News

Computer storage hardware

• February 24, 2021 24 Feb'21

  Arcserve and StorageCraft merger aims for ‘single pane of glass’

  Arcserve and StorageCraft bring a lot of similarities but enough differences for their backers to bet on with their merger, with unifying management between product sets the only priority currently stated

• February 24, 2021 24 Feb'21

  Veeam v11 adds continuous data protection and cloud archive

  Backup specialist’s annual upgrade brings continuous data protection to offer better RPOs and RTOs than existing snapshot functionality and without impact on running processes

• February 16, 2021 16 Feb'21

  C40, C60 R3, go! Pure adds to FlashArray//C QLC flash range

  Hybrid storage killers: Pure Storage adds entry-level FlashArray//C40 R3 QLC array plus re-CPUed C60 R3 that will scale to 5PB or more

• February 09, 2021 09 Feb'21

  IBM refreshes entry-level FlashSystem arrays with a little NVMe

  Big Blue refreshes three entry-level systems – the 5200, 5035 and 5015 – with the flagship of them gaining all-NVMe flash storage capability and cluster scaling to 10s of PB

• February 01, 2021 01 Feb'21

  Netbackup 9 adds flexibility with hyper-converged backup options

  Veritas’s enterprise backup flagship is available in hyper-converged infrastructure and has embraced containerisation, for better hardware and application scalability

• January 28, 2021 28 Jan'21

  Nakivo to use AWS Object Lock as anti-ransomware tool

  Backup software maker leverages AWS Object Lock’s ability to create immutable WORM repositories as a means of helping organisations protect against malicious deletion or corruption

• January 26, 2021 26 Jan'21

  Saudi IT spending to hit $11bn in 2021

  Saudi Arabian organisations will spend about $11bn on IT this year, with emerging technologies high on shopping lists

• January 22, 2021 22 Jan'21

  MinIO stakes leadership claims in cloud object container storage

  2016 startup MinIO reckons it has first mover advantage as a container-native platform that provides private/cloud object storage in and orchestrated by Kubernetes

• January 20, 2021 20 Jan'21

  Architect slashes 20% off storage costs with Nasuni NAS gateway

  LA-based Jerde Partnership replaced on-premise storage and backup with Nasuni hybrid cloud NAS gateways to provide seamless access across timezones to project files

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  Qualcomm announces Nuvia acquisition plan

  Mobile chip giant makes strategic acquisition to augment technology roadmap to redefine compute performance for next-generation devices

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  VVOLs and Pure win VM storage beauty parade for French chain

  VMware Virtual Volumes and a move from NetApp to Pure Storage saw cosmetics retailer Beauty Success make performance gains and eliminate bottlenecks in ordering and logistics

• December 23, 2020 23 Dec'20

  Top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

• December 21, 2020 21 Dec'20

  Top 10 container storage stories of 2020

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 container storage stories for 2020, when providing persistent Kubernetes storage, backup and disaster recovery became a key challenge for many organisations

• December 03, 2020 03 Dec'20

  Dangerous Trickbot evolves to target UEFI/BIOS firmware

  Dubbed Trickboot by researchers, Trickbot’s new features enable malicious actors to read, write or even erase UEFI/BIOS firmware

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  Canada ad firm subtracts 44U with HPE and Ctera hyper-converged

  Glenn Davis Group slashed its hardware estate from 48U of rack space to 4U when it ditched its SAN and tape legacy kit for flash-based Ctera X Series and cloud backup

• November 09, 2020 09 Nov'20

  Quantum’s ATFS aims to classify and manage unstructured data

  Quantum triumvirate now comprises ATFS for file system classification and management, StorNext for high performance with large files and ActiveScale object storage as a bulk store

• November 05, 2020 05 Nov'20

  Slot of the Antarctic: Tape the best option for polar survey backup

  Tape deemed the best medium for backup on board the Antarctic research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough, with Quantum’s Scalar i3 chosen in a fully redundant deployment

