Computer storage hardware

Flexxon bakes AI into SSDs to fight unknown threats

Singapore-based Flexxon has developed a solid-state drive that uses artificial intelligence to fend off malware and other unknown threats Continue Reading

Container-native storage: A definition, and what to ask suppliers

We look at container-native storage – aka cloud-native storage – what defines it, and its benefits as a way of bringing persistent Kubernetes storage to containerised applications Continue Reading

Portworx gets container-native array management for Pure hardware

Container storage player Portworx builds in container-native functionality to allow discovery, provisioning and management from inside Kubernetes cluster, but only on Pure arrays so far 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

Nebulon helps DCI offer high-performance edge hyper-converged

Cambridge-based cloud and colo provider DCI will offer DataQube servers with Nebulon, which marries a cloud control plane with local PCIe-connected flash storage Continue Reading

Backup failure: Four key areas where backups go wrong

We look at the key ways that backups can fail – via software issues, hardware problems, trouble in the infrastructure and good old human error – and suggest ways to mitigate them Continue Reading

Scality launches Artesca container-native object storage

Object storage specialist gets on a burgeoning container object storage market with Artesca, which runs from Kubernetes to provide persistent storage for containerised applications Continue Reading

Five reasons to look at hyper-converged infrastructure

HCI promises easy setup, purchasing flexibility, low procurement and operation costs, reliability and all in one box – but there are challenges too Continue Reading

Winemaker racks Pure all-NVMe all-flash for rapid SAP response

Concha Y Toro also pocketed a 35% saving in storage costs following a move from as-a-service storage provision to Pure Storage FlashArray//X all-flash hardware Continue Reading

Cloud archiving: A perfect use case, but beware costs and egress issues

The advantages of cloud archiving are ease of use and being well-suited to potential latency issues, but IT teams need to be aware of costs and issues around moving data from and between clouds Continue Reading

AET gets Ctera to smooth hybrid cloud access to big files

Remote locations with unreliable WAN connections needed to share large files, which was a real headache until US engineering firm got Ctera edge filers with Azure cloud as a tier Continue Reading

Ctera KubeFiler to bring Kubernetes storage to its cloud gateways

KubeFiler uses the container storage interface to allow Kubernetes to access persistent storage as if it were from a local NAS device, and while keeping existing access profiles Continue Reading

Where now for storage? Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage

Part II: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Hitachi, IBM and Pure Storage. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading

Where now for storage? Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE

Part I: Storage supplier strategy in the cloud era: Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE. We snapshot the big six hardware makers, as they take things to the cloud and as-a-service models Continue Reading

How Lenovo is tackling HCI workloads

Lenovo has teamed up with AMD to address mission-critical workloads such as in-memory databases as APAC organisations look beyond VDI in their hyperconverged infrastructure deployments Continue Reading

Data warehouse storage: Has cloud made on-premise obsolete?

There once was no alternative to building a data warehouse on-premise, but with cloud providers targeting analytics, building data warehouses on-site is looking obsolete Continue Reading

Backup survey: UK councils’ downtimes five times longer than average

Backup product supplier Veeam’s freedom of information request finds councils’ average downtime is seven hours and that backup and disaster recovery testing is not done frequently Continue Reading

Ecolabels and data sanitisation key to recycling and reusing IT assets

Ecolabels on hardware and data sanitisation of devices are key to recycling and reusing old IT equipment respectively, helping enterprises avoid unnecessary asset destruction and contributing to increasingly high levels of electronic waste globally Continue Reading

Backup appliances the hot topic for Pas-de-Calais fire brigade

With requirements for strict, long-duration backup and archiving, French fire brigade set out to replace optical media with a StorageCraft appliance and disaster-proof storage Continue Reading

The 3-2-1 backup rule: Has cloud made it obsolete?

The 3-2-1 backup rule was made for small-scale use in the pre-cloud era when tape still ruled. Is it relevant in the 2020s, or can we repurpose its fundamental principles? Continue Reading

IWM uses StorCycle to free capacity for all-flash SAN upgrade

Imperial War Museums set to embark on unstructured data archiving project that will archive cold data to tape and free up capacity for a move to IntelliFlash all-flash SAN 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

Survey: Backup failures hit a high as pandemic working hits home

Veeam survey finds distributed working plus operations that span on-prem and the cloud the background to high numbers of failures in backup and restore, with 40% of SLAs not met Continue Reading

Ski firm dumps ‘motley’ storage for DataCore software-defined

Eurogroup cuts power usage by 70% and rackspace from 84U to 7U as it consolidates multiple physical servers and storage protocols onto SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading

Scottish farm subsidy body slashes dev time with Pure all-flash

Rural directorate ditched hybrid flash EMC SAN for Pure all-flash storage and cut developer time in half, while beta testing Cloud Block Store and planning container project Continue Reading

Clarification needed on IT ‘super-deduction’ allowance

Chancellor announces that companies investing in qualifying new plant and machinery assets will be able to claim a ‘super-deduction’ allowance Continue Reading

Five ways that disaster recovery changes in a pandemic

Covid-19 has changed IT. Previously, working remotely was a business continuity measure, but now it is the norm. That means disaster recovery has to adapt to new risks and new ways to respond Continue Reading

UK’s Arkivum up for €4.8m EU science data archive project

CERN-led multi-petabyte scale research data archive bid will use Google cloud and compete with AWS-based and open source designs from other providers Libnova and Onedata Continue Reading

