Features

Features

• Is RAID in general an obsolete technology today?

  This is a technology that is so commonly used, so transparent, that we really don't even think about it...  Continue Reading

• What are the pros and cons of RAID-6? What is RAID-DP?

  Generally speaking, dual-parity RAID (RAID-DP) is a proprietary, vendor specific implementation of dual parity...  Continue Reading

• What are the most important new disk drive technologies?

  The first 1 terabyte hard disk drives have appeared. What will be the impact of hard disk drive technologies such as perpendicular recording, 2.5-inch high-performance drives, secure erase, encryption and hybrid technology drives?  Continue Reading

• What's the relationship between storage capacity, storage utilization and storage performance?

  There's a lot of focus on storage capacity rather than storage performance. One of the marketing pitches behind storage virtualization is to increase storage utilization so that you don't need to buy so many drives.  Continue Reading

• Why do enterprise storage arrays cost so much when hard drives are so cheap?

  Why the cost of an enterprise storage array costs so much more than the hard drives inside it.  Continue Reading

• How data deduplication eases storage requirements

  Storage administrators are struggling to handle spiraling volumes of documents, audio, video, images and large email attachments. Adding storage is not always the best solution, and many companies are turning to data reduction technologies such as ...  Continue Reading

• What are some of the best practices for managing the growth of unstructured data?

  It starts with corporate policies around data management ...  Continue Reading

• Where are some of the biggest sources of unstructured data in the enterprise?

  There are actually many sources of unstructured data, which accounts for much of the data growth that we've seen in the enterprise.  Continue Reading

• What are some of the biggest challenges with unstructured data?

  By far, the volume of data has to be the biggest challenge...  Continue Reading

• How do data classification and file indexing manage unstructured data?

  Well, data classification itself is not really a technology, but rather a policy-driven practice of data categorization based on an understanding of the data on hand...  Continue Reading

• What is the impact of unstructured data on backup and restore and disaster recovery in general?

  As data volumes grow, there's a bigger problem meeting recovery time objectives. We depend on our data, and we have set recovery times for our systems that are zero (no downtime) in some cases, though most companies set recovery times from eight to ...  Continue Reading

• What are the disadvantages of unified storage over independent block and file systems?

  There are some compromises that you'll need to make; there are certainly some control granularity issues. The pattern of access for file-based data and block-based data is significantly different...  Continue Reading

• What is the advantage of having unified storage?

  There is debate about that. Many customers may prefer to have just one storage system, avoiding specialized storage systems, like NAS for file-based access or a complicated block-based storage system...  Continue Reading

• What is the difference between InfiniBand, SAS and iSCSI and where does each technology fit?

  InfiniBand is an interface; just like Fibre Channel (FC) or Ethernet. As an interface, InfiniBand carries different protocols...  Continue Reading

• What is the difference between virtualization switches and virtual SANs?

  The word "virtualization" is thrown around so much that it's hard to always know what it means...  Continue Reading

• When should I use a SAN vs. NAS or iSCSI?

  It's often a matter of block vs. file...  Continue Reading

• DWDM vs. SONET networks for connecting to the virtual world

  We live in a virtual world where most of us have network access in our homes -- the Internet -- which is a virtual network.  Continue Reading

• How does IP storage differ from iSCSI, NAS and Fibre Channel?

  Generically, IP storage involves any storage functionality that is leveraging TCP/IP as a network transport...  Continue Reading

• Download Advanced Storage Guide Chapter 4: NAS (PDF)

  You asked for it, so here it is -- a printable version of our Advanced Storage All-In-One Guide. Download Chapter 4: NAS in .pdf format now.  Continue Reading

• Download Advanced Storage Guide Chapter 1: Storage components (PDF)

  You asked for it, so here it is -- a printable version of our Advanced Storage All-In-One Guide. Download Chapter 1: Storage components in .pdf format now.  Continue Reading

• VAR selection requires careful evaluation

  Choosing a VAR is hardly a perfect science. There are many VARs to choose from -- each with their own unique portfolio of products and range of technical expertise. The trick is to do your homework and investigate potential VARs before making a ...  Continue Reading

• Tiered storage becoming tried and true

  Tiered storage matches the value of data with the performance (and expense) of storage. Ideally, tiered storage can save money, while easing the access demands to any single storage tier. While tiered storage has clearly brought storage costs and ...  Continue Reading

• Data storage compliance's impact on storage product choices

  Data storage compliance is having a tremendous impact on the storage organization, as well as the management practices employed to retain, search, certify and destroy data. It's not just regulations like SOX or HIPAA that influence storage -- there ...  Continue Reading

• How do I establish recovery priority for my applications?

  If it's at the IT level, it comes from a data perspective. When you start moving up a little bit into the business side, people start looking at the applications because they don't really know where the data is. If we talk today about virtualization...  Continue Reading

• What is the difference between disk backup and data replication?

  The terms have been used interchangeably quite a bit lately because of the popularity of disk backup that is really gaining. The thing is, disk backup is technically another form of media that your backup application or solution can write to. Data ...  Continue Reading

• SATA technology advances and expands in the enterprise

  SATA drives don't match the performance of Fibre Channel but provide the low cost per gigabyte and high storage densities that are crucial for "nearline" storage tasks, such as performing backups and archiving. This article introduces SATA ...  Continue Reading

• RAID technology adds reliability and overcomes concerns

  RAID's evolution of storage servers and arrays is quietly influenced by the continuing advancement of hard disks and disk controlling hardware. Storage administrators must understand the changes that are taking place, and position their ...  Continue Reading

• RAID technology adds reliability and overcomes concerns, page 2

  Today, the growing prominence of slower, high-capacity SATA drives are raising serious concerns about storage reliability, and dual-parity techniques like RAID-6 are emerging to combat the specter of multiple simultaneous drive failures. Larger ...  Continue Reading

• Switch-level storage virtualization

  Virtualization allows administrators to gather, organize, allocate and manage storage hardware without regard for the applications or servers that use it. When properly implemented, storage virtualization eliminates forgotten or partially -used ...  Continue Reading

• SAN School: Lesson 3

  Join Christopher Poelker, co-author, Storage Area Networks for Dummies, for a lesson on what makes a SAN go. This lesson explores Fibre Channel protocols, World Wide Names and how SAN fabric addressing works.  Continue Reading

• SAN School: Lesson 1

  Do you need a SAN? Lesson #1 explores what a SAN is, the basic benefits of a SAN and which applications are best suited for a SAN.  Continue Reading

• Dual-port SATA for higher iSCSI reliability

  iSCSI SANS are less reliable than FC SANS, but implementing one with an FC-like architecture and levels of redundancy removes most of the reliability concerns about iSCSI.  Continue Reading

• Backup school: Lesson one

  Are you new to storage and backup? Lesson one of SearchStorage.com's "Backup School" explains the fundamentals of backup, the components of a backup and what kinds of backups are out there. Professor Dorian Cougias also explains full backups, ...  Continue Reading