Storage architecture and strategy

Dell data storage remains the weak link in FY18 revenue

Finding a way to grow enterprise storage and data protection will comprise a major focus for Dell Technologies this year, company executives told analysts during an earnings call on Wednesday. Dell ... Continue Reading

The danger of ageism in the tech industry and ignoring the past

Monolithic storage rules the day in spite of the advent of software-defined storage, because vendors and enterprises ignore data storage history and discount experience. Continue Reading

Ten ways to protect intellectual property and trade secrets

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The danger of ageism in the tech industry and ignoring the past

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Ceph vs. Swift: Two object storage systems for different needs

Some cloud object storage experts think that Ceph is better than Swift, but that isn't true. The fact is that both options can work, but your workload needs matter. Continue Reading

Cloudian HyperStore gains on-demand pricing, new funding

IT Investment firm Digital Alpha ponies up $125 million to Cloudian. Most of the new money will fund expanded inventory to support consumption pricing of local HyperStore arrays. Continue Reading

Imanis Data pulls in $13.5 million for databases protection

Imanis Data raised $13.5 million in a series B funding round and hired a new CEO as it aims to grow its business to protect next-generation NoSQL databases. The Imanis Data Management Suite ... Continue Reading

Komprise NAS migration leaves no data behind

Startup Komprise added NAS migration to its list of data management features in the new 2.7 release of its software. Komprise Intelligent Data Management customers can now migrate from one NAS ... Continue Reading

IT resiliency report: Downtime holding businesses up

The intro to a recent IT resiliency report asks the question: "Is IT turbulence the new norm?" In a year marred by ransomware attacks large and small, catastrophic natural disasters and other IT ... Continue Reading

Virtual Instruments rebrands Load DynamiX as WorkloadWisdom

Virtual Instruments rebrands Load DynamiX Enterprise storage performance validation software, updates its user interface, boosts performance and adds 25 GbE and SMB support. Continue Reading

New IBM storage products key on NAS, cloud, NVMe over Fabric

IBM launches new and updated Spectrum software-defined storage products, including a new NAS option, and commits to broadened end-to-end NVMe over Fabrics support by the third quarter. Continue Reading

Software-defined storage benefits to sway SDS holdouts

Software-defined storage is often misunderstood, yet the technology offers some advantages over traditional storage systems for many organizations. Continue Reading

Six software-defined storage architecture mistakes to avoid

SDS architecture is beneficial for many companies, but organizations making the switch can miss important steps, such as capacity and migration planning. Continue Reading

NooBaa update focuses on multi-cloud data management

Software-defined object storage startup NooBaa takes on unstructured data management across multiple private and public clouds with second major product release. Continue Reading

Market for software-defined systems due for a correction

Software-defined storage seems to relegate hardware to the sidelines, but that may change as hardware-centric offerings become attractive alternatives to software-on-COTS options. Continue Reading

Market for software-defined systems due for a correction

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Best data storage products 2017: Products of the Year

Storage magazine names winners of 2017 Products of the Year awards for best storage products in backup and DR, software-defined storage, storage arrays and management tools. Continue Reading

WekaIO Matrix

Startup WekaIO's Matrix parallel, scale-out file software pools the fast flash storage in application servers and offloads cold data to public and private clouds. Continue Reading

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

DataCore SANsymphony PSP6

The latest release of DataCore's software-defined storage offering, SANsymphony PSP6, enhances REST API integration, container support and cloud replication. Continue Reading

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

Pure FlashBlade

Pure Storage FlashBlade is optimized for unstructured data analytics. Its system-on-a-chip architecture uses custom NAND flash blades to accelerate data and its metadata. Continue Reading

IoFabric Vicinity 3.0

Vicinity 3.0 from IoFabric uses artificial intelligence to cut storage costs and also creates a seamless, live instance of data between on-premises sites and the cloud. Continue Reading

