ST1711

STOR 

MAGAZINE 

STORAGE 

The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

Nov/Dec 2017 

Vol 17, Issue 6 

BEYOND DISASTERS: 

Doing more with DR 

EMAIL ARCHIVING: 

Time for a change? 

STORAGE BUYING: 

CFOs have their say 

SDS GAINS TRACTION: 

Hyperconverged driving growth 

PUBLIC CLOUD: 

Challenging conventional wisdom 

COMMENT - NEWS - NEWS ANALYSIS - CASE STUDIES - OPINION - PRODUCT REVIEWS

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The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

BEYOND DISASTERS: 

Nov/Dec 2017 

Vol 17, Issue 6 

CONTENTS 

STOR 

MAGAZINE 

STORAGE 

CONTENTS 

Doing more with DR 

EMAIL ARCHIVING: 

Time for a change? 

STORAGE BUYING: 

CFOs have their say 

SDS GAINS TRACTION: 

Hyperconverged driving growth 

PUBLIC CLOUD: 

Cha lenging conventional wisdom 

COMMENT - NEWS - NEWS ANALYSIS - CASE STUDIES - OPINION - PRODUCT REVIEWS 

Comment.....................................4 

CFOS GET THE STORAGE MESSAGE 

06 

NEWS ANALYSIS: 

HARD DISK DRIVES……..............…...6 

Microwave-Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) technologies 

hold the promise of 40TB+ hard drives by 2025, according to 

WD. Storage magazine takes a closer look 

TECHNOLOGY: 

OBJECT STORAGE..........................10 

Cloudian CMO Jon Toor considers the potential impact of 

object storage approaches on data management and 

accessibility in the 'new age' of the EU GDPR 

08 

EVENT: SYNOLOGY 2018…......…18 

Synology's recent user event in London presented an impressive 

array of innovations, and Storage magazine editor David Tyler 

was there to report back 

READY TO GROW…..................……20 

Finance managers are more likely to approve storage solutions 

that are future-proofed to cope with rapid growth, according to 

new research 

14 

GOING HYPER….......................……..21 

Stephen Chew of Curvature explains how to embrace 

Hyperconverged Infrastructure - on a budget 

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS…….....…..22 

Conventional wisdom around public cloud is wrong, suggests 

Gary Watson, Founder and VP of Technical Engagement at 

Nexsan 

16 

FIRST STEPS TOWARDS SDS…..25 

Brett Denly, Regional Director at DataCore, explains some of 

the key benefits an enterprise can expect to receive from 

software-defined storage 

STRATEGY: EMAIL ARCHIVES….28 

Almost 90% of organisations have encountered problems with 

their email archiving solution - but they needn't, argues Glenn 

Brown of Mimecast 

22 

OPINION: 

3RD PARTY SUPPORT...................29 

There are some very good reasons to consider an alternative to 

OEM support, suggests Simon Bitton, Marketing Manager, Park 

Place Technologies 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk @STMagAndAwards Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

3

COMMENT 

EDITOR: David Tyler 

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CFOS GET THE STORAGE MESSAGE 

BY DAVID TYLER 

EDITOR 

Welcome to our last print edition for 2017, and an issue that covers the whole 

storage gamut from hard drive technologies through Disaster Recovery-as-a- 

Service to email archiving strategies - with a number of entertaining 

diversions along the way! 

One piece that will be of interest to every reader is the analysis on page 20 of recent 

research coming out of Fujitsu, that takes the unusual perspective of asking finance 

executives for their views on the storage purchasing process. It is eye-opening - and 

frankly gratifying - to see that CFOs appear to have a clear grasp not only of the 

importance of IT to business success, but also of some of the potential solutions to the 

ever-growing issue of data growth. 

Three in five CFOs surveyed see technology as 'an important enabler of operational 

efficiency during digital transformation' (59%), while more than a quarter view 

technology as 'a key source of competitive advantage' (28%). 

Interestingly (if perhaps not surprisingly for executives very aware of the importance of 

risk assessment), issues of data availability, data protection and data security are front 

of mind for these finance decision makers, who also expressed anxiety about the 

implications of an unexpected growth in data volumes. Top issues include the need to 

fund additional storage capacity and concerns about spiralling data management 

costs due to rapidly increasing volumes. 

Olivier Delachapelle of Fujitsu comments on the results: "The findings from our survey 

of CFOs confirm that security and data protection are key objectives for any storage 

modernisation initiative. With 9 in 10 senior finance professionals putting general 

future-proofing high on the agenda, the days are clearly numbered for the traditional 

scale up approach to storage. In the digital business landscape of today, more than 

ever… businesses need storage solutions that aren't going to hold them back, no 

matter how fast growing or unpredictable their demands for data storage and backup." 

So if you're looking to get board level budget approval for a storage-related 

investment, you need to keep a few things in mind: will the spend be on a solution that 

is future-proofed against continued - and often unpredictable - growth in data 

volumes, and can it be enhanced in terms of capacity without replacing entire systems? 

If the answer is no, your CFO may well laugh you out of the meeting. Don't say you 

haven't been warned. 

4 

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STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

Nov/Dec 2017 

@STMagAndAwards 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk

NEWS ANALYSIS: ANALYSIS: HDD 

HDD 

HARD DRIVES AND MICROWAVES ARE A 

GOOD COMBINATION AFTER ALL 

MICROWAVE-ASSISTED MAGNETIC RECORDING (MAMR) TECHNOLOGIES HOLD THE PROMISE OF 

40TB+ HARD DRIVES BY 2025, ACCORDING TO WD. STORAGE MAGAZINE TAKES A CLOSER LOOK 

At its "Innovating to Fuel the Next 

Decade of Big Data" event in October, 

Western Digital announced a 

breakthrough innovation for delivering ultrahigh 

capacity hard disk drives to meet the 

future demands of Big Data with proven data 

centre-level reliability. 

The event, held at the company's 

headquarters in Silicon Valley, included a 

demonstration of the world's first microwaveassisted 

magnetic recording (MAMR) HDD and 

presentations from company executives and 

the inventor of MAMR technology, Professor 

Jimmy Zhu from Carnegie Mellon University. 

The company also showcased advancements 

in micro actuation and Damascene recording 

head technology. Western Digital expects to 

begin shipping ultra-high capacity MAMR 

HDDs in 2019 for use in data centres that 

support Big Data applications across a full 

range of industries. 

