Evaluate

Evaluate

Weigh the pros and cons of technologies, products and projects you are considering.

• Persistent storage-class memory to revolutionize data centers

  Since it doesn't lose data during power outages, persistent memory will revolutionize direct-attached storage in particular and the cost/performance ratio of computing overall. Continue Reading

• What's behind the rise of the software-defined storage market

  The software-defined approach to storage is catching on. However, for now, enterprises prefer preconfigured SDS products bundled with hardware for easier deployment. Continue Reading

• Eight data storage startup vendors to watch in 2018

  Even as other storage startup companies fail, newcomers have appeared to take on established enterprise vendors. Can they ride the momentum for flash, hybrid cloud and SDS? Continue Reading

• NVMe flash storage doesn't mean tape and disk are dying

  The advent of NVMe, software-defined storage and other newer storage technologies doesn't mean we'll be looking at all-silicon-based storage any time soon. Continue Reading

• SDS, HCI and CDP are key to dream enterprise storage system

  Easy to implement and manage may be the buzzwords of the day for enterprise data storage systems, but too often daily experiences of IT professionals belie that rosy scenario. Continue Reading

• How does SD-WAN manage real-time network traffic performance?

  Most people have experienced poor quality when it comes to real-time network traffic, like VoIP and video. But SD-WAN can help prioritize traffic and improve reliability.Continue Reading

• The case for private cloud vs. public cloud implementation

  Take security, compliance, cost and scalability into account when deciding between a private and public cloud. Also, think about the future potential of hybrid cloud adoption.Continue Reading

• Azure App Service Isolated boosts security and PaaS performance

  Aimed at organizations with unique security needs, Azure App Service Environment v2 lets applications run in a dedicated network without sacrificing scale or performance.Continue Reading

• Make the case to follow a container strategy at your company

  Sorting through container management software can be overwhelming. Determine what your organization actually needs in terms of security and cloud capabilities before leaping in.Continue Reading

• Unleash application dependency mapping tools to combat outages

  Create a detailed map of application dependencies from the CMDB and cloud resources and help prevent unexpected outages.Continue Reading

• Four ways the container ecosystem will evolve in 2018

  The container market constantly evolves, as new technologies and uses emerge. See what the new year will bring with these four container predictions around IoT, Windows and more.Continue Reading

• PKS complements VMware's cloud-native application portfolio

  Pivotal Container Service takes a DevOps-oriented approach to containers and improves VMware's cloud-native application strategy by adding Kubernetes support to vSphere.Continue Reading

• Aurora Serverless leads next wave of cloud database features

  IT teams face a notoriously difficult task when it comes to database scaling and management. New Amazon Aurora features can ease some of these woes and potentially reduce costs.Continue Reading

• What breakthroughs we won't (and will) see in DevOps 2018

  Will 2018 be the best of times for DevOps? Perhaps. But there's no doubt sweeping changes on the developer and operations sides are coming. Here's what to prepare for.Continue Reading

• Looking ahead to the biggest 2018 tech trends in networking

  The year ahead will force IT professionals to break out of their comfort zones and embrace 2018 tech trends that are reshaping the enterprise networking field.Continue Reading

• Why you should get on board with software testing trends

  Will your organization design a machine learning app in 2018? Or should you pick up DevOps skills to be in demand as a tester? These trends will all have a major effect on software testing.Continue Reading

• Amazon QuickSight tutorial: Get started with data analysis

  While Amazon QuickSight comes with some tradeoffs that data scientists should note, this tutorial walks you through key features that might be of interest to your analytics team.Continue Reading

• Want to understand DevOps? Look to open source's history

  Studying the past in order to not repeat it is something that can be applied to DevOps, too. Expert Chris Tozzi outlines how to understand DevOps by studying open source.Continue Reading

• Evaluate ChatOps tools and bots for the right fit

  ChatOps is still a niche in IT operations and DevOps shops, but organizations that have set it up love it. That means you should join the fun and give it a try. Here's what you need to know about ChatOps tools.Continue Reading

• Four telecom infrastructure trends driving network of the future

  Four telecom infrastructure trends -- SDN, NFV, IoT and 5G -- are driving the network of the future, but telecom networks are more likely to transform in 2020, not 2018.Continue Reading

• Automated networks mean clearing some key hurdles first

  Obstacles facing IT adoption of automation in the network including training and trust. Now's the time to clear these hurdles and reap the benefits of an automated future.Continue Reading

• How can network management systems boost troubleshooting?