Caringo FileFly Secondary Storage Platform

FileFly Secondary Storage Platform from Caringo works with Windows Server and NetApp OnTap, adding intelligent data transfer to scale-out secondary storage while reducing cost. Continue Reading

Datrium DVX 3.0

Datrium impresses judges and wins top honors with its DVX storage architecture, designed to sidestep latency and deliver performance and speed at scale. Continue Reading

Reasons to consider an object storage architecture

Object storage allows organizations to deal with the massive amounts of data generated by IoT and AI applications, but it's not the best fit for frequently accessed data. Continue Reading

How a Dell and VMware merger could affect EMC storage

Enterprise storage stalwart EMC was majority owner of VMware and now may wind up a subsidiary if Dell merges with the virtualization giant. Dell said no decision has been reached. Continue Reading

Enterprise storage market to focus on data use in 2018

The focus of enterprise storage will shift to data management and analysis in 2018, spurring IT departments to rethink architecture that must stretch to edge and cloud. Continue Reading

Caringo Swarm sales jumped 40% in 2017

Despite all the talk about object storage over the years, it has yet to push scale-out NAS out of the enterprise for storing files that take up hundreds of terabytes to petabytes of capacity. But ... Continue Reading

Igneous Systems ingests $15 million funding for file data protection

Igneous Systems today closed a $15 million Series B funding round to help expand marketing of its hybrid cloud backup and archiving platform for file data. Igneous Hybrid Storage Cloud consists of ... Continue Reading

Commvault earnings disappoint again

Commvault generated $180.4 million in revenue last quarter, which was its biggest revenue quarter ever but still missed Wall Street’s expectation of $182 million. The company blamed the small ... Continue Reading

CEO refuses to confirm Primary Data shutdown reports

Primary Data CEO Lance Smith has refused to confirm published reports that the storage software startup has closed shop. Reached Tuesday evening at his Primary Data office telephone number, Smith ... Continue Reading

Cohesity exec: Hyper-converged secondary storage more than a trend

A Cohesity executive wants to make something clear about the company's self-described product line. "Hyper-converged secondary storage is not a trend," chief marketing officer Lynn Lucas said. ... Continue Reading

Data storage management tools: 2017 Products of the Year finalists

Storage management tools candidates for this year's Products of the Year competition reflect the growing importance of the cloud and machine learning. Continue Reading

Software-defined storage products: 2017 Products of the Year finalists

The 11 software-defined storage finalists in this year's competition highlight the most recent developments in flash, cloud and container technologies. Continue Reading

Enterprise storage arrays: 2017 Products of the Year finalists

All-flash and hybrid products comprise the bulk of the 14 storage arrays chosen as finalists in the 2017 Products of the Year contest. Only two arrays rely predominantly on disk. Continue Reading

Data management and storage 2017 Products of the Year finalists

We narrowed down the field to 47 finalists in five data storage categories as part of our much anticipated 16th annual Products of the Year competition. Continue Reading

Storage startup trends: Vendors to watch in 2018

Another year is behind us, and 2017 wasn't kind to enterprise-storage startups, as a bunch went belly up or sold off their assets. Not deterred by this recent history and startup trends, a new group of companies has emerged to try and make an impact in 2018. These include Aparavi, Attala Systems, Elastifile, Minio, Morro Data, Vexata, Wasabi Technologies and WekaIO. They have products focused on hot storage sectors, such as flash, hybrid cloud, scale-out file systems and object storage. Who's behind these startups? What do they offer that the market doesn't already provide? And, given recent startup trends, what are their chances for success? Find out with an early look at these upstarts.

A server still looks like a server, and network cables and racks haven't changed much over the last couple of decades, but storage has fundamentally transformed. Disk has lost its crown as the king of primary storage and is becoming relegated to the secondary -- and even cold -- storage world. More significantly, the data center is becoming more software-defined. That means storage functions that once demanded specialized hardware now reside in adaptable, pliable, reprogrammable and easily updateable software constructs. Explore the state of the software-defined storage market.

