Storage management and strategy

Smartbox move to Nutanix HCI a catalyst for IT team revamp

Gift supplier reorganises IT team structures as Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure helps sweep away legacy architecture for hybrid cloud and containerised operations Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

What’s the problem with NAS backup?

NAS backup has always been problematic, but what exactly are the issues with NDMP, and what are backup suppliers doing to make a decades-old storage staple easier to protect? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Computational storage: What is it and what are its key use cases?

Computational storage brings the CPU to the storage and so boosts system performance by tackling processing tasks, such as near the edge or in AI/machine learning workloads Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Container storage 101: What is CSI and how does it work?

We look at the container storage interface, which provides an interface to persistent storage in the products of storage array makers, and how it relates to Kubernetes Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Molotov.tv streams 24/7 with Dell EMC and Scality object storage

France-based Molotov.tv has offered streaming TV services on digital platforms since 2016, based on Dell EMC servers with GPU acceleration and Scality Ring object storage Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Podcast: ‘The human element’ in compliance at RSA 2020

We review RSA 2020 and discuss the human element in compliance, plus network and data management, trust, Covid-19 and its implications for organisations, and GDPR and CCPA Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cache vs tier: What’s the difference between cache and storage?

We look at the key distinctions between cache and tiers of storage, and where the line has become blurred with fast flash, 3D Xpoint and storage class memory technologies Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Flash storage tiers: Performance, cost and use cases

We look at performance, cost and potential use cases for the key flash storage types available, such as Nand flash, 3D Xpoint and Intel Optane, plus SAS, SATA and NVMe connectivity Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

IT Priorities 2020: Cloud storage key but SAN/NAS alive and well

In the Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities survey cloud dominates storage spending priorities for 2020, but on-premise technologies such as SAN and NAS are still key to IT Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Kubernetes storage 101: Container storage basics

We look at the basics of creating storage and specifying it for applications in container storage using Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

IBM unifies storage arrays under FlashSystem brand

IBM to bring together all non-mainframe storage arrays as FlashSystem product, with options from entry-level to petabyte-scale with NVMe flash and storage class memory Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

US hotel group ditches datacentre for Nasuni cloud NAS

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts got rid of its datacentre and put everything in the cloud, with Nasuni cloud NAS providing storage from which any user can restore files Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Caribbean island hospital rebuilds after hurricane with DataCore

Hurricane Irma tore the roof off a server room and flooded IT hardware, but that was an opportunity to rebuild redundant IT using DataCore’s SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Podcast: How to boost staff awareness of compliance

Employee awareness of compliance, of the laws and regulations that affect your business, is vital, in some cases even mandatory. We look at the key ways to achieve it Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top four compliance considerations for SMEs

We look at the key data compliance regulations that affect smaller companies – such as GDPR, the Data Protection Act, PCI-DSS and PECR – and some key industry-specific frameworks Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Disaster recovery failover choices: Synchronous mirrors, P2V and the cloud

We survey the key options in disaster recovery: whether to failover to an on-site location or off-site facility. We also look at the cloud as an option in disaster recovery Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Six disaster recovery pitfalls and how to avoid them

We look at some key pitfalls in disaster recovery, such as failing to plan, not testing the plan, not protecting backups, poor communication and neglecting the human element Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Spread of Kubernetes spurs backup and disaster recovery products

Growth of containerised applications brings with it the need to back up and provide disaster recovery. But what do you need to protect, and who provides the products? Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Inside NetApp’s transition into a data management firm

NetApp’s leaders in Asia-Pacific discuss the company’s pivot into data services and its traction in the region Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Do you use cloud storage for these use cases yet?

