Computer storage hardware

Dell EMC unveils Isilon scale-out NAS in the Google cloud

The trend to cloud NAS continues as Dell EMC announces beta phase of Isilon Cloud for GCP that will see fully-featured scale-out NAS available to customers via the Google cloud Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Next generation of SCADA industrial controls will protect against cyber attack

Oil, energy and chemical companies are rethinking how to control big manufacturing plants, replacing expensive control technology with cheaper, more secure systems, taking their cue from biology Continue Reading

Storage class memory set to upset hardware architectures

Storage class memory and persistent memory products are set to add a layer of superfast storage media between bulk drives and memory, pushing performance to five million IOPS Continue Reading

IBM admits poor storage results but promises to do better

IBM’s first-quarter 2018 results shows failings in its storage business, while cognitive computing via Watson remains its main growth engine Continue Reading

Elastifile adds NAS file access storage to Google Cloud Launcher

Israeli startup Elastifile launches NFS file access service in the Google cloud to provide hybrid cloud distributed file system functionality with the speed of flash Continue Reading

Disaggregated systems try to unlock the NVMe conundrum

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SSD Raid 101: The essentials of flash storage and Raid

Flash storage is mainstream, but what do storage professionals need to know about Raid when used with SSDs? We look at Raid fundamentals, and supplier implementations Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

DR 101: The disaster recovery plan and disaster recovery strategy

We walk through the key steps and essential building blocks required to develop a disaster recovery strategy and how to write a disaster recovery plan Continue Reading

Nodeum adds clouds to boost tape-to-hybrid-cloud platform

Belgian startup’s Linux-based storage environment now stretches from on-premise disk, LTFS tape and NAS to hybrid cloud working via AWS and Azure public clouds, with more planned Continue Reading

Boom expected in processor attacks

Sonicwall's latest research shows worrying signs that the processor flaws revealed at the start of 2018 are set to dominate IT security Continue Reading

Hybrid cloud mainstream, but seamless operations hard to achieve

Survey by 451 Research finds most organisations use a mix of on-premise and cloud locations, but truly seamless hybrid cloud operations are very difficult to achieve Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Hybrid cloud file and object pushes the frontiers of storage

A single environment across on-premise and cloud environments is possible with a new class of product that builds file systems and object stores with hybrid cloud Continue Reading

Storage 101: How to create, share and manage a LUN in SAN storage

Despite pronouncements from some, the days of the logical unit number (LUN) are not over. We look at the LUN in SAN management: How to create, share, provision and manage a LUN Continue Reading

Disaggregated systems try to unlock the NVMe conundrum

NVMe can unlock the true potential of flash, but storage controllers put a bottleneck back in the I/O path. We look at how suppliers are trying to solve the problem Continue Reading

Druva maintains cloud course with AWS cloud-to-cloud backup plans

Backup product supplier Druva plans cloud-to-cloud backup to Amazon Web Services and other public cloud services as demand arises, in a future firmly fixed on hybrid operations Continue Reading

Scality Zenko 'multi-cloud controller' offers hybrid cloud boost

S3-based software control layer will support Amazon, Google and Microsoft clouds to bring hybrid cloud operations, with object storage across private and public clouds Continue Reading

It’s the year of the cloud, says backup giant Veeam

Veeam roadmap adds cloud to virtual and physical backup with acquisitions that bring cloud and hybrid functionality. Object archives, CDP and NAS backup are also planned Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Ideal Standard standardises in Emea with Nakivo virtual backup

Bathroom multinational strips out country-based systems to virtualise across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nakivo beats Veeam on cost to provide VMware disk-based backup and slashes restore times Continue Reading

Cloud DR: Key choices in cloud disaster recovery

Flexibility and low cost make the cloud well-suited to disaster recovery, but there is no one-size-fits-all route to cloud disaster recovery. We look at the key choices Continue Reading

Rackspace upgrade to save $12m with Scality object storage

Cloud services giant Rackspace brings in Scality object storage in a move that slashes 4,000 boxes from its server count as it separates compute and storage Continue Reading