The advent of virtualization and its need to share all resources threatened the relevance of direct-attached storage (DAS) -- storage within the server. Only the emergence of flash storage, most specifically PCIe SSDs, staved off DAS' extinction, with the likes of Fusion-io demonstrating what you could do with high-speed flash integrated in the server. Today, storage is about to move even further into the server thanks to advancements in storage-class memory -- also known as persistent memory -- technologies. Here's how, why and what this development could mean to you.

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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

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

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Eight data storage startup vendors to watch in 2018

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Alert: Dell EMC data protection patches Avamar security holes

Users of Dell EMC data protection are being urged to quickly patch three security flaws that could hijack Avamar-based products. The vulnerabilities revolve around Avamar Installation Manager, a ... Continue Reading

Digital transformation planning bumps into data management issues

As businesses look to increasingly digitize their information, data management and data access are top concerns, according to a recent survey. "You can't be a digital business if you don't have ... Continue Reading

Taking the software-defined data center market pulse

Most organizations understand the benefits of the SDDC by now, but widespread adoption hasn't hit yet. Challenges such as complexity and internal talent could be to blame. Continue Reading

Toshiba, HPE head 2017 storage acquisitions

Storage acquisitions in 2017 included Hewlett Packard Enterprise's buys of SimpliVity and Nimble Storage, and Toshiba's move to sell off its memory business. Continue Reading

Software-defined data center architecture basics for beginners

The physical, virtualization and management layers of an SDDC make it possible to pool the physical components into logical resources, regardless of the underlying hardware. Continue Reading

Storage market trends of 2017: Flash, HCI and cloud gain steam

Disruption in the enterprise storage market appears unlikely to subside anytime soon. AI analytics, cloud, HCI, mergers and NVMe flash highlight key themes heading into 2018. Continue Reading

Hitz: NetApp market growth hinges on cloud, data management

Storage stalwart NetApp celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017. NetApp founder Dave Hitz reflects on its evolution and the impact of Cloud OnTap, Data Fabric and SolidFire HCI. Continue Reading

SwiftStack object storage integrates file protocol support

New SwiftStack 6.0 storage software supports Universal Access to data with added support for SMB/NFS file protocols to go with Amazon S3 and OpenStack Swift object APIs. Continue Reading

Cloudian HyperFile marries NAS and object storage

Cloudian's HyperFile and HyperStore merge NAS and object storage for unstructured data. The new HyperFile appliance targets medical imaging, engineering files and legal documents. 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

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

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Four rules to craft an enterprise data archiving strategy

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Data storage considerations for a DevOps environment

Having good storage can make all the difference when it comes to DevOps. As more organizations get on the DevOps bandwagon, see how storage has changed to match. Continue Reading

Barracuda Networks going private

Barracuda Networks became the latest public technology vendor to go private when equity firm Thoma Bravo agreed to pay $1.6 billion this week to acquire the security and data protection vendor. The ... 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

Data recovery plans face tall task as storage levels grow

Too much data is weighing heavily on data recovery plans, according to a recent survey. The problem has scaled beyond what many organizations can handle, said Douglas Brockett, president of backup ... Continue Reading

StorOne attacks bottlenecks with new TRU storage software

After six years of development, an Israeli startup launches new Total Resource Utilization storage software that aims to eliminate bottlenecks and improve storage efficiency. Continue Reading

Quobyte preps 2.0 Data Center File System software update

One startup's 'Google-style' software-defined storage upgrade features 'table stakes,' such as volume mirroring for disaster recovery and support for Mac and Windows clients. Continue Reading

Dell EMC: Big data lakes will like our Elastic Data Platform

Dell EMC big data storage has a sharper focus. The vendor recently launched Elastic Data Platform (EDP), a series of reference architecture geared for Hadoop and related big data environments.  EDP ... Continue Reading