We look at the use cases most suited to a quick transition to the cloud: backup, archiving, disaster recovery, file storage and cloud bursting – cloud storage’s low-hanging fruit Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Big storage meets cloud in the datacentre 'as-a-service' revolution

Cloud is mainstream but the datacentre’s here to stay. This has resulted in a trend towards as-a-service in the datacentre where big storage array makers and the cloud giants meet Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How container applications are shaping storage management

Persistent storage, backup and recovery were not on the minds of those behind container applications, but that is starting to change Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

$5bn buy-out set to make backup giant Veeam a US company

Veeam’s founders are out as investment fund gets its hands on a pioneer of virtual machine backup. Now it will be a US company and eligible to target US government customers Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

DRaaS decisions: Key choices in disaster recovery as a service

We examine the key decisions when considering DRaaS. Whether to go full self-service, assisted or managed will depend on what you need to protect and your in-house resources Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Five ways that backup has changed since the days of tape

Back in the day, all this was tape, but times have changed, with cloud-to-cloud backup, cloud storage, virtual and physical backup appliances and myriad endpoint hardware Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Scale’s HE150 the first of a big push to small edge HCI hardware

Scale Computing aims to scale to micro-sized hyper-converged with a lightweight operating system it claims its competitors can’t match for edge and remote location deployments Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 storage deployment stories of 2019

Here are ComputerWeekly’s top 10 storage deployment stories for 2019, which see quite a move away from traditional SAN and NAS to hyper-converged, software-defined storage and object storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Top 10 storage stories of 2019

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019, with the latest trends in enterprise storage arrays, hyper-converged, object storage, scale-out NAS, and more Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How to buy hyper-converged infrastructure

Simplicity, high availability, scalability and reduced cost are among the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure. We survey the benefits, pitfalls and the key suppliers Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

NetApp’s Keystone hybrid cloud storage ‘try-before-you-buy’ for on-prem

Keystone on-premise and cloud subscription model will cost more than buying hardware so will be best suited to customers that want to try NetApp on-site before committing to purchase Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

AWS Outposts debuts in Australia

Amazon Web Services rolls out Outposts in Australia, enabling enterprises to run a consistent version of the AWS platform at locations that require low latency Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Survey finds most firms don’t respond to GDPR requests in time

Most organisations do not respond to requests for GDPR data in the one month allowed, while many return incorrect data. The education sector does best, but the public sector lags behind Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Five essential steps to a sound disaster recovery plan

We walk through the key steps to develop a disaster recovery plan – from risk assessment and setting recovery objectives, to the plan itself and a testing regime to keep it fresh Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Australia’s Fenner Dunlop ditches tape backups for cloud

Australian manufacturer of conveyor belts Fenner Dunlop has freed up its IT staff to focus on future projects by moving tape backups to the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Beverley Head

University of Leicester dumps SANs and LUNs for Cloudian object storage

One-to-one mapping between Dell SANs and media servers had passed their sell-by date and caused vulnerabilities for the University of Leicester, which fixed the problems by a move to “stateless” object storage on Cloudian Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

SME disaster recovery made easy with cloud, hybrid and HCI

Disaster recovery is a lot easier for small businesses than it used to be, with use of the cloud, hybrid cloud, physical and virtual appliances, and hyper-converged infrastructure all among the choices on offer Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Datrium boosts VMware protection but won’t add more hypervisors

NVMe flash pioneer turned DR-as-a-service-focused data platform provider Datrium says VMware and Kubernetes have “won the market” and it won’t extend support beyond those two Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Is facial recognition happening too fast?

In this week’s Computer Weekly, as the information commissioner calls on police forces to slow down the introduction of facial recognition, we examine the issues. We look at what the use of DevOps methods means for storage strategy. And we talk to Microsoft’s global cyber security chief. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

DataCore adds file and S3 object storage with vFilO

Software-defined storage specialist DataCore has added file storage and S3 object storage access with vFilO, which lets customers create virtual pools from on-site and remote datastores Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

NVMe-over-TCP brings super-fast flash over standard IP networks

TCP is the latest transport protocol that can be used to connect NVMe flash storage. We explain how NVMe-over-TCP works and the key advantages for datacentre customers Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

The importance of digital accessibility

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we examine what retailers need to do to make their digital channels accessible for disabled people. We look at the rise of alternative desktop productivity tools to Microsoft Office. And our new buyer’s guide covers next-generation programming tools such as no-code/low-code development. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

What is QLC flash and what workloads it is good for?