Cohesity adds file and object to hyper-converged hybrid cloud

Cohesity broadens out from hyper-converged backup and restore to offer file and object storage on its physical and virtual hyper-converged appliances and in the cloud Continue Reading

Hyper-converged infrastructure 2018 technology and market survey

We look at the latest in hyper-converged infrastructure – server and storage hardware nodes that can be built into scale-out clusters – and the players in the market Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

CW ANZ: Prepare for EU data law

Faced with the double whammy of complying with Australia’s upcoming data breach notification requirement and Europe’s new data protection regime, Australian firms are behind where they need to be in their compliance efforts. In this month’s edition of CW ANZ, find out how Australian organisations are getting ready for the GDPR, the challenges they are facing in meeting two new laws at the same time, as well as what they need to do to achieve their compliance goals. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Dell EMC: Time for hyper-converged, but not for mission critical

Hyper-converged vs converged infrastructure: Dell EMC says hyper-converged isn’t ready for mission-critical applications, but may be by the end of the year Continue Reading

Zerto boosts cloud-to-cloud and hybrid cloud replication

Zerto Virtual Replication version 6 allows hybrid cloud data protection operations across on-premises datacentres and Amazon, Microsoft and IBM clouds, and 350-plus service providers Continue Reading

How a digital workplace can drive innovation

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at some of the latest tools for the digital workplace and find out how they can improve collaboration and innovation. We ask what lessons the demise of Carillion has for IT outsourcing. And the CIO of retailer River Island tells us how technology is changing the high street in fashion. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

IT Priorities 2018: Where senior IT managers plan to spend their budget

It is the year when IT departments migrate to Windows 10, upgrade to Windows Server 2016, architect microservices and deploy cloud management Continue Reading

GDPR requests to take thousands of hours a month, says survey

A recent survey predicts organisations will potentially face thousands of customer requests about their personal information every month, with many unprepared for GDPR compliance Continue Reading

ESG survey: Storage spending habits become ‘hybrid-cloud-defined’

Analyst survey finds cloud is used as a way to make storage more efficient, but organisations are also bringing cloud apps back into the datacentre and spending on in-house capacity Continue Reading

Qumulo file access hybrid cloud QF2 file system launches in Europe

QF2 brings Posix/Windows-compatible scale-out NAS file storage to hybrid cloud with access via on-premise hardware appliance or Amazon compute and storage in the cloud Continue Reading

Cloudian upgrade brings hybrid cloud file and object storage

Move to Cloudian Hyperstore 7 enables data storage operations across on-premise and Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud environments with object and file access Continue Reading

GDPR worries hit cloud storage investments, says survey

NetApp-sponsored survey finds lack of customer confidence in cloud service providers’ retention of GDPR-affected data has led organisations to rethink and scale back cloud investments Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

ITV goes on air with SpectraLogic LTFS tape backup and archive

2PB of SpectraLogic tape front-ended by Black Pearl LTFS object storage access creates integrated archive that lets broadcaster optimise use of existing Isilon clustered NAS Continue Reading

NVMe: The flash storage standard in search of a form factor

NVMe can unleash flash by doing away with the built-for-disk SCSI protocol. But so far there’s no consensus between suppliers about how to build products around NVMe. Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Laing O’Rourke unifies on-site and cloud backup on Commvault

Construction firm sweeps away tape and multiple backup products for single Commvault environment to cut admin time, slash backup windows and boost legal and regulatory compliance Continue Reading

Storage in containers: The answer to persistent storage needs?