  What can IT teams do to combine network management systems and application performance management tools to boost troubleshooting in enterprise infrastructure?Continue Reading

• Choose the right VMware certification to boost your career

  With so many VMware certification levels and specialization tracks, it's easy to get in over your head. Fortunately, this expert advice can help steer you straight.Continue Reading

• NVMe SSD storage costs won't hinder market takeover

  Storage vendors agree that NVMe will become the default for solid-state drives, but it must still overcome cost and configuration challenges.Continue Reading

• Common Amazon EBS performance issues, and how to troubleshoot them

  Having EBS trouble? You're not alone. Use these troubleshooting tips to work through common EBS issues, such as stuck volumes and slow performance.Continue Reading

• Hybrid storage arrays join multiple storage types to cut costs

  Despite being more complex than all-flash or all-hard disk drive systems, hybrid systems offer the speed and low latency of flash and the economy of HDDs, tape or cloud.Continue Reading

• Use SpoofGuard to defend against malicious activity in VMware NSX

  SpoofGuard monitors network traffic to identify malicious activity and prevent phishing attacks. Before you enable SpoofGuard in NSX, there are a few things you should know.Continue Reading

• Build an application migration plan step by step

  To migrate apps to the cloud, start with nonessential workloads and move to more mission-critical ones from there. But, remember, some apps might not be suited for cloud at all.Continue Reading

• Cloud storage providers: What should you look for?

  With so many cloud storage options on the market, it's hard to choose the right one. To start, determine whether you need a business service or if a consumer cloud will suffice.Continue Reading

• Explore the benefits, tradeoffs of GPU instances in cloud

  While GPU instances can give compute-intensive apps the processing boost they need, not all workloads -- or budgets -- will benefit from these cloud instance types.Continue Reading

• The hottest data storage technology trends for 2018

  For the past 15 years, Storage magazine has identified the hottest data storage technology trends you'll want to follow in the coming year. All of our selections may be "newish" tech, but they're also tried and true, having demonstrated their...Continue Reading

• Four rules to craft an enterprise data archiving strategy

  Follow these four rules to redesign your data archiving system in a way that ramps it up gradually, keeps data flowing from primary storage to the archive and makes everyone happy.Continue Reading

• Is Caringo leading the next wave in object-level storage?

  Caringo facilitates and simplifies cross-platform data movement by bridging its proprietary object storage system to Microsoft Azure object storage service.Continue Reading

• The future of networking technology is playing out right now

  To prepare for the future of networking technology, IT managers must understand evolving concepts like hyper-convergence, SD-WAN and intent-based networking.Continue Reading

• Compare different vCenter Server editions to find what fits

  Compare and contrast vCenter Server licensing options, and choose what's best based on how much support you need and how many ESXi hosts you want to manage.Continue Reading

• Software-defined storage: Making sense of the data storage technology

  Use this guide to help understand what vendors mean by 'software-defined storage,' what experts think of it and how to use it in your environment.Continue Reading

• How to select the best network monitoring tool

  Learn the criteria for choosing the best network monitoring tool for your enterprise.Continue Reading

• Get serious about patch validation and deployment -- fast

  Zero-day exploits are more dangerous than ever, but so is applying an untested patch to live systems. Without a strategy to quickly validate patches -- outside of production -- you're playing with fire.Continue Reading

• Do users need 3D NAND flash memory?

