SAN technology and arrays

Dell EMC Unity XT expands midrange storage overlap

Even as it plans to winnow away overlapping midrange SANs, Dell EMC adds four capacity models to its Unity XT series designed to broaden support for VMware Cloud. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Cisco, Dell Technologies renew VxBlock dalliance

Cisco and Dell Technologies may be rivals in the server business, but when it comes to converged infrastructure, the two vendors remain strong partners. Cisco, EMC and VMware in 2009 formed VCE, a ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

New Dell EMC all-flash Isilon hardware compresses NAS data

Dell EMC Isilon F810 all-flash NAS array and ClarityNow software tackle unstructured file data through increased performance and data reduction over previous versions. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Broadcom Brocade SAN automation

Broadcom automates SAN management using a command-line interface and open source tools connecting to Brocade fabric and switches in a storage area network. Continue Reading

By

• Rodney Brown, TechTarget

HPE Nimble Storage arrays

Our Products of the Year judges give HPE's all-flash arrays high marks for built-in analytics, automation, ease of use and price-to-performance balance for midmarket enterprises. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

University of Utah prescribes Hitachi storage for data woes

University of Utah Health extends its Hitachi Vantara storage implementation, adding the Hitachi Content Platform object storage to modernize its data center. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Datera storage software trains for long run on HPE servers

Hewlett Packard Enterprise and startup Datera combine on block-storage appliances and expect to compete against Dell EMC's ScaleIO-based VxRack Flex hyper-converged systems. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Enterprise storage arrays: 2018 Products of the Year finalists

Eleven storage vendors, including legacy brands and some startups, entered arrays for consideration in the Storage magazine and SearchStorage 2018 Products of the Year competition. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Broadcom Brocade launches 2 new SAN management products

Broadcom releases new Brocade SAN management software to help users visualize and optimize storage and a new Fibre Channel extension switch to speed long-distance replication. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Broadcom Emulex flashes Gen 7 Fibre Channel adapter for NVMe

Broadcom releases new Emulex Gen 7 Fibre Channel host bus adapter designed for high-performance NVMe-based flash storage systems with support for 32GFC and 64GFC and PCIe 4.0. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

NetApp all-flash storage fuels hybrid cloud stance, CEO says

NetApp CEO George Kurian says data center customers are adopting more all-flash file and block storage to manage data across multiple public and private clouds. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

HPE StoreOnce backup adds capacity, protection capabilities

Hewlett Packard Enterprise spruces up StoreOnce secondary storage with federated management of up to 100 appliances. HPE also deepened the StoreOnce integration with Commvault. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Lenovo and Veeam integration teams storage with protection

Thanks to a new integration, Veeam and Lenovo customers can purchase Veeam's data management and protection with Lenovo's software-defined infrastructure or SAN products. Continue Reading

By

• Paul Crocetti, Executive Editor

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

By

• Garry Kranz

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

By

• Scott Sinclair, Practice Director

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

By

• Robert Sheldon

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

By

• Robert Sheldon

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

By

• Scott D. Lowe, ActualTech Media

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

By

• Garry Kranz

Hitachi VSP boosts performance and analytics

Hitachi Vantara outfits new Virtual Storage Platform models with more and faster processors and memory, adds midrange arrays, but makes no NVMe promises yet. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

All-flash and hybrid HPE Nimble Storage arrays get updates

HPE enhances its Nimble all-flash arrays with support for NVMe and storage-class memory. Additionally, the vendor collapses its hybrid systems into one product line featuring deduplication. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Dell EMC all-flash PowerMax replaces VMAX, injects NVMe

Dell EMC rebrands its high-end, all-flash VMAX system as PowerMax, which is packed with NVMe flash and inline data reduction. A single system scales to 4 PB, with an onboard AI tiering engine. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Cisco MDS FC Director switches expand with eye on NVMe

