I recently wrote an article for TechTarget that looked at the implementations
of data de-duplication in primary storage arrays. One of the things that
stood out for me was the lack of de-duplication support in traditional (and
some might say legacy) storage arrays.
The cynical amongst us would say that the big 5 storage vendors have no
vested interest in introducing a technology such as de-duplication. If
dedupe rates can reach those of secondary storage products (i.e. 90% or more)
then storage vendors are going to be selling way less storage than they do
today – not the most desirable scenario. However I wonder if technology
plays more of a role here than pure financial considerations.
The Netapp Effect
Netapp introduced A-SIS (advanced single instance storage) into their filer
product range in 2007. Although continually berated by other vendors as
performance ... (more)
At the end of August 2012, Amazon Web Services released their latest service
offering – a long-term archive service called Glacier. As a complement to
their existing active data access service S3, Glacier provides long term
storage for “cold” data – information that has to be retained for a
long time but doesn’t require frequent access.
What Exactly is Glacier?
Many organisations need to retain data in archive format for extended periods
of time. This is for regulatory or compliance purposes or may simply be
part of their normal business process. Good examples are medical,
h... (more)
HP have joined the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market and released
their HP Cloud service in public beta. Here’s the announcement press
release. The services on offer are:
Available Now as Public Beta
Compute – on-demand server instances. Cloud Object Storage – object-based
storage using RESTful APIs. Content Delivery Network – local distribution
of web content.
Still in Private Beta
Cloud Block Storage – persistent data for compute images Relational
Database for MySQL – managed cloud databases
There’s also the HP Identity Service for managing key & token access
managem... (more)
It’s pretty easy to pick holes in the current legacy storage products,
especially when it comes to integration within both public and private cloud
deployments. However it’s worth discussing exactly what is required when
implementing cloud frameworks, as the way in which storage is deployed is
radically different from the traditional model of storage operations. In
this post we will look at why traditional methods of storage management need
to change and how that affects the way in which the hardware itself is used.
This leads to a discussion on APIs and how they are essential... (more)
Like many people, the other week I downloaded and installed Google Drive.
This is the long-awaited competitor to services like Dropbox and
Microsoft’s SkyDrive, offering free online storage with the ability to
upgrade to higher capacity at a cost. Dropbox and the various other
lookalikes have been around for some time, so is Google coming to this market
too late and is the party already over?
Cloud Storage
The concept of Cloud Storage is pretty simple. Services like Dropbox allow
you to share a local folder on your PC or Mac and have that data replicated
into “the cloud”. Fr... (more)
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Nick Basinger
Jonathan Alonso
Lisa Juley
Pramod Pawar
Zakia Bouachraoui
Terry Ray
