Computer storage hardware

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Paul Kirvan

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

storage filer

A storage filer is a type of file server designed and programmed for high-volume data storage, backup and archiving. Continue Reading

By

• Robert Sheldon

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Paul Kirvan

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Tony Lock, Freeform Dynamics

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

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

By

• Robert Sheldon

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

By

• Alex Scroxton, Security Editor

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

By

• Paul Kirvan

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: 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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Pat Brans, Pat Brans Associates/Grenoble Ecole de Management

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

By

• Junade Ali

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

By

• Fleur Doidge

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

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

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

By

• Robert Sheldon

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

By

• Pat Brans, Pat Brans Associates/Grenoble Ecole de Management

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Robert Sheldon
• Sonia Lelii, TechTarget

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Stephen Pritchard

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

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

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

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

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• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

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

By

• Stephen Pritchard

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

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

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

By

• Pratima Harigunani

DNA storage promises 10 million times storage capacity boost

A datacentre that fits in the palm of your hand? However, right now, DNA storage is an expensive chemical process that researchers are trying to make a practical proposal Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Sparsely staffed offices: the new post-pandemic cyber gap

With many offices still operating at limited capacity, a red teaming expert reveals how his job is getting easier, and why this is a problem Continue Reading

By

• Kyle Gaertner

Storage-as-a-service: Consumption models from the big six

We look at the big six storage makers’ consumption model offers, which allow customers to pay for on-prem hardware and cloud storage capacity on a pay-per-use basis, within limits Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Briefing: Cloud storage performance metrics

We look at some of the key storage performance metrics that determine what your applications will get from cloud storage, plus cloud essentials that are beyond simple measurement Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Flexify brings virtualisation layer to multi-cloud storage

Cloud storage virtualisation provider allows application access via S3 API calls to a single destination while capacity can be in numerous clouds with migration between them Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Zoning in on better storage performance and capacity

The fundamentals of data storage are undergoing a significant evolution, and many – if not most – IT administrators won’t even have noticed yet.  Called zoned storage, it’s a shift away from host ... Continue Reading

By

• Bryan Betts, Freeform Dynamics

Five things you need to know about NVMe over Fabrics

We look at NVMe-oF, which extends fast flash across the network – what it is, how it works, use cases, benefits and limitations, and the suppliers of NVMe-oF products Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Manutan claws back 25% of storage admin time in switch to Pure

Industrial and office supply giant needed to replace 3Par arrays then made a rapid switch to Pure Storage FlashArray flash storage when the ageing HPE hardware crashed during POC Continue Reading

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• Yann Serra, LeMagIT
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

France TV repatriates backup and archive from public cloud

France Télévisions Publicité couldn’t always get to critical data, so decided to repatriate backup and archiving from the cloud to on-site locations, with help from a managed service Continue Reading

By

• Alain Clapaud
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud storage APIs: What are they and what can be done with them?

We look at the kinds of application programming interfaces (APIs) available to expose cloud storage to applications, from SME-targeted solutions to higher-end hooks Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

GlobalFoundries to open new fab in Singapore

US chip foundry GlobalFoundries is building a $4bn semiconductor fabrication plant in Singapore to expand its manufacturing capacity as chip demand surges worldwide Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Opera house shuns cloud for Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure

The Royal Opera House considered moving all its infrastructure to the cloud, but a hybrid setup with Nutanix and Rubrik hyper-converged infrastructure came in 35% cheaper Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Vast Data will offer containerised storage software, but not yet

Vast Data sticking to its plan to provide no-tier “universal storage” via QLC flash and a 3D Xpoint read/write buffer that uses a containerised control plane Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Druva helps Thirteen Group get round Azure data retention limits

Social housing business has migrated to Microsoft Office 365 on Azure, but needed long-term data retention to comply with General Data Protection Regulation Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

Storage performance metrics: Five key areas to look at

We look at the essentials in storage performance metrics: capacity, throughput and read/write capability, IOPS and latency, and hardware longevity measured by failure rates Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

How the pandemic changed backup

The Covid-19 pandemic forced big changes in how people work – we look at impacts on backup, including increased reliance on the cloud, plus security and compliance vulnerabilities and ransomware Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Cohesity brings DataProtect backup-as-a-service to Europe via AWS

Scale-out backup appliance pioneer adds backup-as-a-service from a virtual machine on customer premises Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

The drive towards computational storage

The explosion in data is driving demand for faster computing and storage remains a bottleneck – but things are about to change Continue Reading

By

• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor
• Adrian Bridgwater

Swedish university is behind quantum computing breakthrough

Chalmers University of Technology simplifies the process of measuring the temperatures of quantum computers during complex calculations Continue Reading

By

• Gerard O'Dwyer

SA-based MSP shuns HCI for Nebulon cloud-defined storage

SYSDBA needed to refresh its HPE 3PAR arrays, and so looked at hyper-converged but decided on cloud-defined storage from Nebulon that marries local storage with a cloud control plane Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Exagrid pays $2.6m to Conti ransomware attackers

Backup appliance specialist hit by Conti ransomware in May with cyber criminals downloading employee and customer data, confidential contracts and source code Continue Reading

By

• Valéry Rieß-Marchive, Rédacteur en chef
• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

An opportunity to redesign computer architectures

Over the last 70 years business computers have evolved a standard model of computing based around a central processing unit (CPU), main memory (RAM) and data storage. In effect, data is fetched ... Continue Reading

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• Cliff Saran, Managing Editor

How computational storage delivers datacentre benefits

Computational storage is an emerging field of IT that features compute processing power closely coupled with storage. We look at what it can be used for Continue Reading

By

• Daniel Robinson

Valence brings storage virtualisation for the cloud era

Startup 22dot6 launches Valence, software-defined storage that throws a virtualisation layer over any backend storage via multiple nodes that split metadata and storage services Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Oil and gas firm halves backup licence cost with Hycu move

Summit E&P made a strategic move to Nutanix hyper-converged and away from NetApp and VMware and wanted backup that could handle virtual machines and physical servers Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Where to run containers? Bare metal vs virtual machines

We look at the key differences between running containers in virtualised environments and on bare metal servers and focus in on the main trade-offs and decision points Continue Reading

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• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Making data an asset, not a threat

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine the latest developments in the UK government’s National Data Strategy and what it means for the economy. Our latest buyer’s guide explains the emerging technologies around computational storage. And we look at the advances in customer experience management during the pandemic. Read the issue now. Continue Reading