Topics Archives

How can you increase SSD lifespan and keep performance?

Solid-state drives offer high performance, but their cost remains prohibitive. Here are some ways to prolong your SSD lifecycle while maintaining performance. Continue Reading

Storage pros see high demand in 2016 salary survey

Storage magazine has tracked storage salaries for 13 years, polling readers to gather data about pay, benefits and other influences on job satisfaction. Our 2016 salary survey shows demand for storage savvy IT pros is still high as reflected by the overall average salary of nearly $98,000. We look at how geography, education, experience and other factors affect storage salaries in our 2016 salary survey.

When virtual servers first appeared in data centers, storage generally wasn't up to the task. Today, most vendors have tuned their wares to better support virtual environments. But you still might have to get under the hood to fix a bottleneck or two. We'll tell you what to look for and how to fix it.

Few companies are ready to give up their on-premises storage resources in favor of cloud storage. Hybrid setups that integrate on-premises with the cloud are the most desirable arrangements and vendors are beginning to sit up and take notice.

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Propane provider gives SAN the gas with Violin flash array

Ferrellgas' switch from a hybrid array to a Violin flash storage array brought a boost in performance as well as surprising reductions in cost and management. Continue Reading

Complete guide to server-based storage in its modern forms

From hyper-convergence to the cloud, better understand direct-attached storage and its many forms with this essential guide. Continue Reading

Hybrid cloud still an unfulfilled goal for most

Storage vendors often talk about this being a transformation period in storage. EMC, whose executives use that term as much as anybody, conducted an analysis of its customers to see just where they ... Continue Reading

HPE turns 3PAR array from all-flash to hybrid

For years we’ve seen storage vendors take systems designed for hard disk drives (HDDs) and add solid-state drives (SSDs) to them. Now Hewlett Packard Enterprise is taking hardware that ran all SSDs ... Continue Reading

Pure FlashBlade tackles scale-out unstructured data

Pure Storage launches a blade-based, scale-out unstructured data all-flash system that handles NAS and object storage. The vendor also brings out an entry-level version of its SAN flash array. Continue Reading

Violin Memory receives no offers, makes few sales in Q4

Violin Memory finished its hunt for a buyer without a deal. It did land a few partnerships, while shedding a quarter of its workforce and closing few sales of its all-flash storage arrays. Violin ... Continue Reading

NetApp and Synology top NAS storage systems survey

A storage pioneer and relative newcomer land top honors in our 10^th Quality Awards NAS storage systems survey of midrange and enterprise users. Continue Reading

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

Pure Storage accelerates flash revenue

Pure Storage is looking at more competition and more opportunity than ever, and handling both well. The all-flash vendor bucked industry trends by growing revenue significantly last quarter despite ... Continue Reading

CSPs spend a lot on storage to enable the cloud

Nearly one third of cloud service providers spend more than 10% of their revenue on storage while 46% of them spend five to 10 percent of their revenue on storage, according to a survey conducted ... Continue Reading

Michael Dell: 'Ignore click-baiting cratering media'

Michael Dell and other Dell executives have told employees the $67 billion acquisition of EMC will go through despite reports that his group is having trouble securing financing for the deal. Dell ... Continue Reading

NetApp revenue slips keep showing

NetApp’s latest earnings report shows the vendor is still in a hole with a lot of digging to do before it returns to revenue growth. NetApp reported another quarter of declining revenue Wednesday ... Continue Reading

Vendors, analysts guess future of data storage in 2016

After Rich Castagna offered his look at the future of data storage in 2016, vendors and analysts shared their guesses on what will happen this year. Continue Reading

Zadara Storage Inc. VPSA OPaaS 15.07

Zadara Storage's Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) On-Premise as a Service (OPaaS) offers on-demand, enterprise-grade block and file storage, based on OpenStack technology. Continue Reading

Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX 7.6

Judges found the 2015 upgrade to Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX file management software brought significant improvements including extended integration and added features. Continue Reading