QLC flash offers low per-gigabyte costs and lots of capacity, but can be limited by endurance and I/O performance. It can be a good disk replacement for several workloads, however Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Scality APIs connect Azure Stack to Ring object storage on-site

Object storage specialist continues its cloud integration journey by adding Microsoft Azure Blob API connectors to allow use of Ring as bulk storage for Azure edge data Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Is NVMe flash the right choice for you?

NVMe flash storage boosts performance for I/O-hungry operations, but how does it work, where can organisations best deploy it, and what are the key uses cases where it can make a difference? Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

How to monitor NetApp quotas for disks with PowerShell

NetApp's PowerShell module provides a fast and easy way to automate and monitor NetApp quotas for disks. Learn how with this step-by-step tutorial. Continue Reading

By

• Dan Franciscus

Key storage choices: Cloud vs tape for archive storage?

Tape still has benefits, such as an ‘air gap’ that can insulate archives from threats to data integrity. But what are the opportunities for cloud in tape’s traditional use cases? Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Total saves £95,000 a year with Nutanix hyper-converged

Gas and electricity supplier struggled with ageing traditional infrastructure, but moved to hyper-converged for projects that include containers and DevOps deployments Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

CW APAC: Expert advice on storage

The creation of ever-increasing volumes of data is posing escalating problems for storage. In this issue of Expert Advice, Computer Weekly looks at how APAC firms are dealing with storage management issues in the cloud age, NVMe flash as a storage choice for artificial intelligence applications, and how to set up containerised storage. Continue Reading

Key differences between cloud storage offerings

Cloud storage offerings are often largely similar. We run through the key areas where they can differ, such as location, range of services and data protection Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

PCI DSS: Credit card data and what to expect from version 4.0

We preview October’s PCI Europe Community Meeting where attendees will discuss credit card payment data, with topics covered likely to include the cloud and point-to-point encryption Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

DevOps and storage: APIs and flexibility key

The details of back-end storage are irrelevant to DevOps engineers, but they need enough of it, when they want it, and the ability to manage it programmatically is key Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

How APAC firms can slay the storage management beast

The data deluge and compliance requirements are shaping how Asia-Pacific firms are approaching storage management issues in the age of cloud. Continue Reading

Data storage: The top five storage deployment pitfalls

Key pitfalls in data storage include silos, under-utilisation, backup and disaster recovery, plus neglect of skills and application requirements. We ask analysts how to avoid them Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Dutch group works on digitising collaborator archives created in aftermath of World War 2

Experiments have been carried out to ascertain the best technology to open up the analogue archives of the Central Archive of Special Justice in the Netherlands Continue Reading

By

• Kim Loohuis

Pure Storage APAC CTO talks up storage trends

Flash-based storage will be around for at least two decades more, while crystal- and DNA-based storage needs a lot more work before becoming mainstream, according to Pure Storage’s CTO for the Asia-Pacific region Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

National Library of Scotland says aye to Scality object storage

National digitised archives move off Hitachi SANs and Qualstar tape, object storage is embraced and a “no backup” strategy put in place with petabyte-scale Scality S3/file deployment Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud provider sweeps away legacy storage for 1PB of Infinidat

Core DataCloud decommissions storage from several vendors to consolidate to 1PB on Infinidat Infinibox, with DRAM and flash to accelerate hot data in front of disk back end Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Storage and DevOps: What is required for agile development?

DevOps brings continuous and agile application. Storage has to fit in and make itself just as responsive to development that does away with the inertia of stifling hierarchies Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

Pure Storage sees stellar growth in APAC

Pure Storage is expanding its footprint in key markets such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, even as it proceeds with caution in China Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Northwestern cuts storage costs in half with Komprise

Komprise’s Deep Analytics helps university classify and migrate research data to cheaper disk and cloud as it cuts storage costs from $1.1m to $680,000 per annum Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Pure Storage outlines growth momentum, bolsters cloud play

Pure Storage CEO talks up the storage supplier’s competitive edge in a largely stagnant market dominated by larger rivals Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Top five cloud storage pitfalls

Cloud storage offers apparent simplicity, but unexpected costs, complexity, data movement and integration challenges can arise. We look at how to avoid common cloud storage pitfalls Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

