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OCTOBER 2009 |
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FEATURES |
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TOOLS, TRENDS & ANALYSIS |
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COLUMNS |
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Find out more about this month's Storage Magazine advertisers by clicking on the company names below to contact them and request more information on their products and services. |
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December 2008 |
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Next year's hot technologies
by Ellen O'Brien
In our annual look ahead at hot storage technologies, we present our nominees for those storage technologies that are poised to break out of the pack and become essential building blocks for new products that make storage easier to manage, less costly and better performing. |
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2009: Do more with less
by Rich Castagna
According to Storage magazine's 2009 Storage Priorities survey, budgets earmarked for storage technologies will increase on average by only 3.8%. Tighter purse strings will affect most, if not all, companies, but mid-sized businesses may get hit a little harder than their smaller and larger cousins. But having less to spend doesn't mean storage managers will have less to do in 2009. |
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How your SAN will evolve
by Alan Radding
We asked storage vendors, industry analysts and technologists serving on storage industry associations about where they saw the SAN heading. There may not be sweeping architectural changes in five years, but there will be changes in the basic building blocks of the SAN infrastructure: networks and protocols; switches; storage arrays, disks and controllers; and SAN management. |
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DR for virtualized servers
by Jacob Gsoedl
A high level of mobility and the relative hardware independence of virtual servers greatly reduces the cost and complexity of putting disaster recovery (DR) in place, enabling companies to expand DR to a larger number of servers and applications. |
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November 2008 |
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Economy down, salaries up
by Ellen O'Brien
Our sixth annual Storage Salary Survey shows storage salaries are rising overall, and climbing even higher as the number of terabytes managed increases. Experienced storage pros remain in demand but many respondents say that heavier workloads, smaller staffs, longer hours and tighter budgets are all contributing to stress and making the job of managing storage even tougher. |
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Five things that mess up your backups
by W. Curtis Preston
Data backups are still job No. 1--and problem No. 1--for most storage managers. In this article, backup guru W. Curtis Preston describes the five most prevalent backup system problems and explains what you can do to prevent or remedy them. |
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Show-me state shows how to consolidate storage
by Alan Radding
Whether it's the result of a merger or just good housekeeping, at some point in time storage managers will have a storage consolidation project. The Missouri state government embarked on a major storage consolidation project that included numerous political and technical hurdles. |
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Data migration tips
by Robert L. Scheier
Data moves. Or, it has to be moved when you're refreshing array technology, merging storage resources with an acquired company or shifting data around to more economical tiers. Data migration is a common task, but it's often a difficult one. We describe some technologies and tools to ease the pain of data migrations. |
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October 2008 |
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Second-generation CDP
by Jacob Gsoedl
Continuous data protection (CDP) received lots of attention but garnered few takers as a standalone product. Since then, the technology has been incorporated into data protection products and its role is now likely to expand. In addition, rapid data growth and shrinking backup windows are two of the trends that support the increased adoption of CDP. |
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Economy and capacity at odds
by Rich Castagna
With fewer bucks in the budget, storage managers are facing some constraints in dealing with growing storage capacities. But, according to Storage magazine's Purchasing Intentions survey, they're responding by earmarking some of those dollars to newer technologies like data deduplication that will help them cope with burgeoning data stores. |
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The green storage gap
by Ellen O'Brien
Storage departments are trying energy-saving technologies, but measuring ROI is still a challenge. Some storage administrators are plugging vendor-supplied product power consumption numbers into so-called green calculators, but it's no easy task as there are inconsistencies in how each vendor presents its product's power requirements. |
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Storage for high-performance computing
by Deni Connor
The storage and server cluster installed at The University of Texas at Austin is a lesson in how to do high-performance computing (HPC). Storage requirements for HPC go beyond massive capacity and include the use of high-performance file systems. |
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September 2008 |
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Dedupe myths and methods
by Alan Radding
Exaggerated claims, rapidly changing technology and persistent myths make navigating the deduplication landscape treacherous. We list the top five dedupe myths and provide tips to help you get a deduplication product that fits your organization's needs at a competitive price. |
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Virtual server backup tips
by Alan Radding
Virtualized servers yield many benefits, but they can also add complexity to backup operations. There are three main ways to back up a virtual server. Here's how to determine which method is best for your virtualized server environment and storage requirements. |
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CDP in depth
by Jerome M. Wendt
Continuous data protection (CDP) technology is now a viable alternative to traditional backup software and storage system-based replication software. But CDP products can vary significantly, especially in the context of different storage architectures. Depending on specific environments, companies may have to evaluate very different criteria before settling on a CDP product. |
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Are full backups a thing of the past?