Panzura Global File System gets management upgrade

Panzura builds a new console that centralizes maintenance for its controllers and Global File System. The Google Maps-based monitoring and reporting tool manages cloud storage. Continue Reading

Commvault takes a revenue leap forward

Is Commvault back on track? The backup vendor snapped a string of four quarters of year-over-year revenue declines when it reported of $155.7 million last quarter, up 2% from the previous year. ... Continue Reading

Hyper-converged vendor Gridstore picks up funding for expansion

Gridstore closed a $19 million funding round today with plans to substantially expand engineering and sales of its all-flash hyper-converged systems built for Microsoft Hyper-V. The round brings ... Continue Reading

The significance of parallel I/O in data storage

Parallel computing has been around since the 1970s, but the re-emergence of multiprocessor systems may give parallel I/O a big place in the current data storage landscape. Continue Reading

Caringo adds support for Microsoft Azure to its Swarm software

Caringo has expanded its Swarm object storage to Microsoft Azure. The company recently said its object storage software, which already has Amazon S3 support, now is available on the Azure cloud so ... Continue Reading

Veeam kicks off 2016 with V9 GA

Veeam Software has started off the year by making Veeam Availability Suite 9 generally available to customers. The software has more than 250 features, according to Veeam. While the data protection ... Continue Reading

Five types of storage virtualization: Pros and cons

Expert Brien Posey discusses five ways to virtualize storage in an organization. Review the pros and cons of each approach to find the best fit for your data center. Continue Reading

Enterprise hard disk/hybrid storage systems: 2015 Products of the Year finalists

The 14 finalists in the hard disk/hybrid storage systems category of the 2015 Products of the Year competition blend flash configurations with traditional spinning media. Continue Reading

Base enterprise hybrid cloud evaluation on security, cost

Explosive data growth has organizations looking at hybrid cloud storage to meet their capacity needs. But cloud costs and security issues need to be addressed. Continue Reading

Companies use caution with cloud file sync and share

Though nearly half of companies are using cloud file sync-and-share services, those who aren't using it have taken a wait-and-see approach. Continue Reading

Backup appliance revenue up slightly

Worldwide factory revenues for backup appliances grew 2.2 percent year-over-year in the third quarter this year, with revenue totaling $813.6 million, according to International Data Corp.'s ... Continue Reading

Tintri adds entry-level all-flash, teases analytics

Virtual machine-storage specialist Tintri rounded out its all-flash product line today with an entry level version priced at $125,000 for 5.34 TB of raw capacity. The VMstore T5040 is the third ... Continue Reading

Pure Storage reports revenue spike in 1st earnings report since IPO

Pure Storage’s first earnings call since its October IPO was a rosy one on the revenue side. The all-flash array vendor’s revenue hit $131.4 million in its fiscal 2016 third quarter – a 167% ... Continue Reading

Did Violin Memory just hang a ‘For Sale’ sign?

All-flash pioneer Violin Memory can’t sell enough all-flash arrays to make money. So its next move could be to sell itself in its entirety. After another disappointing quarter, Violin CEO Kevin ... Continue Reading

Brocade ties its hopes to storage capacity, not pricing

If the largest storage array vendors that sell Brocade’s SAN switching are getting hit with declining revenue every quarter, that’s bad news for Brocade, right? If you agree with that, then you’re ... Continue Reading

Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance system overview

Oracle ZFS Storage uses mechanical and flash storage. The ZS3-2 and ZS4-4 models offer a variety of software for storage management, encryption and security. Continue Reading

HPE StoreEasy 1000 Storage family product overview

The Hewlett Packard Enterprise StoreEasy 1000 Storage family -- formerly HP StoreEasy 1000 Storage -- has four mid-level NAS models, management tools and BitLocker Drive Encryption support. Continue Reading

Will most 3D NAND flash products continue to feature TLC?

