Virtual desktop software aims to help storage VDI performance

It’s no secret that implementing a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can play havoc with storage performance and cost.

Storage system vendors have developed features and entire arrays designed to help solve these problems, but third-party virtual desktop software tools can also help solve problems for organizations planning and implementing a VDI.

Software products designed to boost storage performance or reduce capacity requirements for VDI projects are available in the areas of storage optimization, predeployment analytics, virtual file systems and application management software.

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National Geographic chooses tape archiving to store PBs of content

While many organizations want to eliminate tape, National Geographic Global Media (NG Global) embraces tape archiving to store between 5 and 10 TB of media content every day.

Kyle Knack, NG Global’s director of infrastructure systems, said his company has petabytes of data in his long-term tape archive and requires a highly available tape library to make sure the data is protected, searchable and retrievable.

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Control VDI costs for storage by careful configuration planning

Whether or not a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) requires a SAN is open to debate, but experts and administrators agree that if you do opt for a SAN for VDI storage, you’ll need to do a good deal of research and planning to find the right balance between performance and VDI costs.

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VDI implementation without boot storms for Ohio DoDD

The Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DoDD) faced a big decision about its PC infrastructure 18 months ago. It either had to replace 80% of the agency’s desktops because they were between 4 and 7 years old, or move to VDI. Brian Brothers, DoDD’s network administrator manager, found a VDI implementation would be cheaper, and he went with VMware View because it is a VMware shop.

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Index Engines revs its discovery appliance

Index Engines is giving its e-discovery platform a facelift with a new look and new features.

Index Engines renamed its products, bringing them all under the new Octane brand. The latest version is Octane 4, and has a re-designed GUI and compliance archive to make it easier to search and collect data.

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Tucci at Oracle OpenWorld: Cloud transition will prove disruptive

Private cloud storage, cloud computing and virtualization will be the keys to dealing with the massive data deluge hitting the IT world, EMC Corp. CEO Joseph Tucci said Monday in his Oracle OpenWorld keynote address in San Francisco.

The theme of EMC World 2011 in May was “cloud meets Big Data,” and Tucci and EMC president Pat Gelsinger brought those topics to Oracle customers this week. Tucci and Gelsinger didn’t make any stunning announcements during their keynote presentations, but they did reiterate EMC’s commitment to the cloud, VMware’s virtualization platform and solid-state storage.

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Integrated IT stack: Packaging the pieces of the virtualization puzzle

Some of the biggest names in the storage industry now offer integrated IT stacks for organizations looking to quickly deploy high-performance virtualized environments. EMC Corp., NetApp Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. sell predesigned architectures that include the virtual server platform, networking and computing gear, and storage infrastructure in one package.

While it’s early for the integrated storage stacks, vendors and their distribution partners expect the trend toward data center consolidation around virtualization and cloud storage to spark interest in integrated stacks.

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Hyper-V storage management options expanding

VMware is the most popular choice for virtualizing servers by a wide margin, but it isn’t the only option. Microsoft’s Hyper-V hypervisor is gaining users because it costs less and requires little extra training for Windows users. As a result, more Hyper-V storage management tools are becoming available.

In addition to Microsoft’s own System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), vendors have released third-party products to manage performance issues in Hyper-V virtual environments. Here’s a rundown of some of Microsoft’s inherent Hyper-V storage management resources as well as some third-party tools.

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Keep compliance data safe when using cloud archiving

The cloud is an obvious candidate for storing compliance-related data. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers pitch their services as an economical way to rid your on-site storage of reams of rarely accessed information that requires strict security and access controls. But experts warn about stashing your compliance data using cloud archiving without carefully examining available third-party services.

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Iomega launches SMB multiprotocol storage with SSD support, dedupe

EMC’s Iomega Corp. today launched the StorCenter px12-350r, a 12-bay rackmount small- to medium-sized business (SMB) multiprotocol storage array with solid-state drive (SSD) support and built-in data deduplication for backup. The 2U system comes a day after rival Drobo officially launched a similar 12-bay rackmount system with SSD support for SMBs.

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Drobo launches SMB SSD system with auto-tiering storage

Small- to medium-sized business (SMB) storage specialist Drobo Inc. has launched its first rackmount system, a 12-bay iSCSI model that supports solid-state drives (SSDs) and built-in automated tiering. The B1200i 3U system is the largest of Drobo’s series of products for SMBs, branch offices and prosumers.