  The population of users who need 3D NAND flash chips on their computers is limited to those who run extremely large workloads, such as big applications or multiple virtual machines.Continue Reading

• What you'll build with software-defined architecture

  It's been two years since Gartner declared that the future of the data center was software-defined. And while we're still a ways from that reality, there's plenty of reason to think IT is indeed moving toward the software-defined architecture.

  ...Continue Reading

• Enterprise shops look to AIOps for IT root cause analysis

  IT ops pros look to AIOps tools to help find the smoking gun in failing IT stacks, but some call automated root cause analysis more dream than reality.Continue Reading

• Guide to DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017

  Industry giants are coming together once again for the annual DevOps Enterprise Summit. Learn what is trending in DevOps, IT ops, AI and machine learning.Continue Reading

• Features disaster recovery-as-a-service providers must offer

  A cost-effective disaster recovery as a service lets organizations of all sizes implement a dependable disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery-as-a-service providers replicate or back up customer data to cloud data centers and then -- should ...Continue Reading

• Are you ready for NVMe storage and the future of flash?

  Three factors to consider beyond technical capabilities before designing and investing money and resources in a low-latency NVMe flash storage network.Continue Reading

• Demand for cold data storage heats up

  The exponential rise in unstructured data is one of many reasons for the upsurge in demand for cost-effective cold storage products, services and media.Continue Reading

• Cloud storage adoption decisions weigh capacity and cost

  Acquiring storage capacity -- particularly for backup, archiving, DR and collaborative purposes -- dominates as the main reason for storage cloud adoption trends in the enterprise.Continue Reading

• Solid-state drive performance metrics go beyond latency, IOPS

  In determining performance and lifespan of an SSD, companies must consider the drive's architecture, the storage controller and write amplification in addition to IOPS and latency.Continue Reading

• Hybrid storage arrays offer the best of all storage worlds

  Hybrid flash arrays provide performance benefits over all-flash and all-hard disk storage systems and can address the varying workload demands of today's organizations.Continue Reading

• To build or to buy? That is the DevOps toolchain question

  An organization should assess its strengths and weaknesses before choosing a DevOps toolchain. A pre-made pipeline is simpler than individually collected tools, but it sacrifices flexibility.Continue Reading

• Compare two types of cloud automation and orchestration tools

  There are two camps of tools for automation and orchestration in cloud: provider-native and third-party. To pick the right one, know your future needs, especially for multi-cloud.Continue Reading

• Hard disk vs. flash storage: The fight of the century?

  When deciding which storage method you want in your corner, the benefits of flash storage are very appealing. But should you forget about hard disk arrays entirely?Continue Reading

• Container OS options abound: Make the right selection

  There is an assortment of OSes that support containerized applications, so go into the decision with a set of wants, needs and must-avoids.Continue Reading

• Network validation a first step to intent-based architecture

  Network validation is an important first step for enterprises evaluating intent-based networking. Unless you know how things really work, you won't succeed.Continue Reading

• Gen 6 Fibre Channel helps support flash, but lacks adoption

  Sixth generation Fibre Channel has the potential to solve fabric-level bottlenecks, but companies tend to choose Ethernet because it has evolved more rapidly.Continue Reading

• What are the pros and cons of contract QA jobs?

  Contract QA jobs can pay more than staff positions, but only if you're a good negotiator. Expert Amy Reichert helps explain the differences between staff QA and contractors.Continue Reading

• Secondary data storage: A massively scalable transformation

  Capitalize on flash with interactive, online secondary data storage architectures that make a lot more data available for business while maximizing flash investment.Continue Reading

• Buying NAS: Do you want performance and scalability?