Vendors are using TLC flash in their 3D NAND flash products, which allows for greater capacity at a lower cost, according to Brien Posey. Continue Reading

NetApp FAS2500 series: Technical overview

The NetApp FAS2500 series includes the FAS2554, FAS2552 and FAS2520. The NAS systems support hybrid flash setups for environments with mid-tier network storage needs. Continue Reading

Enterprise file sharing, shadow IT require swift action

File sync-and-share has vexed enterprises, but it's time to fight back and get those files out of the clouds and off employees' personal devices. Continue Reading

Hitachi NAS platform 4000 overview

The Hitachi NAS platform 4000 series consists of four product models that use a discrete controller that can be attached to almost any Hitachi storage system. Continue Reading

EMC VNXe3200 midrange NAS system technical overview

The VNXe3200 from EMC is a NAS system for environments that require midrange network storage solutions. Continue Reading

Formation Data CEO: Dell-EMC deal doesn't guarantee innovation

Dell’s pending $67 billion acquisition of EMC has sparked plenty of discussion about overlapping products. Yet despite the enormity of their potential merger, the newly fused Dell-EMC may not have ... Continue Reading

Server-side caching has new data center role

Some server-side caching products have evolved into complete software-defined storage platforms that can aggregate flash across multiple servers. Continue Reading

EMC Isilon X-Series NAS: Isilon x200, x210 and x410

The Isilon X-Series is a lineup of NAS systems that support hybrid flash setups. The products are designed for environments with mid-tier network storage needs. Continue Reading

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

EMC Isilon S-Series NAS: Isilon S210 and Isilon S200

The Isilon S210 and S200 are part of the EMC Isilon S-Series line of NAS systems for data storage environments that require mid-level network storage offerings. Continue Reading

EMC Isilon NL400 NAS platform

The EMC Isilon NL400 is a midrange NAS platform with a maximum raw capacity of 210 TB per node. The array is designed specifically for environments that require near-line storage. Continue Reading

The ultimate guide to Dell's EMC acquisition

This guide to Dell's EMC acquisition covers all angles of the blockbuster deal -- from breaking news and expert feedback, to the long-term ramifications on the IT sector. Continue Reading

Datagres PerfAccel 3.0 caching software ready to launch

Datagres PerfAccel 3.0 resides on a host server to examine application I/O access patterns at the file-system level and boost the performance of underlying storage. Continue Reading

By the way, EMC's storage revenue shrunk last quarter

Almost lost in the noise around Dell’s estimated $67 billion acquisition of EMC this week was another down sales quarter for EMC storage. EMC reported preliminary revenue totals Monday on the call ... Continue Reading

Dell is EMC's latest potential dance partner

The EMC rumor machine is in full force again today. This time it’s Dell that is reportedly interested in buying all or some of EMC. Of course, if the sources for these rumors were 100% reliable, ... Continue Reading

Connected Data Transporter trumps public cloud for users

Customers Calvary Church and Look Photography needed a more cost-efficient file-sharing tool and found Connected Data Transporter did the trick. Continue Reading

Utility watchdog deploys all-flash SolidFire storage array

California Public Utilities Commission was stuck at about 80% server virtualization before adding all-flash SolidFire storage to remove latency problems. Continue Reading

Top object storage vendor use cases for IT

Today's object storage vendors provide products that are often the best option for archiving, backup and data lake architectures. Continue Reading

Flash storage and cleaning house

A recent discussion with a client got me thinking about precipitating events that cause IT professionals to “put their house in order” regarding the information they store. In this case, there was ... Continue Reading

External storage sales down as market shifts to hyperscale and server-based storage

External storage sales are shrinking. The total worldwide enterprise storage systems factory revenue grew to an $8.8 billion during the second quarter of 2015, according to IDC. However, sales are ... Continue Reading

Big data analytics applications impact storage systems

Analytics applications for big data have placed extensive demands on storage systems, which Mike Matchett says often requires new or modified storage structures. Continue Reading

