Even though the “cloud” occupies much of the dialogue about transformative processes in IT, the place of archiving in that transformation is still poorly understood by many IT organizations and needs to attract more attention. Therefore, we should welcome any light that can be shed on the subject, and ZL Technologies’ unified archiving approach is particularly luminous. Let’s examine what the company is doing, but first, we should discuss the need for active archiving in general.
Network Computing
ZL Technologies: A Unified Approach To Active Archiving
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Categories: General.
Storage Capacity Still Drives Accessibility
Over its 20 year history, innovation in the field of enterprise storage has seemed to focus on two often conflicting goals: ever expanding capacity and the need to access all of that storage. Nearly every development seems to come down to one of these two areas. In this time of cloud storage and big data, it is illuminating to consider the challenges in light of capacity and accessibility.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Major New DNS Vulnerability Discovered
The Internet Systems Consortium has issued a warning that certain versions of BIND are vulnerable to a denial of service attack. BIND is the most widely used domain name system protocol implementation. The latest version of BIND, 9.7.3, is not affected, but versions 9.7.1 through 9.7.2-P3 are vulnerable. Attackers could exploit the vulnerability to create a denial of service attack because of the way that BIND handles incremental zone transfers (IXFR), which is a technique for transferring data on top of the transmission control protocol (TCP).
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Juniper Introduces New Architecture For Data Center Networking
Juniper Networks is introducing a totally new design for data center networking that it calls QFabric, which collapses the typical three layers of networking equipment into one for faster performance, lower latency, better scalability, reduced power consumption and lower cost. The company will begin selling the QFabric Node switch this quarter at a list price of $ 34,000, the first of three products that together deliver the new QFabric architecture.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Juniper Gets To 1
Juniper finally got to 1 in its 3-2-1 strategy launched last year. The trend, to flatten the network, has been coming for a while. What’s held back the flattening are little things, like being able to aggregate enough access ports over a high capacity and low latency interconnects, broadcast control, traffic management, and frankly a strong driver to re-architect the network. But that hasn’t stopped Brocade, Cisco, and Juniper from coming out with some innovative data center network offerings. Of the three, Juniper’s seems to require less of a commitment by IT, which I think will help the company open doors.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Can Cloud Snapshots Replace Backup?
I’m satisfied that snapshots and replication in conventional storage systems can serve the same function as more traditional backup schemes. While snapshots make satisfying the most common restore requests easy the limitations of most storage system’s snapshot mechanism leave most organizations using snapshots as a supplement to, not a replacement for, backup copies. Does the cloud change the snapshot as backup calculus? Some cloud storage vendors say it does.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Avaya Extends Virtualization Beyond The Data Center
Avaya is extending its Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA), which debuted last November, beyond the data center to the campus network, adding its virtualization capabilities to the company’s Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 8800 and 8600 products. By bringing network virtualization and IEEE Shortest Path Bridging (802.1aq) to the campus, current 8800 and 8600 customers can install, provision and manage real-time applications and services in minutes rather than days, says Avaya, whose ultimate vision is to virtualize the entire enterprise.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Flexera Introduces Software Suite To Smooth Transition To Windows 7
Applications usage management vendor Flexera Software is introducing a suite of software applications that it says can simplify the process of migrating businesses to Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system from Windows XP. AdminStudio Suite 10, available Tuesday, automates the transition project with a six-step process that includes inventorying apps, assessing compatibility, fixing compatibility issues and deploying the new OS. A Gartner report says migration automation tools are becoming increasingly important as enterprises face an April 2014 deadline after which Microsoft will end support of XP.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Acer Takes On Server/Storage Powerhouses
With 2009 revenues of $ 17.9 billion, Acer is best known as a major player in the global PC market, but, in what the company calls a long-term commitment, its U.S. subsidiary is entering the commodity server and storage markets with a full lineup of products to be sold exclusively by resellers and the distribution channel. Acer America is targeting small to midsize businesses and high-performance computing applications with rack, blade and multinode solutions based on Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors, along with a variety of storage solutions from Hitachi Data Systems.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Snapshots And Backups Part Deux
In What Is A Backup?, I compared conventional backups to local snapshots, concluding that restoring data faster using backups is easier when you know where it was last. With conventional backups, an administrator, after cursing under his breath and wishing he could just say no to the CFO, could search the catalog database for *smith*.xls in Finance and locate the file. Since local snapshots don’t include catalogs, it’s harder to restore the data that disappeared sometime last summer. But there are more issues around using local snapshots for backup.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.