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How to break out of the storage hardware zoo
With enterprise storage now costing significantly more to run than it does to buy according to many estimates, the need to cut those operational costs – or at least to slow their rise – is paramount.
The result is a growing desire to move away from the siloed and application-specific nature of much of today's storage market.
" …
Leave nothing behind when migrating virtual machines
We migrate virtual machines (VMs) for all sorts of reasons: to load balance our physical hosts, say, or to offload a server so it can be taken offline for maintenance, or because the original host has failed. But in every case we want no interruption to the VM's operation, or at least as little interruption as possible.
That …
Network switching is having a light bulb moment
As server farms grow and their workload changes, the design and structure of the networks that serve them must also change. End-of-row switching is increasingly giving way to top-of-rack switching, and tiered networks may need to be replaced – or perhaps augmented – by more mesh-like Ethernet fabrics.
The increasing density of …
Network switches look different in the cloud
Cloud computing takes more than just a philosophical shift. It requires new skills, processes and architectures.
In particular, traffic patterns in cloud networks can be quite different from those of the familiar enterprise network and the scale of operation can be significantly higher.
That, according to experts in the field, …
Tarmin touts active archiving software
UK-based software developer Tarmin Technologies has come out of stealth this week with an intriguing archiving tool called GridBank. As the name implies, this is grid-based and looks rather like ILM version 2.0 - but Tarmin CEO and co-founder Shahbaz Ali prefers to call it active archiving.
Currently in beta and due for full …
iSCSI dodges Fibre Channel over Ethernet noose
Fibre Channel over Ethernet may not have taken off yet, but at least it's on the taxiway. That's thanks to NetApp's launch of the first native FCoE storage subsystem, converged network adapters (CNAs) from Emulex and QLogic, and Cisco's announcement of the first FCoE switch - the Connectrix NEX-5020, which is based on its Nexus …
Ballmer deploys greenery in CeBIT charm offensive
On his first trip to CeBIT in six years, Steve Ballmer is hoping to fix up Microsoft's somewhat tarnished image in Europe.
Tonight, he's at the official CeBIT opening ceremony along with European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, and German chancellor Angela Merkel. Rumour has it he'll …
Neterion's NICs are virtually there
10Gig Ethernet specialist Neterion is announcing its third generation of virtualisation-aware network adapters at VMworld Europe this week, with a claim that these NICs will greatly speed up network-intensive tasks such as migrating virtual machines (VMs) from one server to another.
The cards offload work normally done in the …
Fujitsu Siemens says bye-bye to VXA
The storage side of Fujitsu Siemens Computers has given VXA tape the heave-ho, dumping it in favour of LTO.
The company has brought out two new models in its FibreCAT range of storage systems, aimed at SMEs. While the FibreCAT SX88 disk box is mostly a faster version of its predecessor, the TX08 backup system represents a …
Is storage becoming IT's Hummer?
VMware is set to turn storage administrators into the energy-profligate and hated SUV drivers of the corporate world, a top analyst has claimed.
That's because consolidation will cut servers' share of data centre power consumption and propel storage to pole position in IT's energy greed league, claimed Enterprise Strategy Group …
BT banks on windmills to throw greens off its scent
BT is going green in part to avoid being targeted by environmental activists after it emerged that that it now uses 0.75 per cent of the UK's electricity.
Steve O'Donnell, the telco's global data centre boss revealed during a panel session at SNW Europe that the telco was afraid of being besieged by hordes of dreadlocked enviro- …
Bankers could get a kicking on Day of the MiFIDs
Ambulance-chasing lawyers will have a big new target from next month - the financial services industry. So said PJ Di Giammarino, a consultant and keynote speaker at Storage Expo this week.
It's all thanks to MiFID, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, a Europe-wide regulation which comes in on 1 November this year. …
Avoiding x86 cuts iSCSI cost and watts
An iSCSI developer said it has bucked the trend towards using standard servers to power storage appliances, instead using specialist chips that it designed itself.
The company, called iStor, claims that as a result, its latest iS512 subsystems not only out-perform rivals such as EMC, EqualLogic, Intransa and LeftHand, but they …
Removable hard disks make a come-backup
There's always something a little off-beat around the edges of these shows, and this time it was a small company, called Idealstor, pushing an ejectable hard disk called Teralyte as a replacement for tape backup.
Teralyte is a different approach both from the removable disk cartridges offered by Tandberg and Iomega, and from …
WANs go faster Down Under
Australian WAN acceleration company Exinda has brought out its second generation of WAN speed-up gear. There's a new 800 series of hardware appliances, but their new Unified Performance Management (UPM) software will also work on the current Exinda 700 series hardware, and is a free upgrade for existing customers.
Exinda's …
Allot intros big bandwidth shaper
Allot Communications, an Israeli outfit which does high-end bandwidth shaping and network traffic management gear, has brought out an even bigger Service Gateway device. Aimed at the service provider (SP) or large enterprise, this is capable of handling over 20 Gbit/s of traffic.