Commvault GO: ‘Sully,’ Swan emphasize good data’s value

We hear a lot of talk these days about machine learning and artificial intelligence. Those are hot and valuable technologies, but two speakers at Commvault GO last week highlighted the importance ... Continue Reading

Nutanix backup choices expand

Options for Nutanix backup are growing for customers using the hyper-converged vendor’s AHV hypervisor. At Nutanix’s European .NEXT user conference last week, backup software market leader Veritas ... Continue Reading

Quantum CEO Gacek’s a goner after poor quarter

Quantum CEO Jon Gacek is out following poor sales results for the data protection and scale-out storage vendor last quarter. The Quantum board named director Adalio Sanchez as interim CEO. Chairman ... Continue Reading

SMB ransomware report: Attacks frequent, backups key piece

Ransomware attacks on SMBs have increased, according to a recent survey, but backup and disaster recovery platforms can calm data protection fears. An estimated 5% of SMBs worldwide fell victim to ... Continue Reading

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 adds file, iSCSI, container support

Red Hat updates Ceph storage software with support for CephFS file system, iSCSI block interface and Linux container-based storage implementations, plus usability improvements. Continue Reading

Explosion in unstructured data storage drives modernization

Increasing amounts of unstructured data are a key part of modern secondary storage environments with their distributed file systems and a scale-out object storage design. 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

Demand for cold data storage heats up

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Explosion in unstructured data storage drives modernization

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SwiftStack objects to object storage label

SwiftStack’s leadership team appreciated being selected a visionary in Gartner’s recent Magic Quadrant for distributed file systems and object storage. The vendor even put out a press release ... Continue Reading

Arcserve acquisition plans heating up

Arcserve is on the hunt to buy more companies. The data protection and recovery company already has made two acquisitions since becoming independent from CA Technologies in 2014. It bought cloud ... Continue Reading

IBM Cloud Object Storage tweaked for on-prem, small footprints

With the latest upgrades to its object storage platform, IBM recognizes that not everyone who uses object storage does so in the public cloud.  They don’t all start with hundreds of terabytes of ... Continue Reading

Veeam revenue increases as enterprise deals grow

Highlighted by the largest customer deal in its history and a big bump in enterprise bookings, Veeam reported 34% year-over-year total bookings growth in the last quarter. There has been a push in ... Continue Reading

Quest data protection management adds cloud portal

Quest Software, independent again after its spinoff from Dell EMC nearly a year ago, is building out its data protection portfolio with a new cloud-based management console. The Quest Data ... Continue Reading

Beat VDI deployment challenges; find the best VDI storage

Companies that want to stand up a VDI deployment can choose from a variety of storage options, from traditional storage technologies to more creative approaches, such as layering. Continue Reading

Can Commvault HyperScale cure sales slide?

Following six straight quarters of making or beating expectations, Commvault stumbled last quarter when it missed its targets for revenue and income. The backup and data management company today ... 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

Komprise adds data lifecycle management, deeper analytics

Storage startup updates data management software with additional policy-based data migration options, more granular analytics and GDPR-focused confinement capabilities. 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

NetApp customers, partners press on after Las Vegas shooting

About 4,000 NetApp customers and partners attended the vendor's Insight user conference expecting storage news. Instead, they had to absorb the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Continue Reading

Open source technology promises to alter enterprise storage

Open source storage software could alter the face of the industry by cutting costs and delivering greater flexibility over existing storage infrastructure. Continue Reading

Infinidat boxes up $95M funding haul

Infinidat picked up $95 million in funding today to help fuel an aggressive product expansion – including moves into secondary storage and a public cloud offering. Goldman Sachs Private Capital ... Continue Reading

NetApp Insight: Las Vegas should have time to grieve first

LAS VEGAS - This blog was supposed to tell our readers about the big developments surrounding Day 1 of the NetApp Insight user conference.  Sadly, today’s subject matter touches on more sobering ... Continue Reading

Toshiba memory business sale faces bumpy road

Toshiba signs a $17.7 billion deal to sell its memory business to a Bain-led consortium that includes Dell and Seagate, but Western Digital's SanDisk wants to stop it. 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

Dell EMC storage gets new boss

Of all the EMC executives who left the company since the Dell acquisition, the departure of David Goulden will have the greatest impact on the Dell EMC storage business. Dell dropped the news that ... Continue Reading

How do I enable file sharing on Ceph object storage?

