AEC companies (architecture, engineering, construction) often deal with large design files that need to be shared across multiple offices or job sites. During collaboration among remote teams, files may need to be locked for exclusive write permission to prevent inadvertent overwriting. When remotely accessing large number of files, the old method of VPN is deemed inefficient due to WAN bandwidth and latency challenges.Cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox are also inadequate to handle the amount of changed files and file locking requirements. A new category of storage solution has emerged to address this type of application and it’s called Hybrid Cloud File Services. The name implies that it uses a file system that spans across cloud and on premises. This is different from the Dropbox-like cloud-only file system.To read this article in full, please click here
AEC companies (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) often deal with large design files that need to be shared across multiple offices or job sites. During collaboration among remote teams, files may need to be locked for exclusive write permission to prevent inadvertent overwriting. When remotely accessing large number of files, the old method of VPN is deemed inefficient due to WAN bandwidth and latency challenges. Cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox are also inadequate to handle the amount of changed files and file locking requirements. A new category of storage solution has emerged to address this type of application and it’s called hybrid cloud file services. The name implies that it uses a file system that spans across cloud and on premises. This is different from the Dropbox-like cloud-only file system.To read this article in full, please click here
An increasing number of businesses are moving their data to the cloud to take advantage of the cost, scalability and efficiency benefits associated with not having to procure or maintain significant amounts of hardware. And indeed, cloud data storage can certainly help organizations achieve superior ROI; however, oftentimes when choosing a cloud-only file system such as Box or Dropbox, these organizations encounter significant problems – some of which can actually outweigh the benefits. These problems include:
Due to inherent limitations in cloud protocols, accessing files from the cloud is rife with latency. This is particularly prevalent when accessing large files or simultaneously accessing a large number of files.
Active directory access permission control. The permission schemes for cloud-based file systems are often different than your on-premises environment, causing Active Directory permissions to become an issue for both user and administrator levels.
User interface. Losing the familiar file server interface, especially the mapped letter drive interface for a network share, forces users to learn and entirely new user interface. In addition to the increased stress, it can also reduce user efficiency in the short term.
Shadow IT. Since the files are no longer located within the company’s infrastructure, IT Managers lose Continue reading
Anyone that has kept up with this column knows I tend to focus on one storage architecture more than any other – the hybrid-cloud storage architecture. That’s because I truly believe in its ability to meet the challenges of today’s IT storage – ever-expanding data, multiple sites, a need for flexibility and scale, while simultaneously meeting specific performance demands. For this month’s column, I thought we would take a look at how we got to this point and see if this evolution informs where we might go in the near future.Early days – pre-NAS
The very earliest business storage systems were designed for a world long-gone. One in which a business would be expected to manage maybe thousands of files. Even the largest enterprise would have a storage system to support hundreds of concurrent users, no more. These legacy systems had regularly scheduled down time for maintenance, but it was not unusual to not have access for unscheduled reasons.To read this article in full, please click here
Anyone that has kept up with this column knows I tend to focus on one storage architecture more than any other – the hybrid-cloud storage architecture. That’s because I truly believe in its ability to meet the challenges of today’s IT storage – ever-expanding data, multiple sites, a need for flexibility and scale, while simultaneously meeting specific performance demands. For this month’s column, I thought we would take a look at how we got to this point and see if this evolution informs where we might go in the near future.Early days – pre-NAS
The very earliest business storage systems were designed for a world long-gone. One in which a business would be expected to manage maybe thousands of files. Even the largest enterprise would have a storage system to support hundreds of concurrent users, no more. These legacy systems had regularly scheduled down time for maintenance, but it was not unusual to not have access for unscheduled reasons.To read this article in full, please click here
The past few months have been incredibly instructive on the critical importance of keeping one’s data safe, be it customer data or your own intellectual property. Data protection itself covers a broad span:
Physical data protection
Protection from device failure
Protection from data loss and breach
Not only is data security important to the success and reputation of your company, it can be IT that goes “under the bus” when a security event occurs. This means that your career is literally on the line. As a result, your storage architecture better be up to the task of maintaining the integrity of your data store.To read this article in full, please click here
In our last two columns, we’ve focused our discussion on industry trends that are impacting storage architectures, as well as a few “broad stroke” architectures that may help businesses address the issues those trends created. For this month’s column (as well as more than a few future ones), I’d like to instead focus on solution strategies for improving and modernizing the storage architectures for today’s businesses.Market drivers for SMB storage
Let’s start with looking at small and midsize businesses (SMBs). By our definition we’re talking about firms with less than 1,000 employees. While that’s hardly FORTUNE 500 territory, firms with hundreds of employees still have a deep need for enterprise-class file storage capabilities. Think design firms, software developers, architectural firms, creative businesses, etc. – all of these SMBs rely on their data and file storage as the lifeblood of their business.To read this article in full, please click here
In “What the storage industry’s inevitable transition to the cloud means for your business,” I cited the explosive growth of data as one of the primary reasons for a shift in storage architectures from local hardware to the cloud.Let’s take a closer look at this phenomenon and how it impacts your approach to storage, as well as what architecture is the right one for your current and future needs.And what a phenomenon it is! IDC and EMC project that data will grow to 40 zettabytes by 2020, resulting in a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010. And forget about the importance of data simply for your business. In a recent white paper for storage firm Seagate, research firm IDC estimates that by 2025, nearly 20 percent of the data in existence will be critical to our everyday lives, with almost 10 percent of that being “hypercritical.”To read this article in full, please click here
Just a few weeks ago, Microsoft made a relatively unheralded acquisition of a company named Avere Systems. Avere’s raison d’etre is enterprise storage. In their own words, “Avere Systems was created by file systems experts determined to reinvent storage by changing the way enterprises thought about and bought storage resources.” Ostensibly, Microsoft purchased this firm to add cloud-based storage capabilities to its ever-expanding portfolio.To read this article in full, please click here
Paul Tien