Features

Features

• 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

• Top five solid-state, cloud storage tips of 2017

  In 2017, SearchStorage readers cared most about SSD lifespan, 3D XPoint technology and the difference between SAN and NAS. Check out our most-read articles of the year here.  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

• 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

• NVMe SSD storage costs won't hinder market takeover

  Storage vendors agree that NVMe will become the default for solid-state drives, but it must still overcome cost and configuration challenges.  Continue Reading

• Hybrid storage arrays join multiple storage types to cut costs

  Despite being more complex than all-flash or all-hard disk drive systems, hybrid systems offer the speed and low latency of flash and the economy of HDDs, tape or cloud.  Continue Reading

• Cloud storage providers: What should you look for?

  With so many cloud storage options on the market, it's hard to choose the right one. To start, determine whether you need a business service or if a consumer cloud will suffice.  Continue Reading

• Trends in data storage 2018: Five hot techs to watch

  Our hot data storage technology trends for 2018 include predictive storage analytics, ransomware protection, converged secondary storage, multi-cloud and NVMe over Fabrics.  Continue Reading

• NAND flash memory basics: Comparing SLC, MLC and TLC NAND

  NAND is the most popular type of flash, but there are many different types, and they each serve a different purpose. Do you know your NAND flash basics?  Continue Reading

• NOR vs. NAND flash memory: What companies need to know

  NOR and NAND flash memory each suit different use cases, and companies looking at a flash memory product need to know the difference before they buy.  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

• Cloud storage adoption decisions weigh capacity and cost

  Acquiring storage capacity -- particularly for backup, archiving, DR and collaborative purposes -- dominates as the main reason for storage cloud adoption trends in the enterprise.  Continue Reading

• Hybrid storage arrays offer the best of all storage worlds

  Hybrid flash arrays provide performance benefits over all-flash and all-hard disk storage systems and can address the varying workload demands of today's organizations.  Continue Reading

• Buying NAS: Do you want performance and scalability?

  Although SANs still rule the modern the data center, the NAS array maintains a position high up on tech buyers' shopping lists for new primary storage.  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

• 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

• Multicloud storage mitigates risk of public cloud lock-in

  Multicloud storage strategy allows for the shifting of data across public clouds so you can avoid lock-in to a single provider, reduce cost and improve workload efficiency.  Continue Reading

• How NVMe over Fabrics will change the storage environment

  Expect NVMe to supplant SCSI and SAS protocols for SSD storage and NVMe over Fabrics to find a place in high-end networking deployments for transporting data.  Continue Reading

• Persistent data storage in containerized environments

  The most significant challenge to the rise of containerized applications is quickly and easily providing enterprise-class persistent storage for containers.  Continue Reading

• The copy data management market is starting to go mainstream

  Products from copy data management vendors protect and manage production data to lower storage costs, speed data access and streamline self-service access to data copies.  Continue Reading

• The leading object storage vendors offer broad range of options

  Explore how the leading object storage systems can be accessed, how they integrate with the cloud, what data security they provide and the various deployment options they offer.  Continue Reading

• Copy data management vendors expand breadth of offerings

  This roundup of copy management systems from the leading vendors shows the distinct categories and implementation models this cost-saving technology can provide.  Continue Reading

• What the leading copy data management vendors offer

  Copy management systems from the leading vendors offer unique features that can help IT departments consolidate their secondary storage into a single product.  Continue Reading

• How the leading all-flash array vendors meet storage demands

  This in-depth overview of the features and capabilities of the leading AFA storage products can help you determine which configurations may best meet your needs.  Continue Reading

• HDD vs. SSD: Is there room for disk in a solid-state world?

  Although SSD vs. HDD speed is vastly different, for the foreseeable future, hard disks will have a place in our increasingly solid-state and even DRAM-centered data centers.  Continue Reading

• Hybrid cloud technology gets the most out of primary storage workloads

  Learn what to look for in a hybrid cloud platform so you can take advantage of the scalability, agility and cost benefits it has to offer primary storage.  Continue Reading

• Disaggregating network, compute and storage allocation demystified

  Explore the ways disaggregation concepts and principles are being applied to create and allocate pools of compute and storage resources to serve applications on demand.  Continue Reading

• Is enterprise object storage ready to lead?

