Manage

Manage

Learn to apply best practices and optimize your operations.

• Market for software-defined systems due for a correction

  Software-defined storage seems to relegate hardware to the sidelines, but that may change as hardware-centric offerings become attractive alternatives to software-on-COTS options. Continue Reading

• The best enterprise storage systems and services of 2017

  For 16 years, Storage magazine and SearchStorage have recognized the best enterprise storage systems with our annual Products of the Year awards. For this year's competition, vendors submitted new and upgraded products from the past year ... Continue Reading

• Reasons to consider an object storage architecture

  Object storage allows organizations to deal with the massive amounts of data generated by IoT and AI applications, but it's not the best fit for frequently accessed data. Continue Reading

• When to use TLC NAND flash memory

  TLC NAND flash storage devices wear out quickly, and they're not as fast as MLC or SLC. But TLC devices are a good choice for tier 2 storage and read-heavy applications. Continue Reading

• How to use REST APIs in Python

  Using REST APIs with Python can offer storage administrators increased flexibility in their management tasks, but they need some knowledge of how to code. Continue Reading

• Storage startup trends: Vendors to watch in 2018

  Another year is behind us, and 2017 wasn't kind to enterprise-storage startups, as a bunch went belly up or sold off their assets. Not deterred by this recent history and startup trends, a new group of companies has emerged to try and make an impact...Continue Reading

• NVMe flash storage doesn't mean tape and disk are dying

  The advent of NVMe, software-defined storage and other newer storage technologies doesn't mean we'll be looking at all-silicon-based storage any time soon.Continue Reading

• SDS, HCI and CDP are key to dream enterprise storage system

  Easy to implement and manage may be the buzzwords of the day for enterprise data storage systems, but too often daily experiences of IT professionals belie that rosy scenario.Continue Reading

• MTTR (mean time to repair)

  MTTR (mean time to repair) is the average time required to fix a failed component or device and return it to production status.Continue Reading

• NVMe-oF and storage class memory set to disrupt storage

  NVM Express over Fabrics and storage class memory may disrupt traditional storage over the next half decade in much the same way NAND flash did over the last five years.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

• Is Caringo leading the next wave in object-level storage?

  Caringo facilitates and simplifies cross-platform data movement by bridging its proprietary object storage system to Microsoft Azure object storage service.Continue Reading

• Peering into the future of enterprise storage for 2018

  Rich Castagna takes a crack at the annual rite of prognostication with a bold look -- unfettered by truth, reality and sanity -- at data storage trends in the coming year.Continue Reading

• Data storage considerations for a DevOps environment

  Having good storage can make all the difference when it comes to DevOps. As more organizations get on the DevOps bandwagon, see how storage has changed to match.Continue Reading

• Features disaster recovery-as-a-service providers must offer

  A cost-effective disaster recovery as a service lets organizations of all sizes implement a dependable disaster recovery plan. Disaster recovery-as-a-service providers replicate or back up customer data to cloud data centers and then -- should ...Continue Reading

• Explosion in unstructured data storage drives modernization

  Increasing amounts of unstructured data are a key part of modern secondary storage environments with their distributed file systems and a scale-out object storage design.Continue Reading

• Navigating cloud-based data storage requires some caution

  Cloud services are economical and easy to use -- if you know the ropes. Approach cloud computing issues with caution; you just might run into familiar on-premises storage problems.Continue Reading

• Dell EMC acquisition: The deal of the century a year later

  A year has passed since the Dell EMC acquisition, the biggest transaction in the history of IT. With the benefit of hindsight, we examine the positives, negatives and uncertainties of the deal. Did Dell buy the world's biggest storage vendor, or did...Continue Reading

• How can I guarantee the best Ceph performance?

  Ceph object storage performance is largely based on network speed, but journal disks and the right file system for object storage devices also play a role.Continue Reading

• Can I replace HDDs with SSDs to support in-memory storage?

