Like many people in the high tech world, I don’t usually pay attention to the latest entertainment gossip. But while watching the news recently at a hotel, I found myself barraged with information about Katie Holmes deciding to leave Tom...
Read More »When buying storage, IT teams often wonder if it is worthwhile to buy a complete package of storage system, management software, data protection and other elements from a single vendor. Buying everything from one vendor has advantages and disadvantages. The...
Read More »One of the most frequent questions that I get is how the licensing for a particular storage feature or software application is handled. The variations from different vendors have left IT professionals wary of the complexities and costs. The wariness...
Read More »Data protection is probably the most fundamental requirement in Information Technology (IT), and is generally aligned with storage overall. But, data protection is perceived as overhead — a tax on IT operations. Because of that, data protection gets attention (and...
Read More »Compression of data on primary storage has taken center stage in the storage wars now with IBM’s release of Real-Time Compression on the Storewize V7000 and the SAN Volume Controller. Although not the first product to offer data reduction in...
Read More »Last week’s EMC World would have to be viewed as a major success for EMC. There were customers, press, analysts, resellers, and even other vendors there with something around 20,000 people – counting EMC employees. The crowd was so large,...
Read More »Storage consolidation seems to be a simple concept. If you reduce the number of storage systems, you benefit from fewer devices to manage, less space required, and less power/cooling demands. Yet there is confusion over exactly what the term storage...
Read More »Storage systems are undergoing important changes. New systems are becoming available that are both sophisticated and make storage “simple.” Simple is mainly a euphemism for automating many complicated tasks that administrators had to deal with before, but there’s a lot...
Read More »Last week two major storage vendors made significant system announcements. Hitachi Data Systems rolled out its Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) that has block and file support and is aimed at the mid-tier market. NetApp unveiled Dynamic Disk Pooling for the...
Read More »Eight years ago, a friend and I were researching a book we would later call "Inescapable Data - Harnessing the Power of Convergence." We were after an understanding of what kinds of new information one could produce by blending data...
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