Windows 8 server editions will include a filter driver for NTFS for data deduplication The next version of Microsoft Windows Server includes integrated data deduplication technology. Microsoft is positioning this as a boon for server virtualization and claims it has very little performance … [Read more...]
Fixed Block vs Variable Block Deduplication – A Quick Primer
March 14, 2011 by 2 Comments
Deduplication technology is quickly becoming the new hotness in the IT industry. Previously, deduplication was delegated to secondary storage tiers as the controller could not always keep up with the storage IO demand. These devices were designed to handle streams of data in and out versus random IO … [Read more...]
See W. Curtis Preston’s Backup Central Live!
January 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment
W. Curtis Preston launched his own series of Backup Central Live! seminars for 2011 Last week, after the Exec Event in Palo Alto, I joined my friend W. Curtis Preston for his first Backup Central Live! event. Curtis has spent years educating IT pros about data protection, this was the first … [Read more...]
CommVault Simpana 9 Takes Backup To A New Level
October 6, 2010 by Leave a Comment
CommVault introduces an updated version of their all-encompassing Simpana suite CommVault is one of those enterprise IT companies that likes to go their own way. A spin-out of AT&T’s famed Bell Labs, CommVault’s Simpana software integrates many aspects of data management, from backup to … [Read more...]
EMC Mixes Avamar Into Iomega ix12-300r
May 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Wandering the EMC World show floor was very revealing. Along with EMC’s new VPLEX, Chris Mellor and I spotted the unannounced SDRAM-based ZeusRAM SSD from STEC. While getting some hands-on time with Iomega’s new 12-drive storage array, I spotted an exciting but unannounced feature: The ix12-300r … [Read more...]
Considering Ocarina Networks Optimized Data For Virtual Environments
November 20, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Ocarina Networks presented to us during the Day 2 morning session of the GestaltIT Tech Field Day. Their presentation was a deep dive into storage compression and optimization. If you read my Ideas About Presenting To Engineers from earlier this week, then you’ll know what I mean when I say … [Read more...]
Data Dedupe comes to ZFS
November 3, 2009 by 4 Comments
It’s official… Data deduplication has been added to ZFS (read the link if you’re new to data deduplication). Hats off to Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore who did a ton of the work in addition to Mark Maybee, Matt Ahrens, Adam Leventhal, George Wilson and the entire ZFS team. The … [Read more...]
Living on a prayer
July 27, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Much of what we do in Storage Management can be considered living on a prayer; this is not just a result of the parlous state of the storage management tools that we use but also due to the complex interactions which can happen within shared infrastructure. And frighteningly enough, we are in the … [Read more...]
EMC Takes On NetApp For Data Domain’s Affections
June 1, 2009 by 3 Comments
EMC (NYSE:EMC) started a gunfight in the storage world today by offering an astonishing $1.8 billion for data deduplication sweetheart, Data Domain (NASDAQ:DDUP). This $30 per share offer one-ups rival NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP) by $5 per share, which looked to have sealed the deal with a solid $1.5 … [Read more...]
Windows Storage Server-Based Systems Step Into 2008
May 5, 2009 by 2 Comments
Windows Storage Server is one of the most interesting products from Redmond. It is a specialized version of Windows Server 2003 R2 with integrated storage target capabilities, including iSCSI, NFS, and of course SMB file services. It also includes single-instance storage (file-level deduplication), … [Read more...]