News

Flash storage and solid-state drives (SSDs)

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
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 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 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 25, 2020 25 Jun'20
Nebulon emerges with software-defined storage, but from the cloud

Startup to offer on-site storage with local I/O and some controller functionality in the cloud, combining software-defined and cloud to bring “fleet management at scale”
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
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 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
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
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 12, 2020 12 Mar'20
APAC remains hotbed for digital transformation

Nearly half of organisations in the Asia-Pacific region see digital transformation as their top priority, followed by cloud infrastructure deployment and artificial intelligence, survey finds
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 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
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 20, 2020 20 Jan'20
Inside NetApp’s transition into a data management firm

NetApp’s leaders in Asia-Pacific discuss the company’s pivot into data services and its traction in the region
January 15, 2020 15 Jan'20
How container applications are shaping storage management

Persistent storage, backup and recovery were not on the minds of those behind container applications, but that is starting to change
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 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
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 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 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 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 10, 2019 10 Oct'19
UK and Middle East PR firm ditches NetApp for Nutanix and Talon Fast

Four Communications needed better connectivity for collaboration between the UK and its gulf sites, so dumped server/storage for hyper-converged and a distributed file system
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
Dutch group works on digitising collaborator archives created in aftermath of World War 2

Experiments have been carried out to ascertain the best technology to open up the analogue archives of the Central Archive of Special Justice in the Netherlands
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
Pure Storage APAC CTO talks up storage trends

Flash-based storage will be around for at least two decades more, while crystal- and DNA-based storage needs a lot more work before becoming mainstream, according to Pure Storage’s CTO for the Asia-Pacific region
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 17, 2019 17 Sep'19
Pure Storage sees stellar growth in APAC

Pure Storage is expanding its footprint in key markets such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, even as it proceeds with caution in China
September 17, 2019 17 Sep'19
Pure Storage outlines growth momentum, bolsters cloud play

Pure Storage CEO talks up the storage supplier’s competitive edge in a largely stagnant market dominated by larger rivals
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
September 04, 2019 04 Sep'19
Virtual Instruments brings automated VM right-sizing in v6.2

Storage and app performance specialist can now change virtual machine compute and network resources according to workload, with increased shift to analytics and proactive monitoring
July 30, 2019 30 Jul'19
Australia to upgrade supercomputer in HPC boost

The Gadi supercomputer at the Australian National University will run 10 times faster than its predecessor, giving researchers access to high performance computing resources to solve the toughest research problems
July 11, 2019 11 Jul'19
University of Bristol upgrades to Nimble as it takes IT off-site

Higher education institution gets trouble-free hybrid flash performance from Nimble and stores 600TB of data at two colocation sites to which it is transitioning from on-campus
July 09, 2019 09 Jul'19
StorOne brings leasing for high-performance multiprotocol flash storage

To make a name for itself in the SME storage market, startup StorOne intends to innovate in technology and its economic approach, with a subscription model for storage
June 10, 2019 10 Jun'19
Western Digital aims to help rethink unstructured data storage

Zonedstorage.io is Western Digital-backed idea to re-architect unstructured data storage with sequential writes to high-capacity media such as SMR HDDs and ZNS NVMe flash
April 29, 2019 29 Apr'19
LightBits Super SSD brings NVMe on vanilla Ethernet

Israeli startup LightBits offers super-fast NVMe flash storage over plain Ethernet networks in a move that some think will bring “iSCSI for the NVMe generation”
April 26, 2019 26 Apr'19
NVMe is ‘ready’, say Dell EMC, Virtual Instruments and Cisco

Storage and networks big guns say super-fast NVMe flash is ready for enterprise users, with performance 10x over existing Fibre Channel and ecosystem in place
April 24, 2019 24 Apr'19
Pure Storage buys Compuverde to put object storage on steroids

Fast flash storage specialist Pure Storage adds object storage to FlashArray and aims to compete with NetApp on NAS while bringing flash performance to web applications
April 17, 2019 17 Apr'19
Qumulo upgrades hybrid-flash hybrid cloud C-series with C-72T

Hybrid cloud-focused clustered NAS provider Qumulo’s C-72T takes advantage of cheaper and better components to start at 72TB and scale to petabytes from a 1U node
April 09, 2019 09 Apr'19
IBM sees NVMe gains in V5100F, but more to come with better apps

As IBM launches first midrange NVMe box, execs say applications need to have the SCSI designed out of them to gain the full potential of NVMe flash-equipped arrays
April 03, 2019 03 Apr'19
Datrium makes European push as it targets storage ‘big guys’

