Storage Resources

Dell and VMware hammer out deal, but no reverse merger

Dell and VMware have taken a step – maybe only the first step – on a journey to fund Michael Dell’s on-again, off-again love affair with going public. Dell Technologies, parent company of storage ... Continue Reading

With Tintri layoffs, hybrid vendor waves a final goodbye

A new round of Tintri layoffs has cost 200 people their jobs, including its top sales executive, as the hybrid vendor winds down operations. The move leaves Tintri with about 40 to 50 ... Continue Reading

Commvault and Azure integrations drive data protection tasks

Commvault has expanded its integration with Microsoft Azure Stack, also pulling its OEM partner Cisco into deal. With the Commvault Data Platform, enterprises using on-premises Azure Stack hybrid ... Continue Reading

Lustre-based DDN ExaScaler arrays receive NVMe flash

High-performance computing specialist DataDirect Networks spruced up its ExaScaler SFA-based flagship with nonvolatile memory express flash, and it bought Lustre from Intel. Continue Reading

WDC strives to become 'next great storage' company

Since its 2012 acquisition of hard disk drive rival HGST, Western Digital Corp. has bought more storage companies than any other vendor. Some of the deals were whoppers, such as the $19 billion ... Continue Reading

A deep dive into guest clustering for shared virtual storage

When using shared VHDX files to host a guest cluster shared volume, there are some considerations to take into account, such as physical connectivity and potential limitations. Continue Reading

Is there an alternative to error correction and detection codes?

Errors in NAND flash memory can be corrected, but that becomes more difficult as NAND reaches the end of its life. Are you utilizing every available error correction tool? Continue Reading

Qumulo storage parts the clouds with its K-Series active archive

Qumulo introduces the K-144T archive appliance to complement its scale-out NAS systems. The K-Series starts with six nodes, and customers can scale storage in 144 TB increments. Continue Reading

Vexata fires up NVMe flash storage to tackle analytics

Vexata claims about two dozen customers are using its all-flash NVMe VX storage arrays. Vendor says the product upgrade targets growing need for fast storage in cognitive computing. Continue Reading

New 12 Gbps single-port Toshiba SAS SSD takes aim at SATA

Toshiba designed a new single-ported 12 Gbps RM5 SAS SSD to replace slower 6 Gbps SATA SSDs in servers until faster NVMe-based PCIe SSDs are ready for wider market adoption. Continue Reading

SwiftStack 1space facilitates multi-cloud capabilities

SwiftStack launches single namespace for its object and file storage to ease data access, migration, management and search across private and public clouds. Continue Reading

Tintri CEO Barton tells board: ‘I'm outta here’

The captain of fast-sinking Tintri has abandoned ship, just three months after he came aboard as a lifesaver. Tintri CEO Thomas Barton, 54, informed the board of his decision on Monday, according ... Continue Reading

Molecular memory could boost HDD density

Researchers working with molecular storage have discovered a way to create smaller hard drives with more density. But don't expect to see the technology on the market anytime soon. Continue Reading

Four common SSD form factors and where they work best

Solid-state drive form factors offer different benefits, from ease of transition to increased throughput. Four popular form factors are currently dominating the market. Continue Reading

Ceph-based cloud block storage service debuts from Atlantic.Net

Atlantic.Net's cloud-based block storage service is built on open source Ceph, and it includes an NVMe-based flash cache to boost performance and inexpensive HDDs for back-end storage. Continue Reading

Maxta MxSP dons its Red Hat for container storage

Maxta MxSP hyper-converged infrastructure is expanding integration with Red Hat. The software-only vendor has added support for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, which is built on Red Hat ... Continue Reading

Rubrik Alta goes native for AWS EC2, adds MSP Envoy

The latest version of Rubrik Alta Cloud Data Management software adds data protection and management capabilities across clouds, for enterprise users as well as managed service providers. Rubrik ... Continue Reading

The Tintri storage hourglass is almost out of sand

Time is winding down for Tintri, whose slow-motion fall could come by the end of June. The remaining question is whether the publicly traded hybrid storage vendor can complete a last-second Hail ... Continue Reading

New CEO expects Caringo Swarm to ride object storage wave

Object storage veteran Caringo switches CEOs and is looking to 'Swarm' the market through expanded partnerships that go well beyond its Dell OEM relationship. Continue Reading

