ISCSI SAN

5 tips for making flash-based SSDs work with unstructured data

Using flash storage effectively for unstructured data requires upfront analysis of cost, capacity and performance, as well as continued tracking of a rapidly changing flash market. Continue Reading

NetApp Kubernetes Service launched to orchestrate containers

NetApp launched its Data Fabric architecture to adapt its storage to manage applications built for the cloud. Container orchestration had largely been a missing aspect in Data Fabric, but the ... Continue Reading

7 key questions IoT storage designers must answer

IT teams must thoroughly understand their IoT data, including how it's managed and secured, as well as where it's collected, processed, analyzed and ultimately stored. Continue Reading

Scality Zenko goes GA for multi-cloud data management

Scality launches Zenko 1.0 multi-cloud data controller software, offering a commercially supported enterprise edition and a freely available open source version. Continue Reading

HPE 3PAR StoreServ all-flash fixes hospital's image problems

Riverside Healthcare dedicates its all-flash 3PAR StoreServ array to revamp its PACS. New images are stored in HPE's onboard cache for quicker retrieval by radiologists. Continue Reading

Quantum Xcellis unwraps NVMe-powered StorNext NAS

Quantum upgrades its StorNext file system to bolster file sharing and replication on Xcellis NVMe flash appliances. It's the first product release under new CEO Jamie Lerner. Continue Reading

Cloud storage startup Wasabi Technologies raises $68 million

Newcomer Wasabi Technologies will try to build up its brand recognition and take on the Big Three public cloud providers after raising $68 million in Series B funding. “You don’t go up against ... Continue Reading

Storage Product of the Year nominations closing soon

I can’t tell you exactly how many storage products have launched in the past year, but I know it was in the hundreds. I can tell you it was more than I can count. That’s because hardly a day goes ... Continue Reading

How a global file system interface eases data growing pains

If reaching the storage limits of a file server is an imminent threat at your organization, a global system may be the answer to your data growth woes. Continue Reading

Lenovo-NetApp partnership targets rivals Dell and HPE

Lenovo and NetApp go after Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise with a multiyear partnership to bolster enterprise storage offerings and create a joint venture company in China. Continue Reading

With NVMe-oF, who needs rack-scale PCIe?

NVMe over networks is winning out as the best way to offer shared, flash-based storage systems, with Dell EMC, NetApp, Pure Storage, Western Digital and startups in the game. Continue Reading

Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 launched for entry-level SAN

While the industry watches its midrange lines, Dell EMC pushes out a new array of entry-level, flashy PowerVault systems for smaller organizations and branch offices. Continue Reading

Cloud-to-cloud migration tools offer comprehensive services

In a multi-cloud environment, data migration can take on a new set of complications. Luckily, there are a number of technologies available aimed at cloud-to-cloud data migrations. Continue Reading

Economic impact of large capacity archival flash

Quad level cell flash technology is leading to high capacity flash devices that have applicability in archival storage or content repositories that are primarily read access. Currently at 96 ... Continue Reading

New enterprise 14 TB HDD options cater to cloud-scale users

Enterprise-class 14 TB HDDs from Seagate, Toshiba and Western Digital target cloud-scale users in need of economical, high-density storage to cope with exponential data growth. Continue Reading

NVMe over FC is happening, and it's time to prepare

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Data governance best practices exploit big data

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VSphere vs. KVM: Assessing hypervisors in hyper-convergence

Hyper-converged infrastructure has become a complex and competitive segment of the data center architecture market in recent years and so too has the architecture's support for hypervisors. Examples of hyper-converged hypervisors vary, and, over time, a number of HCI vendors have turned to the open source kernel-based virtual machine hypervisor as an alternative to VMware vSphere and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft Hyper-V and others.

This vSphere vs. KVM competition aptly illustrates the evolution of hypervisors in hyper-convergence. For hyper-converged vendors and their customers, KVM offers several advantages, including a lower cost. Some vendors are now supporting KVM, including ones that have built their entire platform around it.

There are tradeoffs to taking the KVM route in the vSphere vs. KVM sweepstakes. We explain what those are as we assess where hypervisors fit in hyper-convergence. We also outline what you need to know to adapt to the less mature KVM ecosystem and migrate away from other more established and comprehensive -- yet more expensive -- technologies.

Also in this issue, we look at how traditional backup no longer meets the speedy data recovery expectations of modern enterprises–hence the growing use of backup alternatives, such as snapshots and replication. However, there are problems with these approaches to data protection, as well. We explore these shortcomings and find out what can be done to successfully combine snapshots and replication with backup to form a comprehensive data protection and disaster recovery plan. We also outline how another option, copy data management, may be the answer IT is looking for to meet management's fast and wide-ranging data recovery ambitions.

