Blog Archives

Breaking The Top Four Myths Of Tape vs. Disk Backup

Posted on January 27, 2011 by George Crump

Over the past few years disk as a backup target has become a key enhancement to most backup infrastructures. Disk is believed to be faster, almost as cost-effective and more resilient. In reality tape has its own unique value in…

Tagged with: Backup, Data deduplication, Data Protection, disk backup, Hardware, RAID, Tape drive, Tape library, Virtual Tape Library
Posted in Article

Dot Hill Briefing Note

Posted on January 26, 2011 by George Crump

Dot Hill has a rich history as an OEM supplier that built mid-range storage solutions for various manufacturers in the industry. They are now moving into a new era by providing unified storage solutions. These are either a turnkey storage…

Tagged with: Data center, Dot Hill, Network-attached storage, OpenSolaris, Storage area network
Posted in Briefing Note

Nimble Storage Briefing Note

Posted on January 26, 2011 by George Crump

Nimble Storage is a convergence device of a different sort. Instead of focusing on unifying primary storage protocols, they are unifying primary storage, backups and disaster recovery into a single device. The goal is essentially to allow storage managers to…

Tagged with: Backup, CASL, Data corruption, ExecEvent, Flash memory, Nimble, Nimble Storage, RAID, Solid-state drive
Posted in Blog

Integrating Disk Backup With Backup Software

Posted on December 30, 2010 by George Crump

Modern disk backup systems can deduplicate data, replicate data and validate that data’s integrity without involving the backup application in the process. This is beneficial, as it allows the software application to not waste resources that may be better handled…

Tagged with: Backup, backup application, Data deduplication, Data Domain, EMC, software application, Storage
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What is LTFS?

Posted on May 18, 2010 by George Crump

Linear Tape File System (LTFS) is IBM’s recently released, self describing tape file system that enables tape media to be mounted and read by the operating system when the cartridge is inserted into the tape drive. The goal is to…

Tagged with: File system, Hard disk drive, IBM, Linear Tape-Open, Linux, LTFS, Tape drive
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What is TRILL’s Role in FCoE Storage Networks?

Posted on May 3, 2010 by George Crump

TRILL is an acronym that stands for Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links and is a proposed Link Layer (L2) networking standard from the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). TRILL is important because as large data centers begin to combine…

Tagged with: Converged Enhanced Ethernet, Data Center Bridging, FCoE, Fibre Channel, Spanning, Storage Network, STP, Switch, TRILL, Virtual machine
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Backup Virtualization

Posted on March 18, 2010 by George Crump

Virtualization has changed the way many data centers operate today. Server virtualization has increased server resource efficiency, flexibility and reliability. Storage virtualization has had a similar effect on storage resources and storage management. Interestingly, the backup and data protection processes…

Tagged with: Backup, Hardware, Storage, Tape drive, Tributary Systems, Virtual Tape Library, VTL
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Using NPIV to Optimize Server Virtualization’s Storage

Posted on June 11, 2009 by George Crump

Despite the economy, server virtualization rollouts continue unabated and in fact because of the economy there is increased pressure to optimize further the virtual infrastructure by increasing virtual machine density. This increased density puts additional pressure on an already strained…

Tagged with: Brocade, Fibre Channel, Hypervisor, I/O Blender, LUN, NPIV, Virtual machine, Virtualization
Posted in Article