Networking giant Cisco adds two MDS FC Director switches for small and medium-sized businesses. The vendor said it wants to speed transition to 32 Gbps FC for NVMe flash. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Broadcom preps for NVMe over Fibre Channel with Brocade gear

Broadcom ships its first Brocade FC switching products and updates SAN management for NVMe with the goal of making Fibre Channel the fabric of choice for NVMe storage. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

SAN purchase and deployment criteria by the numbers

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SAN purchase and deployment criteria by the numbers

Capacity and application needs drive businesses to deploy new storage area network systems, while criteria such as number of LUNs and multipathing are key to purchasing decisions. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

Nexsan arrays 'ARM' national lab with redundant disk storage

Nexsan Unity disk arrays are based on a dual-controller NST platform. Argonne National Lab uses the storage for continuous operations in inhospitable environments. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Excelero NVMesh 1.1

Startup's NVMesh software virtualizes nonvolatile memory express-based storage and lets applications access pooled storage resources at high speed and low latency. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Infinidat InfiniBox 3.0

InfiniBox 3.0 stores data on disk, deploying a small amount of flash as an acceleration tier. Its caching algorithm ensures the hottest data is on the fastest storage media. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Pure Storage FlashStack is recycler's renewable resource

Food waste recycler Valley Proteins chose Pure Storage's all-flash converged infrastructure to replace Dell EMC VNX-Cisco UCS for 24 TB of usable storage with Cohesity backup. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

IT DR planning helps Frost Museum of Science weather Irma

The Frost Museum of Science in Miami braced for Hurricane Irma with a solidified DR planning, storage and data center infrastructure, and it suffered minimal damage from the storm. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Top five solid-state, cloud storage tips of 2017

In 2017, SearchStorage readers cared most about SSD lifespan, 3D XPoint technology and the difference between SAN and NAS. Check out our most-read articles of the year here. Continue Reading

By

• Margaret Jones, Executive Editor

Reduxio Systems' storage wows human resources specialist

Reduxio HX550 hybrid arrays provide primary storage with native data protection for CPP's talent management software, which includes a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Infinidat embeds SAN, NAS replication in InfiniBox R4

Infinidat's software upgrade eschews SCSI in favor of custom IP-based replication protocol. The vendor claims InfiniBox R4 delivers target writes at sub-400-millisecond latency. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Violin Systems CEO Abbasi says profits coming in 2018

All-flash pioneer Violin emerges from bankruptcy; 2018 plans call for profits, acquisition, NVMe deployments and software-defined scalability. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Cisco telemetry data gets streamed from MDS 9700 32G modules

Cisco SAN telemetry sensors capture insight on network fabrics to aid capacity and infrastructure management. The FC feature provides real-time instrumentation analytics. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

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

By

• Scott D. Lowe, ActualTech Media

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

By

• Chris Evans

How do deduplication and compression compare to RAID erasure coding?

RAID 5 and RAID 6 erasure coding, deduplication and compression are similar but distinct concepts that reduce data and maintain storage capacity in virtualized environments. Continue Reading

By

• Stephen J. Bigelow, Senior Technology Editor

Broadcom-Brocade deal delayed, with ‘no assurances’

The $5.9 billion Broadcom-Brocade acquisition has been delayed 30 days, which may turn into a 75-day delay. That's if the deal happens at all. SAN switching vendor Brocade Tuesday evening said the ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Toshiba says enterprise demand remains for 15,000 rpm HDD

Tape isn't dead, and neither are 15,000 rpm enterprise hard disk drives. Not yet, at least. Toshiba recently began shipping a new AL14SX Series of 15,000 rpm HDD products designed for ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Multiprotocol unified storage systems poised for growth

With support for block, file or both types of data on the same device, unified storage architecture is a flexible storage option for the modern data center. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

Multiprotocol unified storage systems poised for growth

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Speeds of storage networking technologies rise as flash use spikes

Speeds of storage networking technologies are rising as faster flash storage is gaining adoption, giving IT organizations more options to meet their performance needs. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