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NVMe over FC is happening, and it's time to prepare

The extent to which the recently published FC-NVMe standard lowers performance latencies in Fibre Channel SANs will be interesting to watch in the coming months. Continue Reading

Data governance best practices exploit big data

Emerging technologies, such as AI and IoT, in the age of big data mean there's more data than ever to benefit from and for data governance policies to manage and secure. Continue Reading

Samsung adds Z-NAND data center SSD

Samsung's new lineup of data center SSDs designed for channel sales to SMBs includes high-performance Z-NAND add-in card, U.2 and M.2 NVMe PCIe models and 2.5-inch SATA drives. Continue Reading

Dell EMC midrange convergence due in 2019

The long-awaited convergence of the Dell EMC midrange storage into one platform will happen in 2019, according to Dell Technologies’ chief storage honcho. Jeff Clarke, VP chairman of products and ... Continue Reading

Startup Infinite io ropes new investors for its cloud NAS controller

Sometimes a storage startup makes a bang, fades into the background, and you forget about it – until the company snares a passel of new investors. That was the case with NAS controller specialist ... Continue Reading

Panzura tackles multi-cloud data management

Vizion.ai software as a service lets Panzura peer into customer data in on-premises and off-premises clouds to index, search, analyze and control it. Continue Reading

Report highlights IT resilience shortcomings

In "The State of IT Resilience," analysis firm IDC estimates that as many as 50% of organizations could not survive a disaster event. A co-author of the report says long-time threats of hardware ... Continue Reading

Tintri bankruptcy deal gives DataDirect an enterprise path

After weeks of uncertainty, the Tintri bankruptcy saga has been resolved. DataDirect Networks (DDN) said it will pay nearly $60 million for Tintri and plans to reveal the product roadmap by ... Continue Reading

Investors pour $94 million into Cloudian storage

The record $94 million funding round that Cloudian trumpeted today suggests investors have plenty of interest in highly scalable object storage and distributed file systems. Cloudian sells turnkey ... Continue Reading

Attala Systems tackles RoCE shortcomings for NVMe flash

Startup Attala said it can scale NVMe over RoCE across composable bare-metal racks. It has also partnered with Super Micro on NVMe JBOF and has data lake software in preview. Continue Reading

HPE storage decline offset by big data, converged demand

What does a vendor do when storage sales lag projections? If you’re Hewlett Packard Enterprise, you blame it on potential vagaries in currency. On Tuesday, the Palo Alto, Calif, hardware maker ... Continue Reading

Cisco HyperFlex bundles Veeam data protection

LAS VEGAS -- Unlike many of its data protection software rivals, Veeam Software has resisted putting its applications on a branded integrated appliance. Instead, it partners with large and small ... Continue Reading

Panasas storage roadmap includes route to software-defined

Panasas network-attached storage targets enterprises with large file workloads distributed across many users. ActiveStor hybrid arrays run the PanFS parallel file system. Continue Reading

Key steps to destroy an SSD and protect your data

Donating a used SSD may seem like a nice thing to do, but not if you want to keep your data secure. SSD disposal and recycling are more complicated than you might think. Continue Reading

Why upgrading to a Gen 6 Fibre Channel network is a good idea

Upgrading to a next-gen Fibre Channel network provides the added performance needed to meet the demands of evolving technologies and workloads, along with other benefits. Continue Reading

Are flash workloads suited to handling unstructured data?

The storage of unstructured data is a hurdle for many organizations. Object storage keeps it organized but lacks speed thanks to hard disks. Luckily, a better way is on the rise. Continue Reading

ClearSky Data launches service for VMware Cloud on AWS

New service from Boston-based startup ClearSky enables VMware Cloud on AWS customers to back up and archive data in Amazon's object-based Simple Storage Service. Continue Reading

Chambers signs on as Rubrik investor

A year ago at VMworld, Rubrik introduced 6-foot-11 Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant as an investor and board advisor. The converged secondary storage vendor’s newest money man and advisor ... Continue Reading

6 features your multi-cloud management tools should have

When evaluating cloud management platforms, IT decision-makers should make sure they have these key functions and that they meet their organization's specific requirements. Continue Reading

Why Intel Optane SSDs have 'failed'

Why haven't SSDs built on 3D XPoint taken off yet? Don't blame the technology; blame the marketing behind Intel Optane. New Optane NVDIMMs could fare better. Continue Reading

Pure Storage all-flash beats street, adds StorReduce dedupe

Pure Storage all-flash sales helped the vendor close a strong quarter in July, generating $309 million to beat its top-end guidance.  The revenue figure represents a 37% increase from the $224.7 ... Continue Reading

Drobo, Nexsan HDD arrays merged in new holding company

If you’re a struggling niche disk array vendor, what's the next step you take to survive? You combine your HDD arrays with another disk vendor in the same boat. That's what low-end NAS vendor Drobo ... Continue Reading

How do compression and deduplication affect performance?

