Tips

  • How to scale beyond a single fabric

    Determine whether you need to scale your SAN beyond a single fabric or device, and which technology to use for the job.

  • When to use mirroring

    Mirroring provides a failsafe for data, but it's not without its pitfalls. Here's when and when not to use the features of mirroring.

  • The slow move toward faster Fibre

    Hungry for faster Fibre Channel? Four Gbps will have to hold you for now.

  • The case for utility computing

    With more and more companies demanding efficiency and flexibility from their storage, utility storage is one of the best options, argues Correy Voo, Head of Storage at BT.

  • Disk: Do you speak geek?

    Think you know disk? Take our quick quiz and see how you measure up on our disk geek-o-meter.

  • Five steps to maximizing disk capacity

    Before you commit precious budget resources to buying more storage hardware, be sure you're getting the most possible value out of what's already deployed in your data center.

  • Tape price hikes looming

    In the coming months, expect to pay more for tape cartridges.

  • Thin provisioning slims storage

    Manual provisioning of storage is a source of tension between storage and application folks, and contributes to the poor capacity utilization that persists in many SANs.

  • Stretch backup windows on a budget

    It's fairly easy to finish backups quickly. Less easy is staying within your backup window without going over-budget.

  • 5 steps to an efficient storage shop

    The New Year presents an opportunity for storage managers and administrators to clean up their acts.

  • Plan for I/O-intensive environments

    I/O-intensive environments with large, sustained workloads of various I/O sizes have their own special management challenges.

  • How to plan for a firmware upgrade

    Many storage administrators don't manage drivers or firmware until something happens, such as an upgrade or new hardware implementation.

  • FC performance at iSCSI prices

    SAN kits for SMBs may provide a viable alternative to IP-based technologies ... provided that they can deliver FC performance at something approaching iSCSI ease-of-use.

  • How to get more out of snapshots

    Snapshots can do much more than simply help you clean up after your users.

  • Five ways to boost iSCSI performance

    There are several things you can do to boost the performance of your iSCSI storage system -- some are easy, and fairly inexpensive.

  • How to select an SRM suite

    Today's SRM tools offer a full menu of features, but before you dig in you need to know which are must-haves and which look tasty but provide little sustenance.

  • Cheap mirroring or RAID?

    Want to avoid the cost and complexity of RAID? Mirroring is one option to consider.

  • Troubleshooting SAN/NAS performance

    Learn how to isolate the cause of performance problems in your storage system, fix what's broken and learn from your mistakes.

  • SCSI reliability on a SATA budget

    If you want to deploy a SATA RAID but are still concerned about the reliability of conventional SATA disks, new high-reliablity disks provide an alternative.

  • How to design LUNs for high performanc

    If you want the best performance, you need to design your LUNs so they map effectively onto storage devices.