In Depth

In Depth

Storage performance

• Dell EMC: Storage giant shifts gear to cloud operating models

  Storage profile: We look at Dell EMC, the result of the biggest tech acquisition ever, and find a company well set for ubiquitous cloud operating models and as-a-service  Continue Reading

• The all-flash datacentre: Mirage or imminent reality?

  Some say disk is dead and we’re on the cusp of the all-flash datacentre. But when will flash capacity and cost hit a point where it is suited to more than just high-tier storage?  Continue Reading

• DPU 101: What are DPUs, what do they do, and who supplies them?

  We look at data processing units, the latest in a line of hardware offload devices that emerged in the era of composable infrastructure. They come as hardware and even in the cloud  Continue Reading

• NetApp: NAS pioneer well set for the cloud revolution

  In this storage profile, we look at NetApp, which built a reputation in file access storage but seems to be set fair to navigate a future of hybrid cloud, cloud-native and containerisation  Continue Reading

• Will computational storage meet data processing demands?

  Computational storage promises performance for workloads that can benefit from dedicated oomph, but it’s not a cure-all. It may come at a cost, and with added application complexity  Continue Reading

• Toyota car plant outage shows database capacity planning is vital

  How could database deletes and re-organisation take out car production for 36 hours at 14 plants? We drill down into the details of database capacity planning  Continue Reading

• CXL in the datacentre: Boosting memory for hungry workloads

  We look at CXL, how it revolutionises connectivity between memory components, potentially saves energy, and adds oomph to heavily memory-dependent workloads such as AI analytics  Continue Reading

• HPE storage comes with full IT stack, hybrid cloud and as a service

  Storage profile: We look at HPE, its Alletra storage refresh, and Greenlake and the ways the company is re-branding as a full-stack provider across on-prem and hybrid cloud  Continue Reading

• Huawei a big storage hitter despite international troubles

  Huawei is a leading storage player with an enterprise product offer across file, block and object storage, and the cloud, despite controversy and trading difficulties  Continue Reading

• Generative AI: Automating storage and backup management

  We look at how generative artificial intelligence is being deployed to automate monitoring of repetitive tasks and report on enterprise storage and backup, but also the limits to its implementation  Continue Reading

• Software-defined storage: What’s available from key players

  What’s available in software-defined storage from the big storage players, software-defined storage specialists, and SDS options focused on cloud, virtualisation and containers  Continue Reading

• Hitachi Vantara: Small part of a big corp and analytics focus

  We look at Hitachi Vantara, its storage, its cloud offer, the workloads it targets, and its efforts in containerisation and consumption models of storage purchasing  Continue Reading

• Pure Storage: HDDs dead by 2028 and our flash will replace it

  Pure Storage says spinning disk is doomed, and only it can provide a replacement. We look at the rationale behind its bold message, and the possible impacts of such a scenario  Continue Reading

• Software-defined storage: What it is and variants available

  SDS is available in numerous variants. It is usually cheaper, flexible to deploy and brings storage efficiencies, but there are pitfalls in complexity, management and performance  Continue Reading

• PLC flash: The next generation or a mirage?

  PLC could be productised within two years, but chip makers might not think it worth the effort. Will managing multiple voltages be more hassle than adding layers to existing flash?  Continue Reading

• Data classification tools: What they do and who makes them

  Data classification is necessary for all organisations for reasons that range from simply putting data on the most cost-efficient media to ensuring legal and regulatory compliance  Continue Reading

• Quantum computing: What are the data storage challenges?

  Quantum computing will be able to process massive amounts of data at extraordinary speeds, but challenges exist in data storage. How will today’s storage systems keep pace?  Continue Reading

• 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

• Vast Data’s ‘Act 2’ builds data management layer on QLC flash

  Vast Data offers QLC flash bulk storage with a rapid cache I/O layer. Now, it has embarked on offering big data, analytics and application access to highly available data stores  Continue Reading

• QLC edges into mainstream, but what are its advantages?

