Storage management and strategy

Scale-up vs scale-out: Horizontal vs vertical scaling for storage

We look at the differences between scale-up and scale-out in storage – or horizontal vs vertical scaling – and the key ways it can be carried out on-prem and in the cloud Continue Reading

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

Top 10 ransomware and backup stories of 2021

Key articles from 2021 that highlight the link between ransomware and snapshots and backup and their role in repelling attacks, plus effects of the pandemic on backup and recovery Continue Reading

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

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

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

Holographic data storage: Next big thing or bust?

The latest work in holographic storage development approaches its uses in a different way. Take a deep dive into the possibilities and potential of this 3D storage. Continue Reading

Cloud storage compliance pitfalls: Post-pandemic and post-Brexit

We look at the key areas of cloud storage compliance that can trip you up, with shared responsibility with cloud providers and data residency among the most important Continue Reading

Lenovo taps into 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

CW APAC: Expert guide to storage management

The storage landscape is evolving at pace. In this handbook, focused on storage management in the Asia-Pacific region, Computer Weekly looks at how firms are rising to the storage challenge, Lenovo’s viewpoint on the region’s market opportunities, how the Malaysian Highway Authority made itself more cyber secure and the advantages of Nexustorage’s latest offering Continue Reading

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

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

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

Immutable snapshots aim to neutralise ransomware

Snapshots – usually immutable anyway – get functionality to stop ransomware intruders moving or deleting snapshots, so customers know they have clean copies of data to restore from Continue Reading

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

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

Understand your storage infrastructure management

Emerging technology, such as AI and software-based storage management systems, have simplified how IT manages its infrastructure. Explore the many components of modern management. Continue Reading

Cohesity beefs up ransomware and disaster recovery offer

Disaster Recovery as-a-service, Data Govern and project Fort Knox available or in development as data protection supplier augments its portfolio with ransomware firmly in mind Continue Reading

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

Verizon opens shop for private mobile edge compute with AWS Outposts

Cloud and communications giants make generally available private mobile edge compute offering to enterprise customers, bringing compute and storage services to the edge of the network on the customer premises Continue Reading

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

APAC expert guide to storage management

In this expert guide to storage management in Asia-Pacific, we unpack the developments shaping storage management and key strategies to extract business value from data Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CW Nordics: Klarna alumni energise Stockholm’s startup scene

Klarna, established in 2005, has not only grown into a well-known Swedish fintech brand, but former staff have gone on to create some of the Nordic region's new startup ventures that are currently riding a wave of growth. Find out more about the so-called ‘Klarna academy’. Also read in this issue why growing tech companies in Stockholm say the city's startup environment needs to diversify more. Continue Reading

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

CW APAC: Trend Watch on datacentre operations

In this handbook, focused on datacentre operations in the Asia-Pacific region, Computer Weekly looks at the most innovative methods being adopted to improve datacentre efficiency. Continue Reading

How to choose between SIEM and SOAR

In this week’s Computer Weekly, our buyer’s guide examines the use of SIEM and SOAR to improve IT security, and asks which you should use, and when? We look at what you need to know about NVMe over Fabrics, the emerging storage networking technology. And we find out how Oracle customers are introducing its Fusion Cloud suite. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Top 10 data storage issues and how to overcome them

Don't overlook or ignore these 10 data storage issues -- including ones related to staff, security and cost -- as they could disrupt operations without the proper planning. Continue Reading

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

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

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

Five ways to ensure remote working security and compliance

A mix of on-site and remote working has become a fact of life for many organisations. We look at five key things you should consider to ensure compliance and security Continue Reading

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

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

Secureworks sets up in EU datacentre for XDR services

New datacentre location helps Secureworks’ customers meet EU data residency requirements Continue Reading

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

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

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

Lakehouse concept aims to merge data lake and data warehouse

Data lakes are big, amorphous and difficult to access, while data warehouses are costly and aimed at structured data. The data lakehouse aims at analytics in an age of unstructured data Continue Reading

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

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

CW APAC: Career guide to cloud computing

In this handbook, Computer Weekly looks at the skills required for cloud professionals to succeed in an evolving industry, the risk to jobs posed by automation and the disciplines being taught at Future Tech Academy Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

Loss of 150,000 police records made worse by management failures

The loss of 150,000 records from a number of national policing systems was caused by a human coding error, but made worse by process and management failures Continue Reading

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

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

Making data an asset, not a threat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What to expect from 2021's data storage conference lineup

In the coming months, data storage conferences are plentiful. This roundup details dates, sessions and topic areas, from event hosts such as SNIA, Dell and Pure Storage. Continue Reading

The ticking timebomb of IR35

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we reveal that IT contractors are seeking a multimillion-pound payout after confusion over the forthcoming IR35 tax reforms. Many firms are building data lakes to improve their analytics – we examine the storage implications. And we talk to the CIO at the London School of Economics. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Top five threats to compliance during the pandemic

We survey the top five pandemic compliance threats – remote working, Covid tracking, criminal exploits, compliance measures slipping, and heightened enforcement to come Continue Reading

Met Police chooses Capgemini as strategic IT infrastructure services provider

Capgemini has a history of providing the force with day-to-day technology services, and will now deliver its infrastructure services under the Pegasus programme Continue Reading

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

Veritas looks beyond NetBackup for growth in ASEAN

Veritas has seen increased demand for its availability tools as it looks to address backup and recovery requirements from cloud, database and VMware workloads Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

APAC buyer’s guide to data management

In this buyer’s guide, we look at the challenges surrounding why enterprises are struggling to deal with data, the use of cloud data management platforms, artificial intelligence, and recommend some best practices Continue Reading

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

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

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

Can AI ever match the power of the brain?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, artificial intelligence is still no match for the brain – we talk to Intel’s neuromorphic computing lab to see how researchers are trying to address that. Our buyer’s guide examines identity and access management. And we find out why datacentres are becoming a new target for financial investors. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

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

Robin.io aims its Kubernetes storage at databases and big data

Cloud-native storage runs in Kubernetes and pools storage media to present it to application persistent storage needs, including snapshots and backup on top Continue Reading