Computer storage hardware
-
Feature
03 Sep 2024
Key-value flash targets more efficient data storage
We look at key-value storage, which promises much greater I/O efficiency and longer flash drive lifespans, but may be constrained by limited use cases and lukewarm productisation efforts Continue Reading
-
News
03 Sep 2024
Flash prices drop as drive production increases but demand lags
Flash prices were high in the early part of this year as a result of manufacturer production squeezes but have since dropped because demand has been slack, with flash now costing just under 10 cents per gigabyte Continue Reading
-
Feature
12 May 2022
The limits and risks of backup as ransomware protection
Backups can provide a sound means of recovery from ransomware infection, but they are not 100% certain to foil attackers. We look at the limits and risks of depending on backups Continue Reading
-
News
11 May 2022
Pure to offer on-prem object storage as Snowflake data source
Pure Storage partnership with Snowflake will see the cloud data warehousing platform make use of on-prem FlashBlade fast file and object storage as a source for analytics data Continue Reading
-
News
10 May 2022
NetApp’s cloud-era storage competitors in ‘world of hurt’
NetApp is busily reinventing itself as a cloud services provider, with its competition years behind, according to its public cloud vice-president Continue Reading
-
News
09 May 2022
Ctera opens up its storage to third-party analytics via APIs
File system software builds pools of NAS-like storage accessible from anywhere, with APIs to third-party tools to interrogate data for business processes, anomaly detection and more Continue Reading
-
News
06 May 2022
IT infrastructure used to launch DDoS attack on Russian targets
Organisations could unwittingly be participating in hostile activity against the Russian government as compromised IT infrastructure is used without their knowledge to launch denial of service attacks Continue Reading
-
Feature
05 May 2022
Disaster recovery is an essential service for EDF with Phenix-IT
EDF has built disaster recovery tracking, planning and testing software on a six-month upgrade cycle based on governance, risk and compliance functionality in Mega’s Hopex platform Continue Reading
-
News
04 May 2022
PeerGFS to add AI/ML anomaly detection to distributed file system product
Peer will add AI/ML-based anomaly detection as it ramps up security protection in its PeerGFS distributed file management software, with Linux server support also to come in 2022 Continue Reading
-
Podcast
29 Apr 2022
Podcast: War, geo-political risk, data storage and compliance
We talk to Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, about impacts on compliance and data storage from instability in geo-political events, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine Continue Reading
-
Definition
22 Apr 2022
RAM-based solid-state drive (SSD)
A RAM-based solid-state drive (SSD) is a storage device made from silicon microchips that has no moving parts and stores data electronically instead of magnetically. Continue Reading
-
Definition
22 Apr 2022
Fibre Channel (FC) port types
A Fibre Channel port is a hardware pathway into and out of a node that performs data communications over an FC link. Continue Reading
-
Feature
22 Apr 2022
Snapshots vs backup: Use both for optimum RPOs
We look at snapshots and backup, the key difference, their pros and cons and how best to use the two approaches in an integrated data protection strategy for optimal RPO Continue Reading
-
News
20 Apr 2022
How Veeam helped grocery chain Franprix escape its backup hell
French supermarket chain had backup windows that ran well into the next working day and restoring deleted files could take days. It chose Veeam in a contest with Cohesity Continue Reading
-
News
19 Apr 2022
Hammers sign Acronis as backup and security in one
West Ham United set to replace separate backup from Veeam and a variety of security products with Acronis Cyber Protect to have backup, data protection and file share on a single platform Continue Reading
-
Feature
08 Apr 2022
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
-
Podcast
07 Apr 2022
Pure says unstructured data needs storage scale and performance
Podcast: Pure Storage says huge growth of unstructured data and its diversity means storage has to be able to scale with it and offer performance to gain insights Continue Reading
-
Feature
06 Apr 2022
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
-
Feature
30 Mar 2022
Backup types explained: Full, incremental, differential, synthetic
We look at backup – on-prem and cloud – and the key variants available, from full backup to synthetic full, via incremental, differential, incremental forever and reverse incremental Continue Reading
-
News
28 Mar 2022
Backup: N-able emerges from white box to aim at enterprise customers