"As the volume, velocity, variety, value and 

longevity of both Big Data and Fast Data grow, 

a new generation of storage technologies are 

needed to not only support ever-expanding 

capacities, but ultimately help our customers 

analyse and garner insights into our 

increasingly connected universe of data," said 

Mike Cordano, president and chief operating 

officer at Western Digital. "Our groundbreaking 

advancement in MAMR technology 

will enable Western Digital to address the 

future of high capacity storage by redefining 

the density potential of HDDs and introduce a 

new class of highly reliable, 'ultra-high 

capacity' drives. We have a proven track 

record for identifying, investing in and 

delivering advanced technologies that create 

new product categories and enable the world 

to realise the possibilities of data. Five years 

ago we introduced our HelioSeal, helium-filled 

drive technology. Since then, we have shipped 

more than 20 million helium drives. That type 

of leadership and innovation continues today 

and we aim to leverage it well into the future." 

MAMR OR HAMR? 

MAMR is one of two energy-assisted 

technologies that Western Digital has been 

developing for years. The company recently 

innovated a breakthrough in material and 

process that provides the required reliable and 

predictable performance, as well as the 

manufacturability to accelerate areal density 

and cost improvements to an estimated 

06 STORAGE Nov/Dec 2017 


www.storagemagazine.co.uk 

MAGAZINE

NEWS ANALYSIS: NEWS ANALYSIS: HDD 

average of 15 percent per year. 

Developments in the other energy-assisted 

technology, specifically, heat-assisted 

magnetic recording (HAMR), have presented 

new material science and reliability 

challenges that are not a factor in MAMR. 

Only MAMR demonstrates the reliability and 

cost profile that meets the demands of data 

centre operators, says WD: "In addition to 

significant costs, HAMR has engineering 

complexities and manufacturing challenges 

that need to be resolved before it can satisfy 

the reliability demands of today's data centre." 

Western Digital's MAMR technology is 

the latest innovation to significantly 

improve areal densities. It builds upon a 

number of other leading innovations from 

the company. In addition to HelioSeal 

helium-filled drive technology, MAMR also 

builds upon the company's micro 

actuation and recording head 

manufacturing technologies. Western 

Digital's advanced micro actuation 

technology for data centre applications 

enables hard drives to accurately and 

reliably position magnetic heads for 

writing and reading at ultra-high densities. 

"Our ground-breaking 

advancement in MAMR 

technology will enable 

Western Digital to 

address the future of high 

capacity storage by 

redefining the density 

potential of HDDs and 

introduce a new class of 

highly reliable, 'ultra-high 

capacity' drives." 

Figure 1: Comparing MAMR vs HAMR 

It is WD's assessment then, that HAMR 

drives will not be commercially viable in 

the near term. The company will continue 

to 'make appropriate investments in the 

technology, consistent with its product 

investment strategy'. At the same time, the 

company has chosen to introduce a more 

cost-effective, more reliable solution based 

on microwave-assisted magnetic recording 

(MAMR) technology. 

At the heart of the company's innovation 

breakthrough is the "spin torque oscillator" 

used to generate a microwave field that 

increases the ability to record data at ultrahigh 

density without sacrificing reliability. 

Western Digital's innovative MAMR 

technology is expected to offer over 4 

terabits-per-square-inch over time. With 

sustained improvements in recording 

density, MAMR promises to enable hard 

drives with 40TB of capacity and beyond by 

2025, and continued expansion beyond 

that timeframe. 

TCO BREAKTHROUGH 

The company's head manufacturing 

operations are the only internal supplier to 

utilise 'Damascene' processing to 

manufacture heads with the precise 

tolerances and complex structures required 

for reliable and cost-effective recording at 

ultra-high densities. The Damascene process 

also provides the capability to embed the spin 

torque oscillator that enables the 

manufacturing of MAMR heads. The 

combination of these technologies delivers 

superior total cost of ownership (TCO) across 

all sizes of cloud and enterprise data centres. 

"Western Digital's demonstration of MAMR 

technology is a significant breakthrough for the 

hard disk drive industry," comments John 

Rydning, research vice president, Hard Disk 

Drives, IDC. "Commercialisation of MAMR 

technology will pave the way to higher 

recording densities, and lower cost per 

terabyte hard disk drives for enterprise data 

centres, video surveillance systems, and 

consumer NAS products." 

More info: innovation.wdc.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

07

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA 

BROUGHT TO BOOK 

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA HAS PRESERVED WORLD-RENOWNED 

LIBRARY COLLECTIONS FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS, THROUGH THE 

IMPLEMENTATION OF A DISASTER RECOVERY SOLUTION THAT 

INTELLIGENTLY COMBINES TAPE AND DISK TECHNOLOGIES 

The University of Georgia (UGA) is a wellknown 

educational institute, located in 

Athens, Georgia. Founded in 1785 as 

the United States' first state-chartered 

university, UGA has more than 36,000 

students and over 305,000 living alumni 

worldwide. UGA is organised into 17 schools 

and colleges, offering over 140 degree 

programs in a wide array of disciplines, and 

has three primary campuses. One of 

America's "Public Ivies" and a top 10 best 

value in public higher education, the 

University of Georgia tackles some of the 

world's grand challenges - from combating 

infectious disease and securing the world's 

food supply to advancing economic growth 

and analysing the environment. 

OUTSTANDING LIBRARIES 

The University of Georgia is ranked among 

the best research libraries in the country, 

housing over 5.2 million volumes and one of 

the nation's largest map collections. It is home 

to several prestigious libraries, including the 

Richard B. Russell Special Collections 

Libraries, which is a 115,000-square-foot 

facility containing the Hargrett Rare Book and 

Manuscript Library, the Russell Library for 

Political Research and Studies, the Walter J. 

Brown Media Archives and the Peabody 

Awards Collection. 

These libraries are composed of nearly 80 

years' worth of digital content in varying 

formats - including radio, audio, video, oral 

histories, books and individual documents. 

The University continues to accumulate 

additional media and is required to keep all 

files forever. The University of Georgia was in 

need of a certified archive solution to 

preserve their library content indefinitely. They 

also sought a new backup solution to replace 

^ 




MAGAZINE

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA 

their dated LTO-3 Quantum SuperLoader, 

and perform regular backups of 

administrative data. 