The open source Ceph project prioritizes efficient data storage over easy access, so companies that want to set up file sharing on their object stores must do a little extra work. Continue Reading

New Pure Storage CEO Giancarlo faces scaling challenge

Former Cisco exec Charles Giancarlo takes over as CEO of Pure Storage from Scott Dietzen with the all-flash pioneer set to become a billion-dollar baby. Will profits follow? Continue Reading

Everspin Technologies nvNITRO ST-MRAM SSDs ready to ship

Everspin's new ST-MRAM-based nvNITRO Storage Accelerator pledges 'DRAM-like' performance, but analysts say the high price could limit the SSD's use cases. Continue Reading

Dell EMC Isilon helps preserve tennis history

At the U.S. Open tennis tournament last week, Rafael Nadal solidified his Hall of Fame credentials and Sloane Stephens became a hall of fame candidate. And the International Tennis Hall of Fame ... Continue Reading

Can I replace HDDs with SSDs to support in-memory storage?

Replacing all your HDDs with SSDs won't solve the storage issues associated with in-memory databases. Look to hyper-convergence and NVDIMMs instead. Continue Reading

Spectra Logic BlackPearl NAS disk appliance launches

Spectra Logic has added a midrange BlackPearl NAS disk appliance to augment its tape-based object storage. Spectra Logic launched the object-based BlackPearl line as a linear tape file system ... Continue Reading

Tintri revenue misses target, but earnings are a surprise

Private enterprise cloud specialist Tintri Inc. on Thursday posted mixed financial results in its first earnings call since going public in June. The bottom line: lackluster Tintri revenue was ... Continue Reading

Dell EMC storage sags in the middle

What do you do when storage sales slow down? If you’re Dell EMC, you add velocity to the sales process. “Storage velocity” was a frequently used term during Dell’s earnings call this morning. On ... Continue Reading

BackupAssist CryptoSafeGuard aids ransomware backup strategy

Windows data protection specialist BackupAssist is the latest vendor to provide a capability that helps combat ransomware. The Australia-based company recently launched CryptoSafeGuard, part of its ... Continue Reading

Cloudian CEO sees favorable trends in object storage market

Cloudian CEO Michael Tso notes favorable trends for object storage: Capacities are increasing to petabytes, and customers want to use different clouds for different workloads. Continue Reading

Your enterprise data management strategy needs a superhero

Data management products are the Superman, not the Batman, of storage. They have built-in superpowers that provide the innate power needed to manage data. 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 -- promises to overcome these challenges. Containers weren't originally designed to implement full-stack applications or any application that needs persistent storage. With containers gaining support from storage array makers, we're starting to see arrays allowing containerized applications to take advantage of primary storage. Find out how storage vendors are bringing persistent storage to the world of containerized applications.

Nonvolatile memory express (NVMe) replaces SCSI at both the device and network levels to deliver greater bandwidth and lower latency to internal storage devices. And with the development of NVMe over Fabrics, the NVMe command set can work across the network via external storage. Discover the benefits of NVMe over Fabrics, when to deploy the technology, how to implement it and which vendors are making it happen.

Copy data management (CDM) protects production data and improves the management of production data copies, with the aim of cutting storage costs, improving data visibility and compliance, and speeding up data access. Until last year, it was the province of point products. But the market is changing, and the technology has gone mainstream as the largest data protection and storage vendors have joined the CDM fray. Find out which CDM capabilities companies value most and what is being done to meet growing demand. What advantages can CDM bring to your IT data storage environment?

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