SAN, NAS, solid state, RAID
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Podcast
25 Apr 2024
Podcast: How to prepare your data for digital transformation
We talk to Chris Gorton, EMEA managing director at Syniti, about how to prepare data for digital transformation Continue Reading
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News
24 Apr 2024
AI firm saves a million in shift to Pure FlashBlade shared storage
AI consultancy Crater Labs spent vast amounts of time managing server-attached drives to ensure GPUs were saturated. A shift to all-flash Pure Storage slashed that to almost zero Continue Reading
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News
21 Dec 2021
Top 10 cloud storage, DR and datacentre storage stories of 2021
Key articles from 2021 that demonstrate the growing importance of cloud storage and disaster recovery, but also the snags that lead to cloud repatriation and difficulties restoring from the cloud Continue Reading
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News
14 Dec 2021
IT priorities 2022: Ransomware and cloud drive storage and backup
The pandemic and the move to the cloud has driven cloud storage as a key priority Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Dec 2021
Edge storage: Four key points
Edge storage is driven by rapidly emerging edge computing and data gathering use cases. We look at why it makes sense to store data at the edge and the key challenges involved Continue Reading
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News
08 Dec 2021
Pure adds flagship FlashArray//XL with doubled throughput
High-end enterprise-targeted FlashArray//XL leverages latest Intel Ice Lake CPU, PCIe 4.0 and distributes SLC flash across drive modules to double throughput over existing arrays Continue Reading
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07 Dec 2021
DNA storage promises 10 million times storage capacity boost
A datacentre that fits in the palm of your hand? However, right now, DNA storage is an expensive chemical process that researchers are trying to make a practical proposal Continue Reading
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News
30 Nov 2021
UK MSP set to use Nebulon cloud-defined storage IaaS
UK service provider Inca to use “cloud-defined storage” to support managed service provider offer in move which shunned hyper-converged infrastructure because of cited costly overheads Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Nov 2021
Cloud repatriation: Five reasons to repatriate data from cloud
We look at key drivers of cloud repatriation, including cost, compliance, issues around latency and data gravity, reversing poorly planned moves to the cloud, and supplier failure Continue Reading
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News
15 Nov 2021
Video firm gets Qumulo scale-out NAS and super-fine metrics
Cognacq-Jay Image shunned Scality and Isilon to get Qumulo scale-out NAS for extremely elastic video workloads and built fine-grained metrics to troubleshoot complex processes Continue Reading
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News
10 Nov 2021
Vast Data: Big shifts promised for an AI future
Purveyor of Universal Storage says AI and GPU-based compute will dominate, and is set to benefit with its (relatively) cheap, deep and quick QLC-plus-Optane offer Continue Reading
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News
07 Nov 2021
Belfast City Airport: Most apps in the cloud by 2031
George Best Belfast City Airport has already achieved 50/50 cloud and on-premise working, with 80% of workloads expected to be cloud-based in the next decade. We look at what hybrid cloud means in practice Continue Reading
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News
02 Nov 2021
iXsystems entry-level NAS goes hyper-converged with TrueNAS Scale
iXsystems TrueNAS can be a fraction of the cost of competitors and with a revamped operating system it can be built into clusters that can run virtual machines and containers Continue Reading
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News
01 Nov 2021
No cloud storage for Belfast City Airport in Nutanix hyper-converged switch
George Best Belfast City Airport ditches ageing Dell iSCSI SAN for Nutanix HCI for half the price of nearest contender, and gets DR site into the bargain. Cloud storage was a no-go for cost reasons Continue Reading
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Feature
29 Oct 2021
Five ways the hyper-converged infrastructure market is changing
We look at changes in the hyper-converged infrastructure market as suppliers go cool, go soft, disaggregate HCI nodes, provide as-a-service options and look to containers Continue Reading
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News
21 Oct 2021
NetApp Insight frames moves to public cloud and cloud native
Storage player highlights partnerships with cloud hyperscalers and development of Spot portfolio aimed at cloud-native applications, DevOps, FinOps and SecOps Continue Reading
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News
20 Oct 2021
Vast boosts QLC flash offer with ransomware-proof snapshots
Vast majors on QLC flash bulk storage with 3D Xpoint cache to smooth out traffic into sequential flows Continue Reading
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News
20 Oct 2021
Spectra Logic unveils Vail hybrid cloud storage virtualisation
Vail provides single pool of storage overlay to on-premise flash, disk and tape, plus cloud via object storage interface with Posix-compliance promised in future releases Continue Reading
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News
19 Oct 2021
Want to sidestep public cloud? AuriStor offers global file storage
Built to scale hugely, and built for high performance and security, Auristor offers NAS-like Posix-compatible storage to customers that want to avoid public cloud Continue Reading
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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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News
12 Oct 2021
NetApp adds CloudCheckr to Spot portfolio
CloudCheckr brings multi-cloud audit capabilities as well as visibility of security and governance in an acquisition that adds to its cloud price optimisation in the Spot portfolio 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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News
28 Sep 2021
Pure launches Fusion cloud control layer for storage
Pure Fusion is a storage control plane across cloud and datacentre. Portworx Data Services also launches to provide database management for container storage platform Continue Reading
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News
27 Sep 2021
GCP gets triple-redundant NAS and built-in Kubernetes backup
Google Filestore Enterprise will provide synchronous replication across three zones, while Backup for Google Kubernetes Engine brings built-in container cluster data protection Continue Reading
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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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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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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
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
03 Aug 2021
New ransomware gang spins out of DarkSide
The emergence of a ransomware gang known as BlackMatter raises questions that it could be a re-brand of REvil or DarkSide Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Jul 2021
DNA storage promises 10 million times storage capacity boost
A datacentre that fits in the palm of your hand? However, right now, DNA storage is an expensive chemical process that researchers are trying to make a practical proposal Continue Reading