CW Europe: Dutch authorities call temporary halt to datacentre construction

Two Dutch municipalities are putting all datacentre construction on hold while they put together a strategy to help them control developments. A local alderman said datacentres take up a lot of space and place a large burden on the electricity grid. Also read how France is racing ahead of Germany in making the most of service companies in India, and about Google’s plans for a new datacentre and technology training hub in Finland. Continue Reading

Spectra tilts at HSM with StorCycle storage management software

Spectra Logic unveils newly-developed storage management platform and two-tier file access and object storage with all data visible to all users for restore Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Commvault buys Hedvig in push for global storage player status

Backup player Commvault aims to bring together datacentre and multi-cloud operations with software-defined storage that can unify access to almost any storage medium, anywhere Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

How APAC firms can slay the storage management beast

The data deluge and compliance requirements are shaping how Asia-Pacific firms are approaching storage management issues in the age of cloud Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Virtual Instruments brings automated VM right-sizing in v6.2

Storage and app performance specialist can now change virtual machine compute and network resources according to workload, with increased shift to analytics and proactive monitoring Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

On-premise object storage: Key products and use cases

We run the rule over on-premise object storage, key use cases and suppliers, take a closer look at an organisation that has deployed object storage, and assess cloud compatibility Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

French national research centre insources with Rubrik backup

France’s national research organisation wanted to insource IT back from Atos and built its private cloud on VMware across two locations with Rubrik appliances for backup Continue Reading

By

• Pierre Berlemont

Virtual Instruments to add cloud monitoring with Metricly

Storage monitoring specialist Virtual Instruments buys Metricly to add monitoring of AWS compute CPU, memory and resource utilisation to save customer costs Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

How to deploy NVMe flash storage for artificial intelligence

We run the rule over NVMe flash as a storage choice for AI applications and the key decision points in form factor and hardware specification Continue Reading

By

• Eric Ebert

Storage: How ‘tail latency’ impacts customer-facing applications

Henry He of Virtual Instruments looks at tail latency, the small percentage of storage I/O that could be causing big and costly problems for business applications Continue Reading

By

• Henry He, Virtual Instruments

Hop jumps to Pure Storage to avoid big storage complexity

Air France short-haul and regional brand Hop jumps to Pure Storage after coming up against Dell EMC, NetApp and HPE, which all tried to sell it solutions ill-suited to its needs Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Australia to upgrade supercomputer in HPC boost

The Gadi supercomputer at the Australian National University will run 10 times faster than its predecessor, giving researchers access to high performance computing resources to solve the toughest research problems Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Analytics and GDPR compliance: How to achieve it

Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, looks at technologies such as pseudonymisation that can help organisations stay GDPR-compliant while gaining value from analytics on customer data Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Computer Weekly – 16 July 2019: Reaping the benefits of digital transformation at Defra

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we check out the digital transformation at Defra, and see how the government department is preparing for Brexit. The new technology chief for the NHS explains how he’s going to bring the health service into the digital age. And we examine how to make a success of enterprise social media platforms. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

BA/Marriott GDPR fines: What they were for and how to avoid them

We talk to Mathieu Gorge, CEO of Vigitrust, about the BA and Marriott GDPR fines and what organisations can do to ensure they achieve compliance with GDPR and similar regulations Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Public cloud: A key component in a disaster recovery plan

The key things to consider when creating a disaster recovery plan that uses public cloud: DIY vs DRaaS, native cloud tools vs third party, and how low can you go with RPO and RTO? Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

French baby store modernises backup as Veeam handles 150TB a night

France-based maternity, baby and children’s store Orchestra needed to share IT resources between 700 points of sale across multiple time zones, and backup for 100 applications Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Cloud snapshots and backups: How to protect data in the cloud

You often need more data protection than native cloud services will give. But should you choose backup or snapshots? And what about third-party backup in the cloud? Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Unstructured data compliance: Obstacles and solutions

Stored unstructured data could be a black hole full of unknown risk. We look at the key dangers to compliance in unstructured data and some ways of mitigating the risks Continue Reading

