DCIG is very excited to announce the availability of its inaugural DCIG 2012 Big Data Tape Library Buyer's Guide that weights, scores and ranks over 140 features on more than 60 tape libraries from 8 different storage providers. Driven by the explosion of storage requirements to address "Big Data" and the "Cloud," organizations are now more than ever looking for cost-effective, viable storage media on which to store this data. This is why DCIG believes tape libraries are poised to be one of the big benefactors of these growing storage demands which prompted DCIG to produce its first ever Tape Library Buyer's Guide to help enterprises choose the right solution for their environment. (read more)

The deployment of flash memory storage as either storage or memory almost inevitably results in increases in application performance. However to get the real 'kick' in performance that today's transactional applications need and which flash can provide, a more elegant approach to flash's deployment is needed. Today I continue my discussion with Fusion-io Senior Director of Product Management, Brent Compton, who elaborates on the APIs that the Fusion ioMemory SDK exposes that make this boost in transactional performance possible. (read more)

Storage tiering as a strategy is gaining a lot of momentum as a way to optimize available storage capacity and bring storage costs under control. But many small and midsized businesses (SMBs) still question if storage tiering is right for them and, if so, what steps they should take to implement it. To answer these concerns, there are three tips for SMBs to follow to ensure implementing storage tiering is the right choice for them and that they do it correctly. (read more)

Since the advent of the TCP/IP protocol, network administrators have had a major blind spot: the ability to reliably determine the identity of an individual device or user. BlackRidge's new Eclipse™ solution, built on BlackRidge's patented Transport Access Control (TAC), uses client drivers or gateway appliances to insert unique identity information to every TCP packet. In this third and final post in our blog interview series, BlackRidge Technology CTO John Hayes and I discuss where BlackRidge is heading and the challenge of managing infrastructures from the perspective of devices rather than networks. (read more)

The keynote given by Symantec's CEO Enrique Salem this past Tuesday and the series of presentations that followed exposed every attendee at Symantec Vision 2012 to just how dangerous today's internet world really has become. Yet the larger threat that every business faces is not putting in place a solution to address them. Rather it is the danger that dealing with these threats will cause organizations to take their eyes off of the ball and fail to focus on where their business needs to go next. (read more)

The allure of client virtualization is increasing in the eyes of enterprise organizations. Aside from its obvious benefits of eliminating the management headaches and upgrade cycles of corporate desktops and laptops, organizations can better meet the growing demands of employees who want to bring their own devices (BYOD) to access corporate networks. However client virtualization can result in enterprises simply swapping one set of problems for another unless organizations first assess what their requirements are so they may put a solution in place with the right framework for their environment. (read more)

When Symantec shipped its first backup appliances in late 2010, it could arguably be said the primary intention of these appliances was to simplify the deployment of Backup Exec and NetBackup at customer sites by shipping both hardware and software as a single SKU. While that still holds true, these appliances also opened the door for them to offer specific features and assume their own unique identities. The new NetBackup 5220 begins to deliver on that promise as it now offers specific software and features that make it much more than just a "server with NetBackup software pre-installed on it." (read more)

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) virtualize their servers at an increasing pace, many fail to consider the impact this change has on how they do backups - or that it impacts their backups at all. However since many IT administrators who are responsible for backups in these environments would freely admit to not being backup gurus, here are some tips on what features to look for in backup software in order to properly protect and recover your newly virtualized environment. (read more)

EMC's VFCache announcement caused a lot of the buzz in the storage industry a few months ago as it was seen by some to be done in direct response to Fusion-io's very disruptive ioMemory architecture. Today in the conclusion of my interview series with Fusion-io's CMO Rick White, he provides his take on EMC's recent VFcache announcement and how he sees this impacting both Fusion-io and EMC. (Editor's Note: This interview with Rick was conducted when EMC's VFCache was still known as "Project Lightning.") (read more)

As small and midsize businesses (SMBs) virtualize their servers at an increasing pace, many fail to consider the impact this change has on how they do backups - or that it impacts their backups at all. However since many IT administrators who are responsible for backups in these environments would freely admit to not being backup gurus, here is some insight into how server virtualization changes backup and what SMBs need to know about backup as they implement virtualization in their environment. (read more)

Today many enterprises and cloud storage providers ask, "What scale-out storage solution will enable us to economically and easily house our burgeoning Big Data stores?" However small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) put a slightly different spin on that same question by asking, "What scale-out storage system will enable us to affordably address our 'bigger data' problems?" SMEs are finding an answer to their question in the form of the Gridstore Scale-out Storage platform. (read more)

It's no secret that 'Big Data' is becoming a 'Big Problem' for organizations from a data and storage management perspective. However what organizations may fail to realize is that the best way to solve their Big Data problems is NOT by mindlessly throwing more resources at them. Rather it is to look at Big Data more strategically and then tackle the data management problems it creates in one fell swoop using software like CommVault® Simpana® and its OnePass technology. (read more)

DCIG expects to unveil its DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment (ECA) Buyer's Guide in Q2CY12. As prior Buyer's Guides have done, it puts at the fingertips of organizations a Buyer's Guide that provides them with a comprehensive list of ECA software that can assist them in this all-important buying decision while removing much of the mystery around how ECA are configured and which ones are suitable for which purposes. (read more)

As organizations virtualize more of their infrastructure, many face the question, "Use separate physical and virtual backup software products to protect these respective environments or consolidate on one backup platform?" Adding to the difficulty in making this decision is that virtualization-only backup software tends to release new features very quickly to keep up with user demands while having no roadmap to take on the protection of physical environments. (read more)

Last week developers of enterprise applications got some new toys to play with in the storage memory realm. The newly released ioMemory SDK will grant developers the ability to better utilize the potential of Fusion-io's line of enterprise flash memory storage. Fusion-io expects the SDK will simplify code bases while providing a sizable performance boost. We begin our discussion with Brent Compton, Senior Director of Product Management with Fusion-io. (read more)