News

Storage

June 24, 2007 24 Jun'07
First in, best dressed?

Telephony company Link Communications Group bought storage from EqualLogic before the vendor had opened its doors in Australia. The company's Vice-President of Global Engineering explains why the organisation took this risky-looking move.
June 12, 2007 12 Jun'07
LUN management at the heart of SAN configuration

Disk drives are the foundation of modern data storage, but operating systems cannot use physical storage directly. The physical drive must be translated into a logical space that an operating system sees as a linear address space comprised of ...
May 08, 2007 08 May'07
ISCSI TCP/IP TOE card specifications

One means of improving iSCSI traffic performance is to include TOE (TCI/IP Offload Engine) capability on the Ethernet card itself. An iSCSI TOE allows the network adapter to process iSCSI traffic (often all Ethernet LAN traffic) locally -- relieving...
April 10, 2007 10 Apr'07
Capacity planning software specifications

Gauging storage needs over time is one of the biggest challenges faced by IT administrators, and a new generation of capacity planning tools is emerging to help forecast growth and utilization of storage resources, and even perform predictive ...

April 10, 2007 10 Apr'07
Capacity planning tools require serious purchase consideration

Capacity costs money, and new disk acquisitions stand out as a notable part of every IT budget. The trick is to match new capacity with actual storage needs. Gauging storage needs over time is one of the biggest challenges faced by IT administrators...
February 18, 2007 18 Feb'07
CDP platform purchase considerations

Busy IT organizations are employing continuous data protection (CDP) technologies to guard data on the fly, essentially eliminating the backup window and allowing granular file and system restoration -- sometimes down to the individual disk write ...
February 11, 2007 11 Feb'07
NAS appliance purchase considerations

NAS appliances are frequently touted for bringing convenience and simplicity to network storage. Appliances include their own dedicated disks for storage and RAID, and most NAS appliances can be upgraded with more or larger disks for additional ...
December 17, 2006 17 Dec'06
NAS gateway purchase considerations

NAS gateways overcome the inherent limitations of scale and flexibility by utilizing externally connected storage as external standalone disk arrays. NAS storage capacity is typically expanded by simply adding more disks to the appliance, but this ...
December 14, 2006 14 Dec'06
NAS gateway specifications

A NAS gateway offers file-based accesses to external storage on a disk array -- or a SAN, where users can take advantage of superior performance and reliability while maintaining a level of simplicity. Since storage is moved off of the NAS device, ...
December 07, 2006 07 Dec'06
NAS management software specifications

Network attached storage (NAS) appliances and gateways must be configured and managed using NAS management software that allows administrators to allocate space, manage RAID and storage behaviors, perform routine maintenance, and other tasks. ...

November 30, 2006 30 Nov'06
Gartner: Existing business continuity plans will fail in a pandemic

Existing business continuity plans will not protect a company during an avian flu pandemic, says a Gartner analyst. Business continuity plans assume a geographically specific disaster, while a pandemic will strike everywhere nearly simultaneously.
November 26, 2006 26 Nov'06
Virtualisation buying guide [Day Two: Virtualisation software examined]

Deploying software on a server or dedicated appliance is often easier for smaller organisations, but the actual product choice demands careful consideration. Now that you've reviewed the essential issues involved in any virtualisation product, this ...
November 23, 2006 23 Nov'06
Commentary: We've never met a "thought follower"

A couple of days back, a vendor tried to convince us that their new security consultancy services should be of interest to you, our readers.
October 04, 2006 04 Oct'06
ISCSI gains strength from servers

More powerful servers are helping ease some performance concerns for users considering IP SANs, but others say they still want to see more improvement.
September 16, 2006 16 Sep'06
Universities lean on each other for better disaster recovery

As another school year begins, colleges and universities are opening their doors to each other in order to get enterprise-level disaster recovery plans working.
July 31, 2006 31 Jul'06
Real life experiences: Lessons learned in disaster recovery planning

Debbie Schwartz shares the lessons she has learned in keeping disaster recovery implementations up-to-date with new and changing business needs.
July 24, 2006 24 Jul'06
Disaster recovery report card: Measuring your company's disaster recovery profile

Disaster recovery planning is challenging because you don't know what you're planning for or how well your disaster recovery plan will hold up in the face of an emergency. Use this report card to measure your disaster recovery plan and identify ...
June 07, 2006 07 Jun'06
CDP overview

Storage volumes are growing at an alarming pace, and tape-based backups are not always possible within an available backup window. Today's businesses are increasingly focused on tighter RTO and RPO. Faster restorations and more recent recovery ...
May 15, 2006 15 May'06
Tape and disk encryption product roundup

With tape and disk encryption products becoming more popular, storage administrators have more options in how to protect sensitive information at rest in the data center and in flight across public networks.
June 26, 2005 26 Jun'05
Remote backup services get affordable

Remote backup services, traditionally reserved for major banks and cash-rich Fortune 500 companies, are now available to small and midsized businesses.
March 17, 2005 17 Mar'05
Pros and cons of remote mirroring for DR

Remote mirroring takes place over MAN or WAN distances. It's usually between storage arrays or storage appliances, and can be synchronous or asynchronous.
December 30, 2004 30 Dec'04
Archive: Bits & Bytes column library

Bits & Bytes column library archive -- 2003 to 2004