By

• Stephen Pritchard

Mea culpa: Trendy isn’t the same as important

I hate it when you realise that your point of reference has been unduly influenced by what’s currently trending rather than what’s really important. A recent briefing with Jim Liddle of Storage ... Continue Reading

By

• Dale Vile, Freeform Dynamics

CW APAC: Buyer’s guide to NVMe storage

In this handbook, Computer Weekly looks at how NVMe storage is gaining popularity in the race to reduce latency and speed up application performance, and throws light on seven misconceptions around the use of NVMe. Continue Reading

Komprise to add Deep Analytics to unstructured data management

New functionality will allow customers to create and interrogate virtual data set from potentially petabytes of unstructured data across multiple shares and physical storage Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cloud storage and its main cost components

We run through the main items charged for by the big cloud storage providers, such as capacity, storage type, transactions, data egress, networks and data protection Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

APAC buyer’s guide to NVMe storage

NVMe storage is becoming popular among Asia-Pacific enterprises that want to reduce latency and speed up application performance Continue Reading

By

• Aaron Tan, TechTarget

Cloud’s low-hanging fruit: Backup, tiering and data sharing

Native cloud operations can have a steep on-ramp in terms of enterprise IT readiness, but some things are relatively easy to port to a tier of storage in the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Hyper-converged infrastructure vs NAS and SAN shared storage

Can compute, storage and networks in one box be a better option than shared storage? And which organisations can most benefit from it, and for what scale of deployment? Continue Reading

By

• Rene Millman

Cloud storage 101: Specifying for cloud storage

We run through key questions to ask when specifying cloud storage, such as disk type, performance, availability and the possible hidden cost of getting data out of the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Paul Stringfellow, Gardner Systems

Using data science at Sainsbury’s

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we talk to one of the UK’s leading retailers, Sainsbury’s, about its data science strategy and how it helps the firm to better understand customers. We take a detailed look at the evolution of the business intelligence market and the impact of big data. And we find out how simulated disaster management can tackle the security skills gap. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Cranfield gets Rubrik backup plus Nutanix in drive to the cloud

Research-led university goes hyper-converged across the board with Rubrik backup appliances and Nutanix in a move to rationalise on-site physical needs and drive to the cloud Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

The nightmare driving test – making driverless cars safe

In this week’s Computer Weekly, we talk to AI experts about the challenges of teaching autonomous vehicles how to drive safely in often extreme environments, and how deep learning simulations can help. Our latest buyer’s guide looks at business intelligence and analytics technologies. And we examine the implications of the EU’s controversial new copyright laws. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

Storage 101: Object storage in the big three public clouds

We look at the object storage services of the big three cloud providers – Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure Blob and Google Cloud Storage – and how customers can achieve compatibility between them Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Cohesity plans to put backup data to good use

Cohesity’s DataPlatform now makes use of previously dormant backup data with analytics to provide business value and to tackle threats such as ransomware Continue Reading

By

• Yann Serra, LeMagIT

Nand, flash, SSDs and HDDs – what’s happening?

It is estimated that the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. How will storage technology cope? Continue Reading

By

• Nick Powling, Exertis Hammer

Cloud-era backup appliances aim at hybrid content platform

While traditional backup apps evolve to meet the cloud via S3 and Azure, a new breed of backup appliances aims to build a single environment across cloud and on-premise Continue Reading

By

• Antony Adshead, Storage Editor

Australia and New Zealand gear up for storage analytics

Despite the marketing wars, ANZ is ahead of the adoption curve for storage analytics, which promises to alleviate storage management woes Continue Reading

CW ANZ: Home in on storage minutiae

With storage analytics, enterprises will be better able to enhance and optimise their storage infrastructure and proactively address problems before they occur. In this edition of CW ANZ, we look at how organisations are using storage analytics to manage their storage footprint and what suppliers are doing to help enterprises get the most of out of the technology. Read the issue now. Continue Reading

How ASEAN firms can tap storage analytics to improve operations

With storage systems becoming more heterogeneous and siloed, some organisations in ASEAN are turning to storage analytics to reduce costs and address storage issues before they occur Continue Reading