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Unified storage systems showdown: NetApp FAS vs. EMC VNX

When EMC Corp. rolled out its VNX and VNXe storage platform this year, it shone a bright light on unified storage systems and intensified its competition with NetApp.

NetApp and EMC aren’t the only vendors to offer unified storage -- most major vendors have systems that support multiple protocols -- but NetApp’s FAS and EMC’s VNX are the most talked about. They're also the most scrutinized and serve as the models that most people refer to when they discuss what is and isn’t true about unified storage platforms.

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FlexPod vs. Vblock: How the integrated IT stacks stack up

Integrated stacks are starting to gain traction in storage. They are mainly aimed at organizations that want preconfigured and pretested systems for highly virtualized environments. These stacks combine storage, hypervisors, networking and management as an alternative to building best-of-breed systems.

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The cloud and virtualization haven't made IT disaster recovery plans obsolete

CHICAGO -- Server virtualization and the cloud haven't eliminated the need for good IT disaster recovery plans and those plans should include tape, consultant Jon Toigo said as part of the DR tips offered during his Storage Decisions keynote.

Toigo, CEO and managing partner of Toigo Partners International, said new technologies and budget cuts shouldn't lull IT administrators into thinking they don’t need to make DR a top priority.

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Iomega’s PX Series SMB NAS devices support SSDs, 3 TB drives

EMC Corp.’s Iomega today launched its StorCenter PX Series of network-attached storage (NAS) devices for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with solid-state drive (SSD) support, user-swappable 3 TB drives and dual-core processors.

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4 Android apps worth buying

I'm cheap. I hate to pay for software, especially mobile software. It may not work on my device (Droid 2). It may not perform as advertised. It may not do what I thought it would do, and you can't return it.

So I rarely buy apps for my cell phone.

But there have been a few I've actually paid for and found worth the money.

Tower Raiders Gold ($3.99): Played both v1.0 and v2.0 free versions before buying the the first version. It's a tower defense game. You must strategically place tower weaponry to stop the Raiders from stealing your crystals. It can be a bit repetitious, but I enjoy figuring out not only which weapons to use, but how to place them to route the Raiders through the most defensible path.

Flex T9 Keyboard ($4.99): The FlexT9 keyboard is the best Android keyboard I've found, with the right balance between key size for my fat thumbs and total keyboard size. It also uses Dragon Naturally Speaking technology for its speech recognition software.

Beautiful Widgets ($2.82): Includes a number of widgets for putting clocks and weather info on your screen. I got it specifically for the Beautiful Weather Live Wallpaper, which shows my city's actual weather as my wallpaper. Very geeky.

X Construction ($1.42): My favorite physics game. Use the limited resources to build a bridge across various landscapes so the train can safely cross. It's harder than it looks.

Survey says cloud DR is viable, but security concerns linger

Nearly half IT administrators said they consider cloud disaster recovery (DR) services a viable option for disaster recovery, although security remains the chief concern, according to a survey of 1,473 small- to medium-sized enterprise (SME) and enterprise IT professionals in the United States.

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InMage introduces cloud recovery as a service

InMage Systems Inc. this week introduced its ScoutCloud recovery-as-a-service platform for managed service providers (MSPs). The platform includes a recovery engine that handles physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) failover and failback, automated virtual machine (VM) provisioning, storage, and multi-tenant portal for MSPs looking to offer managed or automated cloud disaster recovery services.

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Syncplicity opens cloud file management software to channel partners

Cloud file management software vendor Syncplicity Inc. launched its first channel program, which offers pricing discounts and administrative controls for its cloud-based file management, backup and collaboration services.

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High-availability options for virtual environments: A HA solutions tutorial

There's increased interest in high-availability (HA) technologies due to the havoc and lost productivity server outages can cause in both physical and virtual server environments. Virtual server technology can alleviate outage pain by making it easier to restart stalled virtual servers and move resource-strained virtual machines (VMs) to different physical hosts before they crash.

In this tutorial, learn about how to choose the right HA solution for your virtual environment. Learn about the best solutions for VMware, Hyper-V and Citrix environments, and the pros and cons of each.

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Only half of SMBs have disaster recovery plans, according to survey

Half of all small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have no disaster recovery plans in place, according to results of Symantec's 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness survey. The percentage of SMBs surveyed without DR plans was higher than last year, when 47% said they had no plans.

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