In the virtualized data center shared storage is truly shared. Each attached server host may have dozens of virtual machines all accessing the same shared storage system at the same time. This creates a new requirement for shared storage systems,…
As we discussed in our last column “Why Is Storage Hardware Sprawl Worse Than Ever?”, toward the end of the last decade (2007-2010) the data center began to tap into the abundance of compute power available to it but providing…
During a recent Storage Switzerland webinar, we discussed the need for organizations to consider software based approaches to accelerating WAN performance. Interestingly, our polling question revealed that 31% of the webinar participants were trying to determine why there is even…
In our webinar, “Overcoming the RoadBlocks to the All-Flash Data Center”, one of the questions that came up is how to integrate an All-Flash Array into the data center. It’s not our position that you should throw out all your…
As we start 2014, storage is changing. The familiar dual controller, scale up architecture is potentially being replaced by a new set of architectures. Storage professionals now have to consider storage systems that can scale out or converge themselves with…
IT professionals wear many hats and are constantly responding to the emergency of the moment. When performance problems appear in the virtual environment the default reaction is to throw hardware at the problem. That means “throwing” premium priced flash SSD at it. But this approach can lead to buying too much or too little SSD, which either wastes money or doesn’t effectively solve the performance problem. In this article Storage Switzerland’s lead analyst George Crump, leads you through the process of qualifying your virtual environment’s SSD suitability.