  QLC flash offers high density but has lifecycle limitations. But what does it really cost compared with TLC and MLC, and how are suppliers implementing it and getting around durability issues?  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

• Container storage platforms: Big six approach starts to align

  Container storage is a complex but vital task. We survey the big six storage makers and see methods are starting to align around management platforms  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

• Top 10 storage and backup customer stories of 2022

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage and backup customer stories of 2022  Continue Reading

• From capex to opex: Storage procurement options bloom

  We look at the growing list of possibilities when it comes to paying for storage infrastructure, ranging from upfront purchases with upgrades to pure pay-as-you-go options  Continue Reading

• How to get structure from unstructured data

  We look at how to gain structure from unstructured data, via AI/ML analytics to create new records, selecting object data via SQL and storing unstructured files in NoSQL formats  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

• Is object storage good for databases?

  We look at object storage vs block access SAN storage and ask if object storage can be used for database workloads, or is it just good for bulk storage of analytics datasets?  Continue Reading

• NFS vs SMB vs CIFS: File storage protocols defined

  We take a close look at NFS and SMB – the key file storage access protocols – and weigh up their pros, cons and suitability to differing datacentre environments  Continue Reading

• Edge storage: What it is and the technologies it uses

  Storage is moving from the datacentre to the edge. We define edge storage, look at the characteristics of edge computing that shape it and the technologies it requires  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

• 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 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

• 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

• Storage requirements for AI, ML and analytics in 2022

  We look at what is needed for artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the pros and cons of block, file and object storage to store and access very large amounts of often unstructured data  Continue Reading

• Snapshots best practice: Five key things you need to know

  We look at snapshots best practice, including the way they work, why they are not the same as backups, how to avoid heavy processing overheads and key user permissions tweaks  Continue Reading

• Five key points on file locking vs object locking

  We look at file vs object storage locking mechanisms, how different forms of storage ensure data consistency, and especially how object storage is tackling the challenge  Continue Reading

• Software firm saves storage array costs with Nutanix hyper-converged

  Banking SaaS provider Vialink needed more IOPS when its NetApp arrays slowed up, but Nutanix hyper-converged proved a better package than Pure Storage and Dell EMC, too  Continue Reading

• Storage and 5G: Big impacts likely as wide-area topologies evolve

  Enterprise 5G will boost the need for storage generally. It will also push capacity needs closer to the edge and create new locations for processing and storage  Continue Reading

• Posix vs object storage: How much longer for Posix?

  We look at Posix compliance in storage and why it is being challenged by object storage and the need to scale much further than Posix-oriented storage was ever intended to  Continue Reading

• How open source is shaping data storage management

  Open source data storage offers a great deal of flexibility, but unlocking its benefits will require strong technical resources to meet requirements such as stability, high availability and security  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage data residency: How to achieve compliance

  There’s a conflict between cloud storage and the need to comply with local laws and regulations. We look at cloud data location, data residency, data sovereignty and data adequacy  Continue Reading

• Refrigeration firm freezes legacy backup for one Cohesity cluster

  France-based Clauger had reached limits of capacity and complexity with multi-supplier legacy backup, so moved to one Cohesity cluster and gained restores that took mere minutes  Continue Reading

• EDSFF brings built-for-NVMe connectivity to the datacentre

  Aimed at enterprise use cases, EDSFF offers incredible flash density in shared storage and hyperscale deployments, but storage products that use it are still thin on the ground  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

• 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

• Edge storage: Four key points

  Edge storage is driven by rapidly emerging edge computing and data gathering use cases. We look at why it makes sense to store data at the edge and the key challenges involved  Continue Reading

• APAC expert guide to storage management

  In this expert guide to storage management in Asia-Pacific, we unpack the developments shaping storage management and key strategies to extract business value from data  Continue Reading

• French Caisse uses NetApp to move backups to object storage

  State financial arm wanted to move backups held on NAS file-based storage to object storage, so stuck with NetApp StorageGRID and achieved near-seamless migration  Continue Reading

