Data centre hardware
Data centre strategy is an increasingly important focus for IT managers, as enterprises look to cut costs and improve energy efficiency. We examine key data centre hardware trends such as virtualisation, consolidation and systems management to help identify the products that are right for your needs.
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News
20 Oct 2023
Belgian researchers raise speed limit in European datacentres
Researchers have developed a prototype of an optical receiver that will help datacentres process data at a much higher rate Continue Reading
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E-Zine
09 Jun 2022
CW Europe: Russia escalates cyber war on Ukraine
Microsoft has given details of cyber attacks on Ukrainian civilian communications, nuclear safety authorities, and the exploitation of the destruction of Mariupol in a phishing campaign. Also read about a report on the European Artificial Intelligence Act that suggests a limited ban on predictive policing systems. Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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E-Zine
28 Sep 2021
Chancellor Rishi Sunak talks tech
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we talk to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about his plans to support innovation and growth in the UK tech sector. Composable IT is the latest trend in building software to support business change. And Halfords built its own service management software – and now is selling it to other retailers. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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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
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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
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E-Zine
14 Sep 2021
Is 3D printing about to hit the mainstream?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we find out about the emerging consumer services using 3D printing and ask if the technology is about to go mainstream. Our latest buyer’s guide looks at the importance of sustainable datacentres. And we analyse the risks of increasing contactless card spending limits and whether tech could help. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Blog Post
11 Aug 2021
The critical importance and utility of the modern mainframe
IT resilience and security is essential to today's businesses, so dependent are they on their IT systems. For some of those who have been around this industry more than a decade or two, this raises ... Continue Reading
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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
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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
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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
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News
20 Jul 2021
Purported Intel-GlobalFoundries deal targets chip shortage
Hoping to build its chip production to better compete with TSCM and Samsung, Intel is rumored to be making a bid to acquire GlobalFoundries for $30 billion, among other moves. Continue Reading
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Feature
19 Jul 2021
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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Feature
16 Jul 2021
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
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News
07 Jul 2021
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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Feature
07 Jul 2021
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
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News
07 Jul 2021
Forrester finds companies confounded by data deluge
A Dell-commissioned study by analyst firm Forrester finds organisations overwhelmed by mounds of data Continue Reading
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News
06 Jul 2021
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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News
25 Jun 2021
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
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News
24 Jun 2021
Vodafone confirms European datacentres will be powered by 100% green energy by July 2021
Telco giant claims it is on course to hit an important milestone in its latest sustainability push, with its entire European operations set to be 100% renewably powered by 1 July Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Jun 2021
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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News
22 Jun 2021
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
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News
21 Jun 2021
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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News
18 Jun 2021
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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Feature
16 Jun 2021
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
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Feature
10 Jun 2021
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
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E-Zine
10 Jun 2021
CW Europe: Amsterdam reins back datacentre developments over environmental concern
The construction of datacentres in the Netherlands’ Amsterdam region has accelerated at such a pace that their demands for electricity are causing concern, prompting city authorities and datacentre operators to open a dialogue about sustainable datacentre industry expansion. Also in this issue, find out the state of play in the adoption of open banking across Europe. Continue Reading
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News
09 Jun 2021
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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News
02 Jun 2021
Oracle debuts low-cost Arm compute instances
Oracle is offering Arm instances powered by Ampere’s Altra processors at one cent per core hour as enterprises look to deploy more Arm-based workloads Continue Reading
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News
02 Jun 2021
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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News
02 Jun 2021
HPE latest quarterly filing hints at ProLiant shift
Installed base of ProLiant server customers on a path to consumption-based, as-a-service subscription for hardware modernisation Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Jun 2021
Gartner: How to turn old datacentres into critical IT assets
IT infrastructure and operations leaders are increasingly focusing on new ideas and technologies alongside ways to deliver business value Continue Reading
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News
01 Jun 2021
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
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News
25 May 2021
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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News
25 May 2021
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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Feature
25 May 2021
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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Feature
24 May 2021
How Bureau Veritas migrated 85% of its applications to the AWS cloud
In six years, France-based services giant BV has migrated 115 applications to the AWS cloud, mostly using in-house expertise. We talk to the company’s IT director Continue Reading
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Feature
20 May 2021
What digital transformation means for data storage
We survey the key planks of digital transformation and look at the storage technologies emerging to support it, such as NVMe and QLC flash, hyper-converged infrastructure and cloud storage Continue Reading
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Feature
17 May 2021
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
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News
13 May 2021
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
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Feature
11 May 2021
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
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News
04 May 2021
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
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News
29 Apr 2021
Intel seeks broader platform play with Ice Lake
Company is counting on performance improvements from its third-generation Xeon ‘Ice Lake’ chip and its broader platform strategy to regain its mojo in the market Continue Reading
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Feature
28 Apr 2021
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