Industry vet Lewis reveals plan to save Violin flash storage

New Violin Systems CEO Mark Lewis' strategy for saving the flash vendor focuses on its core high-performance technology and a rebuilt channel partner-oriented sales team. Continue Reading

Cohesity backs up truck, unloads $250M in funding

Fast-growing secondary data storage vendor Cohesity closed a massive $250 million funding round today, a total that could give it enough capital to become a public company within a few years. ... Continue Reading

Networked storage systems revenue climbs, for most vendors anyway

Cloud and software-defined products are eating away at traditional enterprise networked storage systems, but the latter category still represents a fairly robust market. In fact, the emergence of ... Continue Reading

Dell, VMware likely held HCI revenue share leads

While IDC probably won’t release its hyper-converged market share numbers for the first quarter until late June, it appears Dell will stay No. 1 on the HCI revenue hardware and software charts. IDC ... Continue Reading

Use object storage technology to fight ransomware infection

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Office 365 data protection, the enterprise and you

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Container applications need backup: Who knew?

The concept of containers, ephemeral applications running across private and public clouds, has grown in popularity over the last few years. It has quickly become clear that the transient nature of containers and container applications isn't compatible with the enterprise, however. As a result, data persistence has arrived in the world of containers and made it necessary to back up container data, protecting it the same way as all other enterprise data.

Securing container data has its own set of processes and requirements, though, and how container backups and data protection are implemented depends largely on the design of the container ecosystem. Vendors take a variety of approaches -- including products, agents and plug-ins -- to back up container applications. This article tells you what you need to know about backing up container data and explores the options available for container backups.

Ransomware is a serious threat that's having a deleterious impact on businesses worldwide. While backing up data is an important tool in the war on ransomware, an unlikely ally has emerged in the form object storage technology, which can add an extra layer of protection beyond traditional backups. When properly implemented, object storage can reduce the chances of ransomware encrypting your data. It could even help get all or some of your data back after an infection without paying a ransom. Find out how object storage can help better protect your valuable data from ransomware.

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Use object storage technology to fight ransomware infection

Done right, object storage reduces the likelihood of a successful ransomware attack and, in some instances, lets you get data back without paying a ransom. Continue Reading

Office 365 data protection, the enterprise and you

Gain a better understanding of Microsoft Office 365 security and storage management features and how the popular cloud-based productivity and collaboration suite really works. Continue Reading

Qumulo files away $93 million for QF2 expansion

Qumulo closed a $93 million funding round today, giving the scale-out file storage vendor “fuel” to compete with the established players in a rapidly expanding market. BlackRock Private Equity ... Continue Reading

HPE adds bulk to M-series Ethernet SAN switching

Hewlett Packard Enterprise expanded its M-series Ethernet storage switching with a smaller switch and orchestration software designed to improve management features for iSCSI SANs. HPE first  ... Continue Reading

Scality storage update adds three-server option

Scality Ring 7.4 file and object storage software takes aim at easing installation and ongoing management, and it adds a lower-cost three-server entry configuration. Continue Reading

Dell EMC storage finally gains some post-merger market share

Dell Technologies on Monday projected positive share growth in enterprise storage, the first quarter that has happened since the Dell and EMC merger closed in 2016. The next question is whether the ... Continue Reading

MAMR hard drives could shake up the storage industry

Microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology may be the next breakthrough HDD technology, promising lower cost and higher reliability than heat-assisted magnetic recording drives. Continue Reading

Cloudian makes moves, keeps up with changing object storage market

The flurry of activity surrounding on-premise object storage specialist Cloudian suggests how rapidly the market has been moving during the last year. Cloudian CEO Michael Tso said 2017 was the ... Continue Reading

Crossbar ReRAM hits 1x nanometer process milestone

Crossbar recently chalked up another milestone in its quest to get on-chip non-volatile resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology to market. The Santa Clara, California-based startup licensed its core ReRAM ... Continue Reading

Edge computing technology can ease bandwidth pressure points

Stockpiling data at endpoints makes sense in a growing number of applications. With storage at the edge, concerns about storage bandwidth and data costs can be mitigated. Continue Reading

How can SSD garbage collection help preserve drive speeds?