A FOREVER SOLUTION 

The University of Georgia worked with 

Spectra Logic to implement a disaster 

recovery archive strategy, to assure their 

library content would be protected and 

preserved forever. They installed two Spectra 

T50e Tape Libraries, a Spectra BlackPearl 

Converged Storage System, and a Spectra 

ArcticBlue Disk Solution. 

Using Spectra's S3 client developer tools, the 

University was able to create their own custom 

BlackPearl Application Program Interface 

(API), allowing them to issue unique 

commands to their BlackPearl converged 

storage system. Additionally, BlackPearl's 

sophisticated Advanced Bucket Management 

(ABM) policy enables the University to write 

content to three different storage targets 

simultaneously, genetically diversifying its data. 

BlackPearl writes one disaster recovery copy 

of data to its offsite T50e tape library and 

one copy of data to its ArcticBlue disk 

solution. ArcticBlue provided a middle 

ground between their tier one storage and 

archive for their digital assets. It allows for 

the fast recall of digital assets when needed, 

at an attractive price point due to its spindown 

drive technology. 

"Utilising a mix of storage mediums across different 

locations allows the University to not only protect its 

data from disaster, but also make smart tradeoffs 

between speed of access and overall cost of 

storage. They are able to store data that needs to 

be accessed more quickly and frequently to 

ArcticBlue, and less often to tape." 

Utilising a mix of storage mediums across 

different locations allows the University to not 

only protect its data from disaster, but also 

make smart tradeoffs between speed of access 

and overall cost of storage. They are able to 

store data that needs to be accessed more 

quickly and frequently to ArcticBlue, and less 

often to tape. 

WHY SPECTRA? 

Disaster recovery and genetic diversity 

Long-term archive 

Industry-leading density and scalability 

Total cost of ownership (TCO) 

Fully-integrated workflow 

Easy and efficient backups 

The University also utilises their new Spectra 

solution to backup administrative data. 

Previously, they had been using a Quantum 

SuperLoader for administrative backups, but 

sought a system that was more efficient. Now, 

they perform incremental backups daily and 

full backups of over 40TB weekly, to their 

onsite Spectra T50e tape library. 

"Spectra Logic provided University of 

Georgia with a fully-integrated solution that 

allows them to manage their data both 

efficiently and cost-effectively," concludes 

Nathan Thompson, CEO Spectra Logic 

Corporation. "The University's new digital 

archive gives them peace of mind, knowing 

that their data is safe and secure. Spectra is 

confident in its ability to preserve the 

University's library content for future 

generations of students, faculty and staff." 

More info: www.spectralogic.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

09

TECHNOLOGY: OBJECT STORAGE 

GDPR IS COMING - CAN 

OBJECT STORAGE PLAY 

A ROLE? 

CLOUDIAN CMO JON TOOR CONSIDERS THE POTENTIAL IMPACT 

OF OBJECT STORAGE APPROACHES ON DATA MANAGEMENT AND 

ACCESSIBILITY IN THE 'NEW AGE' OF THE EU GDPR 

There is a view abroad that the EU's 

General Data Protection Regulation 

(GDPR), which comes into effect on 

25th May 2018, applies only to Europe. 

This misunderstanding may arise because 

the GDPR has been designed to 

harmonise data privacy laws across 

Europe, bolster privacy protection for EU 

citizens and give them more control over 

how their data is used. 

But, GDPR applies to all companies and 

organisations that use or store the 

personal information of EU citizens, 

wherever they store that data, whether in 

the EU or outside it. 

All organisations need to be aware that 

the regulation stipulates data belongs to 

the individual, not the company holding 

the data. Individuals can access their 

personal data and request changes. They 

even have the right to ask to be forgotten. 

If the company involved can't show a 

legitimate reason to retain that person's 

data, the individual can request it is 

deleted without "undue delay". If the 

organisation doesn't have a clear view of 

that data and where it is stored, that could 

be a significant problem. 

People also have the right to 

compensation if their rights are violated. 

Organisations can only hold information 

for as long as it's required. In many cases, 

to ensure personal data is not 

compromised, they will need to appoint a 

Data Protection Officer (DPO). 

A HEFTY PRICE TO PAY 

Failure to meet the regulations could be 

extremely costly. Any breach of GDPR has 

to be reported to the relevant authority 

within 72 hours of the organisation 

becoming aware of the issue. If it fails to 

do so, the organisation could be subject 

to a penalty fine of as much as 10 million 

euros, or two percent of global turnover. If 

a company is negligent or intentionally 

violates GDPR, it can be hit with a fine of 

up to 20 million euros or four percent of 

turnover. 

It's a sobering thought that many 

organisations could hold data in direct 

contravention of GDPR regulations, so it is 

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MAGAZINE


"It's a sobering thought that many organisations could hold data in direct 

contravention of GDPR regulations, so it is important that they take steps to 

remove any data sets that don't meet the requirements. The challenge for 

organisations is in interpreting what the new regulations mean to them and 

understanding what they need to do to ensure compliance. To achieve this, 

they need to be aware of the data they are storing and ensure they have a 

legitimate reason for holding it." 

important that they take steps to remove 

any data sets that don't meet the 

requirements. The challenge for 

organisations is in interpreting what the 

new regulations mean to them and 

understanding what they need to do to 

ensure compliance. To achieve this, they 

need to be aware of the data they are 

storing and ensure they have a legitimate 

reason for holding it. 

This means that data needs to be: 

Processed lawfully, fairly and 

transparently; 

Collected for specified, explicit and 

legitimate purposes; 

Relevant and limited to what is 

necessary; 

Accurate and up to date; 

Retained for only as long as necessary; 

Processed in an appropriate manner 

to maintain security. 

THE CASE FOR OBJECT STORAGE 

While matching all of those requirements 

could appear daunting, one way in which 

an organisation can start moving towards 

GDPR compliance is by using object 

storage. Object storage has already 

proven itself as a key storage method in 

cloud computing and it has a number of 

inherent capabilities that can provide real 

advantages in achieving GDPR 

compliance. 

Customisable metadata tags: To ensure 

compliance, organisations must be able to 

find information. Traditional file systems 

only allow them to view limited metadata 

information on a file, such as the owner 

and the date created. 

In the flat file structure of object storage, 

each object has a unique identifier, a tag 

that can be later used to find information 

via a Google-like search. With these tags 

- plus a user-defined labelling taxonomy - 

data requests will be quick and painless. 

