Storage » Backups

Data deduplication for SMEs: What to look out for

Data redundancy is a primary contributor to the explosive growth in data. Initially deduplication focused on eliminating data redundancy in specific cases like full backups, e-mail attachments, and VMware images. Over time, however, customers have noticed the pervasiveness of duplicated data.

By Paul McClure | 22 April, 2009 14:40

Tags: backup, commvault, deduplication, storage

Big savings with MAID 2.0 storage technology

For years companies have been deploying Massive Arrays of Idle Disks technologies to reduce data-storage energy costs. The on/off or spin/no spin approaches reduce energy consumption by putting power-hungry disk drives to sleep when they are not being used.

By Bob Woolery | 26 November, 2008 10:22

Tags: MAID

The other guy's job -- disaster recovery

Mother Nature has wrought havoc in the Gulf and many of us were once again faced personally with worries over friends and family in harm's way and professionally with concerns about organizations facing uncertainty over their ability to continue or even recover their businesses. In a timely coincidence, I happened to be attending a disaster recovery (DR) conference on the west coast, and, appropriately, Hurricane Ike occupied center stage for much of the discussion. A number of would-be participants never made it to the conference as they were attending to more pressing matters back home.

By Jim Damoulakis | 23 September, 2008 09:17

Tags: backup, disaster recovery

Disaster-recovery planning: You can't live without it

In our daily lives we try to protect ourselves from the worst. We buy insurance for our cars, homes and health and we safeguard personal information. Shouldn't business owners and IT managers treat their networks and critical infrastructure the same way?

By Jeff Godlewski | 22 September, 2008 09:32

Tags: backup, disaster recovery

The naked laptop

Naked home workers may be the stuff of fantasy, but flexible working is now a corporate reality. Ready availability of broadband combined with the reliability and speed of wireless communications has transformed home and remote working.

Debating the merits of SSDs, part two

Healthy debate is often necessary to get a balanced view of an emerging technology. Somewhere between endorsements and detractions, a realistic understanding of the long-term outlook for a technology arrives. As such, I have decided to turn to a guest once again for the second installment in what I hope to be an ongoing debate over the merits of flash SSDs (solid-state drives).

Managing storage from your mobile phone

Being an optimist, I like to think that storage management is or will be getting better. It's hard, however, to ignore the fact that many admins don't know much about what's going on in the storage boxes they are sitting on. And it's not their fault, as management has been the Cinderella of storage apps for many years, and she hasn't found a prince to rescue her quite yet.

Focus on restore, not backup

Everyone always worries about backup, backup, backup. Guess what? None of your users, or managers for that matter, care one bit about backup. All they want is restore, and they want it immediately. So shift your focus from backup to restore.

Ironclad Windows backup on a budget

Creating an effective backup for Windows is a challenge -- largely because the OS lacks a powerful, simple tool like Linux's dd, for example. However, there are many options for establishing a worthwhile backup system for Windows, some of which are free or rather inexpensive.

Archiving with Lotus Notes? Consider native and ISV capabilities

Many Lotus Notes users are concerned with how to manage their employees' growing Notes mail files and the associated impact on storage, servers and database performance. This article looks at the key requirements for archiving and how the functionality available in Lotus Notes and Domino can help address those needs.

Promise for protecting laptops

Among the multitude of data protection challenges facing IT organizations, arguably the least favorite for IT managers is dealing with laptop systems. Each week we read more horror stories about lost notebook computers and potentially compromised data as organizations attempt to grapple with what is literally a moving target.

Tape's not dead. It doesn't even smell bad

The number of times that someone has declared tape "dead" probably numbers in the thousands. So it should come as no surprise that when I inquired of one tape vendor how much tape they sell annually the vendor's response was, "We sell a *&^% load of it".

De-duplicating VMware

It's been said that a server virtualization project is actually an infrastructure redesign project, and certainly in areas related to storage and data protection, the impact can be dramatic both in terms of the volume of data and in the operations to support and protect it. Backup is a particular case in point.

Sweet new service backs up while it syncs

A company called Sharpcast last week rolled out a new service that syncs your data across PCs, Macs and phones. That sounds simple enough, but the service, called SugarSync, and it's believed to be the first of its kind.