Microsoft Adds Data Deduplication to NTFS in Windows 8

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 impact. But how exactly does Microsoft’s de-duplication technology work?

MetaGeek and Ekahau: Wi-Fi Analysis To Go

The most interesting products and companies at Interop Las Vegas 2011 were found around the edges of the show floor. Companies like NEC, Synology, Ciphertex, and Endace may have gone unnoticed in the shadows of towering booths of the industry titans but deserve attention. One such pairing was two Wi-Fi analysis companies, MetaGeek and Ekahau. Both work together to enable spectrum analysis and site surveying on portable devices – smart phones and tablets.

The Dumb Disk Fallacy

I am spending a few weeks examining the truths and fictions that bind our industry together. Let’s start with one of my favorite old canards: That enterprise storage must be overpriced because bare disk drives are so cheap.
I have seen this straw man argument set up by so many throughout my career that it has [...]

WD’s 1 TB Laptop Drive? Not Quite!

Western Digital announced this morning the world’s first “1 TB mobile hard drive!” But although the news is great for storage-hungry folks looking for a portable external drive, it doesn’t quite mark a sea change in the storage industry since this drive cannot be used in (most) laptops.

Not For Laptops
As we’ve discussed before, modern laptops [...]