HPE flash upgrade covers 3PAR, MSA, new Nimble array

Hewlett Packard Enterprise previews flash upgrades to 3PAR StoreServe and hybrid MSA systems, plus its first Nimble Storage array for reusing backup and copy data. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Scalability drives SAN market growth

Better performing, more scalable and capacious storage area networks are required for ever-growing amounts of unstructured data, demanding applications and big data analytics. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

Scalability drives SAN market growth

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X-IO storage pivots to the edge with NVMe-based Axellio

New storage strategy for X-IO centers on Axellio appliance with FabricXpress architecture. NVMe flash atop a PCIe edge storage switch allows analytics as data is ingested. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Persistent container storage vendors take center stage

Portworx expands persistent storage features with PX-Enterprise upgrade. Virtuozzo Storage adds erasure coding to file and block, while StorageOS makes beta available. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Cisco gets MDS 9700 ready for 32-gig FC storage

Cisco 6 FC storage module brings 32 Gbps support across MDS 9700 director family. Cisco and partners certify UCS C-Series servers for 32 Gbps-ready host bus adapters. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Secondary data storage takes center stage

Once considered a necessary evil, secondary storage systems are now providing much more than just backup protection. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Secondary data storage takes center stage

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ZeroStack gives Intelligent Cloud Platform Nimble back-end

ZeroStack's "private cloud in a box" software is now available on Nimble Storage boxes. The vendors this week launched a joint partnership to sell ZeroStack Intelligent Cloud Platform software on ... Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

Entry-level Brocade FC switch enables NVMe flash fabric

New Brocade SAN switch turns Fibre Channel into NVMe fabric for all-flash storage. The G610 device is targeted at converged infrastructure, small SANs and rack-based flash servers. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

New Drobo NAS eyes home business, department workgroups

Low-end NAS specialist Drobo is pushing further down market, launching a performance-oriented hybrid NAS aimed at small businesses and distributed collaboration. The five-bay 5N2 Drobo NAS is a ... Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Bumpy ride predicted as HPE storage absorbs Nimble SANs

Merging the Nimble Storage product line with HPE gear and engineering teams creates overlap and competition for its R&D budget. Other storage startups see an opening. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

The state of flash storage performance

All-flash arrays have virtually eliminated flash storage performance issues, for now. But applications and user expectations will eventually catch up. Innovations in flash technology -- such as nonvolatile memory express and storage-class memory (flash DIMM) -- promise to keep solid-state storage ahead of the curve, however. We discuss these technologies and more as we explore the current and future states of flash storage performance.

DevOps allows developers to rapidly create, develop, amend and deploy applications using Agile methodologies. DevOps resources, including storage, are consumed differently, though, taking more of a cloud-like approach.

Security and compliance concerns are big obstacles to public cloud storage adoption. Reliability, data movement and poor application performance, frequently from irregular spikes in network latency, are other important caveats. We provide tips on how to overcome these and other issues.

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A cure for secondary data storage services blues

Effective user-centric data storage management eases copy data management and object storage uptake while enabling secondary storage services to evolve. Continue Reading

By

• Steve Ricketts, Taneja Group

SAN arrays maintain primary data storage dominance, for now

Solid-state flash is the most sought-after technology for primary storage, as storage area networks remain the main focus of increasing capacity for most enterprises. Continue Reading

By

• James Alan Miller, Senior Executive Editor

The state of flash storage systems

Making flash storage performance even faster has little to do with the media itself and more to do with the storage infrastructure that surrounds it. Continue Reading

By

• George Crump

Data storage infrastructure starts with science-fiction inspiration

Find out what happens when you take a cue from an old science-fiction movie and build an 'interocitor' that becomes its own storage infrastructure. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Data storage infrastructure starts with science-fiction inspiration

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Nexsan Unity adds compliance archive appliance

Nexsan Unity arrays integrate optional secure compliance archive for petabytes of unstructured data. Data files written to primary storage are immediately copied to the archive. Continue Reading