It spent years integrated with Solarwinds and as a re-sold product, but now it plans to target enterprise customers with a backup product that aims at granular file protection and restore Continue Reading
-
News
24 Mar 2022
Ad agency slashes NetApp costs with Datadobi data migration
US-based branding agency needed to migrate 20TB of large files to new NetApp hardware, but unwilling to stomach the vendor’s migration costs it chose Datadobi instead Continue Reading
-
News
22 Mar 2022
NetApp Cloud Insights gets AI monitoring and ransomware detection
Cloud Insights adds artificial intelligence-based continuous audit and monitoring of entire IT estate and generates impact assessments from performance events, plus anomaly alerting for ransomware Continue Reading
-
News
16 Mar 2022
Quantum launches ‘scale-out’ i6H rackmount tape library
Aimed at hyperscalers and enterprises, the LTO-9 system comes in a rackmount form factor that can be deployed anywhere in the datacentre as part of a common pool of storage Continue Reading
-
News
11 Mar 2022
Police EncroChat cryptophone hacking implant did not work properly and frequently failed
Surveillance operation against EncroChat encrypted phone network had repeated technical failures Continue Reading
-
Feature
09 Mar 2022
Cloud-era disaster recovery planning: Maintenance and continuous improvement
In the final article in this four-part guide to disaster recovery planning, we look at how and when to update, maintain, audit, review and continually improve the DR plan Continue Reading
-
Feature
09 Mar 2022
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
-
News
08 Mar 2022
Limelight gains large CDN scale with Edgecast acquisition
Leading CDN provider gains extra scale with strategic purchase, claiming to have created global leader in edge-enabled software services with diversified revenue across products, clients, geographies and channels Continue Reading
-
News
07 Mar 2022
Micron 7450 aims its 176 TLC layers at QLC flash use cases
New 176-layer tech brings densely packed flash cells in drives that come in 2.5”, M.2 and EDSFF form factors, aimed at datacentre workloads from archive to database storage Continue Reading
-
Feature
01 Mar 2022
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
-
Feature
24 Feb 2022
Cloud storage cost challenges and how to tackle them
We look at cloud capacity procurement pitfalls, forecasting challenges, the danger of over-buying, supplier lock-in, deciphering billing and resizing capacity when projects finish Continue Reading
-
Feature
24 Feb 2022
Define RPO and RTO tiers for storage and data protection strategy
We look at RPO and RTO in defining data protection and disaster recovery strategies and how to specify tiers that reflect the importance of different systems in your organisation Continue Reading
-
News
22 Feb 2022
Hammerspace offers follow-the-sun access to on-prem and cloud storage
Startup aims to succeed where others have failed and present file, block and object storage data from any and multiple locations as if it were local to the user Continue Reading
-
News
21 Feb 2022
Backup heads to cloud as ransomware hits 76% and RTOs/RPOs fail
Veeam survey finds most can’t recover the data they want or do it in time, ransomware is now a ‘disaster’, use of the cloud is increasing, but the datacentre is still very important Continue Reading
-
News
16 Feb 2022
Retrospect Backup refines anomaly detection in ransomware battle
StorCentric backup software brand allows customer fine-tuning of anomaly detection in struggle against ransomware, and adds immutable copies via object locking in Azure Continue Reading
-
News
15 Feb 2022
Nebulon gets Ansible collection for datacentre deployment
Provider of cloud-managed and hardware-accelerated – formerly ‘cloud-defined’ – storage makes further moves towards its smartInfrastructure vision, with Terraform support coming Continue Reading
-
News
11 Feb 2022
NetApp provides data infrastructure for EMBL
European Molecular Biology Laboratory uses NetApp to enable researchers to share and process high-end electron microscopy data Continue Reading
-
Feature
09 Feb 2022
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
-
News
08 Feb 2022
Tiger offers lightweight file access for hybrid cloud
Roar data, anyone? Tiger offers local access to cloud data, with only parts of the file being worked on downloaded and file locking in cloud buckets to ensure integrity Continue Reading
-
Feature
08 Feb 2022
Cloud-era disaster recovery planning: Staff training, incident and media management
In the third in a series on cloud-era disaster recovery, we set out the key components of DR staff awareness and training programmes, as well as incident management and dealing with the media Continue Reading
-
News
07 Feb 2022
TV provider MediaHub boots SAN and NAS for Scality object storage
Sydney-based TV content provider MediaHub got tired of performance issues and scaling difficulties with SAN and NAS, so powered its as-a-service offer with Scality object storage Continue Reading