With compute requirements often fragmented, short-lived and bursty, traditional storage architectures can struggle to cope – so is storage in containers the solution? Continue Reading

Cloud firm scales Cloudian object storage to 2.5PB for GDPR

Calligo expands Cloudian Hyperstore from three nodes to 30 at worldwide datacentres, with object storage deployed for file-level and metadata capabilities suited to GDPR Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Storage briefing: The evolution of software-defined storage

The evolution of software-defined storage, from simple software products to those that offer scale-out, hyper-converged, NVMe, public cloud and container functionality Continue Reading

Cloud-to-cloud backup: What it is and why you need it

Applications that run in the cloud are protected, but only so much. For full protection of data generated by cloud-based apps you need cloud-to-cloud backup Continue Reading

The death of the mainframe is greatly exaggerated, says CA

With mainframe software tools forming a key part of its overall growth strategy, CA Technologies remains proud of its mainframe heritage Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Key choices in Docker container storage deployment

Containers often need persistent storage, but how do you achieve that? We look at the key options, including Docker volumes versus bind mounts, and Docker Volume Plugins Continue Reading

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 Continue Reading

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 brings file, iSCSI and container storage

Latest version of open source OpenStack-targeted software-defined storage adds CephFS, ISCSI and storage that can be deployed in containers to save hardware Continue Reading

Commvault joins the hyper-converged backup wave with Hyperscale

Hyperscale Software and Hyperscale Appliance bring Commvault backup software in a reference architecture/software product or as a pre-configured server/storage box Continue Reading

Syneto aims Hyperseries 2100 at hyper-converged for SMEs

European startup targets customers with two-node hyper-converged appliance, with built-in disaster recovery and capacity for up to 15 VMware virtual machines Continue Reading

OpenStack vs hyper-converged: Open-source cloud in the datacentre

We look at how to deploy OpenStack on hyper-converged infrastructure and how HCI suppliers’ products can support deployment of the open-source cloud in the datacentre Continue Reading

Legal services firm gets 54TB of NEC Hydrastor NAS as backup target

Quislex has cut backup windows by a third and will roll out 700TB of NEC Hydrastor to Hyderabad datacentre to provide a grid of deduplicated storage for backup and archive Continue Reading

Dutch startup wants to revolutionise online food shopping

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out how Dutch startup Picnic hopes to revolutionise the online food shopping market using artificial intelligence and data analytics. We take a look at the latest updates to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud-based productivity tools. And we assess the prospects for AMD’s latest line-up of server processors and ask if they can challenge market leader Intel. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Hyper-converged choices: DIY HCI software deployments

What are the advantages of do-it-yourself hyper-converged infrastructure deployment and who are the key suppliers of HCI software? We run the rule over the DIY hyper-converged market Continue Reading

Box uses Google’s AI to support image recognition in the enterprise

Optical character recognition and automated generation of image metadata is now possible, thanks to Google Cloud AI Continue Reading

The fields of Athenry – how Apple’s datacentre plans are causing turmoil in a small Irish town

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look into Apple’s controversial plans to build a huge datacentre in a small town in the west of Ireland, and hear the local arguments it has caused. We find out how the Met Office is managing the vast quantities of data it uses for weather forecasting. And we examine Google plans to bring artificial intelligence tools to the job recruitment market. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Charity swaps SAN for Hypergrid hyper-converged to save £1m

Tearfund saves £950,000 by deploying Hypergrid hyper-converged in place of HP servers and SAN, cutting costs on space, power, staff and hardware, and avoiding VMware Continue Reading

NVMe flash blocked by array architecture, says Kaminario CTO

Flash pioneer CTO says array controllers are built for a different era and must scale-out as clusters to provide the CPU power needed to allow NVMe to realise its potential Continue Reading

Scality Zenko.io brings hybrid cloud storage virtualisation

Zenko.io is a control layer that allows customers to manage data in on-site Scality ring object storage and multiple public clouds but falls short of full data portability for now Continue Reading

GDPR brings serious implications for data storage

New European Union data protection regulations put tough requirements on organisations that store “personally identifiable data”. We look at what is needed to achieve compliance Continue Reading

Tegile launches Intelliflash tiered all-flash arrays with NVMe

Hybrid flash turned all-flash maker Tegile adds tier of NVMe to SAS-connected flash with all drives encrypted and an all-NVMe array planned for later in 2017 Continue Reading