by Kevin Suttle
In the not-so-distant past, we relied on tape backups for operational recovery, disaster recovery and long-term data retention. But are full nightly backups to tape still needed now that we have new disk-based technologies like snapshots and continuous data protection? |
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September 2008 |
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Centralize virtualization at the switch
by Jacob Gsoedl
There are a number of ways you can virtualize your storage, but because a switch-based virtualization engine works out-of-band, there's no need for server agents, making it the most scalable and highest performing of all virtualization architectures. |
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Move data fast
by Ellen O'Brien
As the WAN optimization market has matured, vendors have been competing on features such as advanced compression techniques and traffic management, including load balancing and protocol optimization for Web-based apps. But make sure the new or enhanced product features are truly priorities for your environment and test them thoroughly before buying. |
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Small disks, big specs
by Alan Radding
Hard disk drives have been around for more than 50 years, but the technology is on the cusp of big changes--SAS, a shift to the 2.5-inch form factor and a steady increase in disk drive capacity--that will affect enterprise storage for years to come. |
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August 2008 |
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Enterprise-ready VTLs
by Robert L. Scheier
Enterprise-class virtual tape libraries (VTLs) are an increasingly cost-effective destination for data that needs to be backed up or restored quickly, and isn't quite ready for offsite archiving. But the more complex the storage environment, the more attention users should pay to how the VTL provides scalability, performance, manageability and deduplication. |
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Storage at your service
by Ellen O'Brien
Storage-as-a-service (SaaS) companies learned from the mistakes of their dot-com era predecessors. Today, SaaS is being driven by economic factors, as well as runaway data growth, compliance requirements, security issues and disaster recovery mandates. And a few well-established storage heavyweights entering the market hasn't hurt any. |
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Lights, camera, storage!
by Deni Connor
The digital media business and corporate multimedia departments are looking at increasing terabytes and even petabytes of information generated in the creation, editing, archiving and distribution of digital content. In addition, the move to high-definition television and higher resolution camera work will tax storage boundaries. |
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July 2008 |
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Solid State: New frontier for storage
by Jacob Gsoedl
Solid-state media is starting to show up as an option for traditional storage arrays because it offers higher performance and lower power consumption. However, there are still reliability concerns related to wear out, the slower write performance of flash cells, and issues related to array management and interoperability. |
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Server blades and storage
by Ellen O'Brien
Many IT shops are moving from traditional rack-mounted servers to blade configurations in hopes of reducing power and floor space requirements in their data centers. But combining blade architectures with server virtualization can cause problems with I/O and storage systems. |
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Here comes 8Gig Fibre Channel
by Alan Radding
New 8Gb/sec host bus adapters (HBAs) and switch devices have started arriving. But with storage arrays incorporating the new, higher speed technology still months away, end-to-end 8Gb storage infrastructures are still in the planning stages. Storage managers can get a jump on their 8Gig configurations by upgrading switches and HBAs now, or by considering networking gear that supports Fibre Channel over Ethernet. |
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Storage gets a dose of medical data
by Alan Radding
By 2014, healthcare providers will be required to make every patient's medical information available electronically. While having all of a patient's data in one place will make it easier to diagnose and treat them, many medical IT departments don't have the IT infrastructure, storage and network bandwidth to accommodate these records. |
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June 2008 |
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Migrate data without mistakes
by Deni Connor
Data migrations are a fact of life. In many cases, the migration ends up being a tedious process. Automated tools can help ease migration woes. Host-based migration software takes the load off the storage array and can easily bridge the gap when migrating data between heterogeneous storage systems. But array-based migration may be preferred for technology refreshes. |
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The big crunch: Capacity grows, budgets shrink
by Rich Castagna
The brief respite storage managers enjoyed from the ever-escalating need for more disk capacity appears to be over. Respondents to our 2008 Purchasing Intentions survey say they'll add an average of 47TB of new disk capacity this year. But they'll have to do it with smaller storage budgets. And while virtualization could help respondents use their storage more efficiently, it's still receiving a cool reception. |
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10 key considerations for email archiving
by Stephen Foskett
If you haven't standardized on an email archiving product, it can be time-consuming to find one that fits your company's needs. We list the 10 questions that will help you narrow down the list of available products and find the one that best suits your requirements. |
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May 2008 |
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Tools to test your DR plan
by Robert L. Scheier
Periodically testing a disaster recovery (DR) plan is essential, but it can be a time-consuming and expensive task. New tools that check DR configurations and constantly monitor your site's readiness to recover from a disaster can cut costs and testing time, and provide a level of confidence that your DR plan will actually work when it's needed. |
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Big files create big backup issues
by Stephen Foskett
Big files and millions of files clogging storage systems can create big backup headaches. While there's no quick fix to the problem of big backups, there are many effective approaches, including adjustments to your backup process and newer technologies from backup vendors. |
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Legal toolkit for storage systems
by Alan Radding
Storage managers may be reluctant to admit it, but they and the storage systems they manage are key players in most companies' compliance and legal readiness procedures. While ediscovery is the current buzzword, there's currently no all-encompassing ediscovery tool on the market. But you can assemble an effective toolkit with some of the point products that are available now. |
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Automate storage management
by Rich Bourdeau
IT process automation tools provide workflows that can help automate manual storage management processes. The real value is when these workflow engines are integrated with storage management apps to not only guide administrators through the process, but provide them with information to make intelligent decisions and automate some of the more basic tasks. |
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April 2008 |
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Is iSCSI good enough?