• October 28, 2020 28 Oct'20

  NetApp boosts NVMe, QLC and container hybrid cloud offer

  Storage giant NetApp unveils new AFF, FAS and E-series arrays with NVMe and QLC flash capability, plus object storage in Ontap and Spot cloud container resource management in Cloud Manager

• October 27, 2020 27 Oct'20

  Commvault launches Metallic backup service in Europe

  Backup giant adds backup as a service, with cloud-to-cloud backup and e-discovery functionality that can work across on-site datacentres and the AWS and Azure clouds

• October 07, 2020 07 Oct'20

  Carhartt shifts old data to the cloud with Komprise

  US-based workwear manufacturer cuts storage costs from $1 to $0.25 per gigabyte as it deploys data management software and shifts old files to Microsoft Azure Blob and Cold storage

• October 05, 2020 05 Oct'20

  Veeam buys Kasten to get a boost in Kubernetes backup

  Virtual machine backup pioneer sees $150m purchase of Kasten and the addition of Kubernetes backup to its portfolio as key to becoming a ‘$2bn company’

• September 29, 2020 29 Sep'20

  Red Hat rivals VMware and Nutanix with hyper-converged OCS 4.5

  Red Hat’s OpenShift 4.5 extended container orchestration to virtual machines. The arrival of OCS 4.5 moves the solution into the realm of hyper-converged systems

• September 28, 2020 28 Sep'20

  Swiss ISP opts for Scality object storage for backup service

  Move to object storage allows Lake Solutions to cut customer backup costs by 66% while providing new S3-based bucket storage for customers based on Scality on HPE

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  Nutanix boosts storage performance by 50% with BlockStore

  Hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix boosts access to NVMe and potentially Optane storage with BlockStore, which avoids the need to access the deepest layers of the OS

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Pure flashes the cash, paying $370m for Portworx

  Flash storage pioneer believes container storage is the next frontier and pays big money for container persistent storage software provider Portworx in deal set to close this month

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  Scality aims at high-performance object with Ring 8 all-flash

  Object storage specialist – with file storage capability – aims at tier-1 use cases such as AI/ML, content delivery and some backup tasks with all-flash upgrade to Scality Ring 8

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Broadcom launches Brocade gen7 Fibre Channel switches

  New generation Fibre Channel doubles performance to 64Gbps with switches and HBAs now available. But what future for Fibre Channel with NVMe-over-fabrics hitting the datacentre?

• September 07, 2020 07 Sep'20

  Dutch bank set to save €5m via Veeam backup upgrade

  Rabobank ditched legacy backup where patching took months and restores took hours. Those times are now cut down massively and the bank has a readily available test environment

• September 02, 2020 02 Sep'20

  Nimbus Data launches 64TB of QLC flash in one drive for £8,000

  Flash pioneer aims QLC-equipped ExaDrive NL at AI/ML, analytics, media streaming and archiving use cases. Nimbus eschews NVMe for well-established SAS and SATA connectivity

• September 01, 2020 01 Sep'20

  Pure aims at unified file and object and launches new QLC storage

  Flash storage maker says unified storage in file and object is what is needed for contemporary analytics and AI workloads, while it launches a new all-QLC version of FlashArray//C

• August 25, 2020 25 Aug'20

  Intel’s DAOS tops the IO500 speed challenge for HPC storage

  Following on from Lustre, Intel’s DAOS is an object storage-based system with that is designed specifically for use with Optane for metadata and SSD for bulk storage in HPC environments

• August 19, 2020 19 Aug'20

  Veeam to add CDP, plus Google cloud as a target

  Backup giant set to add continuous data protection for the most critical workloads, plus Google cloud as a target – all on the back of a storming quarter during the pandemic

• August 18, 2020 18 Aug'20

  Panasas launches storage tiering by size instead of usage

  Dynamic Data Acceleration moves data to media dependent on file size and claims performance advantage over rival as it gets the best out of flash and spinning disk hard drives

• August 12, 2020 12 Aug'20

  Pure and Cohesity launch FlashRecover for flash-speed restores

  Flash market pioneer links up with scale-out backup product maker to provide bundled backup plus super-fast recovery based around Pure FlashBlade storage arrays

