Storage arrays are big, expensive, and difficult to manage. Plus, concentrating storage in a single device puts everything at risk if there is an outage. So why buy a storage array at all? Arrays do a few things very well, and this often makes up for the difference, on balance. Storage Arrays Accelerate Performance One of the most important advancements in data storage in … [Read more...] about Storage Arrays Do A Few Things Very Well
Data General
Where Did Blade Servers Come From?
Blade systems allow compact, stripped-down servers to be mounted in a chassis with shared power and I/O support. Among the benefits of blade servers, efficiency, manageability, reliability, performance and flexibility stand out as unifersal. There are lots of blade systems available today, and even more produced in the past, that include some or all of these capabilities and … [Read more...] about Where Did Blade Servers Come From?
The Four Horsemen of Storage System Performance: Never Enough Cache
Why do some data storage solutions perform better than others? What tradeoffs are made for economy and how do they affect the system as a whole? These questions can be puzzling, but there are core truths that are difficult to avoid. Mechanical disk drives can only move a certain amount of data. RAM caching can improve performance, but only until it runs out. I/O channels can be … [Read more...] about The Four Horsemen of Storage System Performance: Never Enough Cache
Of Emulated Fibre Channel, Virtualization, And The Right Tool For The Job
EMC's Chuck Hollis is one smart guy, and a very verbose blogger. As usual, he sparked a bit of a storm recently when comparing unified storage on EMC's Celerra NX4 to NetApp's multiprotocol FAS2020 filer. But it was one phrase in particular that got the attention of Alex McDonald and Kostadis Russos of NetApp, Martin/Storagebod, and Tony Asaro: "just because a vendor says … [Read more...] about Of Emulated Fibre Channel, Virtualization, And The Right Tool For The Job
Top Ten Innovative Enterprise Storage Hardware Products
Looking around at the enterprise storage landscape, it is plain that certain archetypes rule: Monolithic enterprise arrays, dual-controller modular arrays, standard-sized hard disk units, NAS servers, tape libraries. Are these really the optimal designs for storage in our modern open systems world? On the contrary, I suggest that the enterprise storage world we know was … [Read more...] about Top Ten Innovative Enterprise Storage Hardware Products