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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
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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E-Zine
29 Jun 2021
Is the UK government planning to rewrite GDPR?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, a government taskforce on post-Brexit regulations has recommended changes to GDPR in the UK – we examine the implications. The NHS has launched a new data strategy - we look at what it means for your medical records. And we ask how to avoid the performance problems that affect private cloud. Read the issue now. 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
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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E-Zine
08 Jun 2021
The jobseekers turning to cyber crime in the pandemic
In this week’s Computer Weekly, security researchers say people left unemployed by the pandemic are turning to cyber crime – we find out why. We examine the confluence of distributed cloud and edge computing technologies. And controversial uses of facial recognition technology come under further scrutiny. Read the issue now. 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
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
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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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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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
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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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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Tip
12 Apr 2021
8 best practices for SAN deployment within SMBs
SMBs face a number of challenges when planning and performing a SAN implementation. Get out in front of an often intricate process with these best practices. 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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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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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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Tip
16 Mar 2021
7 signs a small business should shift from NAS to SAN
Take a deep dive into seven reasons, including performance issues and scalability demands, an SMB would want to ditch NAS in favor of entry-level SAN. 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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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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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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Tip
23 Feb 2021
Compare entry-level SAN arrays for the SMB market
Performance, capacity and data protection features are a few of the many factors SMB organizations should consider in their comparisons of entry-level SANs. Continue Reading
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News
17 Feb 2021
IXsystems: TrueNAS gets hyper-convergence
TrueNAS has added hyper-converged functionality to NAS and aims at the edge use cases left behind in the rush to the cloud Continue Reading
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News
17 Feb 2021
Executive interview: Tapping APAC’s storage potential
Lenovo’s head of storage in Asia-Pacific singles out the region’s market opportunities and predicts that the healthcare sector will go full-fledged with flash storage in the next year 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
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
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
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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News
11 Jan 2021
Malaysia’s storage market dips amid uncertainty
Malaysia’s enterprise storage market declined 9.2% in 2020, but recovery is on the cards this year as business confidence improves 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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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
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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News
24 Nov 2020
Pure adds block, Azure and convergence to as-a-service offerings
Pure customers can get its storage on-premise, in colocation or the cloud, and now it has added FlashArray C// block capacity and Flash Stack converged infrastructure to the catalogue Continue Reading
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Tip
10 Nov 2020
RAID vs. backup: Learn the differences and benefits of both
In a battle of RAID vs. backup, both could win. While RAID offers disk failure protection, it falls short in other areas where backup comes in handy. 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
IT Priorities 2020: Covid-19 consolidates storage push to cloud
The emphasis on home and remote working has been felt in storage and backup as in all areas of IT, with continued evolution towards the cloud and as-a-service storage and backup 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
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News
05 Nov 2020
Slot of the Antarctic: Tape the best option for polar survey backup
Tape deemed the best medium for backup on board the Antarctic research vessel RRS Sir David Attenborough, with Quantum’s Scalar i3 chosen in a fully redundant deployment Continue Reading
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News
28 Oct 2020
NetApp boosts NVMe, QLC and container hybrid cloud offer
Storage giant NetApp unveils new AFF, FAS and E-series arrays with NVMe and QLC flash capability, plus object storage in Ontap and Spot cloud container resource management in Cloud Manager Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Oct 2020
Unified file and object storage: The best of both worlds?
Unified file and object storage tackles growing volumes of unstructured data in a way that’s compatible with traditional and cloud-era applications, and friendlier to analytics Continue Reading
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News
07 Oct 2020
Carhartt shifts old data to the cloud with Komprise
US-based workwear manufacturer cuts storage costs from $1 to $0.25 per gigabyte as it deploys data management software and shifts old files to Microsoft Azure Blob and Cold storage Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Oct 2020
NVMe-over Fabrics: How NVMe-oF revolutionises shared storage
NVMe brought super-fast flash storage to the datacentre, but it needs NVMe-oF to allow it to bring the benefits of rapid access and low latency to SAN and NAS shared storage Continue Reading
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Feature
28 Sep 2020
Erasure coding vs RAID: Data protection in the cloud era
Erasure coding has come to prominence with its use in object storage and, by extension, in the cloud. We run the rule over its pros and cons vs RAID data protection Continue Reading
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News
28 Sep 2020
Swiss ISP opts for Scality object storage for backup service
Move to object storage allows Lake Solutions to cut customer backup costs by 66% while providing new S3-based bucket storage for customers based on Scality on HPE Continue Reading
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News
21 Sep 2020
Nutanix boosts storage performance by 50% with BlockStore
Hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix boosts access to NVMe and potentially Optane storage with BlockStore, which avoids the need to access the deepest layers of the OS Continue Reading