• August 11, 2020 11 Aug'20

  Nutanix launches Clusters in AWS for hybrid cloud hyper-converged infrastructure

  HCI pioneers launches Nutanix Clusters, which will provide hyper-converged deployments across customer datacentres and the Amazon cloud, but only in Acropolis and on AWS for now

• July 29, 2020 29 Jul'20

  How analogue film will be the future of digital history

  The pandemic meant GitHub had to wait until July to store a 21TB snapshot of its code repositories, on special film that can last a thousand years

• July 28, 2020 28 Jul'20

  Backblaze takes aim at ‘costly and complex’ AWS cloud storage

  Backblaze offers free transfer to its S3-based cloud storage – which it claims costs a fraction of AWS et al – as long as it’s more than 50TB and you commit to at least 12 months

• July 23, 2020 23 Jul'20

  Commvault refreshes HyperScale backup appliances with Hedvig

  Backup player set to replace Fujitsu/Red Hat-based backup appliances with new hardware and storage software from Hedvig, which it bought late last year

• July 22, 2020 22 Jul'20

  Inside Intel’s transition into an enterprise tech company

  Computing giant Intel is pushing deeper into the enterprise with investments in data-centric and emerging technologies along with partnerships with local firms to develop new solutions

• July 15, 2020 15 Jul'20

  University graduates to Nutanix Files hyper-converged NAS

  The University of Reading had already deployed Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure so it made sense to add Nutanix Files when its ageing NAS boxes bit the dust

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Pavilion adds object storage to NVMe Hyperparallel Flash Array

  Pavilion responds to customer demand for object storage to support AI/ML, big data analytics workloads with multi-controller NMVe flash storage architecture

• July 07, 2020 07 Jul'20

  Fujifilm software allows S3 access to LTO tape libraries

  Fujifilm Software Defined Tape allows tape libraries to act as an S3-based object storage archive accessible as a tier of storage on-premise or in the cloud

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  Qumulo hybrid cloud NAS provides special effects for Cinesite

  Hybrid cloud scale-out NAS from Qumulo used to offload Active Directory lookups and other workloads to the AWS cloud that had suffered in peak times when on Isilon

• June 29, 2020 29 Jun'20

  Qumulo Shift opens up scale-out NAS to AWS S3 in the cloud

  Qumulo Shift will automatically convert file data on its NAS arrays to S3 object storage format in the AWS cloud. The functionality will be free to customers from July

• June 23, 2020 23 Jun'20

  SoftIron aims at data too valuable for commodity storage

  UK array maker hopes to be the storage provider of choice for those that really value their data, with highly optimised Ceph-powered hardware aimed at HPC users and enterprises

• June 19, 2020 19 Jun'20

  Inside Lenovo’s transition to a solutions provider

  Lenovo’s long-term transformation from a primarily hardware supplier to an IT solutions provider is progressing, but the journey isn’t over yet

• June 18, 2020 18 Jun'20

  US buildings firm saves big on HDDs with Nasuni cloud NAS

  APi Group dumps first-generation file sharing for Nasuni, which allowed it to save ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ with standard hardware deployments and cutting local storage

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  QLC + 3D Xpoint = Vast Data’s universal storage

  Vast marries cheap-and-deep QLC flash with super-fast 3D Xpoint to bring flash for all data, with a particular eye on analytics and with NAS and S3 object access for now

• June 09, 2020 09 Jun'20

  Churchill gets Ctera hybrid cloud NAS and dodges 3PAR disk spend

  Potteries-based ceramics maker faced the choice between expanding its HPE SAN at great cost or deploying Ctera hybrid cloud NAS. It saved thousands by heading for hybrid cloud

• June 09, 2020 09 Jun'20

  AS Roma to develop video tracking with Acronis AI expertise

  Italian football club will get variable-price ticketing using artificial intelligence expertise to develop systems. It has also deployed Acronis cloud backup