• NVMe-over-fabrics: Five need-to-knows

  We look at five need-to-knows about NVMe-over-fabrics, such as its implementations – RDMA, Fibre Channel and TCP – use cases, hardware and operating system support  Continue Reading

• HDD support and Zoned Namespaces: Key takeaways about NVMe 2.0

  We look at new capabilities in the most recent iteration of the NVMe flash storage standard  Continue Reading

• Five key questions to ask about storage-as-a-service and consumption models

  We look at important questions to ask providers of consumption-based storage procurement services, such as base costs and burst, usage measurement and upgrade paths  Continue Reading

• DNA storage promises 10 million times storage capacity boost

  A datacentre that fits in the palm of your hand? However, right now, DNA storage is an expensive chemical process that researchers are trying to make a practical proposal  Continue Reading

• Storage-as-a-service: Consumption models from the big six

  We look at the big six storage makers’ consumption model offers, which allow customers to pay for on-prem hardware and cloud storage capacity on a pay-per-use basis, within limits  Continue Reading

• Briefing: Cloud storage performance metrics

  We look at some of the key storage performance metrics that determine what your applications will get from cloud storage, plus cloud essentials that are beyond simple measurement  Continue Reading

• Five things you need to know about NVMe over Fabrics

  We look at NVMe-oF, which extends fast flash across the network – what it is, how it works, use cases, benefits and limitations, and the suppliers of NVMe-oF products  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage APIs: What are they and what can be done with them?

  We look at the kinds of application programming interfaces (APIs) available to expose cloud storage to applications, from SME-targeted solutions to higher-end hooks  Continue Reading

• Storage performance metrics: Five key areas to look at

  We look at the essentials in storage performance metrics: capacity, throughput and read/write capability, IOPS and latency, and hardware longevity measured by failure rates  Continue Reading

• What digital transformation means for data storage

  We survey the key planks of digital transformation and look at the storage technologies emerging to support it, such as NVMe and QLC flash, hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud storage  Continue Reading

• Computational storage: What is it? Why now, what for, who from?

  Computational storage is an emerging architecture category, in which compute is put near storage to address I/O bottlenecks resulting from large volumes of data  Continue Reading

• QLC flash storage: What it costs and its best use cases

  QLC flash brings high capacities at costs coming down close to spinning disk. So what are the use cases for QLC solid state, which make best use of its relatively low endurance  Continue Reading

• Paris post-product studio uses Atempo Miria for live restores

  France-based À La Plage Studio decided on tape as a medium to store its visual production work, with Atempo ADA/Miria as a means to access and restore data to work on  Continue Reading

• RAID, flash and erasure coding: What works best with solid state?

  We look at RAID and flash to highlight key choices when it comes to drive data protection. What RAID levels work best with solid state and when is erasure coding a good choice?  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

• 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

• Spinning disk hard drives: Good value for many use cases

  When it comes to storage media, all talk is of flash, but there are plenty of use cases where – far less costly – spinning disk can do a perfectly adequate job in the enterprise  Continue Reading

• Unified file and object storage: The best of both worlds?

  Unified file and object storage tackles growing volumes of unstructured data in a way that’s compatible with traditional and cloud-era applications, and friendlier to analytics  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

• Storage pros and cons: Block vs file vs object storage

  Despite the many changes in storage, there are still some fundamentals that hold true. We look at the key defining characteristics and use cases of block, file and object storage  Continue Reading

• Decision points in storage for artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data

  Artificial intelligence and machine learning storage is not one-size-fits-all. Analytics work differs, and has varied storage requirements for capacity, latency, throughput and IOPS. We look at key decision points  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Crash-consistent vs application-consistent snapshots

  We look at crash-consistent and application-consistent snapshots and backup, how they are defined, the pros and cons of each and the benefits and limits of Windows VSS  Continue Reading

• High-performance object storage: What’s driving it?

  Object storage is getting its performance on to meet the needs of content delivery, analytics and IoT use cases while enabled by rapid flash storage media and other tech advances  Continue Reading

• Computational storage: What is it and what are its key use cases?