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News
27 Apr 2021
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
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News
23 Apr 2021
Intel quarterly results reveal tactics to address ARM in the datacentre
The chipmaker aims to make use of standard chip libraries and offer its customers different ways to package and optimise Intel silicon Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Apr 2021
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
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News
22 Apr 2021
Australia and India team up on critical technology
The first three projects under a joint research grant programme will focus on developing ethical and regulatory frameworks for quantum computing, AI and 5G Continue Reading
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News
21 Apr 2021
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
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E-Zine
15 Apr 2021
CW Middle East: Qatari regulator launches platform to help combat money laundering
The Qatar Financial Markets Authority is using a digital platform to enable financial services professionals to assess their knowledge of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism. Also in this issue, read how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the IT spending patterns among enterprises in Saudi Arabia. Continue Reading
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Feature
14 Apr 2021
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
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News
14 Apr 2021
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
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News
12 Apr 2021
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
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Feature
06 Apr 2021
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
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Feature
06 Apr 2021
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
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News
05 Apr 2021
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
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News
01 Apr 2021
Project Monterey returns to haunt IBM and Red Hat
A tech initiative from the late 1990s has become IBM’s nemesis, as the owner of UnixWare and OpenServer file a copyright complaint Continue Reading
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News
31 Mar 2021
Australian firms slow to wean off the mainframe
Australian companies tend to have a wait-and-see mindset that is slowing down mainframe modernisation initiatives, says Accenture expert Continue Reading
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Feature
30 Mar 2021
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
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News
29 Mar 2021
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
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Feature
29 Mar 2021
Preparing for enterprise-class containerisation
As more workloads are deployed in containers, IT teams will need to assess how to manage container sprawl, reduce cloud bills and support databases Continue Reading
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Feature
26 Mar 2021
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
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Feature
25 Mar 2021
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
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News
24 Mar 2021
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
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Feature
22 Mar 2021
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
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News
19 Mar 2021
AWS rolls out clean energy initiative in Singapore
62MW solar project expected to generate 80,000MWh of clean energy a year, enough to power more than 10,000 homes Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2021
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
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Feature
12 Mar 2021
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
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Opinion
11 Mar 2021
Why the London Data Charter could be a foundation stone in the city’s recovery
London First’s director of connectivity and competitiveness, David Lutton, explains why data is at the core of the capital’s recovery plan Continue Reading
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News
11 Mar 2021
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
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Feature
04 Mar 2021
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
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News
03 Mar 2021
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
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News
03 Mar 2021
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
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News
03 Mar 2021
IBM eyes hybrid cloud opportunity in ASEAN
The hybrid cloud message is resonating among Southeast Asian enterprises that are looking to modernise their applications and systems, says IBM’s general manager for the region Continue Reading
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Blog Post
25 Feb 2021
Has the data centre of the future already arrived?
Predicting the future is full of potential pitfalls, but analysts still insist on trying to do it, even when a study of the evidence illustrates how wild some forecasts have proven to be. But back ... Continue Reading
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News
24 Feb 2021
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
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News
24 Feb 2021
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
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21 Feb 2021
HPE on the ISS: In space, no one can hear your CPU fans
In The Martian, Matt Damon is stranded on Mars, and his comms link is so slow that it takes almost an hour to have a conversation. Now HPE is going into orbit Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Feb 2021
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
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Blog Post
17 Feb 2021
The consequence of IT failure on a space mission
If everything goes to plan, an HPE edge server, Spaceborne Computer-2, will soon be running on the International Space Station, proving that commodity x86 hardware can be used to run mission ... Continue Reading
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News
16 Feb 2021
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
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News
15 Feb 2021
BP joins IBM Quantum Network to support emission goals
Quantum computing promises unimaginable computing power, which can be applied to helping tackle climate change Continue Reading
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News
15 Feb 2021
ENIAC anniversary: What 75 years of computer technology have delivered
The ENIAC was a computer built for the US Army to calculate missile trajectories during the Second World War, but it was finally delivered in February 1946 Continue Reading
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News
11 Feb 2021
HPE on the ISS: In space, no one can hear your CPU fans
In The Martian, Matt Damon is stranded on Mars, and his comms link is so slow that it takes almost an hour to have a conversation. Now HPE is going into orbit Continue Reading
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News
09 Feb 2021
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
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Feature
04 Feb 2021
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
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News
01 Feb 2021
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
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Feature
28 Jan 2021
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
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Blog Post
28 Jan 2021
10 years on, and HPC is taken for granted
In recent weeks we’ve looked back at several areas of IT. In many, we concluded that while today may look technically very different from yesterday, that’s just superficial: the underlying ... Continue Reading
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News
28 Jan 2021
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
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News
26 Jan 2021
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
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News
22 Jan 2021
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
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News
20 Jan 2021
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