• June 02, 2020 02 Jun'20

  OneFS for Cloud is a heavyweight entrant in cloud file storage

  Dell EMC’s porting of its Isilon OneFS scale-out file system to cloud and hybrid use cases brings a big player to a market that has had some innovative incumbents for some time

• May 29, 2020 29 May'20

  Kaminario offers cut-price virtual SAN in the cloud

  Flash pioneer Kaminario builds its VisionOS out to the cloud and says its cloud block storage is much cheaper than what is available from the native cloud services of the big three providers

• May 21, 2020 21 May'20

  Infinidat sees containers and S3 as key to join storage big guns

  But that’s not all. The array maker – that brings flash performance with massive amounts of HDD plus cache – plans for NVMe-over-fabric and use of 20TB hard drives too

• May 19, 2020 19 May'20

  Portworx to add application profiles to persistent container storage

  Kubernetes persistent container storage that runs from inside the cluster will add application storage profiles for applications such as Apache Kafka, Elasticsearch and Postgres

• May 19, 2020 19 May'20

  Storj app builds QNAP NAS into its Uber-like cloud storage network

  QNAP NAS users can use the Storj app to configure spare capacity as part of the Tardigrade S3 cloud, which offers storage at half the cost of the main providers

• May 11, 2020 11 May'20

  Dell EMC launches PowerStore NVMe container-based storage array

  PowerStore controller software is based on container modules for SAN and NAS storage, while the mid-range array is all-NVMe and aimed at performance-hungry use cases such as Splunk

• May 06, 2020 06 May'20

  Pure Storage FlashBlade OS v3.0 brings protected snapshots

  Pure also adds remote replication and aims at storage use cases for high-performance computing and artificial intelligence workloads in its all-flash NAS and object nodes

• May 04, 2020 04 May'20

  StorageOS v2 puts ‘mini brains’ in Kubernetes storage volumes

  StorageOS persistent software-defined storage for Kubernetes distributes control plane decisions to volumes in a cluster and takes away the impact on centralised scheduler

• April 23, 2020 23 Apr'20

  What comes after flash? Weebit Nano hopes its ReRAM will

  Weebit Nano’s ReRAM stores bits by building resistive filaments and promises a 1,000x speed boost over flash in chips that can store data for years and is well-suited to edge uses

• April 21, 2020 21 Apr'20

  Data excess linked to climate change

  IT departments are unwittingly contributing to climate change by storing too much data, much of which will never be used

• March 25, 2020 25 Mar'20

  Smartbox move to Nutanix HCI a catalyst for IT team revamp

  Gift supplier reorganises IT team structures as Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure helps sweep away legacy architecture for hybrid cloud and containerised operations

• March 20, 2020 20 Mar'20

  Unpatched Zyxel storage devices co-opted into IoT botnet

  Owners of Zyxel network-attached storage devices are in danger of being hijacked by Mukashi, a descendant of the infamous Mirai botnet, if they don’t patch a critical vulnerability

• March 06, 2020 06 Mar'20

  IT Priorities 2020: AI, cloud to dominate IT spending in India

  Indian organisations are expected to spend more on artificial intelligence and cloud this year in a bid gain an edge over rivals through key technology investments

• February 25, 2020 25 Feb'20

  IT Priorities 2020: Cloud storage key but SAN/NAS alive and well

  In the Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities survey cloud dominates storage spending priorities for 2020, but on-premise technologies such as SAN and NAS are still key to IT

• February 18, 2020 18 Feb'20

  Veeam Availability Suite v10 adds NAS backup and cloud tiering

  Availability Suite is mostly about consolidating the company’s data management platform idea, but it has added incremental forever NAS backup, cloud tiering and recovery to vSphere

• February 18, 2020 18 Feb'20

  China’s tech sector to shrink by 10% in Q1 amid virus outbreak

  Hardware makers will be hit more badly than software houses, but the decline in China’s ICT market will be limited to the first quarter

• February 17, 2020 17 Feb'20

  Isilon’s multi-dot upgrade to OneFS 8.2.2 masks big changes

  The latest quarterly update to OneFS sees maximum file size grow to 16TB, brings in data deduplication in real time for HDDs, better load balancing and a new Kubernetes CSI