The rumors are true: SSD speeds can slow down over time. Luckily, there are processes available that can help prevent this from happening and maintain the speedy nature of SSDs. Continue Reading

Startup Komprise strikes reseller agreement with IBM

Komprise struck its first major reseller agreement, partnering with IBM to offer Komprise Intelligent Data Management software with the vendor’s storage portfolio. Customers can use Komprise ... Continue Reading

Pure Storage cloud plan gets warm reception from end users

Pure Storage made new FlashArray and FlashBlade all-flash systems generally available this week, emphasizing their role in moving data seamlessly between local and cloud storage. Continue Reading

Charge trap technology advantages for 3D NAND flash drives

Flash drive cells based on charge trap technology are less likely to leak electrons than the older floating gate cell technology. But they have reliability issues to be aware of. Continue Reading

Pure Storage software tooled up for containers, OpenShift, VMware

Pure Storage adds software for building, managing and protecting data in containers, clouds, VMs and on premises. Pure ES2 subscription offers a managed on-premises cloud. Continue Reading

The storage administrator skills you need to keep up today

To meet changing enterprise IT needs, storage admins must acquire a new set of skills. If not, they risk being bogged down in an outmoded, outdated career rut. Continue Reading

ZertoCON 2018: IT resilience takes center stage

BOSTON – At the first ZertoCON in 2016, analyst John Morency said that "IT resilience" is becoming the new "disaster recovery." The concept at the time stressed continuous availability and ... Continue Reading

NetApp CEO: Dell EMC ‘years behind’ us on flash, cloud

NetApp CEO George Kurian says things have never been better for the storage vendor since he joined the company in 2011. Kurian maintains NetApp’s all-flash platform is a hit, it’s the first major ... Continue Reading

HPE storage still on its Nimble high

Hewlett Packard Enterprise extended its impressive storage turnaround last quarter. For the second straight quarter, HPE storage revenue increased 24% year-over-year – jumping to $912 million for ... Continue Reading

Pure Storage all-flash revamp accelerates and consolidates

The Pure Accelerate conference kicks off with an NVMe-enabled FlashArray refresh and upgrades to all-flash Pure AIRI and FlashStack-Cisco UCS converged infrastructure for Oracle. Continue Reading

Micron starts shipping denser QLC SSD to select customers

Micron and Intel unleash QLC NAND flash that can store 4 bits per cell. Micron starts shipping a 2.5-inch QLC enterprise SATA SSD to select customers and targets fall for general availability. Continue Reading

ClearSky Data adds NAS storage as a service

Startup ClearSky offers new scale-up NAS option to extend hybrid cloud managed service offerings beyond block-based primary storage, backup and disaster recovery. Continue Reading

Pure Storage: flash is a means, not an end, to shared data

SAN FRANCISCO – Pure Storage will push the theme of a “data-centric architecture” at its annual Accelerate user conference that begins Wednesday. Data-centric architecture is Pure’s description for ... Continue Reading

Pavilion Data gets funded for NVMe-oF push

As all-flash array pioneer Pure Storage celebrates its $1 billion in annual revenues, two of its former executives are planning the next big thing in flash. Pavilion Data, whose CEO Gurpreet Singh ... Continue Reading

Block, file and object storage interfaces enable integration

Explore the capabilities, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, of some storage vendors' products that support and integrate block, file and object interfaces. Continue Reading

Quest hopes NetVault Backup 12 can vault into enterprise

While Veeam Software uses its VeeamON user conference this week to further its push into the enterprise, Quest Software is making its own attempt to go the same route with its NetVault Backup. ... Continue Reading

Managing storage for IoT data at the enterprise edge

Edge computing, the cloud and internet of things data are changing the way businesses store, analyze and manage all the information generated at the perimeter of the enterprise. Continue Reading

VeeamON 2018: Beyond availability and data protection

CHICAGO – Veeam unveiled a copy data management feature at its VeeamON 2018 user conference Tuesday as part of its newly branded Hyper-Availability Platform. Veeam DataLabs, part of the vendor's ... Continue Reading

Server maker IXsystems sets sail with new TrueNAS flagship

The vendor claims shipments of its storage systems recently surpassed an exabyte of combined capacity. TrueNAS M-Series is a new high-end system with DRAM, NVDIMM and NVMe. Continue Reading

Does SSD overprovisioning have storage benefits?

