In Depth

In Depth

Storage fabric, switches and networks

• The 3-2-1 backup rule: Has cloud made it obsolete?

  The 3-2-1 backup rule was made for small-scale use in the pre-cloud era when tape still ruled. Is it relevant in the 2020s, or can we repurpose its fundamental principles?  Continue Reading

• Brain researchers get NVMe-over-RoCE for super-fast HPC storage

  French neurological researchers deploy Western Digital OpenFlex NVMe array for super-fast HPC storage with Ethernet-based NVMe-over-Fabrics connectivity across several floors  Continue Reading

• NVMe-over Fabrics: How NVMe-oF revolutionises shared storage

  NVMe brought super-fast flash storage to the datacentre, but it needs NVMe-oF to allow it to bring the benefits of rapid access and low latency to SAN and NAS shared storage  Continue Reading

• A peek into the future of storage

  Flash-based storage is here to stay and will continue to be enhanced, even as helium and DNA are being primed for use in the distant future  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

• Mainframe storage: Three players in a market that’s here to stay

  Far from disappearing, the mainframe market and the storage it needs is here to stay for some time. The three key array makers compete with high-end flash-equipped products  Continue Reading

• Is NVMe flash the right choice for you?

  NVMe flash storage boosts performance for I/O-hungry operations, but how does it work, where can organisations best deploy it, and what are the key uses cases where it can make a difference?  Continue Reading

• French national research centre insources with Rubrik backup

  France’s national research organisation wanted to insource IT back from Atos and built its private cloud on VMware across two locations with Rubrik appliances for backup  Continue Reading

• APAC buyer’s guide to NVMe storage

  NVMe storage is becoming popular among Asia-Pacific enterprises that want to reduce latency and speed up application performance  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Self-encrypting drives' benefits and limitations

  Self-encrypting drives are a cost-effective way to ensure compliance in certain situations. We look at self-encrypting drives, what they’re good for and their limitations  Continue Reading

• A guide to choosing and using all-flash array storage

  We take a look at the considerations when devising an all-flash array storage strategy, and what enterprises can do to get the most out of the technology  Continue Reading

• How the internet of things and edge data impact data storage

  Remote device data poses challenges for the datacentre, but edge processing, analytics and the cloud can help businesses profit from the promise of the internet of things  Continue Reading

• NVMe over Fabrics brings benefits of NVMe to shared storage

  NVMe over Fabrics – with NVMe carried over Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband and other protocols – could revolutionise shared storage. We look at how the market is shaping up  Continue Reading

• Net gain? Why networks matter when it comes to hyper-convergence

  The rise of hyper-convergence is radically changing how enterprises manage their IT estates, but its effect on the network has yet to be fully realised  Continue Reading

• Q&A: NetApp’s storage play in the age of cloud

  Storage supplier’s Asia-Pacific general manager reveals the changes that are taking place within the company to keep up with the changing tech landscape  Continue Reading

• Rethinking storage in the age of big data

  The volume, variety and velocity of data are challenging organisations such as insurance giant IAG to reassess the way storage architectures are designed  Continue Reading

• Hyper-convergence will be commoditised, says Nutanix president

  Sudheesh Nair talks about the future of hyper-convergence, its relationship with the cloud, and Nutanix’s challenges in building its business in Asia  Continue Reading

• Hyper-convergence marches on in APAC

  The battle to rein in IT complexity in the Asia-Pacific region continues with hyper-converged systems that promise to offer cloud-like benefits for enterprises  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

• Storage performance 101: Server, array and fabric/network basics

  We look at the key performance attributes of storage media in use today, and the choices and basic tuning steps you can take to get the most from your storage  Continue Reading

• Q&A: From backup to data management

  Beyond data backup, extracting more metadata to improve business processes and data management will become more important, says a senior Veritas executive  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

• NVMe: PCIe card vs U.2 and M.2

  We talk NVMe form factor choices – add-in card vs U.2. vs M.2 – and their uses, for primary storage or cache, with Server StorageIO founder and analyst Greg Schulz  Continue Reading

• NVMe over fabrics vs Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband

  NVMe over fabrics takes the built-for-flash advantages of the PCIe-based protocol, and allows NVMe to be sent via Fibre Channel, Ethernet and Infiniband networks  Continue Reading