Scalability: When data is consolidated, it 

is much more easily searched and 

checked for duplicate records. The 

limitless capacity of object storage makes 

it feasible to consolidate data to a single, 

searchable pool. Organisations can 

expand according to their needs 

without disruption. 

Data protection features: Most object 

storage solutions have configurable data 

protection that lets organisations select the 

durability they need. For example 

customers may choose from on-site 

protection, or replicate across sites for 

disaster recovery purposes, all on a single 

management screen with no additional 

software to buy. 

With data protection features such as 

erasure coding, replication and multitenancy 

(to segregate users and groups), 

organisations are able to ensure data can 

still be retrieved no matter what situations 

arise. 

Geo-location: Where data is physically 

located matters. Many governments 

require that certain data types either 

remain on premises or within geographic 

boundaries. Object storage offers a 

unique solution: a single storage system 

can span multiple locations, but data can 

be held at a specific location within that 

system. 



Nov/Dec 2017 

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STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

11


That's important because, a) all data is 

searchable within that single system, and 

b) one can still meet local compliance 

requirements. And all of this is 

accomplished on a standard system, with 

no add-on management software. 

Compatibility with backup solutions: 

Many popular backup solutions, such as 

Rubrik, VERITAS, Commvault and Veeam, 

work with object storage. That fact, 

combined with the limitless scalability of 

object storage, means it's possible to 

backup all servers and storage to a 

single, searchable pool. 

Lower costs: Object storage platforms 

can provide up to 70 percent lower total 

cost of ownership (TCO) than existing file 

storage. They can reduce management 

overhead by 95 percent and deliver a 30 

percent reduction in 

power/space/cooling. 

In addition, developers view object 

storage favourably because it employs 

the same communication protocol - the 

S3 API - that is used to communicate 

with cloud storage is a simple, effective 

way to address storage. It's also seen as 

very reliable. 

It is not going to be an easy task for 

organisations to meet GDPR compliance, 

but the hard fact is that they have no 

choice. And they have very little time to 

get there. So it is incumbent on 

organisations and businesses to start 

preparing for the enforcement date by 

making sure their data is protected, 

available and searchable. Object 

storage can play a big part in helping 

them to do so. 

More info: www.cloudian.com 

CASE STUDY: CLOUDIAN SUPPORTS CALLIGO DEVELOPMENT OF GDPR SERVICES 

Calligo is an innovative, global cloud service provider offering mid-sized companies the highest levels of data privacy and security, 

application performance guarantees, commercial flexibility and a personalised support service. It has data centres in a number of global 

locations, including the UK, Jersey, Guernsey, Bermuda, Singapore, Zurich and Geneva. 

Responding to customer demand for object storage-based services, Calligo partnered with enterprise object storage systems leader 

Cloudian to deploy its HyperStore solution. Calligo chose Cloudian's S3-compatible object storage offering because it was a very well 

supported storage solution, allowing for easy integration and management. Implementing Cloudian HyperStore enabled Calligo to provide 

cost effective cloud storage while ensuring smooth interoperability and integration with its other cloud services. 

Calligo has spent the last six years working with large amounts of highly sensitive data. CEO Julian Box said that because of this, the fact 

that GDPR comes into force in 2018, and the emphasis that the company places on value added services that they wrap around their 

solutions, it made sense to further leverage HyperStore in their global locations. Specific capabilities of HyperStore that help meet GDPR 

requirements include customisable metadata tags, scalability, data protection features and geo-location, in which data is stored within a 

specific physical cluster of nodes that, if geo-distributed across boundaries, is retained in a specific location that can be verified using 

integrated 'Data GPS' tools, thereby providing assurance of compliance. 

The result is the development of a service-focused consultancy and portal based solution for Calligo clients, specifically for GDPR, to help 

them meet their obligations under this new law. 

"For many companies, the concept of GDPR is scary," said Box. "The processes that need to be followed and implemented to bring systems 

in line by 25th May can be overwhelming. This presented an opportunity for us to take advantage of our long history of a cloud service with 

data privacy at its core and the solutions we already have in place, to develop a range of services designed to help and support customers 

as they navigate towards meeting their ongoing GDPR obligations." 

^ 




MAGAZINE

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CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: KLM EQUIPMENT SERVICES 

KEEPING FLIGHTS ON SCHEDULE 

KLM EQUIPMENT SERVICES HAS DOUBLED THE PERFORMANCE OF ITS CRITICAL BUSINESS 

APPLICATIONS AS A RESULT OF DEPLOYING A HIGHLY AUTOMATED UNIFIED STORAGE CLUSTER 

Fujitsu storage technology is helping to 

reduce flight delays and associated 

issues at one of Europe's busiest airports. 

KLM Equipment Services B.V. (KES) has 

deployed a unified, high-availability Fujitsu 

ETERNUS storage cluster to double the speed 

and performance of its critical enterprise 

applications - ensuring a more efficient and 

reliable ground support service at Schiphol, 

Amsterdam's main airport, ultimately helping 

flights to operate on schedule. 

KES operates as an independent 

subsidiary of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. 

With Amsterdam Schiphol airport as its 

permanent home base since 1952, the 

company has wide expertise and a long 

heritage of providing all aspects of ground 

support equipment - which includes all the 

vehicles and equipment responsible for the 

handling of aircraft on the ground, an 

indispensable link in any airport's logistical 

processes. 

KES's goal is to realise low operational 

cost, while maximising the availability of 

this equipment: The company cannot 

afford downtime as this greatly impacts 

airport operations at Schiphol, which is 

ranked 5th best airport in Europe by 

leading aviation reviewer Skytrax. 

Olivier Delachapelle, Head of Data Center 

Category Management at Fujitsu EMEIA, 

says: "Everybody hates airport delays, and to 

help reduce these at Schiphol airport, we've 

teamed up with KLM Equipment Services to 

minimise any kind of disruption to flight 

schedules that may be caused by ground 

equipment - for example, a jetway not being 

available to disembark passengers from an 

incoming flight." 

^ 




MAGAZINE

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: KLM EQUIPMENT SERVICES 

"Since the implementation we have seen an enormous boost in performance - 

somewhere in the region of 180,000 input/output operations per second 

(IOPS), which means our critical EAM application runs twice as fast as before 

so users are more productive. We are delighted with the seamless transition 

between old and new systems, which included the migration of 35 virtual 

machines and their associated data." 