• February 12, 2020 12 Feb'20

  IBM unifies storage arrays under FlashSystem brand

  IBM to bring together all non-mainframe storage arrays as FlashSystem product, with options from entry-level to petabyte-scale with NVMe flash and storage class memory

• February 10, 2020 10 Feb'20

  US hotel group ditches datacentre for Nasuni cloud NAS

  Wyndham Hotels & Resorts got rid of its datacentre and put everything in the cloud, with Nasuni cloud NAS providing storage from which any user can restore files

• February 05, 2020 05 Feb'20

  Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

  Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month

• February 04, 2020 04 Feb'20

  Acronis CEO bullish as specialist goes beyond backup

  Acronis is set to launch Cyber Protect as it rides a wave of confidence based on increasing revenues and investor funding. Will the backup-plus-cyber protection calculation pay off?

• January 29, 2020 29 Jan'20

  Formulus Black Forsa turns memory into block storage

  Forsa allows customers to bring application data into memory, by provisioning DRAM or persistent memory as block access storage with latency several times better than NVMe flash

• January 24, 2020 24 Jan'20

  Disaster recovery failover choices: Synchronous mirrors, P2V and the cloud

  We survey the key options in disaster recovery: whether to failover to an on-site location or off-site facility. We also look at the cloud as an option in disaster recovery

• January 13, 2020 13 Jan'20

  $5bn buy-out set to make backup giant Veeam a US company

  Veeam’s founders are out as investment fund gets its hands on a pioneer of virtual machine backup. Now it will be a US company and eligible to target US government customers

• January 07, 2020 07 Jan'20

  Scale’s HE150 the first of a big push to small edge HCI hardware

  Scale Computing aims to scale to micro-sized hyper-converged with a lightweight operating system it claims its competitors can’t match for edge and remote location deployments

• December 19, 2019 19 Dec'19

  Top 10 storage stories of 2019

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019, with the latest trends in enterprise storage arrays, hyper-converged, object storage, scale-out NAS, and more

• December 09, 2019 09 Dec'19

  Public sector still losing user devices in high numbers

  The Ministry of Justice has lost 354 smartphones, PCs, laptops and tablets in the past 12 months, according to a Freedom of Information request, and other government departments are in the same boat

• December 09, 2019 09 Dec'19

  China bans foreign computing kit from government contracts

  All government offices and public institutions must eliminate foreign hardware and software within three years, according to a leaked directive dubbed 3-5-2

• December 05, 2019 05 Dec'19

  NetApp’s Keystone hybrid cloud storage ‘try-before-you-buy’ for on-prem

  Keystone on-premise and cloud subscription model will cost more than buying hardware so will be best suited to customers that want to try NetApp on-site before committing to purchase

• December 03, 2019 03 Dec'19

  Survey finds most firms don’t respond to GDPR requests in time

  Most organisations do not respond to requests for GDPR data in the one month allowed, while many return incorrect data. The education sector does best, but the public sector lags behind

• November 25, 2019 25 Nov'19

  University of Leicester dumps SANs and LUNs for Cloudian object storage

  One-to-one mapping between Dell SANs and media servers had passed their sell-by date and caused vulnerabilities for the University of Leicester, which fixed the problems by a move to “stateless” object storage on Cloudian

• November 20, 2019 20 Nov'19

  Swedish hospitals suffer IT crashes

  Hospitals in Sweden’s West Götaland region have suffered computer problems because of as-yet unexplained hard drive crashes

• November 20, 2019 20 Nov'19

  Datrium boosts VMware protection but won’t add more hypervisors

  NVMe flash pioneer turned DR-as-a-service-focused data platform provider Datrium says VMware and Kubernetes have “won the market” and it won’t extend support beyond those two

• November 19, 2019 19 Nov'19

  Businesses failing to wipe data from old endpoints

  Organisations are not taking adequate precautions to sanitise data held on endpoints when refreshing their PC or mobile device estates