By

• Garry Kranz

Future of the Ethernet drive may hinge on NVMe over Ethernet

Despite their debut two years ago, drives that connect via Ethernet have been mostly a curiosity. The Ethernet flavor of NVMe over Fabrics may change that. Continue Reading

By

• Jim O'Reilly

Top enterprise storage vendors to watch in 2017

Check out our comprehensive forecast of what challenges and opportunities the top enterprise storage vendors are expected to face in the coming year. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

RDMA over Fabrics: a big step for SSD access

Shared storage access for servers has been the most basic requirement for storage networks. Performance demands for multiple systems accessing data continually increase due to improvements in ... Continue Reading

By

• Randy Kerns, Evaluator Group

NAND flash technology is just the beginning

NAND flash adoption has been as fast as the speed it offers, but faster storage techs such as 3D XPoint and phase-change memory are on their way. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

How do RDMA storage systems improve latency reduction?

RDMA technology can help speed up I/O in storage environments by bypassing copy processes in the software stack when data is called up from a system's memory. Continue Reading

By

• Dennis Martin, Demartek

Brocade VP: Flash spurs coordinated Gen 6 Fibre Channel launch

Brocade, QLogic and Broadcom coordinated this week’s shipments of the first switches and adapters to support Gen 6 Fibre Channel storage networking technology. We caught up with Jack Rondoni, vice ... Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Purchasing an enterprise SAN: Top-tier products compared

Expert Jacob Gsoedl drills into eight top-tier enterprise SAN products and how each one performs in seven technical areas. Detailed charts make the information easy to digest. Continue Reading

By

• Jacob Gsoedl

HUS VM SAN array platform

The Hitachi Unified Storage VM is a storage array designed for enterprise SAN environments requiring high storage capacities. Continue Reading

By

• Aditya Gune, Senior Products Editor

SAN basics: All the tools you need to purchase a storage-area network

Whether you're purchasing a SAN for the first time or looking to upgrade, this guide walks you through the buying process from start to finish. Continue Reading

HP MSA 2040 storage array

The HP MSA 2040 is a rack-mountable modular storage array for SAN environments that includes increased support for virtualization. Continue Reading

By

• Aditya Gune, Senior Products Editor

EMC VMAX Series storage arrays

The EMC VMAX is a family of SAN arrays designed for enterprise environments requiring large amounts of storage. Continue Reading

By

• Aditya Gune, Senior Products Editor

Hewlett-Packard 3PAR StoreServ 7000 Series Storage Arrays

The HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000 series is a line of storage arrays designed for enterprise SAN environments. Continue Reading

By

• Aditya Gune, Senior Products Editor

Nimble CS700

Nimble Storage adds a higher-capacity model to its iSCSI hybrid arrays, plus an all-flash shelf to bulk up performance. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

SAN storage systems purchases driven by capacity, performance

Anticipated year-over-year capacity growth of 24% and the need to boost the performance of existing applications is driving new SAN storage systems. Continue Reading

By

• Rich Castagna

Examining the future of the RAID volume

Expert Jon Toigo provides a set of tips to answer key questions regarding RAID's place in today's storage world, and whether it will be replaced. Continue Reading

Three key strategies to prevent RAID failure

In this tip, analyst Jon Toigo shares several ways storage admins can proactively prevent the failure of RAID arrays. Continue Reading

By

• Jon Toigo

Figuring out when 16 Gbps Fibre Channel storage networking makes sense

Moving to 16 Gbps FC makes sense for IT shops with new and heavily virtualized servers, solid-state storage and test firm president advises. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

LUN storage: Working with a SAN's logical unit numbers

This guide provides a complete picture of LUN implementations, including best practices for LUN mapping and management. Continue Reading

Tegile Zebi HA2800 Storage Array

The Tegile Zebi HA2800 multiprotocol array can be used as an all-flash system or in front of a pool of hard drives as a hybrid array. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