-
News
31 Jan 2022
Nebulon SmartInfrastructure brings cloud-defined storage to datacentre
Cloud-defined storage allows customers to build private clouds on-site, with pools of storage built from commodity hardware, Nebulon PCIe cards and its browser-based console Continue Reading
-
Definition
28 Jan 2022
storage filer
A storage filer is a type of file server designed and programmed for high-volume data storage, backup and archiving. Continue Reading
-
Feature
27 Jan 2022
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
-
Feature
27 Jan 2022
Cloud-era disaster recovery planning: Setting strategy and developing plans
In the second in a series on cloud-era disaster recovery, we look at how to formulate a DR strategy and develop detailed DR plans for your organisation, while taking cloud services into account Continue Reading
-
News
26 Jan 2022
Storage tech brief: Look out for PCIe gen 5 drives in 2022
PCIe 5.0 will offer bandwidth up to 128GBps per drive. We look at what’s available and when, including in the new EDSFF form factor, as well as looking forward to PCIe gen 6 Continue Reading
-
Opinion
24 Jan 2022
Hybrid cloud storage: The devils are in the details
When it comes to storage, one thing is clear – cloud does not change everything Continue Reading
-
Feature
24 Jan 2022
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
-
Feature
24 Jan 2022
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
-
Feature
24 Jan 2022
Hybrid cloud storage: Options for rearchitecting enterprise IT
Hybrid cloud is seen as a way to have the best of both the on-premise and public cloud worlds. We look at the pros and cons of hybrid cloud storage Continue Reading
-
Definition
20 Jan 2022
direct access
In computer storage, direct access is the process of reading and writing data on a storage device by going directly to where the data is physically located on the device rather than having to move sequentially from one physical location to the next to find the correct data. Continue Reading
-
News
20 Jan 2022
MoonBounce firmware bootkit shows advances in malicious implants
MoonBounce firmware bootkit shows evident technical improvements over others, making it a more dangerous threat to organisations. It is being used by Chinese state-backed actors Continue Reading
-
Feature
19 Jan 2022
Cloud-era disaster recovery planning: Assessing risk and business impact
In the first in a series on cloud-era disaster recovery, we provide a step-by-step guide to building firm foundations for the disaster recovery plan, with risk assessment and business impact analysis Continue Reading
-
E-Zine
18 Jan 2022
The race to quantum computing
In this week’s Computer Weekly, researchers are racing to create the first commercially useful quantum computer – we look at one of the European candidates. Cyber security is one of the greatest risks facing the global economy, warns the World Economic Forum. And we examine the role of employee experience in hybrid working. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
-
Podcast
14 Jan 2022
Podcast: 2022 compliance preview – GDPR goes global
We talk to Mathieu Gorge, CEO of VigiTrust, about what’s looming in compliance, with regulations based on the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation plus the concept of cyber accountability Continue Reading
-
Feature
07 Jan 2022
New supercomputer opens doors for researchers in Sweden
More than twice as powerful as its predecessor, a new supercomputer ushers in new opportunities for researchers who rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning Continue Reading
-
Opinion
06 Jan 2022
Avoid complexity in data storage decisions
With more options for on- and off-premise data storage, the need for simplicity is greater than ever Continue Reading
-
Feature
06 Jan 2022
Evolving datacentre chipsets put cooling, power and software management techniques under microscope
New processor designs that could revolutionise approaches to supporting higher power densities at the rack still look years away, it appears Continue Reading
-
Blog Post
27 Dec 2021
One SSD to ruler them all
If you’re at all curious about what comes next in enterprise storage devices, you need to know about EDSFF, the Enterprise and Data Centre SSD Form Factor – better known as the “ruler” format. ... Continue Reading
-
Definition
23 Dec 2021
direct access storage device (DASD)
A direct access storage device (DASD) is a type of secondary storage device that supports direct access to the stored data, as opposed to sequential access, which is slower and less efficient. Continue Reading
-
Feature
22 Dec 2021
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
-
News
21 Dec 2021
Top 10 cloud storage, DR and datacentre storage stories of 2021
Key articles from 2021 that demonstrate the growing importance of cloud storage and disaster recovery, but also the snags that lead to cloud repatriation and difficulties restoring from the cloud Continue Reading