• November 18, 2019 18 Nov'19

  DataCore adds file and S3 object storage with vFilO

  Software-defined storage specialist DataCore has added file storage and S3 object storage access with vFilO, which lets customers create virtual pools from on-site and remote datastores

• November 06, 2019 06 Nov'19

  Scality APIs connect Azure Stack to Ring object storage on-site

  Object storage specialist continues its cloud integration journey by adding Microsoft Azure Blob API connectors to allow use of Ring as bulk storage for Azure edge data

• November 05, 2019 05 Nov'19

  Qumulo gets HPE upgrade as customers ‘come back from object’

  Distributed file system maker Qumulo benefits from HPE Apollo hardware upgrade in a market where Qumulo exec says customers are coming back from object storage for unstructured data

• October 29, 2019 29 Oct'19

  NordVPN enlists ethical hackers, launches bug bounty programme

  Breached consumer VPN supplier details steps it is taking to shore up its cyber security posture after an unknown actor gained access to one of its servers

• October 24, 2019 24 Oct'19

  Total saves £95,000 a year with Nutanix hyper-converged

  Gas and electricity supplier struggled with ageing traditional infrastructure, but moved to hyper-converged for projects that include containers and DevOps deployments

• October 21, 2019 21 Oct'19

  Virtual Instruments is now Virtana and aims at cloud, containers

  Searches for “Virtual Instruments” returned too many synthesizers, so storage monitoring pioneer went through a blue sky ordeal. It has new plans for cloud and container capability, too

• October 16, 2019 16 Oct'19

  Commvault adds Metallic SaaS backup and Hedvig features

  Backup software maker adds software-as-a-service Metallic, which can protect on-premise, cloud and hybrid platforms. Meanwhile, Hedvig gets datacentre features and erasure coding

• October 07, 2019 07 Oct'19

  PLC flash: A solid state candidate for analytics and archives?

  We thought flash would end at QLC, but storage media makers are working on penta-level cell, which could push capacity to double figures, but at a further performance cost

• October 01, 2019 01 Oct'19

  Intel previews Optane persistent memory, QLC SSD and even PLC

  Intel sets out roadmap for second-generation Optane persistent memory – between SSD and DRAM – as well as QLC SSD, with talk of PLC (penta-level cell) after that

• September 30, 2019 30 Sep'19

  HPE refurbishes legacy IT assets to make money for users

  HPE Financial Services is giving old IT assets a new lease of life at its tech renewal site in Erskine, near Glasgow, as part of a promotion of the circular economy

• September 25, 2019 25 Sep'19

  National Library of Scotland says aye to Scality object storage

  National digitised archives move off Hitachi SANs and Qualstar tape, object storage is embraced and a “no backup” strategy put in place with petabyte-scale Scality S3/file deployment

• September 24, 2019 24 Sep'19

  Pure adds Optane and QLC flash to boost performance and capacity

  Flash storage player adds Intel Optane modules performance, a capacity flash range based on QLC drives, plus rebranding and GA of its on-premise/cloud leasing service

• September 24, 2019 24 Sep'19

  Cloud provider sweeps away legacy storage for 1PB of Infinidat

  Core DataCloud decommissions storage from several vendors to consolidate to 1PB on Infinidat Infinibox, with DRAM and flash to accelerate hot data in front of disk back end

• September 17, 2019 17 Sep'19

  Northwestern cuts storage costs in half with Komprise

  Komprise’s Deep Analytics helps university classify and migrate research data to cheaper disk and cloud as it cuts storage costs from $1.1m to $680,000 per annum

• September 10, 2019 10 Sep'19

  Spectra tilts at HSM with StorCycle storage management software

  Spectra Logic unveils newly-developed storage management platform and two-tier file access and object storage with all data visible to all users for restore

• September 10, 2019 10 Sep'19

  Ctera launches hybrid cloud HC2400M at media use cases

  Edge filer specialist hits up the media and entertainment market with its NAS-like hardware that caches data locally, syncs with other nodes and stages data to the cloud