A few years ago, companies wondered "What if?" regarding whether the Serial ATA (SATA) disk drives found in consumer-grade PCs would eventually find their way into enterprise-class storage systems. Now, the question no longer is "What if?" but "Where will it stop?" SATA disk drives have found their way into existing SAN and NAS storage systems as well as emerging Cloud and Grid storage architectures. As this has occurred, SATA disk drives have evolved to keep pace with new demands that companies of all sizes are placing on them. (read more)

Assuming you want to eliminate your storage headache, where should you turn? Virtualization has been around for a long time, but should you immediately run out and purchase an IBM mainframe just because it's been around the longest? Surely not! Might I suggest you first look at a recipient of the 2008 Frost & Sullivan North American Technology Innovation Award in the field of storage architecture? This year, 3PAR's Thin Provisioning received the award by notably "revolutionizing the storage industry and setting a new benchmark with the advent of 3PAR Thin Provisioning". (read more)

With the strong desire to reduce operating expenses and the push for a greener IT environment, it is becoming more and more understandable why green IT equipment is becoming the standard and encouraged. Take a look at U.S. federal agencies that purchase over $68 billion in IT equipment annually and are being encouraged, through the Federal Electronics Challenge (FEC). (read more)

It isn't enough for a vendor to make claims about their storage system; they should have to prove it. In a recent briefing with BlueArc it was quite clear that it was ready to back up its claims which really shouldn't have surprised us since BlueArc has taken control of its destiny from the beginning. A quick look at various U.S. Patents shows BlueArc's ingenuity, direction, and leadership. (read more)

These are just some of the reasons that software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions have taken off in recent years. Organizations don't want to pay large up-front licensing costs for software they may never use. Instead they are opting to pay for solutions as they need them so they only incur costs as their organization grows. In so doing, they can easily obtain software and pay for it as their specific business needs change. (read more)

Today's Rapid Recovery 4.0 backup software announcement from Unitrends continues to reinforce one of the growing trends in disk-based backup - ever more powerful backup software bundled on backup appliances intended for use by small and midsize businesses (SMBs). No longer do these size companies need to cobble together their own backup solution or rely upon a value-added reseller (VAR) to architect one. Instead SMBs can realistically expect to obtain fairly robust, near-turnkey backup solutions for prices starting at $5,000. The real trick when going down this path is selecting a backup appliance that can scale capacity as your business grows as well as offers backup software that meets the specific needs of your company's environment. (read more)

When you really look into the data that your organization is archiving, there is usually a good reason for the business to retain that data, otherwise why would it be archived at all? Placing that data on a system designed and built from the ground up to be an archival repository is probably a really good idea. (read more)

Before breaking off into a sprint, and hyperventilating with Microsoft's Hyper-V, it might be a good idea to take a slightly broader look at the purposes of virtualization and utility computing. When used properly, we can all agree that virtualization is changing the datacenter in a positive way by providing operational and economic benefits. Yet virtualization by itself does not create economic benefits. After all, virtualization is just the ability to abstract and hide the physical computing resources through the creation of a virtual machine (VM) with no initial cost benefit in doing so. In fact, in many environments virtualization may increase costs long term due to the new licensing and administration overhead that VMs create. (read more)

A recurring theme in terms of what I hear from users is how VMware adds new complexities to their day-to-day management tasks. For instance, even before server virtualization came in vogue, companies were already complaining that their physical servers reproduced like rabbits. Server virtualization just makes server growth that much easier to occur since now companies don't even need to purchase a new physical machine anymore - it now is little more than a copy-and-paste like exercise to create a new virtual machine (VM) once server virtualization is in place. (read more)

My visit to this fall's Storage Decisions conference in New York City on Wednesday, September 24, was an abbreviated stay. I only had the afternoon to spend at the conference before leaving in the evening for another set of meetings the next day. So while my time was short, I did catch a couple of briefings as well as a little industry chatter. Some of the talk on the exhibit hall floor had to do with the current crisis facing the banking industry and what that may mean for technology as a whole. One of the sentiments expressed which I generally agree with is that the financial crisis is probably not good news for the larger storage vendors at the show but likely bodes well for emerging storage technologies in the market as it will force some companies to look beyond traditional solutions.. (read more)