  As object storage benefits become more enticing to enterprises for internal storage uses and not just for cloud, vendors are overcoming its drawbacks.  Continue Reading

• Analyzing products from the leading object storage vendors

  When evaluating the leading object-based storage systems, it is important to consider which product can best support your uses cases and unique site requirements.  Continue Reading

• Caching vs. tiering: Comparing storage optimization techniques

  There are many factors to consider when choosing between caching and tiering storage techniques to optimize storage. Knowing how and when to use either can make a big difference.  Continue Reading

• Object-level storage poised to replace NAS in the enterprise

  Many vendors offer highly scalable object storage-based products with file interfaces, making the technology more accessible than ever as an alternative to NAS.  Continue Reading

• Chief concerns when buying cloud storage include cost and capacity

  Enterprises look for the best deal from the vendor with the best reputation when turning to the cloud to tame growing data volumes for archiving, backup and more.  Continue Reading

• Determine your requirements before buying a copy management system

  Before evaluating copy data management systems, examine the pros and cons of the deployment models, as well as the most important features to look for in a product.  Continue Reading

• Container ecosystem needs to expand its persistence of vision

  Persistent storage for containers will become a necessity as the stateless computing method becomes less about just DevOps and more about end-user applications.  Continue Reading

• New use cases for flash data storage benefit enterprises

  Adoption of protocols such as NVMe and memory bus-based flash DIMMs helps flash storage devices keep pace with the most demanding use cases.  Continue Reading

• Multiprotocol unified storage systems poised for growth

  With support for block, file or both types of data on the same device, unified storage architecture is a flexible storage option for the modern data center.  Continue Reading

• Questions to ask object storage vendors before evaluating products

  Before investing in object storage architecture, it is vital to understand your options, including whether you should buy software, hardware or a combination of both.  Continue Reading

• Examining what products the leading all-flash array vendors offer

  Although there are many factors to consider when selecting the right all-flash storage arrays for your organization, the first step is to assess your functional specifications.  Continue Reading

• Object storage systems ease data capacity and archival concerns

  If your organization can identify with any of the object storage use cases noted here, it might be time to consider adding this technology to your storage portfolio.  Continue Reading

• Quantifying the benefits of investing in copy management technology

  There are many benefits to implementing copy data storage, including cost reduction and increased operational efficiency while maintaining service-level objectives.  Continue Reading

• Use the cloud to enhance the functions of primary storage

  Learn some of the best ways to leverage public cloud as a storage tier to complement primary storage and make data centers more efficient.  Continue Reading

• Building an IT resiliency plan into an always-on world

  A multipronged approach is the best protection against unaffordable and unacceptable downtime in today's 24/7 business cycle.  Continue Reading

• Scalability drives SAN market growth

  Better performing, more scalable and capacious storage area networks are required for ever-growing amounts of unstructured data, demanding applications and big data analytics.  Continue Reading

• Is an all-flash data center worth it?

  The elevated cost of flash technology is a reason to limit flash usage. Find out what other factors go into a flash purchase and how it's used in today's data centers.  Continue Reading

• Copy management systems reduce data consumption and storage costs

  Copy management systems offer a range of options for reducing excessive storage consumption and improving performance by eliminating the creation of redundant data copies.  Continue Reading

• How an object storage architecture can help reduce storage complexity

  An object storage architecture tackles traditional storage limitations by offering a file structure that is ideal for storing and protecting large amounts of unstructured data.  Continue Reading

• The present and likely future of the NVMe protocol

  The NVMe and PCIe combination of protocol and interconnect was an inevitable development once solid-state drives were created, as was moving NVMe to fabrics.  Continue Reading

• Smarter storage starts with analytics

  Storage smartens up to keep pace with data-intensive business applications embedding operational analytics capabilities.  Continue Reading

• Purchase of NAS arrays driven by need for capacity, desire to expand

  As unstructured data continues to lead storage growth, businesses are opting for scale-out NAS arrays to handle current and future capacity.  Continue Reading

• Flash, cloud top data storage options for storage pros

  Cloud is popular among data storage priorities for primary and backup storage, while most say they will use flash in primary data storage.  Continue Reading

• Five factors to consider before buying all-flash storage arrays

  Before purchasing all-flash array storage, you should determine whether your site plans to integrate AFA storage into its existing infrastructure or to start a new storage silo.  Continue Reading

• Building a business case for all-flash array storage

  To make a business case for purchasing AFA storage, you must first understand what your applications need in terms of IOPS, latency and throughput.  Continue Reading

• Overcome problems with public cloud storage providers

  Security and compliance concerns are chief obstacles to public cloud storage adoption, as IT managers are hesitant to have their critical data reside outside the data center.  Continue Reading

• Storage plays catch-up with DevOps environment

  To deliver an Agile or DevOps environment, the way in which resources, including storage, are consumed and deployed changes to a more cloud-focused approach.  Continue Reading

