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
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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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Dedupe Benefits Mainframes as it does Open Systems

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Eric Slack

Historically, tape as a storage medium in the open systems world has had issues with performance, complexity, reliability and cost, compared with disk systems. The mainframe market has encountered many of these same issues with tape as a backup solution,…

Tagged with: Backup, Data Domain, Dedupe, Deduplication, EMC, LTO, Open Systems, Tape, Virtual Tape Library
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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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Pay Attention to Flash Controllers when Comparing SSD Systems

Posted on December 11, 2009 by Eric Slack

Solid State Disk (SSD) storage devices now commonly use flash memory as the media on which they record data. Flash has driven the SSD cost per capacity significantly below that of DRAM based SSD and flash is narrowing the lead…

Tagged with: DRAM, ECC, Flash memory, MLC, Multi-level cell, SLC, Solid-state drive, SSD
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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
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Visualizing SSD Readiness

Posted on June 2, 2009 by George Crump

For many enterprises, Solid State Disks (SSD) should no longer be a future consideration and they are visualizing SSD at work in their data center. Many environments can take advantage of SSD right now and the organization can benefit from…

Tagged with: Hardware, IOPS, Serial ATA, Solid-state drive, SSD, Texas Memory Systems, Visual, White paper
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