The Service Gateway is an expandable chassis …
IT bosses: directors don't take security seriously
Most IT managers believe that while their board-level superiors pay lip service to compliance and security, they don't really take it seriously, according to a survey carried out for software developer NetIQ.
The survey also revealed that 51 percent of the 218 UK companies queried still do not have the processes and procedures …
Google starts charging for storage
Google has begun charging users for additional storage once they fill their free allowance, according to a blog post by one of the company's lead software engineers.
Price plans start from $20 a year for an extra 6GB and run to $500 a year for 250GB. Google account holders can buy storage here.
The engineer, Ryan Aquino, said …
SNIA offers green advice
SNIA, the Storage Networking Industry Association, has set up a task force and technical working group to address "green storage". The groups will develop resources to help IT managers understand and address environmental issues, the organisation said.
Jürgen Arnold, SNIA Europe's chairman, said while there's plenty of …
Fibre Channel gets an 8Gig kicker
The first 8Gbit/s Fibre Channel storage networking products are out, and could drive the final nail into the coffin of 10Gbit/s Fibre Channel. However, the new technology seems unlikely to stem the drift to iSCSI over 10Gbit/s Ethernet, although it might perhaps slow it a little.
8Gbit/s has the advantage that it uses the same …
The Scouts go grid
The Scouts are getting into grid computing - yes, it seems that "Dyb dyb dyb" now means "donate your bits". Scouts all around the world are being encouraged to join a team that's donating its spare CPU cycles to the World Community Grid, which provides processor power for medical research.
"We are calling upon current and …
Free Wi-Fi aims to snag Mondeo man
Anyone logging onto one of the UK Wi-Fi locations run by free-hotspot.com and online-4-free.com this summer can expect to have to wait through a video advert for the new Ford Mondeo, before they get the promised free internet access.
The free Wi-Fi service is funded by advertisements. Some of these are simply static web pages, …
Genetic researchers fill 1TB a week
Fresh from its recent sinister triumph, the Wellcome Trust says that its research into genetic diseases is generating such huge data volumes that it has had to buy an extra 42TB of SATA disk arrays, 30TB of which are already full.
Scientific analysis of genetic material generates output files of around 50MB, the trust said, and …
Wanna stick USB 2.0 to your network?
Anyone fed up with having to plug peripherals into their laptop - or run a desktop PC as a peripheral server on the network - could find a USB network server useful, according to Keyspan.
The company has just announced its USB 2.0 Server, which lets users share many kinds of USB devices - printers, scanners, cameras, storage - …
LeftHand brews up IP SAN software
LeftHand Networks, the storage company that's named after a brewery*, said the new version of SANiQ - its iSCSI SAN software - includes self-healing capabilities and what it called next-generation thin provisioning.
SANiQ version 7, which is released today, is also available in two new packages aimed at specific needs, one for …
Take a secure hotspot home with you
For anyone fed up with support calls from users trying to connect into the corporate network from home, or set up security on their home wireless router, roaming specialist iPass reckons it has a solution.
The company is bringing its managed home-office service to Europe, offering to put broadband and a managed wireless router …
HP and MIT form worldwide digital archiving group
HP and MIT have formed an independent organization to support the work of digital archivists who use the DSpace open source archiving software.
Called the DSpace Foundation, the new group will provide a forum and a focus for users of the software - who include over 100 universities, museums and companies - said Nick Wainwright …
iPass layers on security for laptops
Roaming internet access specialist iPass is getting into device security via a deal with Symantec.
It is integrating Symantec's Sygate Enterprise Protection software into its client package - this includes USB lock-down, device health-checks, policy enforcement, application authorisation, and other features.
IT managers will …
North Wales Police gets unified IP comms
North Wales Police is going all-IP with a new network that'll put unified communications - including videoconferencing and IP telephony - into all 75 of its cop-shops.
Famed for its speeding-obsessed chief constable Richard Brunstrom - dubbed the "Mad Mullah of the Traffic Taleban" by The Sun - the force says it should save £ …
Expand gives Oracle a boost
Expand Networks has developed an Oracle-specific software module for its Compass WAN acceleration gear, and claims that beta testers and its own labs are reporting anything from five to 65 times performance gain as a result.
It said that the speed boost is partly down to its ability to accelerate the underlying network …
T-Mobile in court over Truphone call blocks
Truphone got its hour in court yesterday, though judgement in the case - the VoIP operator has applied for an interim injunction to stop T-Mobile blocking its customers from dialling Truphone numbers - is not expected until Monday morning.
The suit alleges (pdf) that even though Truphone has been issued a range of mobile …
Itheon offers WAN in a box
Itheon has brought out a compact version of its network emulator technology for developers who need to check how their games or applications will perform in the real world.
Based on Windows XP-Embedded, the portable device allows users to simulate WAN connections with all sorts of error conditions.
For example, it can simulate …
VMware gets multi-server config tool
Utility software developer Veeam has come up with a configuration tool for VMware ESX servers which lets you work on multiple virtual servers simultaneously, for example to reconfigure all the members of a server cluster at the same time. It also gives GUI access to settings normally accessible only through the command line or a …
Born-again 3Com wants network #2 spot
3Com's proposal to spin off TippingPoint, the security appliance vendor, is part of the company's plan to win back its position as the networking industry's number two, says Mike Ansley, the veep in charge of 3Com's EMEA operations.
