When so many businesses are totally dependent on their digital information, data protection becomes a key requirement for every IT organisation.  The way in which we implement technology changes almost daily and this affects the choices on how we protect it.  Where 20 years ago the standard model for deployment was based on physical servers,… Read more »

The IT world is great at delivering technically elegant solutions that intrigue and pique my (and others) interest.  In recent years the entire virtualisation and containers movements have been good examples of this.  Producing something technically interesting doesn’t always lead to a solution that benefits the business.  However, in the case of Droplet Computing, the… Read more »

For the past few months, I’ve been working with the idea of building a model for the adoption of hybrid cloud.  Some people may say that hybrid is already here, but I think what we see today is a set of tactical implementations.  Instead, we need a bolder vision of what the use of hybrid… Read more »

Data protection has featured heavily on the blog over the past few months.  Solutions are moving on from the traditional self-build of the last 15 years to more targeted software and appliances.  Another company doing something different with data protection is HYCU, formerly Comtrade Software.  The company recently rebranded and released version 3.0 of their… Read more »

Technology terms get dropped into conversations in the storage industry, with perhaps little explanation of where they come from. Forklift Upgrade is one example.  What does it mean and what’s the context behind it? Legacy Storage If you look back 10-15 years ago, the process of replacing storage was pretty arduous.  Although Fibre Channel as… Read more »

All technology evolves over time and backup is no different.  I started protecting data with tapes – the kind that are stored on reels as shown in this lovely picture I took at the Computer History Museum recently.  While at Cloud Field Day 3 last week we saw three different facets to how backup is… Read more »

Amazon Web Services recently introduced a new class of S3 Object storage called S3 One-Zone Infrequent Access.  This extends the options for S3 to four levels of availability and associated cost.  What is the point of introducing another option and what could it be used for? S3 Options Until now there were three S3 classes. … Read more »

Data replication is a core enterprise feature for implementing data protection.  Synchronous replication provides the ability to maintain an identical copy of data at another location.  While not a panacea for every problem, sync replication simplifies the protection process for servers and applications that are contained on one or more LUNs/volumes. INFINIDAT recently announced InfiniSync,… Read more »

This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018.  For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/. If someone asked me what business Riverbed was in, I’d have said WAN acceleration.  In past lives, I’ve… Read more »