• Hyper-converged infrastructure product survey: The challengers

  In the first of a two-part survey, we look at the hyper-converged infrastructure market and the startups providing VM-native servers and storage, and datacentre-in-a-box products  Continue Reading

• Flash storage roundup 2016: Flash technology outliers

  Flash storage doesn’t just come in traditional drive format and PCIe card. There are significant outliers in the market that make use of custom flash modules, flash/Dimm and QLC  Continue Reading

• Hybrid flash array roundup 2016: The Big Six

  Will 2015 be remembered as the last big year of hybrid flash storage? The Big Six offer hybrid flash, mostly based on HDD-era designs, and innovation has slowed as all-flash rises  Continue Reading

• All-flash storage roundup 2016: The startups

  Computer Weekly surveys the startups and specialists in the all-flash array space and find a market in which advanced storage features are becoming the norm, while suppliers battle down to $1/GB  Continue Reading

• 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

• The state of all-flash versus hybrid storage in Australia and New Zealand

  Magnetic disk drives are yesterday’s technology. Soon all servers will be based on all-flash arrays – or will they?  Continue Reading

• Big data poses storage challenges in Australia and New Zealand

  Big data is like digging for gold, except you must keep every single rock. Computer Weekly unearths some of the main challenges facing those mining data  Continue Reading

• How Asean organisations are untangling big data storage challenge

  If organisations are to benefit from the promise of big data they must get on top of a legal and regulatory minefield when it comes to storing data. How are Asean IT departments navigating this?  Continue Reading

• Russian organisations have confidence in virtual backup

  Russian organisations are content with the options available to them for backing up virtual servers  Continue Reading

• Virtualisation and storage: Five ways to do it better

  Server and desktop virtualisation bring many savings, but you have to work smart to ensure storage performs efficiently. We survey the top five pitfalls and how to avoid them  Continue Reading

• Demand for all-flash storage to accelerate in Australia and New Zealand

  Demand for all-flash storage will increase in ANZ, as a result of lower prices and greater capacities.  Continue Reading

• Automation and acceleration the Asian aspiration

  Storage infrastructures within Asean organisations are changing to support technologies designed to speed up, automate and centralize.  Continue Reading

• Build in resilience to simplify workloads with hybrid cloud

  Hybrid cloud offers benefits of hosted applications and offloading manual tasks but beware latency and outages in mission-critical functions  Continue Reading

• Erasure coding vs Raid as a data protection method

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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Using fibre channel for storage networking

  Find out why Fibre Channel is still the network of choice in data centres.  Continue Reading

• Virtual server backup software survey

  In this virtual server backup software survey, we run the rule over the key third-party VM backup products, from the fully featured for the enterprise to thin and light products for SMBs.  Continue Reading

• Enterprise SAN survey: A feature-rich market with some key differences

  The enterprise SAN market is full of large-capacity beasts with advanced features common to all, but vendors’ high-end array products are by no means all the same.  Continue Reading

• Options in small-business storage for server virtualisation

  SMBs moving to virtualised servers need shared storage to support a new, dynamic environment. We survey the key file- and block-level options in small-business storage.  Continue Reading

• Storage capacity planning tools: Why virtual machines change everything

  Because virtual servers are easy to create, delete and move and their storage needs grow rapidly and unexpectedly, you need to be on top of storage capacity planning.  Continue Reading

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Enterprise flash: Three implementation options for virtualisation

  Enterprise flash now comes in a variety of form factors aimed at speeding I/O beyond what’s possible with spinning disk in server and desktop virtualisation scenarios.  Continue Reading

• 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

• Nutanix, Tintri pioneer new forms of virtual machine storage

  Nutanix and Tintri pioneer new forms of virtual machine storage that aim to deal with large amounts of random I/O with flash, spinning disk and innovative architectures.  Continue Reading

• 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

• New forms of direct-attached storage emerge to meet VM I/O demands

  A new dawn for DAS? New forms of direct-attached storage have emerged that aim to meet the needs of virtual servers and their extremely random I/O characteristics.  Continue Reading

• Storage protocols battle it out for the data centre switching crown

  Storage protocols battle it out for the data centre switching crown. The key vendors -- Cisco, Brocade and QLogic -- embrace convergence, but they differ in emphasis over Fibre Channel.  Continue Reading

• Ethernet storage: When will FCoE gain traction in data centres?

