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News Analysis
Get Out Your Checkbooks, The IT Recovery Is Here
Analysts from the research firm IDC say the IT economy will grow faster than the overall economy this year as the recovery from the recession builds. IDC forecasts information technology spending to grow by about 3 percent in 2010, modest by historical standards, but 1.5 times faster than the growth in the overall economy, said Stephen Minton, vice president of IT markets and strategies for IDC. Minton was one of a number of IDC experts who spoke Wednesday at the IDC Directions 2010 conference in Santa Clara, at which the Boston-based research firm shared its research on a wide range of IT topics.
More News Analysis
- IEEE 802 Standards Committee Turns 30
- Sepaton Goes DeDupe
- 3Par Slashes Storage Array Costs
- Ballmer Bets Microsoft's Future On Cloud Computing
More News Analysis in Data Center Channel »
Architectures
Smart Grid Integration A Daunting Task As Green Energy Comes Online
As alternative green energy sources come online, power plants and energy distribution substations find their networks challenged by smart grid demands that call for rapid changes between traditional and alternative energy sources. System and network integration on a smart grid that manages hybrid energy sources is on technology road maps for virtually every utility company now, but a majority are still not diversified with alternative energy. Consequently, the prospect of integrating traditional and alternative energy systems with networks looms large.
More Architectures
- MySpace Finds Unique Use For SSD Technology
- Poor Performance Leads To Deployment Of SSD Technology for Aspirus
- Humana Builds A Twenty-First Century Data Center For Healthcare
- Unified Computing: A New Game Plan For IT?
More Architectures in Data Center Channel »
Reviews & Workshops
Windows 7 Rolling Review: Wrap-Up
Deploying a new operating system across a company is a bit like conducting an orchestra: You need the proper instruments in place, and your timing and execution must be right to evoke harmony. Get it wrong and all you get is noise. So for all those would-be maestros of Windows 7, now is the time to take a close look at OS deployment software, which we've tested in our Rolling Review.
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Blogs
Brocade Shifts Ethernet Strategy
March 11, 2010 11:57 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
I must admit I was surprised when Brocade, in their quarterly earnings call last month, announced that while their total revenue and earnings were up, Ethernet sales were down almost 25 percent. Analysts were busy downgrading the stock, declaring the Brocade/Foundry merger a failure and generally decrying the foolishness of anyone that dared challenge Cisco in the market. Methinks they doth protest too much.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Issues With Automated Tiering
March 10, 2010 2:10 PM
Posted by George Crump
While the industry, myself included, has been busy extolling the virtues of automated tiering, it's important to understand that it's not a be-all-end-all for the storage manager. Certainly there is plenty to like but, there are a few caveats that you should be aware of. From a performance perspective most (if not all) automated tiering systems leverage SSD or RAM to accelerate I/O and reduce latency. The upside of this, as we have discussed, is that it provides an automated way for storage managers to take advantage of SSD. The downside is that the rest of the environment has to be fast enough to take advantage of it. Putting a really fast drive at the end of a wire is not necessarily going to deliver better performance.
See all blogs by George Crump
FalconStor And Violin Add SSD To NSS
March 10, 2010 9:00 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
While I had been waiting for FalconStor to add flash support to their Network Storage Server (NSS) storage virtualization software, I was expecting flash volumes off a Fusion-IO or TMS PCIe flash card with promises of automated tiering to arrive sometime before Snow White's prince. I was pleasantly surprised when the folks at FalconStor called to tell me they were aiming a little higher than that and using Violin's solid state memory array as a cache.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
IBM Reloads Enterprise Branding
March 9, 2010 3:00 PM
Posted by Alexander Wolfe
Global CIO's Bob Evans and I were talking with Rod Adkins, the senior vice president who runs IBM's Systems and Technology Group. That operation is Big Blue's Big Kahuna, accounting for $19 billion in annual revenues and including IBM's chip, server, storage and systems software businesses. Did I mention that Adkins is also responsible for IBM's global manufacturing, procurement and customer fulfillment operations? All of this is by way of saying that, when Adkins speaks, one should listen.
See all blogs by Alexander Wolfe
One Million IOPS: Moving The Data Center Bottleneck
March 9, 2010 10:00 AM
Posted by Frank Berry
The first system administrator to ever upgrade a server undoubtedly experienced a mismatch in performance between the installed server and the new component. Since then, millions of data center managers have experienced first-hand the performance bottleneck constantly moving from one component in their data center to another. Have those years of experience stopped smart people in our industry from challenging whether it makes sense to deploy new generations of faster technology, because the new technology has performance the rest of the system can't use? The answer is no. The latest generation of high-performance converged network adapters is a great case-in-point.
See all blogs by Frank Berry
The Types Of Automated Tiering
March 9, 2010 8:00 AM
Posted by George Crump
Automated tiering, the transparent movement of data between tiers of storage, has several methods of delivery. There is some disagreement as to which is the "real" automated tiering. I'm not sure if from a storage manager's perspective it matters, but understanding the types of automated tiering will help you select the best method for your data center.
See all blogs by George Crump
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.