Cost savings for virtualizing servers not yet reality

Though you've heard for years that virtualizing servers will save money, Jon Toigo argues that the cost of virtualization hasn't lowered. Continue Reading

Formation Data Systems tries out storage virtualization

Formation Data Systems CEO Mark Lewis offers a sneak peek of new data and storage virtualization software to move to the "cloud storage generation." Continue Reading

VMware EVO SDDC testers shoot for low storage cost

Reduced storage costs and better capacity scaling are key reasons EVO SDDC testers say they are interested in the hyper-converged private cloud stack. Continue Reading

Commodity hardware is a myth

Software-defined storage vendors preach the concept of commodity storage hardware, but beware: the hardware is just as important as the apps. Continue Reading

VMware prepares VSAN 6.1, promises dedupe next

VMware launches VSAN 6.1 and prepares beta for the next version of the hyper-converged software, which will finally deliver data deduplication. Continue Reading

EMC Federation center stage as VMworld 2015 opens

With the future of EMC Federation in the air, the storage giant launches bundle for end user computing and updates its hybrid cloud package. Continue Reading

EMC XtremIO storage array

The XtremIO storage array from EMC is an all-flash system that offers scalability and high performance. Continue Reading

Why are object stores a good match for archival data storage?

Latency in object stores that stems from a large amount of metadata means the technology is better suited to non-transactional data. Continue Reading

What is eventual consistency in object stores?

Eventual consistency in object stores can be an issue because object storage is spread over many nodes and up-to-date data may not always be available. Continue Reading

Toshiba unveils SAS, NVMe PCIe SSDs at Flash Memory Summit

Count Toshiba among the group of drive makers demonstrating new enterprise PCI Express (PCIe) and SAS SSDs at this week’s Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California. Toshiba unveiled three ... Continue Reading

Pure takes first step to go public, files for IPO

Pure Storage today filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in hopes of becoming the second all-flash storage array vendor to go public following Violin Memory. In its filing with the U.S. ... Continue Reading

Box hires former EMC Syncplicity chief

Box today has hired the former CEO of  EMC Syncplicity. Jeetu Patel, the former general manager of EMC Syncplicity enterprise file synchronization and sharing (EFSS) business unit, has joined the ... Continue Reading

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

Taking stock of the cloud storage market

Rich Castagna takes a closer look at the impact of cloud storage, what's preventing more widespread adoption, and the potential of the technology. Continue Reading

Performance counts when buying a solid-state storage device

More than half of our surveyed companies are using flash now, with plans to use it for more than just mission-critical apps. Continue Reading

What separates object storage systems from SDS?

Although software-defined storage and object storage can work in similar ways, there are significant differences between the two. Continue Reading

Is Veeam’s gain causing Commvault’s pain?

Commvault’s revenue keeps sliding while data protection software rival Veeam makes steady gains. Coincidence, or is Veeam taking deals that Commvault used to win? Commvault's revenue of $139 ... Continue Reading

EMC tempers expectations, accelerates shift to emerging storage technologies

EMC executives reduced their 2015 revenue forecasts for the second time this year following a quarter of tepid growth. They also said the vendor will implement plans to cut costs by $850 million a ... Continue Reading

SIOS launches iQ, seeks more intelligent analytics

Data protection software vendor SIOS Technologies is branching out into IT analytics. The vendor this week launched SIOS iQ, an analytics platform developed for virtual machines and their ... Continue Reading

What's the difference between EMC VNX series and ViPR?

Brien Posey explains how two of EMC's virtual storage products work and for what use cases they work best. Continue Reading

What's the best way to protect against HDD failure?