  Computational storage brings the CPU to the storage and so boosts system performance by tackling processing tasks, such as near the edge or in AI/machine learning workloads  Continue Reading

• How Oxeva delivered budget analytics with Pure Storage flash NAS

  Web hosting provider Oxeva thought the consultants were mistaken and that what suited the web giants for analytics/big data wasn’t necessarily what was needed for enterprise customers  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

• Flash storage tiers: Performance, cost and use cases

  We look at performance, cost and potential use cases for the key flash storage types available, such as Nand flash, 3D Xpoint and Intel Optane, plus SAS, SATA and NVMe connectivity  Continue Reading

• Top 10 storage deployment stories of 2019

  Here are ComputerWeekly’s top 10 storage deployment stories for 2019, which see quite a move away from traditional SAN and NAS to hyper-converged, software-defined storage and object storage  Continue Reading

• NVMe-over-TCP brings super-fast flash over standard IP networks

  TCP is the latest transport protocol that can be used to connect NVMe flash storage. We explain how NVMe-over-TCP works and the key advantages for datacentre customers  Continue Reading

• What is QLC flash and what workloads it is good for?

  QLC flash offers low per-gigabyte costs and lots of capacity, but can be limited by endurance and I/O performance. It can be a good disk replacement for several workloads, however  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

• How APAC firms can slay the storage management beast

  The data deluge and compliance requirements are shaping how Asia-Pacific firms are approaching storage management issues in the age of cloud  Continue Reading

• How to deploy NVMe flash storage for artificial intelligence

  We run the rule over NVMe flash as a storage choice for AI applications and the key decision points in form factor and hardware specification  Continue Reading

• Hop jumps to Pure Storage to avoid big storage complexity

  Air France short-haul and regional brand Hop jumps to Pure Storage after coming up against Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE, which all tried to sell it solutions ill-suited to its needs  Continue Reading

• AI storage: Machine learning, deep learning and storage needs

  Artificial intelligence workloads impact storage, with NVMe flash needed for GPU processing at the highest levels of performance – and there are other choices right through the AI data lifecycle  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

• Cloud storage 101: Specifying for cloud storage

  We run through key questions to ask when specifying cloud storage, such as disk type, performance, availability and the possible hidden cost of getting data out of the cloud  Continue Reading

• Cloud-era backup appliances aim at hybrid content platform

  While traditional backup apps evolve to meet the cloud via S3 and Azure, a new breed of backup appliances aims to build a single environment across cloud and on-premise  Continue Reading

• NVMe startups’ different routes to flash performance gains

  NVMe offers huge flash performance benefits, but no one is quite sure how to overcome the challenges that brings and startups are trying several different approaches  Continue Reading

• Cloud the rising star of storage: Eight years of text analysis

  Tracking word frequency in nearly a decade’s worth of storage content shows how cloud has come of age, flash has gone mainstream and how we don’t talk about virtualisation any more  Continue Reading

• Australia and New Zealand gear up for storage analytics

  Despite the marketing wars, ANZ is ahead of the adoption curve for storage analytics, which promises to alleviate storage management woes  Continue Reading

• How ASEAN firms can tap storage analytics to improve operations

  With storage systems becoming more heterogeneous and siloed, some organisations in ASEAN are turning to storage analytics to reduce costs and address storage issues before they occur  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Structured data and its storage needs

  Structured data is declining as a proportion of all data but its importance to business applications and its organised nature make its storage requirements very specific  Continue Reading

• NVMe is fast flash storage, but big five suppliers take it slowly

  NVMe flash offers blistering performance gains but so far the big five storage array makers have tended to opt for gradual implementations rather than radical new architectures  Continue Reading

• What is storage-class memory and what is it used for?

  HPE has announced the availability of storage-class memory in its products and other array makers are expect to follow. So what does SCM do for analytics-centred workloads?  Continue Reading

• Storage 101: Unstructured data and its storage needs

  Unstructured data exists in huge volumes, but often it is semi-structured with metadata. We lift the lid on unstructured data and key approaches to its storage  Continue Reading