NVMe pioneer turned hybrid cloud and “data platform” provider makes a push for the enterprise and wants to take scalps from those selling “1990s SAN technology”
April 02, 2019 02 Apr'19
Cranfield gets Rubrik backup plus Nutanix in drive to the cloud

Research-led university goes hyper-converged across the board with Rubrik backup appliances and Nutanix in a move to rationalise on-site physical needs and drive to the cloud
March 11, 2019 11 Mar'19
Aptare buy to add turbo-charged analytics to Veritas

Veritas announces acquisition of Aptare, in a move that will boost the backup giant’s analytics offer with inclusion of Aptare IT analytics in NetBackup and Backup Exec
February 26, 2019 26 Feb'19
All-flash and hyper-convergence star in HPE and NetApp financials

All-flash storage lines hit high revenues and growth rates for HPE and NetApp in their latest quarter results. Hyper-converged infrastructure also does well for HPE, but NetApp keeps mum
February 20, 2019 20 Feb'19
MWC 2019: Huawei claims massive lead on 5G readiness

At a pre-Mobile World Congress event in London, Huawei’s Ryan Ding shared details of the firm’s rapidly expanding 5G mobile portfolio, and laid into his competitors
February 19, 2019 19 Feb'19
Pure launches ObjectEngine cloud dedupe, plus inter-rack NVMe

Flash storage pioneer offers flash-to-flash-to-cloud ObjectEngine on-premise and in the cloud while boosting connectivity between datacentre racks with NVMe-over-fabrics
February 13, 2019 13 Feb'19
Cloud and backup top storage priorities for 2019

Deploying the cloud for primary and secondary storage and backup and archiving project top project priorities in 2019. SAN, NAS and hyper-convergence also prominent
January 15, 2019 15 Jan'19
Nottingham Building Society boosts storage and saves power with Nexsan deployment

Building society ditches geriatric IBM storage array to gain reliability, boost capacity by 20 times and make energy savings with Nexsan, but rejects flash storage for spinning disk SAN
January 10, 2019 10 Jan'19
20TB hard drives expected in 2019 as Seagate HAMR is tested by NetApp

Heat-assisted method of writing to disk looks likely to push HDD capacities to 20TB this year, with 40TB possible by 2023, for media suited to colder data
December 28, 2018 28 Dec'18
Top 10 storage stories of 2018

Key trends in storage in 2018 included hybrid and multicloud storage, container storage, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Meanwhile, flash storage has evolved with NVMe
November 29, 2018 29 Nov'18
Virtual Instruments aims to be “the brain of the datacentre”

Virtual Instruments hopes artificial intelligence and machine learning functionality that helps IT staff spot connections between application and storage performance could put an end to the “war room”
November 27, 2018 27 Nov'18
Data volumes set to hit 175ZB with a tectonic shift to the cloud

There will be more data in the public cloud than enterprise datacentres or consumer devices by 2025 as data shifts location, according to a study by IDC and Seagate
November 21, 2018 21 Nov'18
NetApp and Pure show strong results on flash storage and cloud

NetApp records healthy year-on-year revenue increase with flash showing out well, while Pure Storage sees incredible earnings for its flash products over 12 months
November 19, 2018 19 Nov'18
Pure Storage makes big hybrid push with Cloud Data Services

Flash storage pioneer makes a big deal of its object storage architecture as it launches Pure capacity in the AWS cloud, plus replication to the cloud for on-premise hardware
October 30, 2018 30 Oct'18
Excelero adds NVMe flash via Ethernet and Fibre Channel

NVMesh2 will allow NVMe flash connectivity, so customers can use existing network hardware between servers. Erasure coding for data protection is also added
October 29, 2018 29 Oct'18
IBM refreshes StorWize with NVMe flash and NVMe-over-fabrics

Big Blue boosts midrange arrays with NVMe and NVMf capability and launches Spectrum Discover, a Data Lake metadata-focused data analysis tool, plus a new tape drive, the TS1160
October 17, 2018 17 Oct'18
Violin to add X-IO flash, hybrid and disk as mid-range options

Reborn Violin Systems is to buy X-IO’s spinning disk, all-flash and hybrid flash storage systems in a bid to provide more mid-range options to its customers
October 10, 2018 10 Oct'18
Commvault tops and tails HyperScale backup appliance offer

Data protection specialist adds clustered high-end HS3300 backup appliance and the standalone Remote Office Appliance, pushing the HS1300 launched last year to mid range
October 03, 2018 03 Oct'18
Violin launches XVS8 flagship high-performance flash array