HDD failure can put bytes of data at risk. Is multi-copy mirroring or erasure coding the more efficient data protection approach? Continue Reading

Red Hat not likely to combine Ceph, Gluster into single product

One petabyte-scale storage customer traveled to this week’s Red Hat Summit in Boston with dreams of Ceph and Gluster merging into a single product. He hoped Red Hat would take the best pieces of ... Continue Reading

PernixData plans platform proliferation

PernixData executives this week disclosed three coming additions to its core FVP software, which clusters server flash and RAM to accelerate I/O and reduce latency. PernixData claims around 400 ... Continue Reading

Examine your computing environment before you buy flash storage

The decision to buy flash storage can overcome many performance issues, but other areas of your computing environment could be contributing factors. Continue Reading

HDS fully digests Pentaho

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) closed its acquisition of Pentaho this week, which means Pentaho’s big data analytics technology will be showing up in HDS storage products soon. Pentaho software will be ... Continue Reading

Violin still searching for right notes

The red hot all-flash array remains ice cold for Violin Memory. Violin reported revenue of $12.1 million for last quarter. That was down 33.3 percent from last year and 41 percent from last ... Continue Reading

Will memristor technology replace NAND flash?

Brien Posey says that with HP working on a memristor-based computer it plans to launch by 2020, the technology could eventually succeed NAND flash. Continue Reading

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

The ultimate network-attached storage guide

Get tips on implementing a NAS system, find out where the technology works best and understand the need-to-know purchasing criteria. Continue Reading

Quantum expects to scale StorNext products, sales this year

Quantum’s forecast for the next year includes more StorNext and scale-out archiving products, sales and vertical markets. The sales bump has already started. Quantum last week reported its ... Continue Reading

New Dell storage array, software-defined options added

Dell Storage ships new entry-level SCv2000 arrays, ups performance and density in PS6610 and adds a new Microsoft-based software-defined storage option. Continue Reading

Nexenta Systems CEO discusses upcoming product launches

Nexenta Systems CEO says NexentaEdge object storage demo will happen at upcoming OpenStack Summit, NexentaFusion management beta launch will follow Continue Reading

EMC World 2015: Expect backup, flash, future directions

EMC will roll out products in its Data Domain, XtremIO and ViPR platforms at EMC World 2015, but what about a CEO succession plan? 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

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

What are protocol endpoints in vSphere VVOLs and how do they work?

VMware's new VVOLs feature allows storage functionality to be distributed on a per-VM basis. Protocol endpoints are integral to proper allocation. Continue Reading

EMC storage revs down, reflect industry transformation

EMC came up $75 million short of its projected storage revenue last quarter, according to its Wednesday earnings report. No big surprise there. EMC and other large storage vendors have struggled to ... Continue Reading

SanDisk sees PCIe flash take a dive

SanDisk became the PCIe flash market leader with its 2014 acquisition of server-side flash pioneer Fusion-io. Less than a year later, there is a lot less to that market and that is having a ... Continue Reading

EMC: Information glut will change what storage looks like

There’s a lot of data out there, and there’s going to be even more in the future, and businesses need to figure out better ways to use and deliver it because the always-connected “information ... Continue Reading

IBM says it can put 220 terabytes in the palm of your hand

IBM is working on putting 220 terabytes of storage in a palm-sized tape cartridge. The company has developed breakthrough technology that shrinks the size of bits for magnetic tape and offers ... Continue Reading

A closer look at cloud storage use cases, strategies

Find out how primary storage vendors are closely integrating with cloud storage providers in ways that enable new uses for cloud storage. Continue Reading

Five ways VDI technology is affected by storage

Managing storage for your VDI infrastructure has progressed, but there are still some snags. Here are five ways to avoid VDI environment issues. Continue Reading

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

Four tips to maximize the lifespan of your flash memory storage

The lifespan of flash memory storage is not the hot-button issue it once was, but you should perform these tasks to prolong the life of your drives. Continue Reading

IT managers: Concerns spurring hybrid cloud adoption

According to a recent study conducted by EMC, the top concerns of IT managers today could be contributing to an uptick in hybrid cloud deployments. Continue Reading