by Deni Connor
Organizations of all sizes have adopted iSCSI because it's easy to install, inexpensive, behaves just like Ethernet and doesn't require specialized skill sets like Fibre Channel does. But do analyst claims that iSCSI performance falls short of that for Fiber Channel hold up? |
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The benefits of clustered storage
by Robert L. Scheier
Clustered storage combines multiple arrays or controllers to increase their performance, capacity or reliability. But the technology isn't right for every company. We outline what you need to know before deciding to adopt clustered storage. |
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Automate application recovery
by Eric Burgener
Today's application continuity computing (ACC) products are best suited for small- and medium-sized businesses, and are focused exclusively on Exchange, which most companies now consider a business-critical application. But the concentration on Exchange will likely change over the next few years, as several ACC vendors plan support for SQL Server and SharePoint in the future. |
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March 2008 |
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Arrays score with both file and block storage
by Jacob Gsoedl
Multiprotocol arrays that support block- and file-based storage through a single controller give users the best of both worlds: NAS for file-based information, and Fibre Channel or ISCSI block-based storage for databases and other transactional apps. |
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Vendors retool SRM apps
by Bob Laliberte
The definition of what constitutes storage resource management (SRM) depends on who you ask and what they're selling. A recent study by the Enterprise Strategy Group queried respondents on the SRM features they use most often, their most desired features and if they would purchase an SRM product without a particular feature. |
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Case study: NY Mets add deduplication to roster
by Alan Radding
With an extensive lineup of corporate data, photos and video, the Mets needed to recruit some backup help. The call went out for low-cost disk backup configuration, including deduplication and compression to reduce the amount of data to be backed up, as well as WAN optimization/acceleration to speed up the replication process. After much consideration, Data Domain was drafted for the job. |
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February 2008 |
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Hot Storage Skills
by Ellen O'Brien
As storage becomes more complex and costly, businesses are seeking storage professionals who can architect various tiers of networked storage, document what they've done, and help their business units select the type of storage that best supports their applications' requirements at a price that makes the executive suite smile. |
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More Than Just Backup
by Jerome M. Wendt
Data protection is changing rapidly, with point-in-time recoveries, fast legal discovery response and near real-time disaster recoveries becoming new requirements. To address these needs, enterprise backup applications are adding support for continuous data protection, deduplication, ediscovery, single-instance storage and the VMware Consolidated Backup framework. These backup suites promise not only integrated data protection, but overall enterprise data management. |
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January 2008 |
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Unlimited storage
by Alan Radding
Clemson University has big plans as it upgrades its data center—and those plans call for lots and lots of storage. Their new IT infrastructure is being built along the lines of the National Science Foundation's Cyberinfrastructure initiative. Clemson expects its new world-class facility to attract a new crop of young faculty who will find the storage, bandwidth and CPU resources needed to support their research efforts. |
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Storage standards: A progress report
by Rick Cook
The Storage Management Initiative-Specification (SMI-S), eXtensible Access Method (XAM), encryption key management and the Fabric Application Interface Standard (FAIS) are four standards that could radically change the way you manage storage systems and protect data. We look at the status of each of these standards and where they're headed. |
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Video focuses on storage
by Alan Radding
In the not-so-distant past, IT barely noticed conventional video surveillance. But with digital video on the rise in enterprises, storage teams will need to play a key role in accommodating the petabytes of data generated by video surveillance systems. |
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Taming storage virtualization
by Jerome M. Wendt
Where storage virtualization should reside and how it should be applied depends on the size of the storage infrastructure, the type of applications running in it, and the levels of control and visibility required by administrators. We look at the leading storage virtualization products and help you decide which technology may be best for your storage shop. |
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