• SAN arrays maintain primary data storage dominance, for now

  Solid-state flash is the most sought-after technology for primary storage, as storage area networks remain the main focus of increasing capacity for most enterprises.  Continue Reading

• The state of flash storage systems

  Making flash storage performance even faster has little to do with the media itself and more to do with the storage infrastructure that surrounds it.  Continue Reading

• AFA storage has total cost of ownership advantages over HDDs

  All-flash array storage TCO advantages, including reduced power and cooling and increased performance, can help an organization justify its use to store their active workloads.  Continue Reading

• AFA storage advances may mean the end of the hybrid market

  Flash price drops and speed boosts make the all-flash array the smart choice over hybrid storage arrays for most enterprise users, not just those with high-performance computing needs.  Continue Reading

• The data storage capacity growth survival guide

  You can keep your storage investments in place, allow for capacity increases, and solve performance and application problems, while gathering data to plan for new growth.  Continue Reading

• Businesses use enterprise file sync-and-share market to collaborate

  Enterprise file sync and share solves numerous business problems by offering organizations a way to provide more secure document sharing and collaboration.  Continue Reading

• Tegile Systems IntelliFlash HD

  Tegile Systems IntelliFlash HD intended to appeal to medium and large enterprises looking to consolidate multiple workloads on a single all-flash array.  Continue Reading

• Nimble Storage All Flash Arrays (AF-Series)

  Nimble's first all-flash array family scales from 20 TB to petabyte and 8.2 PB of usable storage and 1.2 million IOPS per four-node cluster.  Continue Reading

• Hitachi Data Systems Virtual Storage Platform VSP F800

  Modular rack-mounted Hitachi Data Systems VSP F800 runs the vendor's SVOS operating system software and is equipped with custom-designed flash storage modules.  Continue Reading

• VMware vSAN 6.2

  VMware's vSAN 6.2 upgrade -- featuring dedupe/compression, QoS and erasure coding -- wins 2016 Storage Products of the Year gold in the server-based storage category.  Continue Reading

• Formation Data Systems FormationOne

  Formation Data Systems' FormationOne scores in value, innovation and functionality to take silver in server-based storage in the 2016 Products of the Year competition.  Continue Reading

• Virtual Instruments VirtualWisdom NAS Performance Probe

  The VirtualWisdom NAS Performance Probe stops companies from needing to send captured packet data back to vendors and wait for the analysis to identify performance problems.  Continue Reading

• Data Dynamics Inc. StorageX 7.8

  Data Dynamics upgrades StorageX with new data protection features and functions, and makes it so users can customize their own data mobility policies with a REST API and SDK.  Continue Reading

• Zadara Storage Cloud

  Zadara Storage Cloud provides block, file and object storage-as-a-service either on-premises hardware managed by Zadara, in the cloud, or both.  Continue Reading

• Nimble Storage Adaptive Flash Arrays (CS-Series)

  Nimble Storage jumped on the all-flash bandwagon in 2016, but didn't forget its disk fans by upgrading its CS-Series mixing flash and hard disk drives.  Continue Reading

• Avere Systems Cloud-Core NAS (C2N)

  Building on its NAS Edge filer technology, Avere rolled out Cloud-Core NAS (C2N) product, which puts file and object storage in one system that spans on-premises and the cloud.  Continue Reading

• Future of the Ethernet drive may hinge on NVMe over Ethernet

  Despite their debut two years ago, drives that connect via Ethernet have been mostly a curiosity. The Ethernet flavor of NVMe over Fabrics may change that.  Continue Reading

• A look at the services the leading public cloud vendors provide

  Examine the leading public cloud service providers and the features each offers, including backup and recovery, archival, hybrid cloud storage and cloud analytics.  Continue Reading

• Get the most value out of your SDS systems by making smart choices

  There are many choices you face when looking to implement an SDS infrastructure. Making the right ones will help you get the most value from software-defined storage.  Continue Reading

• How to build a private storage cloud

  Building internal cloud storage must account for elasticity, choosing the right platform, allowing for workflow, and stack deployments and public cloud integration.  Continue Reading

• Top enterprise storage vendors to watch in 2017

  Check out our comprehensive forecast of what challenges and opportunities the top enterprise storage vendors are expected to face in the coming year.  Continue Reading

• Comparing the leading public cloud service providers

  Amazon, Google and Microsoft may offer similar storage options, but each of these public cloud services has unique features that set it apart from its competitors.  Continue Reading

• Four criteria for evaluating public cloud storage providers

  Prior to selecting a public cloud service provider, it's essential that you understand what each vendor offers and how their services can best meet your organization's needs.  Continue Reading

• The top 10 cloud storage platform tips

  We've compiled the ten most important pieces of cloud storage advice from 2016, from implementing a hybrid cloud to choosing a data migration strategy.  Continue Reading

• Public cloud storage services offer scalability and performance

  Public cloud storage providers help organizations offload their physical hardware and associated costs, including power, cooling and server maintenance.  Continue Reading

• Hot data storage technology trends for 2017

  Learn what's hot and what's not-quite-so-hot on our list of data storage technology trends for the forthcoming year.  Continue Reading

• Will the eMMC controller market keep up with flash innovation?