  Although SANs still rule the modern the data center, the NAS array maintains a position high up on tech buyers' shopping lists for new primary storage.Continue Reading

• A year later: Pros and cons of the Dell and EMC merger

  Our experts take measure of the Dell EMC acquisition, the storage and technology merger of the century, a little more than 12 months after the deal closed.Continue Reading

• A long hot summer for the enterprise storage market

  Use of magnetic tape in enterprise storage is set to break out, even as the cloud market slows and software-defined storage and hyper-converged infrastructure stumble.Continue Reading

• Multicloud storage mitigates risk of public cloud lock-in

  Multicloud storage strategy allows for the shifting of data across public clouds so you can avoid lock-in to a single provider, reduce cost and improve workload efficiency.Continue Reading

• Investigate how copy data management systems curb data sprawl

  The top copy data management vendors offer innovative products to reduce the staggering amount of data that organizations create by replicating multiple copies of production data.Continue Reading

• Carrier cloud could create bigger roles in future for SDN and NFV

  Increasing carrier cloud deployment could be the key that drives SDN and NFV technologies forward in the future of virtual networking -- not the other way around.Continue Reading

• IaaS benefits broaden as public cloud market evolves

  The benefits of IaaS now range from increased scalability to access to emerging technologies, such as serverless. Review these key benefits, as well as management implications.Continue Reading

• Standardize configuration management software for smoother DevOps

  If your organization uses different configuration management software for development and operations, you're not alone. Even better, it's no engineering feat to migrate to one main tool.Continue Reading

• Deciding between IaaS and PaaS for microservices

  Implementing a microservices architecture requires a stable DevOps team. Whether the target environment is IaaS or PaaS, users must consider needs, costs and culture.Continue Reading

• SAM Local enables offline development for serverless apps

  Serverless computing is a draw for developers, though hybrid functionality has been limited. AWS' SAM Local now enables local testing of Lambda functions -- but faces competition.Continue Reading

• Navigating the all-flash array storage buying process

  Companies of all sizes are turning to all-flash storage arrays to meet their storage capacity, performance, reliability and data protection requirements.Continue Reading

• What's the difference between IaaS and PaaS to developers?

  Before making a decision about IaaS vs. PaaS for development, organizations should know the major differences. Here we examine the differences between the two.Continue Reading

• Comparison of popular technical SD-WAN service models

  Two main SD-WAN service model options exist for users to choose from, but more could be on the way due to regulatory and industry development efforts. Find out what works for you in this comparison.Continue Reading

• Visions of software-defined branch begin to take hold

  Software-based technologies can apply to the vision of a software-defined branch that converges network elements and centralizes management. But getting there will take time.Continue Reading

• PaaS tools on shaky ground as Elastic Beanstalk evolves

  While serverless computing poses a threat to some PaaS offerings, AWS Elastic Beanstalk maintains developer interest, in part because of its integration with services like Lambda.Continue Reading

• An IT operations job description written for the future

  Forward-looking IT ops jobs require more Python and less cable management. To reach valued positions in the IT organization, align your skills with these popular job requirements.Continue Reading

• Early adopters of technology belong in every organization

  In today's rapidly changing tech environment, avoiding new opportunities means falling behind. Thorough research into newly available tools leads organizations to success.Continue Reading

• Configuration management processes take down GRC challenges

  Configuration management processes speed deployments, but tools that know effective licenses and data storage details aid in another area that businesses are keen to get right.Continue Reading

• The story of SDN: Control planes, OpenFlow protocol and disaggregation

  When discussing SDN, control planes and programmability are often lumped into the conversation -- along with a dose of OpenFlow protocol and disaggregation.Continue Reading

• Amazon DAX manages database spikes for improved performance

  The DynamoDB Accelerator reduces database latency without tacking on a separate cache. While the service has some early limitations, DAX benefits enterprises with real-time apps.Continue Reading

• How NVMe over Fabrics will change the storage environment

  Expect NVMe to supplant SCSI and SAS protocols for SSD storage and NVMe over Fabrics to find a place in high-end networking deployments for transporting data.Continue Reading

• Persistent data storage in containerized environments

  The most significant challenge to the rise of containerized applications is quickly and easily providing enterprise-class persistent storage for containers.Continue Reading

• Persistent storage readied for containerized applications

  Traditional application architectures are limited in their ability to scale and meet the demands of today's fast-growing data, cloud and IT environments. Containerization -- with its support for Agile design, development and deployment methodologies...Continue Reading

• The copy data management market is starting to go mainstream

  Products from copy data management vendors protect and manage production data to lower storage costs, speed data access and streamline self-service access to data copies.Continue Reading

• Demystifying flash pricing

  What do math problems and determining the true cost of flash have in common? You need all the facts to get the right answer, and they're both really hard.Continue Reading

• How to determine the true cost of flash

  If you want to add flash storage, it's important to consider the cost per IOPS and gigabyte compared to HDD volumes, as well as the difference between consumer and enterprise SSDs.Continue Reading

• What are the pros, cons of PaaS offerings from AWS, Google, Microsoft?