Data reduction methods, such as compression or deduplication, can have a positive effect on performance, but the significant CPU resources required could overshadow the benefits. Continue Reading

Move to NVMe technology will depend on need and speed

As a replacement for the SCSI storage protocol, NVMe can provide more responsive storage and lower latency. But transitioning to NVMe in the data center requires thorough planning. Continue Reading

NAND flash manufacturers showcase new technologies

Get up to speed on new NAND flash technologies, including Toshiba Memory's XL-Flash, startup Yangtze Memory's Xtacking, and SK Hynix's so-called 4D NAND. Continue Reading

DRaaS Magic Quadrant shrinks; Microsoft, iland lead the way

Gartner's 2018 Magic Quadrant for disaster recovery as a service made 13 vendors disappear. Gartner also thoroughly shuffled the deck among the remaining DRaaS Magic Quadrant survivors. Besides ... Continue Reading

Revenue from NetApp all-flash spikes on strong demand

Demand for NetApp all-flash storage surged last quarter, part of strong growth across its cloud portfolio that helped it beat guidance on earnings, margins and revenue. And the storage vendor has ... Continue Reading

Scale-out Qumulo NAS qualifies latest Dell EMC PowerEdge servers

Qumulo scale-out NAS software can now run on Dell EMC's PowerEdge servers. That means Dell EMC server customers can choose between Qumulo software and Dell EMC's Isilon. Continue Reading

You'll never guess what people use Pure's FlashBlade to do

Pure Storage is finding a use case for its FlashBlade array that no one expected when the all-flash system for unstructured data launched in 2016. Brian Schwarz, VP of product management for  ... Continue Reading

IBM DS8882F converges array and mainframe in one rack

IBM skinny mainframes add a few pounds with the DS8882F all-flash array screwed into the IBM Z ZR1 and LinuxOne Rockhopper II 19-inch racks. Continue Reading

Kaminario storage goes for a run on Western Digital OpenFlex

Kaminario storage continues to push farther and farther away from its reliance on purpose-built hardware. The all-flash vendor has qualified its consumption-based Cloud Fabric software for Western ... Continue Reading

Violin Systems prepares NVMe launch, but not for drives

Violin Systems will make its first platform launch since its resurrection when it brings out a flash array with NVMe support on the front end for host connectivity in September. Violin CEO Mark ... Continue Reading

New Seagate Nytro SSD line uses Toshiba 3D NAND chips

Seagate shows off its first triple-level cell, 64-layer 3D NAND Nytro SSDs since investing in Toshiba NAND. Analysts wonder if the HDD giant waited too long to get serious about flash. Continue Reading

Dell EMC Isilon, ECS gain ClarityNow for unstructured data

Dell EMC on Thursday picked up file software to help project teams access, control and manage unstructured data on heterogeneous storage. The deal for Agoura Hills, Calif.-based DataFrameworks is ... Continue Reading

NAND flash shortage end could lead to dramatic price drop

Impending NAND flash oversupply will lead to price collapse of NAND flash chips and higher capacity enterprise SSDs, according to semiconductor analyst Jim Handy. Continue Reading

NVMe-oF and its many benefits take NVMe to the next level

NVMe over Fabrics is revolutionizing the storage market by making full use of data center capacity and becoming an effective replacement for SAN environments. Continue Reading

CEO: Actifio funding round to help focus on customer growth

Actifio today completed its second $100 million funding round in four years, as it moves closer to a possible IPO and seeks profitability and growth. The Actifio funding round increases the ... Continue Reading

Newisys NVMe flash array chases hyperscale market

Sanmina-owned Newisys is known as a white-label server OEM to array vendors. The NSS-2560 NVMe flash provides storage density with hot-pluggable SSDs and Intel Broadwell servers. Continue Reading

Catch the next wave of digital IT transformation: Learning tech

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Understanding data storage and its import eludes younger IT folks

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The challenges of flash enterprise storage and how to beat them

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NVMe market and technology rapidly evolve

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Storage conferences aren't what they used to be

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How NVMe technology will rock the enterprise storage boat

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NVMe flash storage is shaking things up

The development of the nonvolatile memory express protocol is a huge step forward in allowing enterprises to maximize the benefits inherent to flash storage. NVMe puts storage closer to the CPU, reduces latency and increases the amount of parallel sessions available to storage devices. NVMe over Fabrics, meanwhile, is designed to retain the benefits of centralized storage by allowing the client host to talk directly to NVMe flash storage across a high-speed network. This is all good. But adopting NVMe flash storage does raise a number of questions. For example, what is the best approach to take when integrating NVMe flash storage in a particular IT infrastructure? And, perhaps, most imperative to the majority of enterprises, how well will the NVMe flash storage protocol and the devices that support it work with existing data center technologies?

