre sector since the start of the pandemic, so how is the sector faring?  Continue Reading

• Multicloud storage 101: Pros, cons, pitfalls and strategies

  Not putting all your eggs in one basket can be helpful to an enterprise’s resilience strategy. We look at multicloud storage and the benefits and pitfalls it brings  Continue Reading

• Malaysia’s business continuity planning readiness a mixed bag

  Larger Malaysian enterprises have BCP in place, but SMEs lag behind and will find it harder to weather the Covid-19 storm  Continue Reading

• Edge computing environments: what you need to know

  An edge case in business sits at the limits of what's viable, and edge computing requirements suggest a similar struggle  Continue Reading

• Lean, mean and green: The datacentres of the future

  Working out how to develop more efficient datacentres in an increasingly resource-hungry world is not easy, but it is possible  Continue Reading

• Cache vs tier: What’s the difference between cache and storage?

  We look at the key distinctions between cache and tiers of storage, and where the line has become blurred with fast flash, 3D Xpoint and storage class memory technologies  Continue Reading

• How AI and data analytics are driving composable infrastructure adoption in datacentres

  As enterprises continue to grapple with how to make sense of their big data stores, organisations are having to rethink how they kit out their datacentres, with composable infrastructure leading the way  Continue Reading

• Alibaba versus Amazon, Microsoft and Google: Does the Chinese cloud challenger have what it takes?

  Chinese public cloud challenger Alibaba is undoubtedly making waves in the west, but does it have what it takes to seriously trouble the likes of Amazon Web Services and Microsoft in the infrastructure-as-a-service market?  Continue Reading

• Driving adoption: Are high costs putting public cloud out of reach to non-profits?

  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s insights into the sky-high cloud bills faced by some non-profit organisations prompts questions about whether the public cloud giants should do more to make their services more accessible to the third sector  Continue Reading

• Mixing it up: Cloud and datacentre in the new world of IT

  Cloud computing has long been tipped as the technology that will displace enterprise datacentres in CIOs’ affections, but that is not quite how the story is playing out  Continue Reading

• Processors re-imagined: Will cloud and AI lead mean all change in the datacentre?

  We look at the changes cloud-native platforms and artificial intelligence could bring about in the datacentre.  Continue Reading

• Overcoming the infrastructure and connectivity challenges of cloud gaming

  The cloud gaming market has a number of infrastructure challenges to overcome to reach its potential, and the supplier community is intent on helping it address them  Continue Reading

• From consumer to prosumer: Reducing the datacentre industry’s reliance on the national grid

  With the government ramping up plans to go net zero on carbon emissions by 2050, where does the datacentre industry stand – and how can it become more sustainable over the coming years?  Continue Reading

• Do non-compete clauses risk stifling cloud innovation?

  Non-compete clauses in tech employment contracts are commonplace – and understandably so – but could they be limiting innovation in the public cloud?  Continue Reading

• Data storage: The top five storage deployment pitfalls

  Key pitfalls in data storage include silos, under-utilisation, backup and disaster recovery, plus neglect of skills and application requirements. We ask analysts how to avoid them  Continue Reading

• Locking down the datacentre: A security checklist for IT administrators

  As datacentres become increasingy decentralised and the security threats they face increase in number and complexity, IT admins are at risk of becoming overwhelmed as they strive to keep on top of their server farm estates  Continue Reading

• EBA outsourcing guidelines: What banks, fintechs and cloud providers need to know

  The regulatory landscape for financial services and outsourcing will undergo a refresh this month with new guidance from the European Banking Authority. We look at what banks, fintechs and cloud firms need to do  Continue Reading

• Cutting the cord: Negotiating cloud contracts with problematic customers

  How accountable should cloud firms be for the actions of the customers that use their platforms, and how much thought should they give to aligning themselves with problematic brands before hosting them?  Continue Reading

• Finding a fix for the IT industry's recruitment woes: A datacentre perspective

  The datacentre industry is in the midst of a well-documented skills crisis, caused by a mix of sector-specific challenges and some more generalised ones  Continue Reading