MAXIMUM AVAILABILITY 

To replace an old storage platform, which 

was plagued with performance and 

capacity issues, KES worked with Fujitsu 

and SELECT Circle Partner SJ-Solutions 

B.V. to design and deploy two clustered 

Fujitsu Storage ETERNUS DX100 systems 

at two sites. 

Designed for maximum data availability 

and business continuity at a competitive 

price, the Fujitsu solution provides highperforming 

and scalable data storage for 

all of KES' core business functions, 

including enterprise asset management 

(EAM), finance, enterprise resource 

planning (ERP) and other office 

applications used by 150 KES employees. 

Siwart van der Veen, Manager ICT, KLM 

Equipment Services, said: "Based on their 

knowledge of our environment, and the 

challenges we were facing, Fujitsu and SJ- 

Solutions provided a solution within our 

deadlines which met our requirements and 

budget. Since the implementation we have 

seen an enormous boost in performance - 

somewhere in the region of 180,000 

input/output operations per second 

(IOPS), which means our critical EAM 

application runs twice as fast as before so 

users are more productive. We are 

delighted with the seamless transition 

between old and new systems, which 

included the migration of 35 virtual 

machines and their associated data." 

ULTIMATE RELIABILITY 

Round-the-clock availability is guaranteed 

thanks to the ETERNUS storage cluster 

architecture with two mirrored devices, 

which allows for immediate, automatic full 

disaster recovery. Should a complete 

storage system fail, the second one takes 

over in about five seconds. 

As well as providing the ultimate in 

reliability, robustness and performance, 

the Fujitsu solution has already helped KES 

lower its energy consumption for storage 

by 40 percent, reducing electricity bills, 

cooling costs, and minimising its 

environmental impact. 

"KES has recognised that disaster-proof 

configuration is an absolute must for 

mission-critical data and applications that 

must be available at all times, especially 

at a major airport," concludes Olivier 

Delachapelle. "Our storage cluster 

solutions provide this reliability without 

adding unnecessary complexity or high 

costs. The virtualised storage cluster, 

based on Fujitsu ETERNUS DX100 

devices, has given KES the performance it 

needs, combined with stability and 

resilience, all in one cost-efficient, truly 

unified architecture. We're proud to be 

playing our part in helping one of the 

biggest airports in Europe to operate 

more efficiently." 

More info: www.fujitsu.com/uk 

SOLUTION SUMMARY 

Fujitsu ETERNUS storage cluster facilitates round-the-clock availability of core ground support functions at Amsterdam's bustling Schiphol 

airport 

Low-maintenance, highly automated Fujitsu storage platform combines speed and reliability as well as using 40 percent less energy than 

previous system 

Unified cluster architecture provides automatic disaster recovery for failsafe operation 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

15

STRATEGY: DRAAS DRAAS 

BEYOND DISASTERS: DOING MORE WITH DR 

GEOGRAPHIC REDUNDANCY AND REPLICATING CRITICAL WORKLOADS CAN KEEP BUSINESSES UP 

AND RUNNING DURING CATASTROPHIC EVENTS, BUT THERE ARE MANY MORE EVERYDAY USE 

CASES FOR DRAAS (DISASTER-RECOVERY-AS-A-SERVICE) THAT CAN DRIVE ADDITIONAL VALUE FROM 

THE INVESTMENT, ARGUES JASON CLARK, ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT AT ILAND 

Disaster recovery plans exist to ensure 

business continuity when the worst 

happens. They allow organisations 

and individuals caught up in life-changing 

events such as natural disasters to focus 

100% on protecting people from harm, 

without the distraction of worrying about 

data and IT systems. 

Recent events - both climate related, such 

as the hurricanes in the US and elsewhere, 

and as a result of man-made events such 

as ransomware attacks - have brought 

disaster recovery (DR) to the top of mind, 

and organisations are looking to boost their 

preparedness. As they do this, they should 

also consider some of the useful ways that 

cloud-based disaster recovery solutions can 

contribute to everyday business operations - 

even before catastrophe strikes. 

We all know that geographic redundancy 

and replicating critical workloads can keep 

businesses up and running during 

catastrophic events, but there are many 

more everyday use cases for DRaaS 

(Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service) that can 

drive additional value from the investment. 

^ 




MAGAZINE

STRATEGY: STRATEGY: DRAAS 

"While the occurrence of natural disasters may well be the prompt that starts 

organisations looking more closely at cloud-based disaster recovery, once they 

do I think they'll find some seriously compelling reasons to build regular testing 

using DR test environments into their core business processes. DRaaS offers so 

much more than peace of mind for when the worst happens, and savvy 

customers are really starting to make it work in their favour." 

A key use case is maximising the value of 

the test environment created as part of the 

DRaaS provision. Every DR plan needs to 

be regularly tested to provide assurance 

that it is fit for purpose, but beyond 

readiness there are a few other key reasons 

why testing can be important for your 

business. 

When delivering Zerto for cloud-based DR 

solutions for our customers, iland creates an 

environment on our Secure Cloud with 

preconfigured networks for both live and test 

failovers. The test environment is completely 

isolated, and can serve as a sandbox for all 

of your DR and out of band testing needs, 

all without any impact to production or 

replication. That isolated environment can 

be used in a number of ways: 

CODE DEVELOPMENT/QA 

These days, almost all organisations do 

some level of internal development. Many 

have also adopted agile development 

principles along the way. Unfortunately, not 

everyone has adopted Test-Driven 

Development (TDD), whereby you write 

tests before you write code. You simply refactor 

the code until the test passes. Boom, 

automatic quality assurance (in an ideal 

world, that is…). 

With this newfound agility, however, 

comes the temptation to release code a bit 

prematurely. Why not test in an isolated 

environment? By performing a test failover 

of your development systems, you can 

begin to run those applications in a pseudo 

real-world environment. Often, it's not until 

the services are live that you find errors. 

Debugging in this sandbox allows for your 

development team to clean up what 

otherwise might have gone undetected 

until launch. This practice will save you 

from having to issue patches down the line 

and will ultimately result in higher quality 

code releases that are less likely to have 

negative impacts on your employees or 

customers. 

APPLICATION CHANGES/PATCHES 

Speaking of patches, back to my "in an 

ideal world" comment: they're going to 

happen. Knowing that's the case, it makes 

perfect sense to test the patches, or any 

other code changes for that matter, in a 

secure environment. We've had a number 

of customers find this test environment 

conducive to finding issues and bugs 

much sooner. 