  EMMC host controllers may have a hard time handling advances in flash memory technology, like 3D NAND and newer connection interfaces, and competition from new markets.  Continue Reading

• Small but mighty eMMC flash storage grows its enterprise role

  Many common devices, like your cell phone and tablet, use eMMC flash for storage. But the internet of things will soon make eMMC a major part of nearly every enterprise.  Continue Reading

• How eMMC 5.0 can improve your organization's small storage needs

  The latest eMMC specification puts the tiny flash storage devices on a level playing field with many SSDs when it comes to speed -- but eMMC is still the smallest flash drive.  Continue Reading

• Hot info on cold cloud storage: Glacier vs. Cool Blob Storage

  Not all storage needs to be about super speedy SSDs and the lowest latency or retrieval times. Cold storage is an inexpensive way to handle data archiving.  Continue Reading

• A look at the future of data storage careers

  Thanks to virtualization, the cloud and solid-state technology, data storage professionals and those who want to pursue a career in it face an uncertain future.  Continue Reading

• Take the sting out of switching cloud data storage providers

  Switching your cloud storage provider is a complicated, sometimes painful, process, but here's what you need to know before making the decision to migrate your data.  Continue Reading

• When buying more primary data storage, applications matter

  Faster storage -- and more of it -- is important, but that wouldn't matter if new SANs didn't boost application performance and efficiency in the process.  Continue Reading

• M.2 SSD form factor approaching server-ready status in capacity, speed

  Tiny M.2 SSDs are used in ultrabooks and tablets as a bridge between SD cards and SATA SSDs. With capacity of more than 10 TB planned and SATA-like speeds they may be server-ready.  Continue Reading

• Hypervisor virtualization manages, supports data storage

  Chris Evans looks at the latest efforts by storage virtualization vendors to handle hypervisor storage and data management functionality.  Continue Reading

• Storage managers seek storage answers with a storage purchase

  Capacity and bandwidth are key reasons for new storage purchases, with SAN arrays that offer flash storage, data reduction and storage virtualization popular among buyers.  Continue Reading

• Smart storage systems smart for business

  Mike Matchett explains how data-aware storage combined with application awareness is leading to a new wave of intelligent data storage.  Continue Reading

• 3D XPoint memory stumbles in race to ditch DRAM; RRAM may step up

  Due to mediocre performance, Intel and Micron have put off the release of the 3D XPoint technology until 2017. This could open the door for RRAM products from companies like SanDisk.  Continue Reading

• Flash storage caching boosts application performance, requires balance

  Chris Evans discusses the benefits to caching flash storage, the trade-offs involved and flash cache models, as well as a handy cheat sheet.  Continue Reading

• Cloud-based storage services use cases vary, customers skeptical

  A lot of companies use cloud-based storage services, but many approach this relatively new storage resource with caution.  Continue Reading

• Rumors of the hybrid storage array dying may not just be hype

  Innovations in flash memory have led to changes in the cost and performance of flash SSDs, prompting some to speculate if we'll see hybrid storage wither away.  Continue Reading

• Flash cloud storage needed if performance is paramount

  Most providers today can offer you cloud flash storage if your organization has a need for that kind of increase in speed of access to data -- and can afford the increased cost.  Continue Reading

• Understand enterprise file sync-and-share deployment models

  Terri McClure looks at how "shadow EFSS" has made it easy for sensitive data to fall into the wrong hands and hard for companies to protect it.  Continue Reading

• Seven tips to improve data storage efficiency

  Storage networks, server-side flash, network cache, software-defined storage and all-flash or hybrid arrays help storage performance and efficiency.  Continue Reading

• Buying cloud-based storage services starts with budget, backup needs

  Some of the gotchas that dogged cloud storage services -- security, data protection, latency -- now less important to buyers.  Continue Reading

• Conquer unstructured data: Scale-out NAS vs. object storage

  Learn how scale-out NAS and object storage systems work, their pros and cons, manageability and how they integrate with your storage infrastructure.  Continue Reading