While overprovisioned SSDs have less usable capacity available, that space is put to good use. The majority of SSD manufacturers overprovision their drives, and for good reason. Continue Reading

Five NVMe-oF questions you've been dying to ask

The NVMe over Fabrics specification is growing in popularity, thanks to its ability to reduce latency and increase performance. But is it just a fad or here to stay? Continue Reading

Updated IBM storage products focus on cost savings and cloud

IBM storage enhancements focus on data deduplication expansion, cloud-based Storage Insights, VM-based Spectrum NAS and Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud. Continue Reading

OwnBackup GDPR features seek to aid compliance

With two weeks to go before the compliance deadline for the General Data Protection Regulation, cloud-to-cloud backup vendor OwnBackup is helping its customers prepare for the comprehensive set of ... Continue Reading

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

NetApp NVMe AFF array plays capacity tune for AI listeners

NetApp pumps out an NVMe-ready All Flash FAS array with 30 TB Samsung drives and 700 TB of usable storage. SAN users can upgrade to FC over NVMe on select OnTap systems. Continue Reading

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

Dell EMC storage IPO, VMware merger plans still unclear

Dell Technologies World 2018 has come and gone with hardly a mention of the corporate reorganization Michael Dell and his team is considering as the next step after Dell’s $60 billion-plus 2017 ... Continue Reading

Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays

Dell EMC plans to keep overlapping midrange storage for now. Dell Technologies World 2018 rollouts included CloudIQ analytics and Isilon SaaS beta with Google Cloud Platform. Continue Reading

Virtual Instruments VirtualWisdom 5.6 enhances Cisco support

Virtual Instruments shows off newly integrated Cisco SAN Telemetry Streaming and AppDynamics technology and troubleshooting improvements in its VirtualWisdom 5.6 tool. Continue Reading

IoT initiatives and other emerging workloads force data center change

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IT spending priorities for 2018 include cloud and flash storage

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Many enterprises aren't prepared for a cloud service outage

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NVMe technology is but a first step toward bigger things

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Three trends causing the rapid commoditization of AFA storage

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The AFA market faces unprecedented and rapid commoditization

Prices of all-flash arrays have nosedived. Massive discounts due to fierce competition are contributing to rapid and unprecedented commoditization of all-flash arrays and changes in the AFA market. Meantime, the demand for AFAs is shrinking because of increasing hyper-convergence and cloud adoption. This is bad news for storage vendors. To survive, they must innovate and differentiate themselves by solving real problems users face. But it's all to the advantage of storage buyer in today's AFA market. Learn how and why this is happening and how you can benefit.

The data explosion has pushed storage systems to the breaking point, leading many enterprises to spend a good deal of their IT dollars on the cloud, backup storage and on-premises flash, according to the TechTarget 2018 IT Priorities Survey. More than half of those surveyed will see their IT budgets increase in 2018, according to the IT spending trends study. And the average growth in spending across all enterprises will be about the same this year as it was in 2017. Demand for on-premises storage infrastructure, meanwhile, continues unabated for a large percentage of companies, as it does for hyper-converged and converged infrastructures.

Reliance on the cloud is leading almost a third of respondents to consolidate cloud workloads to better meet the management challenges presented by multiple cloud environments, while the on-demand model of the cloud itself has altered how we expect to consume and pay for IT resources. This includes storage, where vendors have changed how they deliver core features like deduplication and compression. The 2018 IT spending trends highlighted in this issue shed considerable light on today's storage market. This, in turn, will help elucidate your present and future storage needs.

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IT spending priorities for 2018 include cloud and flash storage

More than half of respondents to our survey have larger IT budgets this year, and their storage spending is focused on ways to manage massive data growth. Continue Reading

IoT initiatives and other emerging workloads force data center change

Internet of things projects and other new technology, such as analytics and machine learning, are tied to software-defined storage and public cloud use, changing the face of IT. Continue Reading

Many enterprises aren't prepared for a cloud service outage

Some businesses have no idea what a cloud outage will cost them and who takes responsibility for restoring data and workloads, the customer or the cloud service provider. Continue Reading

Three trends causing the rapid commoditization of AFA storage

Advancing technology and changing market forces have shifted the dynamics in the all-flash array market, opening it up to new challengers and benefiting customers. Continue Reading

NVMe technology is but a first step toward bigger things

NVMe is an inevitable move forward for flash technology that begins the transition to storage-class memory and will lead to even more significant storage advances. Continue Reading