From the get-go, the intrinsic possibilities and benefits of the all-flash data center seemed enormous and attractive. The idea that production databases would respond instantly to requests for unstructured data is extremely appealing to enterprises. Falling flash prices; the advent of unprecedented storage densities, with 16 TB flash drives commonplace and 50 TB-plus drives in the offing; and technologies such as compression and deduplication that work well in a flash environment make all-flash seem more reasonable than ever. The flash-only data center raises two significant issues that must be addressed, however. It makes equipping disaster recovery sites far more expensive and raises the question of why would you want to pay a premium price to maintain cold and stale data on expensive flash storage when a (still) much cheaper hard-disk option would suffice.

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Catch the next wave of digital IT transformation: Learning tech

IT learning technologies, such as machine learning and AI workloads, are gaining traction and could be the next wave of IT investment that drives competitive advantages. Continue Reading

Understanding data storage and its import eludes younger IT folks

Jon Toigo has a lot to say about the consistent disparagement and disregard many young people in the IT industry show toward data storage technology and management. Continue Reading

The challenges of flash enterprise storage and how to beat them

Blazing fast all-flash data centers raise important issues. It's expensive to equip DR sites and then there's all that stale data. Find out how to counteract these issues. Continue Reading

NVMe market and technology rapidly evolve

The tipping point of NVMe acceptance is fast approaching as more enterprises consider adopting the technology to maximize SSD flash investment and performance. Continue Reading

How NVMe technology will rock the enterprise storage boat

NVMe flash speeds up storage and radically alters server connectivity. How will enterprises adopt NVMe storage and how well will it work with existing technologies? Continue Reading

Storage conferences aren't what they used to be

If you're an IT pro looking for a good storage user conference these days, you'll probably have to go through one or more of your storage vendors to find one. Continue Reading

NetApp AI storage packages OnTap all-flash FAS A800, Nvidia

NetApp follows Pure Storage's lead, adds Nvidia GPUs to its all-flash arrays to build a storage product designed for data scientists and others dabbling in artificial intelligence. Continue Reading

Western Digital launches 15 TB enterprise SAS SSD

Western Digital's 15 TB Ultrastar SAS SSD has twice the capacity of its previous version, but only half of the capacity of Toshiba's 31 TB whopper. Continue Reading

Alluxio adds connectors for multi-cloud data migration

Updated Alluxio open source storage software homes in on portability across multiple big data object stores. Applications access Alluxio as mountable file storage. Continue Reading

Storage networking technologies explained

Make sure you know the differences among network fabrics, such as Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand, before making decisions about your storage network infrastructure. Continue Reading

Storage class memory advances could be a game-changer

Sometimes referred to as persistent memory, SCM may address the growing gap between storage and memory technologies. But don't expect it to happen just yet. Continue Reading

PATA and SATA: The evolution of disk standards

Disk standards have evolved over time, and while PATA and IDE may have reliability on their side, growing support and advancements for SATA may make it the preferred option. Continue Reading

5D data storage and the future of optical technology

Researchers say revolutionary 5D optical storage could protect hundreds of terabytes of data for billions of years, far beyond the capabilities of current storage media. Continue Reading

3D NAND technology: What it is and where it's headed

Following a recent NAND flash shortage, 3D NAND is seeing renewed interest from consumers and vendors. Discover what makes the technology a compelling flash memory option. Continue Reading

CEO outlines Data Dynamics StorageX trends, future features

Data Dynamics' CEO discusses upcoming StorageX software capabilities designed to help customers find, analyze, move and manage unstructured data in a hybrid cloud environment. Continue Reading

Gartner: all-flash array market ‘visionaries’ include Tintri

Several vendors with spotty fiscal histories made Gartner’s list of competitors angling for all-flash array market share. Gartner listed Tintri as a “visionary” in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for ... Continue Reading

Repurpose legacy storage systems for reliability and savings

Planning to move to a new data storage platform? Before kicking your older legacy storage hardware to the curb, consider the benefits of repurposing your existing technologies. Continue Reading