Be better connected in a wireless world

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at the latest developments in wireless technology and discover how enterprises can deliver secure and reliable wireless networks for staff and customers. We examine Microsoft’s PowerShell scripting language to understand why it’s become such an important tool for automating system administration. And we ask CIOs what it’s like to cross the divide and work for IT suppliers. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Nutanix makes hybrid cloud push with Calm and Xi Cloud

Hyper-converged pioneer to extend on-premise OS to the cloud with plans to span the datacentre and public cloud using Calm, plus forthcoming hybrid cloud services via Xi Cloud Continue Reading

News UK dumps tape for backup with Zadara cloud storage

News publishing corporation saves up to 40% on hardware and software costs by switching in-house hardware for a cloud-first policy, using Zadara cloud storage as a backup target Continue Reading

Datacentre decisions: Converged vs hyper-converged infrastructure

Converged and hyper-converged infrastructure are ready-tested ways to put compute and storage into the datacentre. But which should you choose for your deployment? Continue Reading

Red Hat launches open source hyper-converged infrastructure

Infrastructure bundles OS, hypervisor and storage software components from the open source distributor and is aimed at SMEs and remote office use cases Continue Reading

Why did British Airways’ datacentre crash?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, after an IT outage at British Airways left passengers stranded at airports, we examine the possible causes and ask what BA’s official explanation really means. We analyse the challenges for digital government now the UK election is over. And we hear how the charity Barnardo’s is leading an initiative for a data platform to improve children’s social care services. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Tips for buying hyper-converged systems

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine the growing market for hyper-converged infrastructure - combining processing, storage and networking into an integrated design - and assess the options available to IT leaders. We ask mature users of the cloud what’s next for their migration to off-premise systems. And we analyse how retail supply chains are developing to keep up with online and mobile shopping trends. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

NVMe flash storage: What are the deployment options?

NVMe offers to unleash performance potential of flash storage that is held back by spinning disk-era SAS and SATA protocols. We run through the key NVMe deployment options Continue Reading

NetApp to launch SolidFire-based HCI hyper-converged appliances

NetApp HCI will comprise hyper-converged infrastructure appliances based on SolidFire flash storage with QoS and compute from an unnamed supplier later in 2017 Continue Reading

Racetrack Memory products in five years, says IBM fellow

Millennium Prize winner Stuart Parkin says flash and 2D methods of storage are fatally limited – Racetrack Memory offers 100x the capacity without flash’s wear issues Continue Reading

Cloud data portability: Obstacles to it and how to achieve it

Cloud providers are very keen to get your data into their systems but sometimes it can be difficult or costly to move it elsewhere. We look at solutions to cloud portability Continue Reading

Dell EMC all-flash XtremIO X2 gains I/O boost via software upgrade

Dell EMC’s XtremIO X2 all-flash arrays got a performance jump from ungraded hardware, but the real performance boost comes from changes to the way I/O is dealt with Continue Reading

Toxic data: What it is and how to find it and deal with it

In this podcast, Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, looks at the management of legacy data and how to find and deal with toxic data that could expose your organisation to compliance breaches Continue Reading

Nexsan Unity goes all-flash but leaves NVMe on the back-burner

Nexsan Unity arrays already have SAN, NAS and file sync and share, and now add all-flash and policy-based archiving, but there’s no NVMe on the roadmap for now Continue Reading

Understanding analytics and storage performance

Analytics workloads place specific demands on storage. We take a look at the workload profiles of analytics use cases and the storage platforms available to support them Continue Reading

3D XPoint et al to force architecture and software changes

New solid state technologies such as 3D XPoint will be a second tier of memory, bringing change to hardware architectures and software to be rewritten, says SNIA solid state group chair Continue Reading

Backup testing: What to test, when to test, how often to test

We run the rule over what’s involved in backup testing in virtual and physical server environments, how often you should test and the key pitfalls to avoid Continue Reading

