In this installment of the Storage Migration Tools series RichCopy is the tool of choice. It is a free tool offered by Microsoft (without support of course) that uses a simple and easy to use GUI interface to copy files.
Storage Migration Tools: A look at what’s around
Storage Migration Tools: RoboCopy
Getting acquainted with storage
Moving to a SAN and managing data growth
Recently I got a Celerra NX4 storage array to meet my organizations storage needs, or out of the box, solve a specific problem that we are having with regard to storage. Slow data performance across the network and Windows Update. I found out quickly by doing some simple math covering what exists today and the maximum amount of available storage on the NX4 (~900GB) that this move to SAN Storage would indeed be something that has multiple phases (read disk shelves).
CommVault Simpana 9 Takes Backup To A New Level
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 e-discovery, under one umbrella. Last year, the company impressed me by adding cloud storage as a backup target equal in status to disk and traditional tape. Now the company is doing the same for storage-based snapshots, accelerating data protection for virtual machines.
Managing Migration Makes Martin Mad!
So we can thin-provision, de-dupe and compress storage; we can automate the movement of the data between tiers; now one single array may not have all these features today but pretty much every vendor has them road-mapped in some form or another. Storage Efficiency has been the watch-word and long may it continue to be so.
EMC Symmetrix V-Max: When Does It Get FAST and Virtual?

EMC caused a major stir on April 14 as they announced the next-generation Symmetrix enterprise storage array, the V-Max. Since that time, many of the features have been discussed and dissected on various blogs at the same time as EMC moves forward with sales of the new system. But one question remains: When can end-users actually purchase and use the V-Max system as described? And in particular, When does the V-Max get the most desirable and hyped Fully-Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) and scale-out features?
Maintenance Madness
We often talk about trying to make capital acquistions cost neutral in less than eighteen months; a reduction in Opex to offset the capital cost. Vendors are often complicit in this, as I mentioned in my previous entry, inflated maintenance costs mean that is often cheaper to refresh and take the bundled maintenance offered with a new system than to continue to pay maintenance on the legacy kit.