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

New DataCore CEO looks to MaxParallel to drive expansion

DataCore CEO Dave Zabrowski takes the reins from founder George Teixeira as the company works to use MaxParallel product to go beyond storage to the software-defined data center. Continue Reading

AFA storage tackles big data analytics challenges

The latest generation of all-flash array storage is delivering the high performance and low latency required to support petabyte-scale big data analytics workloads. Continue Reading

Demystifying the hybrid storage array buying process

Hybrid flash storage offers numerous benefits over using just SSDs or HDDs. Learn how to assess your organization's needs for a hybrid storage array and how to evaluate the different hybrid arrays to find the right fit. Continue Reading

New Red Hat Storage One bundles hardware, SDS

Red Hat partners with Supermicro on first turnkey storage package, bundling Gluster Storage software, server hardware and support at one price in a single SKU. Continue Reading

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

Unitrends VMware backup takes swipe at Veeam

The Unitrends VMware backup product that launched today is going directly after one of the data protection vendor's major competitors. VM Backup Essentials (vBE) converges many features the vendor ... Continue Reading

How open source Ceph compares to Linux Ceph products

Ceph software-defined storage is available for free, thanks to its open source nature. However, in some situations, a commercial Linux Ceph product could be the way to go. Continue Reading

Dell EMC storage strategy talk buzzes Dell Tech World

Dell EMC World is no more. The combined vendor has renamed its annual user summit Dell Tech World, where data storage product upgrades will touch flash, HCI and software-defined. Continue Reading

Three multi-cloud deployment tactics that work

Use standardization, as well as a centralized management tool and independent monitoring tool, to deploy a multi-cloud environment that's easy and efficient to manage. Continue Reading

Morro Data adds replication, Azure Active Directory support

Startup Morro targets SMB customers with a CloudNAS 3.0 file storage update that adds replication capabilities and support for Microsoft's Azure Active Directory. Continue Reading

SSDs vs. HDDs: When is all-flash storage overkill?

The SSD vs. HDD analysis isn't as simple as it looks. SSD prices are falling, and capacities increasing. But HDDs are still a good deal and fine for many noncritical workloads. Continue Reading

Veeam and Pure Storage team up on data protection, production

Four months after the release of Veeam's Universal Storage API, Veeam and Pure Storage have teamed up to streamline data protection and storage, and speed recovery. The integration -- initiated ... Continue Reading

Storage sales make IBM blue

After four straight quarters of growth, IBM storage hardware revenue crashed in the first quarter of 2018. IBM reported a 15% decline in storage hardware revenue, a drop that dragged the entire ... Continue Reading

Ultrathin memory storage device could spell breakthroughs

According to its creators, atomristor technology promises a vast improvement on modern flash storage devices, but mainstream use may still be far off. Continue Reading

Scality Rings up $60 million funding round

With a fresh $60 million in funding, Scality CEO Jerome Lecat said he expects the object storage vendor to become profitable within two years. Scality, which launched its Ring object storage in ... Continue Reading

Four situations where a multi-cloud strategy makes sense

Many businesses can benefit from using multiple cloud services, especially if they need to ensure reliability, protect privacy, remain flexible and optimize the cloud experience. Continue Reading

OwnBackup lands $15.5M to fund further SaaS backup

OwnBackup closed its largest funding round to date and will use it to propel product work and double employee headcount, the cloud-to-cloud backup and restore vendor said today. The $15.5 million ... Continue Reading

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

Reasons to choose Ceph storage over traditional alternatives

The flexibility and multitude of interfaces available in a Ceph environment make it a tempting option and have some organizations ditching their current storage setup. Continue Reading

Leading hybrid storage arrays offer flexibility, scalability

By examining how leading hybrid storage systems address scalability, system management and company size, your organization can select the array that will best meet its needs. Continue Reading

Datrium storage software adds AWS cloud backup

Datrium DVX 4.0 adds enterprise features such as AWS' cloud backup and recovery service, Oracle RAC support, VM fault tolerance and FIPS 140-2 security validation. Continue Reading

Qumulo P-Series packs NVMe into scale-out NAS

Qumulo goes after organizations with large, unstructured data stores that have a new need for speed with its all-flash NVMe P-Series scale-out NAS, which holds up to 24 NVMe SSD drives in a node. Continue Reading

How to get the full benefits from NVMe flash storage

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