Why object storage is becoming an alternative to RAID

RAID is a well-established storage technology, known for being reliable and secure. But as data volumes grow, more flexible, effective RAID alternatives are gaining a following. Continue Reading

Commvault Advance still in neutral

Commvault’s retiring CEO Bob Hammer said the data protection vendor’s ongoing transition will produce long-term gains, although they will likely follow short-term pains. Commvault unveiled a series ... Continue Reading

Veeam adds Nutanix AHV support, expands Office 365 backup

Veeam Software has launched updates to its product line to increase platform support in recent weeks while continuing on a trajectory to becoming a $1 billion company by the end of the year. Veeam ... Continue Reading

Rubrik targets ransomware attacks with Polaris Radar

Rubrik today added an application to its Polaris SaaS platform, with the goal of automating protection against ransomware attacks. Polaris Radar is the second Polaris application from the converged ... Continue Reading

Toshiba, Western Digital start shift to 96-layer BiCS flash

New 96-layer 3D NAND flash memory is starting to roll out that can store more data per chip and potentially lower per-bit storage costs over  64- and 32-layer technologies. Toshiba Memory America ... Continue Reading

Dell EMC midrange storage systems nudge a little closer

Dell EMC keeps its Unity and SC midrange storage arrays on separate tracks, but shows early signs of eventually merging the platforms. Both get OS upgrades. Continue Reading

HPE InfoSight automates customer support on 3PAR

HPE increases the ability of its InfoSight cloud-based predictive analytics to help manage 3PAR storage arrays; HPE picked up InfoSight in its 2017 acquisition of Nimble. Continue Reading

Storage Spaces Direct requirements you need to know about

Microsoft's architecture uses commodity hardware to create highly available, software-defined storage. But success depends on following the vendor's rules and recommendations. Continue Reading

Tintri acquisition proposal leaves customers in limbo

DataDirect Networks sees Tintri's analytics and flash capabilities as an entry point to the enterprise, but Tintri customers remain in the dark about their storage vendor's fate. Continue Reading

Intel, Micron end 3D XPoint memory joint development

Micron and Intel plan to end their joint development of nonvolatile 3D XPoint memory next year, after finishing work on the second generation of the nonvolatile memory technology. Continue Reading

New Elastifile CEO intensifies startup's cloud focus

Elastifile's new CEO plans to increase the company's focus on filling a 'huge missing piece' of enterprise file storage for public clouds and sees more customers shifting away from on-site deployments. Continue Reading

Hedvig and Veeam integration converges storage, backup

As an alternative to selling branded integrated appliances as most of its large competitors do, Veeam partners with as many hardware vendors as possible. Hedvig is the latest Veeam partner, now ... Continue Reading

Cloudian storage adds file sync/share through partner

Object storage startup Cloudian partnered with UK-based Storage Made Easy on file sync-and-share capabilities designed to target enterprises facing compliance requirements under the European ... Continue Reading

Adoption of 32 Gbps Fibre Channel being driven by flash

Flash, along with more and bigger workloads and more demanding applications, is driving businesses to switch from 8 Gbps and 16 Gbps FC to 32 Gbps FC storage environments. Continue Reading

Newest Dell EMC data protection appliance heads downstream

Until last year, Dell EMC data protection involved separate offerings of Avamar backup software and Data Domain deduplication appliances. The vendor changed that strategy in May 2017 with the ... Continue Reading

IBM all-flash diversifies with NVMe-based FlashSystem 9100

IBM FlashSystem 9100 scales to 32 PB of all-flash storage in a standard rack. IBM guarantees consistent latency of 350 microseconds and 100 million IOPS per four-way cluster. Continue Reading

Ctera Networks adds Dell and HPE gateway appliance options

Ctera cloud storage gateway appliance portfolio expands with new all-SSD and all-HDD models that enable customers to run multiple applications on the same box. Continue Reading

Clarifying what cloud and virtualized data storage really mean

Cloud storage doesn't always mean the public cloud. Virtualization and virtualized data storage aren't always about virtual servers and desktops. Find out what's really going on. Continue Reading

MapR Data Platform gets object tiering and S3 support

MapR Technologies adds policy-based tiering to its Data Platform to automatically move data across performance, capacity and archive storage on premises and in cloud. Continue Reading

New HPE SAN switch is based on Cisco Gen 6 FC technology

It may not set off fireworks, but Hewlett Packard Enterprise heads into the July 4 break with a finalized portfolio of Cisco-based StoreFabric Fibre Channel switching gear for its all-flash arrays. ... Continue Reading