-
News
20 Dec 2021
Top 10 ransomware and backup stories of 2021
Key articles from 2021 that highlight the link between ransomware and snapshots and backup and their role in repelling attacks, plus effects of the pandemic on backup and recovery Continue Reading
-
News
14 Dec 2021
IT priorities 2022: Ransomware and cloud drive storage and backup
The pandemic and the move to the cloud has driven cloud storage as a key priority Continue Reading
-
Feature
10 Dec 2021
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
-
News
10 Dec 2021
UAE joins the race to produce a usable quantum computer
As part of its ongoing effort to keep up with the latest technology, the United Arab Emirates has begun work on the region’s first quantum computer Continue Reading
-
News
08 Dec 2021
Pure adds flagship FlashArray//XL with doubled throughput
High-end enterprise-targeted FlashArray//XL leverages latest Intel Ice Lake CPU, PCIe 4.0 and distributes SLC flash across drive modules to double throughput over existing arrays Continue Reading
-
News
30 Nov 2021
UK MSP set to use Nebulon cloud-defined storage IaaS
UK service provider Inca to use “cloud-defined storage” to support managed service provider offer in move which shunned hyper-converged infrastructure because of cited costly overheads Continue Reading
-
Feature
19 Nov 2021
Cloud storage compliance pitfalls: Post-pandemic and post-Brexit
We look at the key areas of cloud storage compliance that can trip you up, with shared responsibility with cloud providers and data residency among the most important Continue Reading
-
Feature
17 Nov 2021
Cloud repatriation: Five reasons to repatriate data from cloud
We look at key drivers of cloud repatriation, including cost, compliance, issues around latency and data gravity, reversing poorly planned moves to the cloud, and supplier failure Continue Reading
-
News
15 Nov 2021
Video firm gets Qumulo scale-out NAS and super-fine metrics
Cognacq-Jay Image shunned Scality and Isilon to get Qumulo scale-out NAS for extremely elastic video workloads and built fine-grained metrics to troubleshoot complex processes Continue Reading
-
News
10 Nov 2021
Vast Data: Big shifts promised for an AI future
Purveyor of Universal Storage says AI and GPU-based compute will dominate, and is set to benefit with its (relatively) cheap, deep and quick QLC-plus-Optane offer Continue Reading
-
News
07 Nov 2021
Belfast City Airport: Most apps in the cloud by 2031
George Best Belfast City Airport has already achieved 50/50 cloud and on-premise working, with 80% of workloads expected to be cloud-based in the next decade. We look at what hybrid cloud means in practice Continue Reading
-
Feature
05 Nov 2021
Immutable snapshots aim to neutralise ransomware
Snapshots – usually immutable anyway – get functionality to stop ransomware intruders moving or deleting snapshots, so customers know they have clean copies of data to restore from Continue Reading
-
News
02 Nov 2021
iXsystems entry-level NAS goes hyper-converged with TrueNAS Scale
iXsystems TrueNAS can be a fraction of the cost of competitors and with a revamped operating system it can be built into clusters that can run virtual machines and containers Continue Reading
-
Definition
02 Nov 2021
IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics)
IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is an electronic interface standard that defines the connection between a bus on a computer's motherboard and the computer's disk storage devices. Continue Reading
-
News
01 Nov 2021
No cloud storage for Belfast City Airport in Nutanix hyper-converged switch
George Best Belfast City Airport ditches ageing Dell iSCSI SAN for Nutanix HCI for half the price of nearest contender, and gets DR site into the bargain. Cloud storage was a no-go for cost reasons Continue Reading
-
Feature
29 Oct 2021
Five ways the hyper-converged infrastructure market is changing
We look at changes in the hyper-converged infrastructure market as suppliers go cool, go soft, disaggregate HCI nodes, provide as-a-service options and look to containers Continue Reading
-
News
27 Oct 2021
Cohesity beefs up ransomware and disaster recovery offer
Disaster Recovery as-a-service, Data Govern and project Fort Knox available or in development as data protection supplier augments its portfolio with ransomware firmly in mind Continue Reading
-
News
21 Oct 2021
NetApp Insight frames moves to public cloud and cloud native
Storage player highlights partnerships with cloud hyperscalers and development of Spot portfolio aimed at cloud-native applications, DevOps, FinOps and SecOps Continue Reading
-
News
20 Oct 2021
Vast boosts QLC flash offer with ransomware-proof snapshots
Vast majors on QLC flash bulk storage with 3D Xpoint cache to smooth out traffic into sequential flows Continue Reading
-
News
20 Oct 2021
