Computer Technology Review articles from October - December 2005

Computer Technology Review archives from October - December 2005

Business continuity in SMB: disaster recovery in the small-to-medium business space.(Storage Networking)
October 1, 2005... Many small to medium businesses (SMB) operate under the data protection philosophy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But something will inevitably happen: a disaster wipes out the backup tapes, or a critical database is permanently...

Data encryption strategies; Part 2: encrypting high-performance, high-volume storage.(Disaster Recovery & Backup/Restore)
October 1, 2005... As the amount of network-attached data and storage systems grow, so does the exposure to data loss. Unless you are using a mainframe computer, the level of risk for data loss and theft from unauthorized access is growing daily. The risk has...

SAS I/O performance: unprecedented flexibility in I/O bandwidth selection.
October 1, 2005... Much has been written about the benefits of SAS and SATA compared to previous generation storage interconnects. In this article, we compare the data throughput capability of three of the most popular enterprise-class and near enterprise-class...

Backup and disaster recovery techniques: a look back and forward.(first in/first out)
October 1, 2005... If you used backup and disaster recovery techniques from just five years ago in today's datacenter, you definitely wouldn't get the job done. If you tried techniques from ten years ago, you couldn't even get started. To begin, the average size...

Optimizing serial attached SCSI with PCI Express.(Small Computer System Interface)(Peripheral Component Interconnect)
October 1, 2005... Data centers have relied on the parallel SCSI bus interface as the workhorse of disk drive interconnections for almost 25 years. SCSI, as well as other parallel bus technologies, remains in widespread use and continues to meet the performance...

The long arm of compliance: how SMBs can effectively manage various requirements.(Special Section)
October 1, 2005... When one hears the word compliance, the initial thought that often comes to mind is of laws and regulations that guide well-known, publicly held companies. The reality is that compliance reaches farther than large, public companies. It affects...

Personal disaster recovery software: an essential part of business disaster recovery plans.(Special Section)
October 1, 2005... Traditional and obvious methods of protecting business PCs and the digital content they contain do not provide a complete and foolproof solution for content protection or successful recovery in the event of a PC disaster. If a disaster strikes,...

Serial attached SCSI hard drives: performance and flexibility for today's data explosion.(Storage Management)
October 1, 2005... Whether for a server or for a storage enclosure, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive options provide a scalable, flexible, better performing, and efficient solution to go beyond the inherent limits of parallel technology--just in time for...

Data storage works hard for entertainment venues.(Storage Management)
October 1, 2005... Entertainment venues have critical needs for storage capacity and data availability. The sheer number of events, expectations of guests--up to 20,000 at one time--and the logistic requirements of each event call for complex data storage for all...

Security and compliance: danger lurks for stored data.
October 1, 2005... Today's companies are both highly regulated and highly dependent upon their digital assets. This dual challenge is monumental--public examples of security breaches are all over the news. The table below shows some recent examples of security...

How to eliminate the complexity of software licensing with utility pricing.(Disaster Recovery & Backup/Restore)
October 1, 2005... Software licensing seems to grow more and more complex every year, and as software piracy mushrooms, software companies and watchdog groups are aggressively pursuing violators with fines and lawsuits. This presents a unique challenge for IT...

Continuous data access: the 99.999 challenge facing network administrators; Enterprise level high availability using iSCSI.(Disaster Recovery & Backup/Restore)
October 1, 2005... Storage Area Networks (SANs) can deliver data storage solutions that provide 99.999% data storage availability. Originally, SANs were built on FC technology. However, for the majority of businesses, using FC to build a SAN is too expensive to...

PCI Express switching and Remote I/O in the data center.(Disaster Recovery & Backup/Restore)(Peripheral Component Interconnect)
October 1, 2005... The emergence of the PCI Express standard enables us to realise some of the advanced features enjoyed within a blade server environment while still using standard commodity parts. By providing a remote I/O module connected via PCI Express to...

Are the days for traditional backup and recovery numbered? Changing the rules for backup and recovery.(Disaster Recovery & Backup/Restore)
October 1, 2005... Organizations require a business continuance strategy that ensures valuable data is protected and applications can be recovered rapidly--if not instantaneously. A business continuance strategy is dependent on replicating any component of the...

Interface considerations for tiered storage.
October 1, 2005... Never before has the enterprise enjoyed such a comprehensive range of storage solutions from which to choose. The Fibre Channel, Serial ATA and Serial Attached SCSI interfaces all play vital roles in tiered storage infrastructures, and often...

Network-centric IP SAN: a new approach to unleashing the full potential of your IP network.(Storage Networking)
October 1, 2005... We are in the midst of the next evolution of Storage Area Networking (SAN). Enterprises have long recognized the advantages associated with SANs. Improvements in storage utilization and much improved management, especially when compared to...

Thanks to standards, storage gets innovative.(Storage Networking)
October 1, 2005... At risk of severe understatement, the world was a very different place 10 years ago than it is today: In 1995, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged past 4,000 for the first time; Microsoft Corp. released an operating system upgrade called...

ILM for life sciences: the next big storage play?(Storage Networking)(Information Lifecycle Management)
October 1, 2005... Raise your hand if you know all about flow cytometers. Okay, how about confocal microscopes? No? Don't feel bad, most of us storage pros have never heard of these instruments either, despite the fact that they are commonly used by thousands of...

Next generation storage for next generation studios; Case study: BlueArc and the fantastic four.(Case Studies)
October 1, 2005... Often, storage in the studios for applications including animation, special effects, or editing, are simply a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks), directly attached to workstations striped together to get acceptable performance, measured by raw...