RSSNews Analysis
Graybar Tracks Application Performance With Precise Tool
In late August, the IT group at Graybar was getting calls about slow performance from its users accessing the company's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. So the IT team fired up an application performance management solution last week from Precise Software to determine the cause of the trouble.
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Architectures
School District Optimizes Virtual Machine Archiving
Server virtualization separates operating systems and applications from the physical hardware, letting organizations consolidate infrastructure and pool application and communications resources. Organizations of all sizes are adopting virtualization to reduce the number physical servers they need. The El Dorado County Office of Education (EDCOE), located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Placerville, Calif., has been leveraging virtualization for several years to support 70 schools.
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Reviews & Workshops
When To Encrypt At Layer 2 Or Layer 3
Layer 2--data link layer--encryption is a high-performance security option that offers some advantages over Layer 3--networking layer--encryption in some scenarios, particularly in unified communications environments that require low-latency, high-volume data transmission. The increased availability and popularity of high-speed carrier Ethernet services provide fast, relatively cheap transmission, particularly for voice, video and other latency sensitive traffic. Enterprises can leverage more traditional Layer 3 IPSec encryption utilizing high-speed switching technology and fast pipes. Or, they can look at Layer 2 encryption technology, which is faster and simple to manage, for appropriate situations.
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Blogs
What Will Dell Do Now?
September 8, 2010 1:00 PM
Posted by Tom Trainer
For a company that prides itself on listening to its customers and delivering more than just what meets requirements, EMC received the message loud and clear from Dell about what the company is looking for in an enterprise class storage product: like a 3Par InServ. Can EMC deliver an enterprise storage array for Dell? Will Dell select a new acquisition target? Now that HP has won the bidding war, what will Dell do now?
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FalconStor VDI Solution: Economics And Performance
September 8, 2010 8:00 AM
Posted by Tom Trainer
On August 24th, FalconStor announced their new NSS SAN Accelerator for VMware Virtual Desk Top Environments, and Network Computing covered it here. FalconStor briefed me on this solution prior to their announcement, and I was impressed with it. FalconStor has been developing some highly creative storage solutions, and I thought it time to take a closer look at this one and spend some time talking with someone who is using it. To say that I was even more impressed with the FalconStor solution after my conversation is an understatement.
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Lessons Learned From 3Par & Data Domain
September 7, 2010 8:00 AM
Posted by George Crump
In the past two years, we have been privy to two exciting bidding wars that ended in two-billion dollar payouts for both 3Par and Data Domain. Despite the fact that they were in two different ends of the storage market, there is a lot to be learned from both of these companies. The key factor is that both companies focused on the task at hand. They essentially did one thing really well. In the case of 3Par, it was simplifying block storage in the enterprise, and in the case of Data Domain, it was simplifying backup storage. Each company's focus made users' jobs easier, and users voted with their dollars.
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Yes, You Can Automate IT. No, You Can't Avoid It.
September 3, 2010 10:53 AM
Posted by Mike Fratto, Editor
It's been coming for a long time now. Automating your data center is emerging in a big way. You can't avoid it, you can only put it off for a while, but sooner or later, it's going to happen. I am not talking about piddly automation functions like distributing software and patches or moving a virtual machine from one hypervisor to another. I'm talking about event-based automation where the actions you would have initiated manually are done automatically. Many of the objections I hear are that automation is too risky, complex, time consuming and can't handle errors well. Those are reasonable objections, but they are also easily overcome.
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Virsto Virtualizes Storage I/O For Virtual Machines
September 2, 2010 5:09 PM
Posted by Tom Trainer
Back in February of this year, Virsto launched their "Virsto One" storage virtualization software product. Much was written about Virsto at that time, and they were covered here on Network Computing. I had the unique opportunity to sit down and talk with Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto, in San Francisco this week while we were both in town for VMworld. Virsto is virtualizing storage in Microsoft Hyper-V based environments. A key question for Mark was why release storage virtualization in the Hyper-V space first before addressing the VMware market?
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DocuSign Goes Mobile
September 2, 2010 9:30 AM
Posted by Lee H. Badman
I recently caught up with Tom Gosner, VP and chief strategy officer of DocuSign. Given the advantages of digital signature technology--paperless transactions handled securely and rapidly with legally binding electronic signatures--DocuSign's core service is a natural fit for today's mobile business world. As I watch everyone from salespeople to execs hit the road while doing business out of the palm of their hands, I wanted Gosner's perspective on how digital signatures are being received by those asked to use and trust them, how they fare in legal challenges, and if DocuSign has new service offerings tailored to the latest generation smartphones. It turns out that Gosner has a lot to be excited about these days.
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Best of the Web
Data deduplication: Declawing the clones
Data deduplication is emerging as a critically important new arrow in the storage administrator's quiver to answer hard questions about the increasing problem in storage growth costs.
Compression, Encryption, Deduplication, and Replication: Strange Bedfellows
One of the great ironies of storage technology is the inverse relationship between efficiency and security: Adding performance or reducing storage requirements almost always results in reducing the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system.
WAN Optimization Whitelists and Blacklists
Optimization is a fantastic way of saving money and creating really happy customers at the same time, but it doesn't work flawlessly for all applications.
WAN Optimization as a Managed Service: It's Not About the Cost
This insight examines how organizations outsourcing their WAN optimization initiatives to a third-party go about achieving their goals for application performance, reducing operational costs, and streamlining enterprise infrastructure.
