Drew Robb

Explosive storage growth is driving the need for simplified management of file storage. But how can storage users increase efficiency and control growth without affecting service levels and still respond to changing business needs? One possible solution is file virtualization, a technology that has suddenly caught fire. According to TheInfoPro’s (TIP) Heat Index survey, file […]

The continuing growth of the backup market coupled with the need to archive massive e-mail repositories has given rise to a new branch of storage — deduplication. With messaging storage growing at 25 percent a year, and storage costs declining by about 20 percent a year, “We are heading towards the concept of ‘bottomless e-mail,’ […]

Storage World Conference (SWC) 2006 rolled around this week in its traditional Long Beach, Calif., home. And as usual, the show was replete with end users and somewhat light on vendor interest. Surprisingly, IBM, Sun, NetApp and HP didn’t even bother to set up a booth at the exhibit. Despite that, however, about 100 smaller […]

SMI-S, Aperi, StorageRevolution.com, HP/AppIQ — it seems there’s no shortage of efforts to simplify the world of storage. SMI-S has been in development for years and enjoys massive backing from a veritable Who’s Who of the vendor community under the umbrella of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). More recently, however, IBM appeared to break […]

The subject of storage grids is gaining some momentum within the industry as perhaps the next big thing. It probably started a couple of years ago when NetApp acquired Spinnaker Networks to add grid-like capabilities to its storage operating system, Data ONTAP 7G. More recently, EMC purchased grid software from Acxiom Corp. that provides a […]

Inspired by Enron and other data cover-up fiascos, legislative bodies around the country appear to be taking the words of Joni Mitchell to heart: Don’t it always seem to goThat you don’t know what you’ve gotTill it’s gone. In this case, though, they are thinking less of big yellow taxis and more about making it […]

The pairing of server blades and storage seems to be all the rage these days. IBM, for one, recently released a few products pairing the two technologies: an embedded switch module co-developed by McData and QLogic; the LS20 blade with iSCSI capabilities; and a SANRAD blade version of its Switch-V iSCSI SAN switch based on […]

There has been a lot of debate over the past year about how storage virtualization should be done and who has the best technology. Some say it should be done in the switch, some prefer the array, others insist that it must be contained within an appliance, and a growing number believe it belongs in […]

Amidst a barrage of hysterical hype and cacophony of vendor announcements, it can be hard to separate the vaporware from the technology that is changing the face of storage. So what’s really hot right now, as opposed to press-release hot? We asked a few analysts what they see as the trends worth watching, and here […]

Microsoft has had a busy year in storage, in a quiet sort of way. The company partnered with Tacit Networks to offer wide area file services (WAFS) as an add-on to a Windows Storage Server foundation. It added high-end features to its iSCSI initiator. And at last spring’s Storage Networking World, it launched the Microsoft […]

When news of the Symantec-Veritas merger broke last December, Wall Street frowned. Over the next few months, shares took a beating, losing nearly half their value. Since April, Symantec has recovered some of that lost ground, and predictions are gradually becoming a little brighter. “Wall Street was confused by the merger, as to their mind, […]

In the consumer world, tape formats have all but vanished from the scene, replaced by CDs, DVDs and other digital disk-based systems. Will the use of tape in storage follow the same fate? Possibly not, but with each passing year, tape loses a little more ground to the encroachment of disk. “Large customers are permanently replacing […]