OVERCOMING THE FEAR FACTOR 

Let's face it, as fearful of security events as 

we all are at this point, many organisations 

are also nervous of impacting critical 

systems by performing security checks on 

their production systems. Having an 

isolated environment to conduct security 

tests is invaluable. 

Within this isolated test environment, 

you're able to perform test failovers of the 

workloads you'd like to audit without 

impacting production. Now that you have 

a test bed established, you can start by 

performing penetration tests. There might 

be unknown critical vulnerabilities present 

on those systems, but you'll be able to run 

a vulnerability scan, identifying chinks in 

your systems' armour. Following that, you 

could inject sample malware into the 

environment to put the system's detection 

capabilities to the test. 

Other tools worth checking would be 

malicious file detection, intrusion detection 

and prevention, and URL filtering. There 

are many open-source tools and publicly 

available utilities for simulating malicious 

activity. Many iland customers have found 

security vulnerabilities and weaknesses in 

their IT systems by deploying DR security 

testing in this way. In other words: hack 

away, my friends! 

As you can see, I've identified a few, 

pretty cool, use-cases for DR testing that 

go beyond its primary purpose. While the 

occurrence of natural disasters may well be 

the prompt that starts organisations looking 

more closely at cloud-based disaster 

recovery, once they do I think they'll find 

some seriously compelling reasons to build 

regular testing using DR test environments 

into their core business processes. 

Disaster-Recovery-as-a-Service offers so 

much more than peace of mind for when 

the worst happens, and savvy customers are 

really starting to make it work in their favour. 

More info: www.iland.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

17

EVENT: SYNOLOGY 2018 SYNOLOGY 2018 

THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX 

IF YOU THOUGHT SYNOLOGY WAS ONLY ABOUT NAS HARDWARE/SOFTWARE FOR THE SMALL 

BUSINESS, THE COMPANY'S RECENT USER EVENT IN LONDON PRESENTED AN IMPRESSIVE ARRAY OF 

INNOVATIONS TO CHANGE YOUR MIND. STORAGE MAGAZINE EDITOR DAVID TYLER WAS THERE TO 

REPORT BACK 

September saw Synology run the third leg 

of its 'world tour' as the company came 

to London's Shaw Theatre. This was 

their seventh such annual event, by the end 

of which they will have spoken to over 6000 

users and partners - and of course the 

media. Since last year's event Synology has 

launched over 10 new products including 

public cloud services, and the most recent 

version of DSM has been downloaded over 6 

million times. 

The keynote message reinforced the 

company's core belief that 'data should be 

administered only by its owner.' This was 

followed by sales administrator Jeremie 

Francois whose focus was on the company's 

productivity apps aimed at the SMB market, 

including the Moments photo management 

app and Synology Drive which has been 

designed to make all data accessible via a 

single 'portal' approach. 

Throughout the day it was noticeable that 

Synology now has a vast breadth of offerings 

that are aimed at everyone from individual 

home users right up to enterprise storage 

administrators. It is to the company's credit 

that they managed to cover so much ground 

in the course of a few hours, without 

confusing everyone present. 

As UK Sales manager Billy Knowles told us, 

the event is designed to "Allow users to get 

an understanding of Synology - of where we 

are pushing boundaries and moving the 

market forward. You can see we have these 

applications we've developed for the home 

side of the business, but we are also very 

much looking at the enterprise space with 

offerings such as our FlashStation all-flash 

arrays. As a result our audience here ranges 

from home users through business 

purchasers to resellers and distributors. 

Storage is for everyone - which means there 

isn't really a typical Synology customer." 

We also saw the Surveillance Station app 

which allows users to set up CCTV using 

Synology kit, which has taken off hugely in 

recent years. The newest version includes 

links to POS systems and is now built in 

HTML to allow cross-browser support and 

greater security and reliability. 

It was clear from the event that Synology, 

despite having started out with a 

SOHO/consumer bent, has grown into a 

business with designs on the larger 

enterprise market. As Billy Knowles 

^ 




MAGAZINE

EVENT: SYNOLOGY EVENT: SYNOLOGY 2018 

commented: "That consumer/prosumer 

market was certainly where we've developed 

our products and our brand, but we've 

grown it since then as people's data storage 

needs have evolved - and we kind of 'caught 

the attention' of the enterprise. As users got 

into deploying iSCSI at home, for instance, 

they were thinking that if they could use this 

on a 4-bay desktop home model, what's to 

stop them getting a rack-mount version with 

a couple of Xeon processors?" 

INNOVATIONS IN STORE 

Knowles himself followed the opening 

presentations with a more in-depth look at 

what is in the pipeline for the company's core 

storage offerings. A new snapshot calculator 

was unveiled for Storage Manager, making it 

easier for users to create volumes, with a 

consistent user interface for home and 

enterprise users. Meanwhile 'smart data 

scrubbing' has been developed to combine 

file system scrubbing and RAID scrubbing 

together in a single step. An iSCSI manager 

is now built into DSM, and a new 'latency 

mode' will speed up storage without having 

to upgrade to SSD hardware. 

On the virtualisation side, a virtual DSM 

product was presented as 'effectively NAS-asa-Service', 

which will target large scale 

deployments and enhance High Availability. 

A new HA 2.0 product was announced: if an 

active server falls over, the 'passive' one will 

take over seamlessly. The new version is said 

to be much faster to deploy, with enhanced 

performance monitoring and security 

updates applied with no downtime at all. 

Specific new hardware offerings included a 

6-bay NAS, the DS3018XS, and a desktop 

all-flash NAS, the FS1018. 

Synology was also emphasising data 

protection offerings: its agentless Active 

Backup is being extended to cover PC, VM 

and public cloud environments - with 

global deduplication across the entire 

storage pool - on top of the existing server 

offering (which will be rebranded as Active 

Backup for Business). 

The new cloud service, C2, is currently in 

beta with the aim to be available before the 

end of 2017. It will include C2 Backup with 

staged pricing by volume, and C2 DR as a 

dedicated package that will replicate a 

Synology server to the C2 cloud. If they can 

deliver on the claimed RPO of 1 hour and 

RTO of 15 minutes, this service will doubtless 

prove popular. 

Knowles concludes "Synology started out 

as a software company, so that has always 

been at the heart of everything we create. 