  Get started with exploring these PaaS offerings: AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Google App Engine and Microsoft Azure. An IT veteran summarizes their pros and cons.Continue Reading

• Real-time vs. near-real-time analytics -- how to choose

  Data is king, but what happens when the data isn't truly real-time? Expert Tom Nolle explains the cloud platform choices when it comes to 'real-time' analytics.Continue Reading

• Selecting the best object-based storage platform for your needs

  Object-based storage systems can provide the scalability needed to meet organizations' increasing unstructured data storage requirements. Learn how to pick the right platform.Continue Reading

• Know how container host machine resources get used?

  What's a container's resource limit? How do they scale? What OS does a host machine need? Answer 10 questions to prove your container deployment knowledge.Continue Reading

• Microsoft Ignite 2017 conference coverage

  Check all the developments from the Microsoft Ignite 2017 conference in Orlando and track the company's strategic moves in its hardware, software and services businesses.Continue Reading

• How should IT manage connected devices?

  As IT teams become tasked to manage connected devices more often, what steps need to be taken to avoid performance and security-related problems?Continue Reading

• The leading object storage vendors offer broad range of options

  Explore how the leading object storage systems can be accessed, how they integrate with the cloud, what data security they provide and the various deployment options they offer.Continue Reading

• Making the Agile development model current again

  From test automation to software design and empowering leadership, discussions at Agile2017 focused on how to move forward in the current state of the Agile development model.Continue Reading

• Copy data management vendors expand breadth of offerings

  This roundup of copy management systems from the leading vendors shows the distinct categories and implementation models this cost-saving technology can provide.Continue Reading

• The mainframe environment: A thing of the past or the future?

  It made its name in a long-ago era, but even in the time of virtualization and cloud computing, the mainframe hasn't disappeared yet. The IBM z14 aims to keep it that way.Continue Reading

• Uptime Institute tier classification system faces new rivals

  Because the Uptime Institute focuses primarily on power and cooling, alternative data center certifications have emerged. Their chances of replacing Uptime, however, seem slim.Continue Reading

• Compare XtremIO vs. Unity all-flash storage system for VDI

  Dell EMC offers two all-flash storage options geared toward VDI shops. One suits companies with fewer than 500 persistent machines, and the other is for larger deployments.Continue Reading

• What the leading copy data management vendors offer

  Copy management systems from the leading vendors offer unique features that can help IT departments consolidate their secondary storage into a single product.Continue Reading

• Open source network tools compete with shrinking vendor equipment

  Vendor equipment consolidation could limit network operator service automation efforts, but new open source network tools offer options and prevent lock-in.Continue Reading

• Do ops skills fall into an IT engineering job description?

  What are some ways to level up from an IT operations or administration role into an IT engineering one? Will my experience in IT operations translate into engineering tasks?Continue Reading

• How the leading all-flash array vendors meet storage demands

  This in-depth overview of the features and capabilities of the leading AFA storage products can help you determine which configurations may best meet your needs.Continue Reading

• Disaggregation enables on-demand resource pool management and creation

  Disaggregation may not be a new concept, but it has become more important to IT in recent years. Here, it means breaking computers down to the core elements of compute, memory, I/O, storage, cache, network fabric and so on, to enable resource pool ...Continue Reading

• Forget all-flash arrays, aim for flash-optimized storage first

  Look for simple, cost-effective products that are optimized for flash and meet your needs rather than focusing on the all-flash array storage that vendors are pushing.Continue Reading