Print Portfolio

I'm a freelance writer, editor, and content marketer. I produce technology, business, and sports features stories, news articles, podcasts, video interviews, and on-air radio shows. Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Protecting petabytes: Best practices for big data backup

One of the issues created by holding voluminous data sets (also called "big data") in your storage environment is how to protect that data.

Petabyte-size data stores can play havoc with backup windows, and traditional backup is not designed to handle millions of small files. The good news is that not all big data information needs to be backed up in the traditional way.

Nick Kirsch, director of product management for EMC’s Isilon scale-out NAS platform, said it helps to be more intelligent about the data you have when doing big data backups. He advises that, before you consider how to protect your data, you should take a good look at what data needs to be protected. Machine-generated data – report data from a database, for instance – can be reproduced easier than it can be backed up and recovered.

Read more

Monday, June 18, 2012

Varonis seeks to provide cloud file sharing, without the cloud

Varonis Systems Inc. is preparing an application called DatAnywhere that performs on-premises file sharing and syncing that mimics cloud file sharing services.

Varonis said it will begin beta testing DatAnywhere Aug. 1.

According to David Gibson, Varonis’ vice president of strategy, DatAnywhere allows existing traditional file servers and network attached storage (NAS) devices to sync files to users’ remote devices while adhering to existing organizational security restrictions.

Read more