  Replacing all your HDDs with SSDs won't solve the storage issues associated with in-memory databases. Look to hyper-convergence and NVDIMMs instead.Continue Reading

• Back-end storage considerations for in-memory processing

  Storing hot data in main memory removes the latency associated with hard disk and solid-state storage operations; it's the best option for need-it-now data.Continue Reading

• Your enterprise data management strategy needs a superhero

  Data management products are the Superman, not the Batman, of storage. They have built-in superpowers that provide the innate power needed to manage data.Continue Reading

• Get control of data storage growth before things go haywire

  Companies are collecting and hoarding data like never before. Take control of this out-of-control situation with forward-looking data storage and management practices.Continue Reading

• Persistent storage readied for containerized applications

  Traditional application architectures are limited in their ability to scale and meet the demands of today's fast-growing data, cloud and IT environments. Containerization -- with its support for Agile design, development and deployment methodologies...Continue Reading

• The power and benefits of encouraging IT disruption

  IT can't remain a reactive cost center and cheerful help desk, but must become a competitive, cutthroat service provider and powerful champion of emerging disruptive technology.Continue Reading

• How to determine the true cost of flash

  If you want to add flash storage, it's important to consider the cost per IOPS and gigabyte compared to HDD volumes, as well as the difference between consumer and enterprise SSDs.Continue Reading

• Private cloud implementation guide

  Wondering how to pull off a private cloud deployment? Plan ahead, design for the future and make sure you have built up the right knowledge base.Continue Reading

• Should I be concerned about SSD lifespan?

  HDD and RAID vendors have stirred up FUD around the lifespan of SSD drive cells, but companies considering solid-state don't have to worry about arrays wearing out.Continue Reading

• Disaggregation enables on-demand resource pool management and creation

  Disaggregation may not be a new concept, but it has become more important to IT in recent years. Here, it means breaking computers down to the core elements of compute, memory, I/O, storage, cache, network fabric and so on, to enable resource pool ...Continue Reading

• Everything you need to know about OpenStack modules

  OpenStack continues to evolve in an effort to compete with AWS. The modules that are available now make OpenStack a viable enterprise option.Continue Reading

• Making the case for an all-flash data center

  Companies should ditch hard disk drives and outfit their data centers entirely with flash storage; vendors have solved old solid-state problems, such as wear time and cost.Continue Reading

• Object storage use cases coming to a data service near you

  Object storage, unlike traditional file and block storage, is well-suited to manage vast amounts of unstructured data.Continue Reading

• ECX 2.6 includes intelligent data management

  Catalogic Software's approach to snapshot creation and management delivers pragmatic features to DevOps and more with the release of ECX 2.6.Continue Reading

• How is private cloud support divided between IT and providers?

  When companies choose a private cloud storage provider, it's important that they understand what the internal IT department is responsible for, as opposed to what the provider will support.Continue Reading

• What are the benefits of private cloud over popular alternatives?

  Don't overlook the advantages of private cloud when choosing a cloud storage implementation. Security, cost and ease of transition make it a viable option.Continue Reading

• What to expect in OpenStack releases Pike and Queens

  OpenStack Pike, Queens and Rocky will include much-needed features and updates that will simplify user interfaces and improve the function of existing APIs.Continue Reading

• DevOps doesn't need stateful containers with storage, but apps do

  DevOps is giving up its hold on the container world, as persistent storage makes the stateless environment work for end-user applications, not just developers.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

• Solving enterprise-class storage challenges in the age of convergence

  In this age of data center convergence, with technology evolving faster than ever, planning how to transition from traditional yet rigid environments to more agile software-defined ones is among the trickiest challenges facing IT shops today. ...Continue Reading

• Three approaches to strategic data management: Good, better and best

  It's time organizations take a more mature and sophisticated approach to data management techniques and make the most of the data they generate and consume.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

• Four private cloud design pointers to ensure success

  To design a successful private cloud, lay the groundwork: Plan beyond the five-year mark, determine who will manage images and make it highly available.Continue Reading

• Why the NAND flash shortage exists and what to do about it

  The current NAND flash market product shortage means SSD prices won't dip below hard disk drives any time soon. Make sure to ask your vendors about their supply situations.Continue Reading

• Planning is paramount for a private cloud environment

  Almost any organization of any size can enjoy the flexibility and cost savings that often accompany a private cloud implementation. It's not just for startups.Continue Reading