Reborn Violin Systems launches flash boxes that can scale to petabytes and are aimed at transactional, analytics and virtualisation use cases, with NVMe upgrades expected
October 01, 2018 01 Oct'18
New cloud storage services for Microsoft Azure at Ignite 2018

Microsoft launches Data Box hardware appliances for cloud ingestion, Avere vFXT cloud NAS, Ultra SSD storage based on NVMe flash and Azure Premium file storage
September 17, 2018 17 Sep'18
Red Hat to throw its hat in with Container Storage Interface

Software maker will add Container Storage Interface support to its existing OpenShift Container Platform and GlusterFS-based scale-out file system container storage
September 14, 2018 14 Sep'18
Lenovo cements deal with NetApp to strengthen datacentre foundation

Lenovo wants to become more customer-centric. A tie-up with NetApp takes its datacentre strategy to the next phase. We investigate
September 10, 2018 10 Sep'18
Enterprise demand drives hike in storage sales, says IDC

Healthy jump in all-flash and SAN/NAS sales is being driven by enterprise storage modernisation, but also by component price rises. Dell EMC and NetApp top the supplier sales charts
September 04, 2018 04 Sep'18
DDN to make enterprise push with Tintri’s VM-aware storage

DDN set to add Tintri’s portfolio of all-flash and hybrid flash arrays to its product offering following the purchase of the VM-aware storage pioneer after it filed for bankruptcy in June
August 29, 2018 29 Aug'18
Toshiba drives add Marvell cards to give native NVMe-over-fabrics

Piggy-backed cards allow drive shelves that can connect to remote servers as if directly attached and at NVMe speeds, with box maker Aupera getting in on the JBOF act
August 22, 2018 22 Aug'18
Newisys bare metal NVMe box targets performance market

Former OEM supplier come out of stealth with dual-server box that can mount 56 NVMe drives for hyperscale datacentres or build-your-own NVMe shared storage hardware
June 25, 2018 25 Jun'18
VM-aware storage pioneer Tintri on verge of bankruptcy

Recent first-quarter results by the VM-aware storage pioneer throw light on a fragile financial situation that needs new funds or a buyer to avoid bankruptcy by the end of June
June 22, 2018 22 Jun'18
Vexata doubles capacity in NVMe flash storage VX family

NVMe flash storage Vexata maker ups capacity to just under half a PB with 8TB drives, claims near-bare metal performance, and aims at analytics, trading and simulations workloads
June 20, 2018 20 Jun'18
San Francisco 49ers add pace to the team with NVMe flash from Datrium

US NFL football team plans high-performance NVMe flash to power in-game statistics and video decision-making, plus access for scouts to player databases during draft
June 14, 2018 14 Jun'18
StorageCraft to unveil unified storage, backup and cloud appliances

StorageCraft arose as a backup software maker but now plans converged storage, backup and analytics play in a move to unify offering built on core and acquired products
June 14, 2018 14 Jun'18
Case study: Mercedes F1 team makes gains with Pure Storage all-flash

Two years ago, the Mercedes AMG Formula 1 team deployed Pure Storage all-flash arrays in its datacentre and in mobile racks out on the circuit. It’s a bet that has paid off for the racing team
June 08, 2018 08 Jun'18
Medical firm puts vTax and SAN to sleep to save £30,000 with Scale

Penlon replaces HPE servers and storage and VMware virtualisation to escape the high costs of licensing, and deploys Scale Computing hyper-converged appliances at two UK datacentres
May 29, 2018 29 May'18
Pure debuts new FlashArray //X arrays with NVMe across the range

Pure is set to replace //M series boxes with FlashArray //X arrays in which NVMe is standard with NVMe-over-fabrics connectivity to servers and expansion shelves
May 23, 2018 23 May'18
Technicolor speeds up movie production with Excelero NVMe flash

Film giant Technicolor had to duplicate workstreams or schedule access to movies being worked on, but Excelero NVMe allows concurrent access to 10 or more workstations at a time
May 21, 2018 21 May'18
Micron first to market with QLC flash drive 5210 QLC SSD

Micron’s 5210 QLC SSD is aimed at analytics and content delivery in cloud and web-scale operations that currently use 7,200rpm spinning disk in huge Raid sets to gain IOPS
May 21, 2018 21 May'18
IBM adds deduplication to Spectrum Virtualize, and Storwize arrays

IBM has added data deduplication to Spectrum Virtualize and array products that run it. It has also upgraded array analytics and the cloud version of Spectrum Virtualize
May 09, 2018 09 May'18
NetApp adds Google Cloud NAS and AFF A800 NVMe flash array

