I cannot think of a technology event that I have ever attended where record crowds were the best indicator that the economy is still struggling. But if there was ever an exception to that rule, VMworld 2010 is probably it. (read more)

Talk all you want about the different features and functions found in backup software. If an IT administrator in a small and midsize enterprise (SME) thinks about backup at all it is in the context of "How easy is it to get it to work?" and "How much does it cost?" However, calculating any backup software's ease of configuration and price is tricky at best. (read more)

Over the past few years there has been a lot of hype that tape storage is being left dead. But while disk is capturing the fancy of enterprise organizations because of disk's success in solving their primary backup and recovery problems, longer-term issues with data management are just now starting to surface. It is for this reason that enterprise data centers are finding new tape library solutions such as the Overland Storage NEO 8000e well suited for their emerging archiving needs. (read more)

The bidding war for 3PAR between Dell and HP continued yesterday with 3PAR first announcing that it had reached an agreement to be purchased by Dell for $24.30 a share and then, before the end of the day, HP countered with a $27 per share price offering. This back and forth has captured the attention of many of those who follow storage and even those who do not. But what is puzzling to many is, "What is so interesting about 3PAR that it is prompting Dell and HP to fight over it?" (read more)

The introduction of Database Availability Groups (DAGs) into Microsoft Exchange 2010 is being hailed by many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) as a key technology to making high availability (HA) accessible and affordable since it enables the use of hard disk drives (HDDs) that are internal to a physical Exchange server. However the fact that SMBs can now use internal HDDs as part of Exchange HA solution does not necessarily mean they should. (read more)

Over the years storage virtualization solutions have frequently been adapted (CDP, NAS, VTL, etc.) to function in specific ways but until now it really has not been viewed as the perfect fit for any specific application. But now thanks to the rapidly growing adoption of desktop virtualization technologies such as VMware View in organizations, storage virtualization may have finally found its perfect match. (read more)

If past VMworld conferences are any indication, more than 10,000 individuals will head to San Francisco the last week of this month looking for the latest advancements and news regarding VMware at VMworld 2010. But with so many organizations confronted with new backup challenges that are part and parcel of any VMware implementation, as well as looking to take advantage of the new recovery options that it creates, do not be surprised if data protection steals some of the spotlight at this year's event. (read more)

A few months ago DCIG released its first ever Buyer's Guide - the Midrange Array Buyer's Guide - to gauge the interest of such a guide among users and vendors alike. Needless to say, DCIG has been overwhelmed with the positive response and has received numerous requests to produce more like that one. But due to the amount of research and expertise required to produce these guides in an authoritative fashion in other segments of the storage market, DCIG elected to reach out to other analysts in the industry who have the needed experience to do this task. (read more)

A little over two years ago companies were advised to "start small" with virtualization but "think big" and, based upon what we are seeing today, it's clear that organizations followed that advice considering the wide scale adoption of virtualization that has occurred. But as they enter the "Think big" phase many are encountering a roadblock: business critical applications that they are hesitant to virtualize because of availability concerns on virtualized platforms. Enter this week's newly announced ApplicationHA from Symantec that looks to extend server virtualization all the way to even these business critical apps. (read more)

It is no secret that small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) are still keeping their belts tight in the face of the economic slowdown that has occurred. This is forcing them to change how they do business which means bringing in the right technologies to make sure their employees can still get their work done. As they do, more are bound to find the Overland Storage SnapServer N2000 the right technology to help them meet this objective. (read more)

Usually everyone waits until the end of the year to talk about trends in the storage industry but being fully in the throes of the dog days of summer here in Omaha, I thought I would use this week's weekly recap blog entry to reflect on some of the trends that are taking place in 2010. In doing so, I looked back to a blog entry that I wrote in January 2010 where I forecast six subtle storage trends for 2010 to see how right (or wrong) I was on my predictions. Turns out I was more right than I anticipated but I have encountered some trends that I did not expect. (read more)

Symantec's decision to decouple DMP from its parent Storage Foundation puts concerns about other dependencies that all multi-pathing software solutions have to rest. Currently, a standalone version of DMP is available for Solaris, AIX and Red Hat and SuSe Linux. Beginning in Q4 2010, Symantec will also make DMP available as a standalone product for HP-UX and Windows. This now frees customers to deploy DMP without a requirement to first deploy Storage Foundation or VxFS. (read more)

Not that many years ago the debate around how to best deduplicate data centered on inline versus post processing deduplication as data was archived or backed up. While that debate still simmers, a new one is brewing that was spurred in part by the recent announcement that Dell plans to acquire Ocarina Networks. (read more)

For this Friday's weekly recap blog entry I asked my colleague Robert "Bob" Eastman over at SMB Research, LLC, to write it for me. Bob along with Miles Prescott, the other half of the SMB Research team, are collaborating with DCIG to help produce the forthcoming Virtual Server Backup Software Buyer's Guide that we have planned for publication in October 2010. (read more)

Backup problems are supposed to be gone, right? All you have to do is throw in some disk and a good dose of deduplication and organizational backup problems will magically disappear. So while that may be true up to a point, today's newly released Information Management Health Check survey conducted by Applied Research and sponsored by Symantec reveals that organizations are failing to take into account the implications of what infinite backup retention periods mean for them long term. (read more)