According to Ansley, the sell-off scheme is part of a big shift in 3Com strategy, which has also …
Aardman picks Observer for net monitoring
Aardman Animation has bought network monitoring gear from Network Instruments to help detect and fix problems on the high-bandwidth links that connect its four sites in Bristol.
The company says that, as well as handling CGI files and database replication, its 10Mbit/s extended LAN supports a wide variety of creative …
Turing test challenges spam filters
Spammers have turned a widely-used anti-spam trick - fuzzy text that computers cannot recognise - to their own advantage, according to the head of an anti-spam software developer.
The distorted text images are arriving in PDF files touting German penny stocks, in yet another iteration of the pump-and-dump scam that's been …
Verbatim buys into portable HDs
Media manufacturer Verbatim has bought SmartDisk, a US-based vendor of portable and external disk drives and flash readers. The deal was agreed last month and finalised yesterday.
The acquisition includes physical assets, patents, trademarks and technology. Verbatim said it would also hire some SmartDisk engineering, operations …
Collaborators offered pre-built SharePoint app
A British software company is claiming that it can deliver a basic but fully working Microsoft SharePoint collaboration system in as little as an hour, and without the customer needing to buy SharePoint client access licences (CALs).
"We have built over 100 SharePoint projects and found that 70 to 80 percent was common - there …
Thin clients catch VDI for VMware access
Server-based computing schemes such as Citrix and Windows Terminal Server now have a serious rival in the shape of VDI, claimed German thin client developer IGEL Technology, as it added VDI support to its desktop devices.
VDI, or virtual device infrastructure, is a relatively new scheme pushed by VMware, among others. It runs …
Finance sector still the disk backup leader
More than half of British companies now prefer disk-based backup over tape, and in the financial services industry the margin is even greater, with almost two-thirds opting for spinning storage, according to a survey commissioned by RAID developer Infortrend.
The big drivers for disk-based backup are the shortening of the …
Tivoli integrates compliance management
IBM has finally finished digesting Consul InSight, the risk management software that it bought last December, and has re-released it in expanded form as Tivoli Compliance Insight Manager.
Now linked into other Tivoli products, such as Security Operations Manager, Identity Manager and Access Manager, the updated software allows …
3Com mounts school Wi-Fi fightback
3Com has decided to fight the hysteria over WiFi in schools. The company has hooked up with a reseller that specialises in the education market called 802.UK to promote "second-generation wireless" - by which it means enterprise-class managed WLANs - for schools.
The companies said they will offer free wireless information …
Unwanted e-card conceals a Storm
There's a new version of the Storm Trojan on the loose, disguised as an e-postcard but actually recruiting zombies for a botnet, according to the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre.
The attack arrives as a spam with the subject line "You've received a postcard from a family member!" and contains links to one of several …
BlackBerry gets free international calls
Internet phone service specialist EQO has added BlackBerry to the list of around 400 handsets that it says can now make local-rate or free international calls - without using Wi-Fi or VOIP to the handset. Users also get cheap text messaging and free access to all the popular IM services, the company said.
EQO's service uses a …
UK oldies go crazy for e-shopping
On-line shopping is the nation's favourite use for a PC, and over-55s are the UK's most frequent computer users, according to an on-line survey sponsored by Microsoft.
Fully 95 percent of over-55s claimed that they went on-line every day, compared to 85 percent of 16-24 year-olds. Indeed, 77 percent of the older group go on- …
Quantum touts high end de-duplication box
Quantum has announced a high-end de-duplication appliance, called DXi7500. The new box is aimed at large enterprises, and as well as de-dupe, it can also be used as a virtual tape library (VTL) with a path to real tape, as disk-based backup and even as straight replicated disk storage.
The company claims it is the only vendor …
Novell kicks off Hackweek
Open source developers at Novell are spending this week on a 'working holiday' that the company calls Hackweek.
Almost all of Novell's 300 SUSE Linux and open source developers around the world - plus a few guests - have been given the week to work on whatever open source projects they want to support. That's 1500 developer- …
Open source 'leaving Asia behind'
The open source community risks leaving Asian users and developers behind, thanks to cultural differences and western business's tendency to treat programmers there as code monkeys rather than software designers, a senior Novell staffer has warned.
Kurt Garloff, the company's global product opportunities veep, said that while …
Lotus leaps into social networking
IBM is the latest big company to jump onto the social networking bandwagon, via its Lotus subsidiary which has at last released its much-hyped information-sharing and community-building software, Lotus Connections.
The whole thing sounds awfully like what Lotus Notes and SameTime were already supposed to be doing for us, but …
IBM launches MySpace for mainframes
IBM aims to leverage social networking by building an online meeting place for users of its System z mainframes. It says the Web-based portal, called Destination z, gives customers a place to discuss and debate mainframe usage, exchange ideas and seek technical advice.
The company also announced software to improve System z's …