We then developed our NAS offering as we 

created an almost Apple-like ethos of using 

our software with our hardware. So all of 

our key innovations tend to be softwarebased 

predominantly, and that means our 

users are able to use all sorts of 

sophisticated functionality and features that 

are integrated into our products, that maybe 

would be more complex to consider with 

third party offerings. We do all the hard 

work in the background, so that the UI itself 

is simple and intuitive - so that users, at 

home or in business, can do things like 

replicating to the cloud that they might 

previously have thought would be too 

complicated for them to do." 

More info: www.synology.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

19

RESEARCH: STORAGE BUYING 

READY TO GROW 

FINANCE MANAGERS ARE MORE LIKELY TO APPROVE STORAGE SOLUTIONS THAT ARE FUTURE- 

PROOFED TO COPE WITH RAPID AND UNPREDICTABLE GROWTH - AND WHICH INCLUDE THE ABILITY 

TO ADD CAPACITY WITHOUT REPLACING ENTIRE SYSTEMS - SAYS NEW RESEARCH FROM FUJITSU 

equipment which prematurely reaches end-oflife, 

and a high reliance on skilled IT staff and 

the challenges associated with maintaining 

these skills. 

Looking forward, finance professionals 

outlined the key characteristics they expect to 

see in relation to new storage technology - 

highlighting three factors as most important: 

Automation to reduce reliance on manual skills 

to minimise both cost and risk; the ability to add 

capacity as demands increase, without 

replacing entire systems, and overall system 

flexibility to better deal with high and 

unpredictable data growth. 

Data storage requirements for small and 

mid-size businesses are predicted to 

double over the next four years, 

according to a new Fujitsu study among senior 

finance professionals in small and medium 

sized businesses (SMEs). In turn, this high 

growth is causing widespread concern (76%) 

that high or unpredictable data growth will 

lead to escalating data storage and 

management costs. 

According to a survey conducted among 182 

Chief Financial Officers across Europe, the 

Middle East, Africa and South Asia, three in five 

see technology as an important enabler of 

operational efficiency during digital 

transformation (59%). More than a quarter of 

CFOs surveyed view technology as a key 

source of competitive advantage (28%). 

However, with a keen eye on risk, issues of 

data availability, data protection and data 

security are front of mind for finance decision 

makers, who also expressed anxiety about the 

implications of an unexpected growth in data 

volumes. Top issues include the need to fund 

additional storage capacity and concerns about 

spiraling data management costs due to rapidly 

increasing data volumes. 

Senior finance professionals are also acutely 

aware of the challenges that traditional disk and 

tape-based storage solutions and expressed 

frustration at factors such as systems hitting an 

expandability wall, leading to investment 

requests coming out of the blue; the waste of 

Olivier Delachapelle, Head of Category 

Management Data Center at Fujitsu in EMEIA, 

comments: "The findings from our survey of 

CFOs confirm that security and data protection 

are key objectives for any storage 

modernisation initiative. With nine in 10 senior 

finance professionals putting general futureproofing 

high on the agenda, the days are 

clearly numbered for the traditional scale up 

approach to storage. In the digital business 

landscape of today, more than ever, small and 

mid-size businesses need storage solutions that 

aren't going to hold them back, no matter how 

fast growing or unpredictable their demands for 

data storage and backup." 

The survey, 'A Finance Perspective on Storage 

Investments', sponsored by Fujitsu, was 

conducted in June 2017 among 182 senior 

finance professionals across Europe, the Middle 

East, Africa and South Asia. The participants 

worked in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, 

drawn from a variety of industry sectors, 

including manufacturing, retail, travel/transport, 

financial services, telecoms, healthcare/life 

sciences and automotive. 

More info: www.fujitsu.com 

^ 




MAGAZINE

STRATEGY 

STRATEGY: HYPERCONVERGENCE 

GOING HYPER 

STEPHEN CHEW OF CURVATURE EXPLAINS HOW TO EMBRACE HYPERCONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE - 

ON A BUDGET 

infrastructure for connectivity. In short, legacy 

systems are being leveraged as building blocks 

for today's hyperconverged environments. 

A hyperconverged infrastructure solution 

should be on your radar, because it eliminates 

the need for siloed operations and puts greater 

focus on a consolidated infrastructure, which 

reduces reliance on precious real estate while 

consuming less power. All this results in 

reduced operating expenditure and less 

manual maintenance. 

Server refresh period is often understood 

to be the warranty/maintenance 

timetable dictated by the OEM vendors 

(which is typically 3-5 years). Yet, according to 

one analyst report, the potential lifespan of 

servers is between 7-10 years (typically 6 years 

for rack servers and up to 10 years for 

integrated systems), actually providing up to 

three times longer than the typical replacement 

cycle for servers and storage arrays. The truth 

is that servers last a lot longer than you think. 

We wanted to know if this message had 

resonated, so we recently asked our 

audience on LinkedIn this question: "Did you 

know your servers are built to last between 6- 

10 years?" A quick slew of comments ensued 

that demonstrated different points of view 

out. Opinions were roughly divided down the 

middle, from the conservative "You should 

replace your hardware between 3-5 years to 

renew your productive software environment," 

to the reformative, "Virtualisation has 

changed my views on server longevity. Plan 

your platform to survive the failure of every 

possible element and buy quality equipment 

second hand at a fraction of retail." 

Let's say you fall on the conservative side and 

currently prefer to stick with your OEM vendor 

advice. Your options are to either renew your 

maintenance contract or procure the latest 

generation of servers to replace existing ones. 

Both options come with extremely high 

premium and of course, the true cost of 

upgrades goes beyond your initial purchase. 

Factor in lost productivity and potential 

downtime, which impact staff time, the uptime 

of services, and have a cascading effect on 

other projects within the organisation. It will 

also likely mean increased requests for tech 

support when the system breaks. Migration 

and upgrades are complex projects that 

distract your IT team from innovating. 

One trend that is emerging is 

Hyperconverged Infrastructure, allowing 

innovation but with old hardware. Legacy 

servers are being repurposed as building 

blocks for a hyperconverged infrastructure. 

We've seen customers evolve their three-tier 

architecture (server, SAN, and storage) into a 

two-tier hyperconverged (server/storage) 

environment while using existing network 

A hyperconverged solution also opens up a 

world of possibilities, including softwaredefined 

storage. The challenge of data deluge 

is very real. About 2.5 exabytes of data are 

created every day. That's equivalent to 90 years 

of HD video. Software-defined storage has 

been proven to be much more efficient than 

native hardware storage, and it reduces the 

number of hardware storage units you need to 

maintain and replace. Also, as a virtual 

computing platform, hyperconvergence gives 

you continued access to your data in the event 

of a malfunction or disaster, and it provides the 

necessary redundancies for data protection, 

backup, and recovery. 