Spectra Logic unveils Vail hybrid cloud storage virtualisation
Vail provides single pool of storage overlay to on-premise flash, disk and tape, plus cloud via object storage interface with Posix-compliance promised in future releases Continue Reading
-
News
19 Oct 2021
Want to sidestep public cloud? AuriStor offers global file storage
Built to scale hugely, and built for high performance and security, Auristor offers NAS-like Posix-compatible storage to customers that want to avoid public cloud Continue Reading
-
Feature
13 Oct 2021
Hybrid cloud: Five key questions in 2021
We look at key need-to-knows about hybrid cloud in 2021, including how it is defined, key use cases, the main pitfalls and where it’s heading Continue Reading
-
Feature
07 Oct 2021
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
-
News
04 Oct 2021
Nexustorage aims at file and block access to object storage
New Zealand-based startup to release Nexfs, which chops files into sub-file chunks and tiers them off to cheap and deep object stores with NFS and iSCSAI access for Posix applications Continue Reading
-
Feature
29 Sep 2021
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
-
News
28 Sep 2021
Pure launches Fusion cloud control layer for storage
Pure Fusion is a storage control plane across cloud and datacentre. Portworx Data Services also launches to provide database management for container storage platform Continue Reading
-
News
27 Sep 2021
GCP gets triple-redundant NAS and built-in Kubernetes backup
Google Filestore Enterprise will provide synchronous replication across three zones, while Backup for Google Kubernetes Engine brings built-in container cluster data protection Continue Reading
-
News
20 Sep 2021
Kioxia revisits SLC flash to power FL6 and rival Optane
SLC flash storage – mostly consigned to the ‘where is it now?’ pile – has been given a lease of life by Kioxia as capacity for rapid access storage-class memory applications Continue Reading
-
News
17 Sep 2021
Aftershock eyes corporate PC market
Singapore-based custom PC supplier Aftershock has set up a corporate sales team and is looking to offer a desktop as a service for business customers Continue Reading
-
Feature
14 Sep 2021
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
-
Feature
09 Sep 2021
Five things you need to know about cloud file services
We look at cloud file services, which provide a file system-like architecture that gives users access to file data wherever they are, just as if it were a local NAS filer Continue Reading
-
Feature
08 Sep 2021
Dell, NetApp and Pure: Healthy results on Covid easing
Dell’s still top of the storage supplier pile with midrange arrays doing well, but meanwhile NetApp and Pure are making gains on the rise of public cloud Continue Reading
-
News
06 Sep 2021
NetApp and AWS launch fully managed Ontap cloud file storage
But hybrid cloud still limited, according to NetApp. Until containerisation is widespread, applications tend to be built for the cloud or work better in the datacentre Continue Reading
-
Feature
02 Sep 2021
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
-
News
02 Sep 2021
NUS researchers develop brain-inspired memory device
A team of researchers led by the National University of Singapore have developed a brain-inspired molecular memristor that can be configured to perform a range of computing tasks Continue Reading
-
News
31 Aug 2021
More NAND SSD in fewer hands as WD $20m Kioxia bid likely
The NAND flash market could soon go from six major players to four, but the fusion of Kioxia into WD and SK Hynix with Intel’s NAND business will still leave Samsung atop the pile Continue Reading
-
News
23 Aug 2021
Veeam survey: Big cloud impact on backup and disaster recovery
Backup specialist finds cloud eclipses on-site compute for all workloads while DR makes big strides in the cloud despite concerns about complexity and security Continue Reading
-
News
23 Aug 2021
Flexxon and Lenovo tie up on AI-infused SSDs
Singapore-based Flexxon teams up with Lenovo to make its solid-state drive that uses artificial intelligence to fend off cyber threats available on ThinkPad-based laptops Continue Reading
-
Feature
04 Aug 2021
Disaster recovery for SMEs: Five key areas to consider
We look at key disaster recovery considerations for SMEs, including why backup is not enough, how to create a disaster recovery plan, best-practice DR testing and DR as a service Continue Reading
-
News
03 Aug 2021
Panasas’s 10x saving bumps NetApp from HPC storage deployment
University of Wollongong got 1.2PB for the cost of 100TB for HPC storage in its cryo-imaging institute. Scale-out NAS maker Panasas also brought life sciences expertise to bear Continue Reading
-
News
23 Jul 2021
Can India become a global manufacturing hub?
India can be a major player in the global manufacturing supply chain by shoring up IP protection and tapping opportunities in contract manufacturing and firmware design Continue Reading