SME backup: Card maker ditches tape-only for Nakivo 3-2-1 setup

IG Design Group gains a modern backup regime with data held on disk, in the cloud and long-term on tape in a move that has helped it to slash backup and restore times Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Data lake storage: Cloud vs on-premise data lakes

The data lake is a fundamental concept of data management. But what type of storage do you need to build a data lake on and what are the pros and cons of on-premise vs the cloud? Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Five key points about unstructured data storage on-prem and cloud

We look at unstructured data, the myriad forms of data it comprises and the key storage options available, which include NAS and object storage on-prem and in the cloud Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Five key questions about Kubernetes backup answered

We look at when to back up containers, what to protect, the main methods of backup for Kubernetes and the main Kubernetes backup products available in the market Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Five key benefits of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud file storage

The big three offer cloud file storage that can ease hybrid cloud operations, with consistency between cloud and on-premise as well as greater enterprise application compatibility Continue Reading

Qualcomm announces Nuvia acquisition plan

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

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 Continue Reading

Cloud DR from the Big Three: Who’s best at what?

We look at cloud disaster recovery from AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google to see which is best for provision of turnkey solutions, breadth of portfolio and modular building blocks Continue Reading

Data Dynamics aims at single view of unstructured data

Data volume is ballooning, and storage is becoming more disparate, which makes the need for a single platform to manage storage and compliance a key requirement for organisations Continue Reading

Robin.io aims its Kubernetes storage at databases and big data

Cloud-native storage runs in Kubernetes and pools storage media to present it to application persistent storage needs, including snapshots and backup on top Continue Reading

Five key points about cloud vs in-house disaster recovery

The cloud is well suited as a disaster recovery failover option. The key questions are about what you should keep on-site and what goes to the cloud. We look at five key points to consider Continue Reading

Top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

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

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 Continue Reading

Five hyper-converged infrastructure use cases to watch

We look at workloads ripe for hyper-converged infrastructure deployment. These include virtual servers and desktops, SMEs/remote offices, Kubernetes, and analytics and machine learning 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

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 Continue Reading

How retailers are using technology to survive

In this week’s Computer Weekly, with high street retailers struggling to survive, we look at how technology can keep stores relevant. Everyone is focusing on flash storage, but hard disk drives are still an essential part of the IT toolkit. And we examine the latest developments in the ongoing Post Office Horizon IT scandal. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

IP surveillance: The storage it needs, on-premise and in the cloud

Surveillance is changing, with the evolution from simple streams of sequential images to the application of AI to video, as well as an increasing move to use of the cloud 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

Need to know: Five key things about backup testing

We look at five key things to consider when it comes to backup testing – what to test, how often, making sure backups work, whether recovery is effective and ensuring processes are consistent Continue Reading

CW Benelux: Dutch Alzheimer’s app helps dementia patients

An app aimed at helping dementia patients and their families has been developed by the Alzheimer Society in the Netherlands. Also in this issue, read about a Belgian startup's app based on blockchain technology to help container handling at ports, and why Rabobank ditched its legacy backup. 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

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 Continue Reading

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 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

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 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

Podcast: Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Covid-19 and storage

We look at how organisations can use Cybersecurity Awareness Month as an opportunity to revisit their handling of data and compliance, especially with changes brought by Covid-19 and home working Continue Reading

CW APAC: Trend Watch – storage

Many organisations turn to cloud to cut storage bills, but the options available and potential costs are many and varied. In this handbook, Computer Weekly takes a peek at future storage technologies, such as helium and DNA, and offers some valuable tips on how to keep cloud storage costs under control. Continue Reading

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 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

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’ Continue Reading

Backup audit: What is a backup audit and why do we need them?

Backup and recovery are vital components to protect against data loss, whether technical or causes such as ransomware. So how can a backup audit help protect our key assets? Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Erasure coding vs RAID: Data protection in the cloud era

Erasure coding has come to prominence with its use in object storage and, by extension, in the cloud. We run the rule over its pros and cons vs RAID data protection Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Top five ways backup can protect against ransomware

Ransomware threatens to put your data beyond reach, so the best way to prepare is to have good-quality data you can restore from backup. We look at the key things to consider Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Top five ways to benefit from tape today

We look at the benefits that tape can bring, including in backup and recovery, long-term and ‘warm’ archiving, compliance and WORM use cases and ‘air gapping’ to protect data Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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? Continue Reading

NHS whistleblowers at risk due to poor IT policies

In this week’s Computer Weekly, our investigation into NHS practices shows how poor IT policies are putting whistleblowers at risk. Our buyer’s guide examines the networking implications of the surge in remote working. And we assess how well the public cloud giants responded to the demands of the coronavirus pandemic. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 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

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Cloud storage costs: How to get cloud storage bills under control

Many organisations look to the cloud to cut storage budgets, but the potential costs are many and varied. So what are the key ways to cut cloud storage costs? Continue Reading

Freezing digital history in the Arctic Circle

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out why GitHub is storing its historical open source code repositories on analogue film in the Arctic Circle. Our buyer’s guide examines modern software development practices. And we hear how virtual reality technology helped the UK build more ventilators to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Five on-premise and cloud options for network-attached storage

We look at five options for file access storage, from ‘traditional’ NAS in a standalone appliance to distributed hybrid cloud file storage and NAS cloud gateways Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Storage skills in the age of the cloud and convergence

Storage skills was a discrete area in the IT jobs market, but that’s being eroded by the cloud, hyper-convergence infrastructure, and virtualisation. So, what are the key storage skillsets today? 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

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 Continue Reading