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
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
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Feature
19 Jan 2021
Five key benefits of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud file storage
The big three offer cloud file storage that can ease hybrid cloud operations, with consistency between cloud and on-premise as well as greater enterprise application compatibility Continue Reading
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News
14 Jan 2021
Qualcomm announces Nuvia acquisition plan
Mobile chip giant makes strategic acquisition to augment technology roadmap to redefine compute performance for next-generation devices Continue Reading
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News
14 Jan 2021
VVOLs and Pure win VM storage beauty parade for French chain
VMware Virtual Volumes and a move from NetApp to Pure Storage saw cosmetics retailer Beauty Success make performance gains and eliminate bottlenecks in ordering and logistics Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Jan 2021
Cloud DR from the Big Three: Who’s best at what?
We look at cloud disaster recovery from AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google to see which is best for provision of turnkey solutions, breadth of portfolio and modular building blocks Continue Reading
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Feature
12 Jan 2021
Data Dynamics aims at single view of unstructured data
Data volume is ballooning, and storage is becoming more disparate, which makes the need for a single platform to manage storage and compliance a key requirement for organisations Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Jan 2021
Five key points about cloud vs in-house disaster recovery
The cloud is well suited as a disaster recovery failover option. The key questions are about what you should keep on-site and what goes to the cloud. We look at five key points to consider Continue Reading
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News
23 Dec 2020
Top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020
Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020 Continue Reading
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Feature
14 Dec 2020
Five hyper-converged infrastructure use cases to watch
We look at workloads ripe for hyper-converged infrastructure deployment. These include virtual servers and desktops, SMEs/remote offices, Kubernetes, and analytics and machine learning Continue Reading
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News
09 Dec 2020
HPE offers on-demand high-performance computing managed service via GreenLake
HPE claims its preconfigured HPC service can speed up the deployment of high-performance computing projects and reduce capital expenditure Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Dec 2020
Paris post-product studio uses Atempo Miria for live restores
France-based À La Plage Studio decided on tape as a medium to store its visual production work, with Atempo ADA/Miria as a means to access and restore data to work on Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Dec 2020
RAID, flash and erasure coding: What works best with solid state?
We look at RAID and flash to highlight key choices when it comes to drive data protection. What RAID levels work best with solid state and when is erasure coding a good choice? Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Dec 2020
A safe bet: How Covid-19 is fuelling investor interest in the datacentre industry
With demand for cloud and colocation capacity soaring on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic, datacentres are looking like an increasingly attractive bet for the investor community. Computer Weekly finds out why Continue Reading
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Feature
26 Nov 2020
IP surveillance: The storage it needs, on-premise and in the cloud
Surveillance is changing, with the evolution from simple streams of sequential images to the application of AI to video, as well as an increasing move to use of the cloud Continue Reading
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Feature
25 Nov 2020
Brain researchers get NVMe-over-RoCE for super-fast HPC storage
French neurological researchers deploy Western Digital OpenFlex NVMe array for super-fast HPC storage with Ethernet-based NVMe-over-Fabrics connectivity across several floors Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Nov 2020
Need to know: Five key things about backup testing
We look at five key things to consider when it comes to backup testing – what to test, how often, making sure backups work, whether recovery is effective and ensuring processes are consistent Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Nov 2020
Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t
We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with Continue Reading
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News
10 Nov 2020
Canada ad firm subtracts 44U with HPE and Ctera hyper-converged
Glenn Davis Group slashed its hardware estate from 48U of rack space to 4U when it ditched its SAN and tape legacy kit for flash-based Ctera X Series and cloud backup Continue Reading
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News
09 Nov 2020
Quantum’s ATFS aims to classify and manage unstructured data
Quantum triumvirate now comprises ATFS for file system classification and management, StorNext for high performance with large files and ActiveScale object storage as a bulk store Continue Reading
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Feature
09 Nov 2020
Spinning disk hard drives: Good value for many use cases
When it comes to storage media, all talk is of flash, but there are plenty of use cases where – far less costly – spinning disk can do a perfectly adequate job in the enterprise Continue Reading