Pivot3 launches Acuity hyper-converged with NVMe flash and QoS

Acuity operating environment merges features inherited from NexGen acquisition and adds NVMe Accelerator nodes with flash as cache in front of main storage Continue Reading

Cancer researcher gets Nodeum LTFS tape NAS

Belgium-based OncoDNA replaces IBM tape library with flash-powered Nodeum LTFS to provide file access to backup and archive tapes at approaching nearline timescales Continue Reading

StorageOS goes to market with persistent Docker container storage

StorageOS is now available on the Docker marketplace with software product that manages stateful storage for containers, with advanced storage features such as data protection and encryption Continue Reading

Quantum upgrades to StorNext 6 with replication and app QoS

Quantum StorNext scale-out file system adds to cloud capability with granular replication that can operate one-to-one, one-to-many, plus provide storage QoS per application Continue Reading

How to tune storage performance for different workloads

We run the rule over what’s needed to get the best storage performance for databases, virtual servers and desktops, web and email servers and analytics use cases Continue Reading

Pure Storage launches FlashArray//X with NVMe drives

FlashArray//X has NVMe drives but end-to-end storage-to-host NVMe connectivity will have to wait for an NVMe-over-fabrics (NVMf) version planned for release later this year Continue Reading

Analytics, internet of things to drive data volumes to 163ZB by 2025

IDC study predicts consumers as creators of data will decline as the enterprise, analytics and “life critical” scenarios push total volumes to a tenfold increase by 2025 Continue Reading

Inside Diamond Light Source, the UK's synchrotron facility

Computer Weekly recently visited the particle accelerator facility, to see how cutting edge software and hardware engineering is supporting pioneering science Continue Reading

Red Hat adds Gluster metadata cache and container deployment

Scale out NAS parallel file system speeds operations with client-side caching, and allows container deployment and faster self-healing volumes Continue Reading

Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?

Making a backup is only the start of the process. You must be sure you can restore, that backups contain what you need, and that they will work with the applications that need them Continue Reading

Storage performance 101: Server, array and fabric/network basics

We look at the key performance attributes of storage media in use today, and the choices and basic tuning steps you can take to get the most from your storage Continue Reading

HPE buys Nimble Storage to fill an all-flash and hybrid gap

Hardware giant buys Nimble Storage for $1.2bn and plugs a gap below its high-end flash retro-fitted 3PAR arrays with ground-up solid state-based hardware Continue Reading

Nodeum to add S3 connectivity to LTFS-powered tape archive

Belgium-based Linux-plus-LTFS startup adds S3 capability to allow customers to add cloud as a tier and data portability between on and off-premises archiving Continue Reading

Storage 101: Object storage vs block vs file

We recap the key attributes of file and block storage access and the pros and cons of object storage, a method that offers key benefits but also drawbacks compared with SAN and NAS Continue Reading

CW ASEAN: On-premise vs cloud creates storage balancing act

Storage is gradually moving to the cloud in ASEAN. According to Computer Weekly/TechTarget’s annual IT Priorities research, 40% of ASEAN-based IT decision makers are planning a cloud storage initiative in 2017 and 40% are planning a cloud backup initiative. To answer this growing demand for cloud storage, many new cloud players are setting up datacenters in the region. Southeast Asia’s cloud market is already teeming with all the big players – AWS, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Oracle – and a host of other providers of datacenter services and managed IT services, so how will newcomers, including Alibaba Cloud and Google, affect the cloud storage market? And what does this mean for the on-premise storage market? We speak to storage experts, analysts and suppliers to bring you an exclusive analysis of the fast-evolving storage market in the Southeast Asian region. Continue Reading

Private cloud: Orchestration, storage and containers

We look at the key requirements and components of private cloud – including the use of container platforms – and the impact of private cloud on storage in the datacentre Continue Reading

Storage 101: Queue depth, NVMe and the array controller

We look at queue depth and fan-out and fan-in ratios. With NVMe they could become a thing of the past, but for now there’s still a bottleneck at the storage array controller Continue Reading