In Depth

In Depth

Storage management and strategy

• Storage 101: Object storage vs block vs file

  We recap the key attributes of file and block storage access and the pros and cons of object storage, a method that offers key benefits but also drawbacks compared with SAN and NAS  Continue Reading

• RAID vs erasure coding for flash storage

  Flash storage needs array data protection. We run the rule over RAID for flash storage and look at erasure coding, which will become more attractive as drive sizes increase  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

• 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

• Hybrid cloud 101: Using the cloud as a storage tier

  We look at what’s possible when it comes to hybrid cloud, what types of data and what hybrid cloud architectures can combine on-premise and cloud storage capacity  Continue Reading

• Backup 101: Incremental vs differential vs synthetic full backup

  Backup methods pros and cons: Full, incremental, differential, synthetic full, incremental forever, and reverse incremental. We set out the advantages and drawbacks of each  Continue Reading

• 3D-Nand boosts capacity to push all-flash datacentre

  3D-Nand piles flash cells on top of each other to tackle some of the scalability problems of flash storage, and is all set to help achieve the all-flash datacentre  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

• 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

• Storage briefing: NVMe vs SATA and SAS

  NVMe brings blistering performance gains over existing HDD-era disk protocols, and is a straight swap-in for PCIe server-side flash with array and hyper-converged products on the way  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

• Pioneers take flash storage to analytics and big data use cases

  Flash storage is now being applied to big data and analytics workloads as array makers exploit flash performance for rapid access and high throughput for big datasets  Continue Reading

• Hyper-converged vs shared storage for SMEs

  The rise of hyper-converged infrastructure – with compute, storage and networks in one box – seems ideal for SMEs, but is it always a better idea than traditional IT architecture?  Continue Reading

• 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