• Financial services and cloud: Delivering digital transformation in a highly regulated industry

  The financial services community has gone from being one of the least likely sectors to adopt cloud to becoming one of its keenest users, as regulator attitudes to using the technology have become more accommodating  Continue Reading

• Unpicking the datacentre industry’s complicated relationship with climate change

  The energy usage habits of datacentres often see the sector labelled as a contributor to climate change, but the situation is far more nuanced than that, it seems  Continue Reading

• Log management: Helping IT admins to achieve infrastructure-wide visibility

  When properly configured and deployed, log management tools can unearth a veritable treasure trove of data that IT administrators can use to triage and diagnose problems in enterprise IT infrastructures  Continue Reading

• Evolution in action: How datacentre hardware is moving to meet tomorrow’s tech challenges

  The datacentre industry is in a state of flux, as new and emerging tech trends highlight hardware and performance shortcomings in legacy sites, prompting operators to rethink how they kit out their facilities  Continue Reading

• Evolution in action: The changing face of the datacentre

  The role datacentres play in the wider enterprise IT landscape is changing, fuelling the demand for a mix of different types of facilities that are capable of meeting the growing variety of enterprise data-processing requirements  Continue Reading

• Employee activism: How staff revolts are shaking up the IT recruitment landscape

  As staff at tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon continue to speak out about pressing social issues, pressure is growing on firms to better align themselves with their employees on ethics  Continue Reading

• Making multicloud work: Is it really worth it?

  Enterprise interest in multicloud deployments is on the rise, but with so many moving parts to take care of, will the benefits end up being too hard-fought to make it viable for most enterprises?  Continue Reading

• Don’t let datacentres be a waste of space

  Storage costs can be saved by improving the utilisation of existing storage infrastructures  Continue Reading

• Competitive threats: What the growth in new public sector cloud frameworks means for G-Cloud

  Public sector IT buyers may soon find themselves spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding where to procure their cloud services, thanks to the emergence of several new frameworks, but where does that leave G-Cloud?  Continue Reading

• Blackout after Brexit: UK datacentres brace for post-EU power supply and cost changes

  As the uncertainty over how the UK intends to extricate itself from the European Union rumbles on, datacentre operators are weighing up how Brexit might affect the availability and cost of the power they need to run their facilities in future  Continue Reading

• Keeping cloud costs in check: What enterprises need to know

  Organisations should not be rushed into moving to the cloud, because doing so could result in mistakes that are costly to put right  Continue Reading

• EMIS Group CIO: Breaking down NHS patient data silos by going all-in on AWS

  EMIS Group CIO Pete Malcolm is in the throes of a sizeable revamp of the healthcare provider's flagship software system for GPs that will see it go all-in on AWS, while addressing the government's push to make NHS data systems more open and ...  Continue Reading

• Room to spare: Could space constraints slow London's record-breaking datacentre growth spree?

  The London colocation market enjoyed another record year of growth in 2018, thanks to the hyperscale cloud community's insatiable demand for datacentre capacity. But is the capital running out of space?  Continue Reading

• How Europe’s largest datacentre is helping to expand broadband access

  NGD, the operator of the largest datacentre in Europe, is playing an unlikely role in helping expand access to full-fibre broadband in south Wales. We find out how, and why  Continue Reading

• Interview: OVH CEO on offering a European alternative to the US public cloud giants

  Six months into his tenure as OVH’s CEO, Michel Paulin sets out the work the firm is doing to stand out from the public cloud crowd through its local knowledge of the European data protection landscape and its open source credentials  Continue Reading

• Docker management at scale: What enterprises need to know

  Docker adoption within enterprises often starts at grass roots level, with developers leading the way, but as deployments scale and become larger in size, problems can occur  Continue Reading

• Intel Cascade Lake vs AMD Rome: Who will rule the datacentre roost in 2019?

  Intel and AMD are both making a renewed push into the enterprise datacentre market in 2019, with both set to release new processors. We take a look at what they have to offer  Continue Reading