PRO+ Premium Content/Storage

Features in this issue

• Storage spending continues to rise

  by  Mark Schlack

  Our extensive survey of 2003 spending plans show spending is up, but storage managers want more than just raw capacity.

• Outsourced Backup: Pricey But Worth It

  Experio, the consulting arm of Hitachi USA, has more than 800 employees, 700 of which are mobile consultants. At the same time, it only has a four-person IT staff. How does Experio do it? In a word: outsourcing, including outsourced backup.

• Shared file systems: a mixed blessing

  by  Benjamin Kuo

  Shared file systems promise to simplify managing storage. But you might have to wait a few years before that promise is fulfilled.

• Optimize your storage for fixed content

  by  Ed Palmer

  Much of your data gets written once, read often and never changes. Here's what's available to handle so-called fixed-content storage--and how storage managers are making use of it.

• ATA Drives Move Up the Ranks

  The nod has been given to ATA drives by EMC, which is now giving customers the option of buying disk array enclosures (DAEs) for their Clariion CX400 and CX600 arrays equipped with ATA, rather than the usual Fibre Channel drives.

• Distance: Meeting the new mandate for disaster recovery

  by  Johanna Ambrosio

  Tougher government regulations and increasing distance requirements are driving new remote copy tactics and technologies.

• SRM Software Players Cook Up New Pricing Models

  As more IT shops deploy networked storage, many storage resource management (SRM) vendors are moving to capacity-based pricing, rather than the server- or processor-based pricing models of old.

• DDS Lives as Replacement Fails to Materialize

  Last year, the digital data storage (DDS) tape format, a.k.a. DAT, was in decline.

• EMC/Accenture Partnership Bears Few Fruit

  Ever wonder whatever became of EMC's ISC, the "vendor neutral" storage consulting service the company launched with Accenture last summer?

• SNIA Members Plug Away at Management Spec

  Storage Networking World, co-sponsored by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is always a big source of storage standards news.

• The shape of the new data center

  by  John Blackman

  The key to the next wave of data center technologies is adaptability. Realizing that goal may rest in your hands.

• Getting real about iSCSi

  The picture of iSCSI is a little fuzzy. What advantages or disadvantages do you face if you implement now?