NexGen Storage Inc. n5-150 Storage System

IT admins using the NexGen Storage n5-150 Storage System can guarantee performance to each app and isolate workloads from one another on the SAN. Continue Reading

By

• Dave Raffo

What you need to know about improving iSCSI performance

Storage expert Dennis Martin discusses how technologies like Data Center Bridging, CHAP, IPsec and iSCSI offload adapters affect iSCSI performance. Continue Reading

By

• Dennis Martin, Demartek

Citrix StorageLink integrates SAN with virtualization environment

Find out what benefits Citrix StorageLink delivers to Citrix XenServer, such as access to advanced features on the storage array, offloading of storage operations to the array, and more. Continue Reading

By

• Sander van Vugt

I/O performance in need of a fix

Despite technological advances, unacceptable I/O performance could hold the entire industry back. Here are some solutions that have materialized. Continue Reading

By

• Arun Taneja, Taneja Group

What you need to know about SMB SANs

Marc Staimer discusses what to look for in an SMB SANs this Q&A and recent developments in SMB SAN technology. Continue Reading

By

• Marc Staimer, Dragon Slayer Consulting

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) implementation case studies

Learn how three firms tackled management issues in a Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) implementation; case studies detail potential turf wars, restructuring. Continue Reading

RAID level comparison chart: A free download

Download our free RAID level comparison chart, where the most important RAID levels are defined, along with information about the pros and cons of each RAID level. Continue Reading

How RAID storage systems protect your application data

RAID storage systems improve application performance and data availability. Learn about RAID levels and choosing the right RAID technology. Continue Reading

By

• Todd Erickson

iSCSI storage area networks explained

In part two of our series, we examine the features of an iSCSI SAN to help you decide if it's the best SAN technology for your SMB. Continue Reading

By

• Marc Staimer, Dragon Slayer Consulting

10 Gigabit Ethernet for iSCSI storage, NAS storage still hinges on cost

While 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) offers greater bandwidth for iSCSI storage or NAS storage, IT shops still have to justify upgrade costs with their needs. Continue Reading

By

• Carol Sliwa

Director switch comparison: Brocade DCX Backbone versus Cisco Systems MDS 9500

Are you looking for director switch for your SAN? We compare the Brocade DCX Backbone and Cisco Systems MDS 9500 offerings in terms of latency, throughput and FCoE support. Continue Reading

By

• Jacob Gsoedl

virtual SAN appliance (VSA)

A virtual SAN appliance (VSA) is a software bundle that allows a storage manager to turn the unused storage capacity in his network's virtual servers into a storage area network (SAN). Continue Reading

By

• TechTarget Contributor

Fibre Channel switch options for SMBs

Recently, the Fibre Channel industry has become more attractive and affordable for SMBs. This article explores FC switch considerations and products for SMBs. Continue Reading

By

• Alan Radding

Fibre Channel SAN switches tutorial

Learn all about Fibre Channel SAN switches with these articles on selecting the right switches and the best practices for managing FC switching environments. Continue Reading

ISCSI SAN FAQ

ISCSI storage area networks (SANs) are frequently touted as a solution for small-midsized businesses (SMBs) moving to networked storage. But, why not just use Fibre Channel? Terri McClure, analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, discusses the pros and cons of iSCSI SANs, the iSCSI SAN market and whether iSCSI SANs are really a good fit for SMBs. Continue Reading

A guide to storage virtualization

Few technologies are more confusing than storage virtualization. Without a guide to explain the different storage virtualization solutions, storage administrators who want to deploy this technology will be lost. Continue Reading

Determining the number of drives in a RAID group

How many drives in a RAID group will it take to give you the performance you need for a database or email or file server, or for that new VMware implementation? Continue Reading

By

• Joel Lovell, Storage Engine

Host bus adapter (HBA) architecture explained

HBAs are integral pieces of a SAN environment -- they connect the server to the SAN -- but few storage administrators know how to configure them. Continue Reading

By

• Bob Violino