  Ethernet storage: FCoE has been around for some time, but how do vendors’ implementations differ, and when will the technology gain real traction in data centres?  Continue Reading

• Open source storage users break free of vendor lock-in

  Open source storage frees users of the need for proprietary software on top of commodity disk. Read how UK IT departments have used it to gain cost-saving advantages.  Continue Reading

• Integrated stacks haven’t yet won over IT shops

  While the Vblock, FlexPod, vStart, VirtualSystem, CloudBurst and Exadata systems promise to simplify matters in the data centre, customers seem reluctant to go with integrated stacks.  Continue Reading

• Enterprise MLC: How flash vendors are boosting MLC write endurance

  Enterprise MLC: Flash vendors are boosting MLC write endurance to level read/write wear, improve error correction and combat flash’s inherent tendency to write amplification.  Continue Reading

• Entry-level SAN survey: A full-featured SAN for less than $10,000?

  Entry-level SAN survey: Can you buy an entry-level SAN with enterprise-class features for less than $10,000? Many vendors say you can; we find out what you’ll get for your money.  Continue Reading

• iSCSI storage array developments and future trends: 10 GbE, multiprotocol, virtualization support

  iSCSI storage arrays now boast high-end features, with 10 GbE boosting speeds to equal to or better that those of Fibre Channel.  Continue Reading

• Midrange SANs embrace flash, server virtualisation and unified storage

  Technology survey: Midrange SANs embrace enterprise features with flash, server virtualisation and unified storage among product upgrades in the past 12 months.  Continue Reading

• MLC vs SLC: Which flash SSD is right for you?

  Which flash SSD you choose depends on the performance you need and the price you want to pay, but the differences are not as great as you may think  Continue Reading

• VCE Vblocks and NetApp FlexPods must integrate further to survive

  VCE Vblocks and NetApp FlexPods reflect the need for integrated stacks in an increasingly utility environment, but the alliances behind them will be compelled to concentrate manufacturing.  Continue Reading

• FCoE implementation saves money for London hosting provider

  FCoE implementation brings converged network and saves hardware and power costs on VMware-based infrastructure for London-based service provider Atlanta Technology.  Continue Reading

• iSCSI implementation: How to design, deploy an iSCSI SAN

  When approaching an iSCSI implementation, you'll need to carefully consider product selection, network design, TCP/IP offload, security/encryption and management.  Continue Reading

• iSCSI SAN: Reliable shared storage without Fibre Channel's costs

  The iSCSI SAN is a block-level shared-storage alternative to Fibre Channel that is becoming increasingly popular among SME organisations.  Continue Reading

• Desktop virtualization: Storage requirements planning

  Desktop virtualization is gaining traction among users. Learn the benefits of desktop virtualization, and how to implement and deploy desktop virtualization.  Continue Reading

• 8 Gbps Fibre Channel promises bandwidth and data storage port boost

  8 Gbps Fibre Channel promises to double bandwidth and boost the number of hosts connected to the SAN fabric, but will it put increased strain on data centre power and cooling?  Continue Reading

• Director-class SAN switch benefits: Scalability and reliability for SAN fabrics

  Benefits of using a director-class SAN switch in SAN fabrics is improved scalability and reliability, as well as advanced features such as security and application support.  Continue Reading

• Enterprise flash drives spell doom for tier 1 storage

  Enterprise flash drive capacities are set to increase dramatically. Will single level cell and multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash dominate Fibre Channel hard drives?  Continue Reading

• SAN implementation: Key steps in SAN deployment

  A SAN implementation has a number of key steps. Learn about SAN deployment, SAN fabrics, how to size a SAN, how data will be backed up on a SAN, and questions surrounding SAN growth.  Continue Reading

• FAQ Guide: Answers to tough questions about SAN hardware

  When do you replace a SAN with limited expansion capacity? How do you change a SAN vendor? Analyst Steve Pinder answers the questions he's hearing from SAN administrators.  Continue Reading