• Helpful steps toward an easy private cloud implementation

  There are many aspects of an overall private cloud infrastructure that affect your organization's cloud storage plans, and knowing what to look for is vital.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

• Tier 0 storage moves to NVMe to meet demand for speed

  Tier 0 has been fast and proprietary, but nonvolatile memory express is changing that second part as a standard programming interface for PCIe SSDs.Continue Reading

• The status of NAND flash memory now and in the near future

  Flash memory chips have driven a revolution in storage, and faced a recent shortage because of huge demand. That's easing, and advances in NAND technology show a great future.Continue Reading

• 2017 IT spending trends for data storage

  For the 15^th year, Storage magazine has surveyed storage pros to learn about their IT spending trends for the coming months. As you'd expect, the cloud continues to pick up steam for both primary and secondary projects, while ...Continue Reading

• Essential elements of copy data management

  The next chapter written in the book of computer science should be all about management of copy data, the core function of IT.Continue Reading

• How does storage capacity growth affect operations?

  As storage capacity grows, so do the requirements for keeping an organization's operations running as usual. Analyst Randy Kerns notes the steps to keep functioning.Continue Reading

• How to survive the growth of unstructured data and capacity limits

  Storage capacity is growing at a rate that is unlikely to slow down. Randy Kerns talks unstructured data, and how to deal with the consequences, in this Storage Decisions clip.Continue Reading

• The state of flash storage performance

  All-flash arrays have virtually eliminated flash storage performance issues, for now. But applications and user expectations will eventually catch up. Innovations in flash technology -- such as nonvolatile memory express and storage-class memory (...Continue Reading

• A cure for secondary data storage services blues

  Effective user-centric data storage management eases copy data management and object storage uptake while enabling secondary storage services to evolve.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

• 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

• Classification of data can solve your data storage problems

  Having a data classification process in place can make your data smart enough to know what to do with itself, allowing you to attain the holy grail of enterprise data storage.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

• Announcing the best data storage products of 2016!

  This year marks the 15^th edition of the Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com Products of the Year awards, recognizing the best storage products of the past year. Nominated products competed across six categories, with the top in ...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

• How to navigate the public cloud service provider selection process

  Learn how to determine if your organization could benefit from public cloud storage and how to select the public cloud provider that will best meet your needs.Continue Reading

• Showback the value of your data storage expertise

  To demonstrate value, IT must provide an easy-to-understand cost model to its business leaders. This has fostered IT showback projects. Yet showback isn't easy to achieve.Continue Reading

• Start your hybrid cloud implementation off on the right foot

  Hybrid cloud storage has garnered a lot of interest because it offers cost savings and scalability. But there are some key concerns to think about before you dive in.Continue Reading

• Working in a virtual machine environment: VM-aware storage

  How can storage administrators decide if a virtual machine-aware appliance can cure their virtual server storage headache? This guide walks users through the basics.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

• Drowning in data storage capacity? Set it free!

  We're all guilty of data hoarding, and managing it is costing companies billions of dollars. The answer? Do a better job of managing all that useless data.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

• How to avoid common hybrid cloud implementation mistakes

  Companies that jump into a hybrid cloud deployment can make grave errors. Proper planning -- and understanding the drawbacks of going hybrid -- can prevent a cloud catastrophe.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

• Everything you need to know about storage snapshots

  The role of storage snapshots in data protection is growing. Essentially, groups of disk blocks -- physical in an array or virtualized within a software-defined storage or virtual appliance -- storage snapshots embody what a file system or volume ...Continue Reading

• Making a storage capacity plan that doesn't bust your budget

  Storage capacity is growing at a rapid rate and by using the latest innovations in storage technologies it is possible to meet demands without growing your storage budget apace.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

• Intelligent storage puts brainpower into data storage systems

  Vendors are offering storage systems that "know" more about the data within them than ever before. Powered by multiple CPU/cores, fast flash/memory, nimble software-defined storage and lessons learned from big data, these intelligent storage systems...Continue Reading

• Flash storage caching, tiering or both? Consider the workload

  If you're using a flash-based storage system, you're familiar with caching and tiering to accelerate data. Storage tiering is used in hybrid flash storage systems to separate active and inactive data. Active data is kept on the flash tier, while ...Continue Reading

• How can image cloning help manage data in your NAS?

