After a one-year incubation, Seagate’s Kinetic Open Storage Platform is now generally available. It features disk drives that communicate with applications over Ethernet, using a key-value architecture and RESTful APIs, instead of traditional protocols like SCSI or SATA. What’s different…
This is part two of Storage Switzerland’s test drive of WD’s DA2300 Backup Appliance that features the WD Arkeia backup software. In part one we went through the set up and configuration steps, getting backup clients connected to the system…
The DA2300 is a purpose-built backup appliance from Western Digital that runs the Arkeia backup software package on a capable quad-core, four-drive desktop chassis that WD originally developed for their small business server. While it offers enterprise-level features that meet…
As we’ve mentioned in previous columns, in order for a VDI project to have any chance of success it has to deliver at least the same computing experience users had prior to their desktop being virtualized. That makes sense, but…
Converged infrastructures combine the four components of a compute environment – a server, storage, networking and a virtualization platform – in a single system. The concept is to simplify the implementation of a compute environment and maintain that simplicity as…
Successful VDI deployments must satisfy three groups within the enterprise: 1) users, who want the same experience they had with their desktop PCs; 2) IT managers, who want to simplify operations and reduce risk; and 3) the CFO, who wants…
In a recent test run by HDS and audited by Storage Switzerland, an enterprise NAS system was able to successfully support 15,000 VMs. This is certainly an impressive number, and a performance spec that some larger enterprises may actually need.…
Running a high-density virtualization environment on a NAS box is something many companies assume won’t work. But we wanted to try. In this lab test run by HDS and audited by Storage Switzerland, an 8-node Hitachi HNAS system reached over…
The proliferation of mobile devices and cloud-based services is a good indicator of how people are working nowadays – and what a small company’s storage system needs to provide. It’s all about collaboration and presenting ‘anywhere, anytime, on any device’…
Backup has seen a lot change over the years. Disk has became the primary backup target instead of tape because of its speed and simplicity. And when vendors added deduplication it became even more cost effective. More recently, we’ve seen…
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