Storage

In depth: Online backup services keep your data safe

It's a fact of modern life that archiving data is essential to prevent a data disaster. Still, something like one-third of computers are never backed up, according to 2257 respondents in a recent Backblaze poll carried out by Harris Interactive. The survey came to the dismal conclusion that a scant 7 per cent of users practice safe computing by archiving their systems on a daily (or nightly) basis.

By Brian Nadel | 07 February, 2012 02:08

Tags: internet, storagem security

Seven strategies for keeping disaster recovery ON TARGET

It was a normal Monday batch process at a well-respected global bank - until, that is, a critical back-office system failed. At first, IT administrators took it in stride. This wasn't the only time they'd had to recover lost data. But soon it became clear something more ominous was occurring: the bank's multi-terabyte database had become corrupted.

By Craig Sands and Andrew Truscott | 12 May, 2008 08:14

Tags: disaster recovery

TechWorld's top 10 Christmas gift ideas for 2010

Christmas is again upon us and 2010 is coming to a close. It’s been a busy year and now we’re all scrambling to buy presents for family and friends. Following the success of last year’s list, TechWorld's funky Christmas gift idea list is back again for 2010. It’s all about helping you find an ideal gift, so please add any other ideas you think would be of interest to techies (and those surrounded by techies). Have a happy and safe holiday season and all the best for 2011.

By Rodney Gedda | 17 December, 2010 09:15

Tags: Christmas, christmas gift guide, gadgets

Delorean hard drive is perfect for time machine

Attention all Back To The Future fans: If you're in the market for a new hard drive, then the folks over at Flash Rods have something just for you. Flash Rods latest, known as the Delorean Time Machine Hard Drive, contains a 500GB Seagate drive within the chassis of the much-loved Delorean from the Back To The Future trilogy.

By Chris Brandrick | 30 November, 2010 12:16

Tags: Drives, Flash Rods, hdd, storage

Burning questions: Virtualisation

Virtualizing x86 infrastructure isn't just a one-step process -- as servers change, the whole data center must change as well. While server hypervisors such as VMware's ESX, Microsoft's Hyper-V and Xen can make IT more efficient and cost-effective, many of the virtualization advantages can be canceled out when data centers rely on technology and processes that haven't been updated for the virtualization age.

By Jon Brodkin | 26 October, 2010 00:52

Tags: Configuration / maintenance, Data Center, hardware systems, Microsoft, security, server, server virtualization, storage, Storage Management, Virtualization, VMware

Reducing storage complexities

As the entrance of the new decade eases in, new technologies being developed by the day are creating voluminous amounts of data that accrue in stale storage systems, gathering dust in the bin.

By John Mark V. Tuazon | 02 July, 2010 07:12

Tags: storage

A jolly storage strategy

Simplifying IT storage management at fast food giant Jollibee Foods Corp. (JFC) is something that can be considered a "jolly strategy," with all the millions of cash saved yearly on maintenance alone.

By Tom S. Noda | 02 July, 2010 07:16

Tags: Jollibee Foods, storage

Open source helps Facebook achieve massive app scalability

People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.

By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 09:40

Tags: apache, cloud computing, databases, Facebook, high performance computing (HPC), lamp, Linux, memcached, mysql, open source, php, SaaS, software development

Slideshow: Open source at Facebook

It’s loved by millions and has risen from a small-time university social networking service to the biggest phenomenon on the Internet. It’s the phenomenon that is Facebook. Popularity, however, doesn’t come easy. With some 400 million unique home pages Facebook is pushing the boundaries of traditional Web application scalability and it’s not shy to admit that it has been achieved by leveraging open source software. We take a look at some of the slides presented by Facebook at this year's FOSDEM conference in Belgium.

By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 14:25

Tags: cloud computing, Facebook, open source, social networks

Storage wrinkle: 4,500 flash drives left at the cleaners

Lost a thumb drive with important data on it? Check with your dry cleaner. A survey by a U.K.-based company shows that in the last year, 4,500 USB flash drives were forgotten in pockets of clothes left at the dry cleaners, and thousands more handheld devices were left in the backseats of taxis.

By Lucas Mearian | 22 January, 2010 08:39

Tags: flash storage, storage

Storage industry tackles making sense of metadata

Here is a wager I bet I will win. How many of us took a photo, saved a video, or downloaded a music track and have no clue where it's hiding today? Maybe it's buried somewhere on your PC's hard drive or in one of dozen external drives.

By Melissa J. Perenson | 07 January, 2010 09:02

Tags: ces 2010, metadata, storage

Deep dive: SAN and NAS virtualization

In just a few short years, storage virtualisation, also known as block virtualization, has proven its worth in the large enterprise and traveled that well-worn path from pricey boutique solution to affordable commodity. As a standard feature in all but the most modest mid-tier storage arrays, storage virtualization soothes a wide range of storage management woes for small and mid-size organizations. At the same time, dedicated solutions from top-tier vendors deliver the greatest ROI to large shops managing large SANs with intense data availability requirements.

By Steve Norall | 12 November, 2009 05:54

Tags: storage virtualisation

Opening the Pandora's box of network storage

Managing storage technology is an oxymoron these days. It seems like the more tools you add to manage your increasingly complex environment, the more convoluted the environment becomes. Nirvana is within sight, but your budget prevents you from getting there. Even worse, the budget shrinks but the demand on your resources grows. What's a storage area network (SAN) guru to do?

By Ryan Perkowski | 27 August, 2009 08:04

Tags: nissan, storage

Seagate, Western Digital go green with new 2TB drives

Capitalizing on the buzz around green IT, Seagate and Western Digital have released new "green" hard drives designed to use less power (in part by spinning more slowly than the latest generation of drives) and produce less heat (thus requiring less cooling).

By Rich Ericson | 22 July, 2009 20:25

Tags: barracuda, green, hard drives, seagate, storage, western digital

Sun tussles with de-duplication startup

Sun Microsystems is suing startup GreenBytes for allegedly claiming that Sun stole its data de-duplication technology.

By Stephen Lawson | 15 July, 2009 09:22

Tags: dedup, deduplication, GreenBytes, sun

Review: Hard disk vs. solid-state drive -- is an SSD worth the money?

Solid-state disk (SSD) drives are all the rage among techies. The drives use non-volatile NAND flash memory, meaning there are no moving parts. Because there is no actuator arm and read/write head that must seek out data on a platter like on a hard disk drive (HDD), they are faster in reading and, in most cases, writing data.

By Lucas Mearian | 19 June, 2009 07:57

Tags: hard-disk drives, seagate, solid-state drives, storage

Bad times force IT to deal with orphaned hardware, software

Pat Beemer, the IT director at Seattle Lighting Fixture Co., has a lot of orphaned computer hardware and unused software licenses on his hands -- the result of what he called "serious" layoffs at the company in recent months.

Adventures in data recovery

Russian hackers hold a casino site hostage, a Venezuelan town mistakes disk drives for organ transfers and a Canadian hospital needs ER for RAID array. Three adventure tales from CBL Data Recovery.

Solid-state disks offer 'fast erase' features

As the pilot ejects inside enemy territory, the fighter jet triggers an automatic data-destruction sequence. Within 15 seconds, the highly classified mission data on the solid-state disk has been wiped out.

By Robert L. Mitchell | 10 February, 2009 10:13

Tags: SSD

What your hard drive will look like in five years

As solid-state disk (SSD) technology closes in on hard-disk drive (HDD) capacity and price, experts say it may not be long before spinning disks are a thing of the past and a computer's storage resides in flash memory on the motherboard.

By Lucas Mearian | 19 January, 2009 09:43

Tags: storage