Data storage has always been one of the most conservative areas of enterprise IT. There is little tolerance for risk, and rightly so: Storage is persistent, long-lived, and must be absolutely reliable. Lose a server or network switch and there is the potential for service disruption or transient data corruption, but lose a storage array (and thus the data on it) and there can … [Read more...] about Today’s Storage: Same As It Ever Was
data protection
Why Big Disk Drives Require Data Integrity Checking
Hard disk drives keep getting bigger, meaning capacity just keeps getting cheaper. But storage capacity is like money: The more you have, the more you use. And this growth in capacity means that data is at risk from a very old nemesis: Unrecoverable Read Errors (URE). Let's get one thing out of the way from the start: The only thing protecting your data from corruption … [Read more...] about Why Big Disk Drives Require Data Integrity Checking
The Prime Directive of Storage: Do Not Lose Data
People call on storage devices and systems to do lots of things, from accelerating I/O to copying and sharing data. But at the heart of it all, storage arrays really have just one job: Do not lose data! That's right. Storage really only needs to store data. Nothing fancy; nothing exotic. I give you data, you give it back. Everything else you can do for me is … [Read more...] about The Prime Directive of Storage: Do Not Lose Data
Local Snapshots in Mac OS X Lion Time Machine: Is It A Good Idea?
Apple is readying the next major release of their Mac OS X operating system. Dubbed "Lion", Mac OS X 10.7 is widely expected to hit Apple stores in the Summer of 2011, and brings many exciting new features along for the ride. This series of articles introduces the storage and data protection features of Lion as they are revealed. Many operating systems include a backup … [Read more...] about Local Snapshots in Mac OS X Lion Time Machine: Is It A Good Idea?
CommVault Gives Cloud Storage A Seat At The Adult Table
If your family was like mine, Thanksgiving was a two-tiered affair: The adults sat at the fancy dining room table while the kids had to sit in the kitchen, some even using a card table and folding chairs. You knew you were grown up when you moved up to the adult table. I guess this American coming-of-age ritual is pretty common with other rituals, too. There's no formal … [Read more...] about CommVault Gives Cloud Storage A Seat At The Adult Table