NetApp gets on the cloud NAS bandwagon with Google Cloud Platform file storage access, while adding its first NVMe flash-equipped storage array, the AFF A800
May 04, 2018 04 May'18
Dell EMC freshens high-end SANs with VMAX makeover, PowerMax

Dell EMC rebrands VMAX high-end SAN arrays as PowerMax, with CPUs upgraded, new inline data deduplication, controller code re-worked and NVMe and Optane hardware on the roadmap
May 02, 2018 02 May'18
StorageOS makes hybrid cloud container storage platform generally available

StorageOS releases tool that allows management of persistent storage for containers that can operate on-premise, in public cloud and hybrid cloud to provide deployment, QoS and protection
April 09, 2018 09 Apr'18
NVMe scale-out NAS: Qumulo P-series targets Isilon and Pure

Scale-out NAS specialist Qumulo unveils P-series all-flash systems based on NVMe, and aims to be an alternative to high performance NAS hardware from Isilon and Pure Storage
April 04, 2018 04 Apr'18
InfiniSync backup ‘bunker’ gives zero RPO for critical apps

Infinidat launches InfiniSync “black box” as off-site storage on-site, plus new Infinibox PB-scale array, cloud storage service Neutrix Cloud and InfiniGuard backup appliance
March 29, 2018 29 Mar'18
Western Digital adds StorReduce deduplication to object storage

US hardware giant Western Digital links up with StorReduce to provide data deduplication for object storage that combines WD ActiveScale scale-out appliances with the startup’s dedupe software
March 14, 2018 14 Mar'18
All-flash rules while Brexit slows UK storage spend, says IDC

IDC quarterly storage shipments tracker shows all-flash storage on top of the pile while Brexit slows UK spending and Huawei knocks Hitachi Data Systems out of top five
February 27, 2018 27 Feb'18
King’s College dumps legacy SAN for Nimble hybrid flash

Cambridge college triples storage capacity for VMware virtualised environment and adds Veeam backup. Nimble hybrid flash ensures rapid data access with Sata bulk storage behind
February 20, 2018 20 Feb'18
Load Dynamix is now WorkloadWisdom and adds more NAS support

Virtual Instruments enhances NAS testing and monitoring capabilities with SMB and 25GbE support in WorkloadWisdom but hybrid cloud monitoring will remain off limits for now
February 13, 2018 13 Feb'18
Siemens’ Datrium NVMe flash speeds customer software deployment

Siemens utility metering group deploys Datrium DVX in place of cumbersome LUN-based block storage and cuts customer software roll-outs to a few minutes and data restores to seconds
January 23, 2018 23 Jan'18
Hyper-convergence and containers key storage-related deployments in 2018

Hyper-converged infrastructure and containers are key deployments planned by UK customers in 2018, with flash storage, virtual machine storage and disk backup also prominent
January 21, 2018 21 Jan'18
Cloud firm speeds customer analytics with Pure Storage arrays

Cloudhelix replaces Pernix Data storage with Pure Storage FlashArray products to provide “brute force” performance approach for unpredictable customer workloads
January 08, 2018 08 Jan'18
IT Priorities 2018: ANZ ups ante on cloud services and software

Organisations in Australia and New Zealand are bullish on IT spending, particularly in cloud infrastructure services, cloud applications and all-flash storage arrays
December 19, 2017 19 Dec'17
Top 10 NVMe flash storage stories of 2017

NVMe promises to unleash flash storage to previously unheard-of performance. In this top 10 Computer Weekly NVMe flash stories of 2017, we track this rapidly emerging technology
December 18, 2017 18 Dec'17
Top 10 storage and backup stories of 2017

In Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories of 2017, we tracked key trends such as the continued rise of hyper-converged infrastructure, the emergence of NVMe flash and object storage
November 29, 2017 29 Nov'17
Datrium’s hybrid Cloud DVX brings off-site mirror of NVMe storage

Cloud DVX operates in Amazon cloud to provide backup and recovery instance off-site, for use as a mirror site for customers of the NVMe-focused storage maker
November 22, 2017 22 Nov'17
Meg Whitman steps down as HPE CEO

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman is to step down after six years in charge
November 13, 2017 13 Nov'17
Violin rises from ashes with new products planned for 2018

Bankrupted all-flash pioneer’s CEO says company has learned the lessons of its demise and is planning file, object, software-defined storage and a careful entry into the NVMe market
November 08, 2017 08 Nov'17
Panasas upgrades scale-out NAS to ASD-100 and ASH-100 nodes

New Panasas appliances upgrade CPU and RAM to double throughput while changing hardware architecture. Clustered NAS specialist says all-flash and tiers of flash are on the roadmap