  Managing image copies in a virtual environment can put stress on your network-attached storage, but cloning can help get things under control -- if your NAS supports it.Continue Reading

• Rethink the use of an object storage gateway for data migration

  Software options that allow data to be written natively to object storage may be better for your organization than gateways that migrate data to object stores.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

• Best bets for modernizing legacy storage systems

  Traditionally, storage arrays were purchased on three- to five-year contracts, but modern budgets often require companies to keep their arrays for seven years. With the pace at which data storage technology changes today, 7-year-old legacy storage ...Continue Reading

• Nine reasons object-level storage adoption has increased

  Scalability, performance and low cost are some of the motivations behind implementing object storage, but there are many more that have organizations looking at the technology.Continue Reading

• Disaggregation marks an evolution in hyper-convergence

  Hyper-convergence vendors are pushing forward with products that will offer disaggregation, the latest entry into the data center paradigm.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

• 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

• The complete rundown on Docker data storage and containers

  While primarily used in application testing environments, storage containers are making the move to primary storage, with Docker technology a clear front-runner.Continue Reading

• OwnBackup CEO: Stay safe in the cloud

  Your cloud data may not be as secure as you think. No matter where your data lives, you should put the same level of thought and care into its protection, according to Sam Gutmann, CEO of ...Continue Reading

• Update NAS scale-out systems without a performance hit

  With proper prior planning, it is possible to upgrade existing scale-out network-attached storage without the process having a negative impact on overall performance.Continue Reading

• Calculating flash pricing is key to all-flash array vs. disk decision

  Flash costs are nearing parity with hard disk drives, but it can still be a challenge to determine the exact expense for an all-flash array on a per-gigabyte basis.Continue Reading

• HDFS alternatives can avoid the file system's downfalls

  Increasingly, IT administrators are integrating data center-grade storage systems with Hadoop -- ones that come with the required data protection, security and governance built-in.Continue Reading

• Is the software-defined storage market efficient?

  The software-defined storage/hyper-converged infrastructure model offers promise, but also discussion as to whether it needs to be reimagined.Continue Reading

• Storage in a container: Dealing with Docker storage

  Docker is the de facto standard for the relatively new application and development and deployment system known as containerization. By nature ephemeral, Docker storage containers bring about a multitude of new challenges regarding data storage and ...Continue Reading

• Buyer's checklist to hybrid flash arrays

  All-flash arrays are a hot technology, but not everybody needs flash for all of their storage. Hybrid flash arrays can strike a balance between using flash for performance while keeping spinning disk drives to lower the price for less frequently ...Continue Reading

• Majority of object storage use cases point back to the cloud

  Object technology stores unstructured data in a single namespace, making it attractive for use cases that require a high amount of capacity at a low cost.Continue Reading

• Solid-state storage device buyers want performance

  As solid-state storage devices become more commonplace in storage shops, the amount implemented and its use cases are growing, too.Continue Reading

• Data management best practices convey data's real value

  Jon Toigo shares best practices for enterprise data management that can improve the value of your data, even as it's created in record quantities.Continue Reading

• Why the standalone EFSS market isn't going away just yet

  Enterprise file sync-and-share allows for simpler file access and sharing on the consumer and business level. Success stories like Box may indicate that EFSS is sticking around.Continue Reading

• Why all-flash array vendors must offer advanced enterprise features

  As all-flash arrays become increasingly common in enterprises, IT professionals need to look not just for efficiency, but for important features, such as analytics and data protection.Continue Reading

• Commercial Hadoop distributors bring HDFS improvements

  These three commercial distributions of Hadoop are alternative options for big data storage that can bypass data protection and performance problems common with HDFS.Continue Reading

• Are SSD as cache appliances losing prevalence in the market?

  As flash technologies and public cloud storage become increasingly common in enterprises, SSD caching appliances on hard disk drives may soon become outdated.Continue Reading