What's more, when customers need ondemand 

upgrades, you can reduce your 

deployment and implementation time without 

affecting operations. That means shorter lead 

time - and that right there is how you can 

channel your human capital to focus on 

initiatives that drive revenue. 

What hyperconvergence doesn't need to 

mean is an entire 'rip and replace' and a new 

journey dictated by your server manufacturer. 

Look closely at the assets you already have 

and start planning and repurposing for 

positive change. 

More info: www.curvature.com 


@STMagAndAwards Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

21

OPINION: PUBLIC CLOUD PUBLIC CLOUD 

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS 

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM 

AROUND PUBLIC CLOUD IS 

WRONG, SUGGESTS GARY 

WATSON, FOUNDER AND VP OF 

TECHNICAL ENGAGEMENT AT 

NEXSAN 

When it comes to the public cloud 

conventional wisdom would have us 

believe it's user friendly, highly 

available, scalable and cheaper than onpremises 

storage. More organisations are 

moving towards the public cloud, but much to 

the surprise of many, on-premises storage can 

offer the same capabilities, at a lower cost and 

with greater control over availability and 

security. With the recent AWS S3 outage hitting 

the headlines, the fundamental importance of 

keeping control over company data has come 

back into focus. 

Organisations are investing in public cloud 

solutions that not only lack control over security 

and data locality but in the long run cost more. 

And when it really comes down to it there is no 

guarantee your data will be available. It 

doesn't matter whether the public cloud 

storage in question is block, file or object, onpremises 

storage is just about always less 

costly. The primary exception is in those rare 

circumstances when the storage is temporary 

or short term - less than 18 months. The 

question is; how often is storage consumed just 

temporarily or for short term? Not very often. 

GROWING COSTS 

Perception and reality of the public cloud do 

not always align. Although the public cloud 

may appear cheaper, the reality is that once 

^ 




MAGAZINE

OPINION: PUBLIC OPINION: PUBLIC CLOUD 

"Perception and reality of the public cloud do not 

always align. Although the public cloud may appear 

cheaper, the reality is that once organisations are tied 

into recurring monthly fees, this is an expensive outlay. 

Not to mention the cost to transfer data back on site 

can be vastly more than you ever imagined. Some 

cloud service providers also charge per user, so 

although cloud promotes unlimited scalability, this can 

come with a heavy price tag." 

organisations are tied into recurring monthly 

fees, this is an expensive outlay. Not to mention 

the cost to transfer data back on site can be 

vastly more than you ever imagined. Some 

cloud service providers also charge per user, so 

although cloud promotes unlimited scalability, 

this can come with a heavy price tag. 

Organisations also use the cloud as a way 

to ensure increased data resilience, and data 

stored in the cloud has a form of data 

protection through erasure coding as it is 

stored in multiple locations. However, storing 

the data in multiple data centres only 

protects it in the event of rare on-site 

disasters. It does not protect against human 

errors, human maliciousness, ransomware, 

malware of all kinds, or software corruption 

that needs some form of data protection 

such as zero capacity snapshots. 

Erasure coding only protects against disk 

or object storage node hardware failures. 

Similarly, albeit a bit more robust than 

parity RAID, it adds significant latency, 

affecting application performance and 

response time. On-premises private cloud 

can provide the same agility as the public 

cloud, but within the organisation's own 

environment, offering more functionality 

such as: data reduction, snapshots, higher 

performance and local control. 

Data is the lifeblood of an organisation and 

critical to its success, which is why more 

businesses are retaining information for longer 

and using this to gain insight into customer 

behaviour and trends. Storage is therefore 

critical and it's not simply a case of 

implementing a short-term solution. 

Organisations need a comprehensive IT 

infrastructure that is built to offer the agility of 

the cloud such as file, sync and share but with 

the added security and capability to safeguard 

data long-term. In addition, when 

organisations opt for the public cloud they are 

relying on a third-party provider with their most 

critical data. 

AVAILABILITY AND SECURITY 

Relying on these third party public cloud 

providers also brings into question availability 

and security: as the AWS S3 outage earlier this 

year demonstrated, public cloud services will 

suffer downtime. This is something many 

smaller organisations cannot afford. Although 

AWS recovered and only suffered a small 

impact in terms of its revenues, for SMBs there 

will be times when they are unable to recover. 

Downtime in any form for smaller 

organisations can have critical consequences. 

Although public cloud providers employ 

encryption technology they also have access to 

your data at any time. This can cause difficulty 

when it comes to compliance and is another 

added security concern. With an on-premises 

private cloud solution the encryption keys are 

stored directly on the appliance meeting 

requirements for sensitive medical, financial 

and legal information. 

The AWS outage highlights that there will 

always be vulnerabilities when it comes to the 

public cloud, but these service providers are 

tech giants and are able to recover. However, 

before opting for a public cloud service 

provider, businesses need to consider if they 

can trust them with their most critical data - 

and ultimately their business' survival. 

The only way to maintain full control is 

through an on-premises solution. With an onpremises 

private cloud solution organisations 

can achieve the agility of the cloud at a lower 

cost and with guaranteed control over data 

privacy, availability and security. It's time we 

updated the conventional wisdom on the role 

and limitations of the public cloud. 

More info: www.nexsan.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

23

CASE STUDY: 

ANALYSIS: SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE 

SDS TAKES CENTRE STAGE 

IDC IS FORECASTING THAT SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE 

SOLUTIONS WILL GENERATE WORLDWIDE REVENUES OF OVER 

$16 BILLION IN 2021 

Software-defined storage (SDS) is one of 

several new technologies that are 

rapidly penetrating the IT infrastructure 

of enterprises and cloud service providers. 

SDS is gaining traction because it meets the 

demands of the next-generation data centre 

much better than legacy storage 

infrastructure. As a result, IDC has recently 

predicted that the worldwide SDS market will 

see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) 

of 13.5% over the 2017-2021 forecast 

period, with revenues of nearly $16.2 billion 

in 2021. 

Enterprise storage spending has already 

begun to move away from hardware-defined, 

dual-controller array designs toward SDS and 

from traditional on-premises IT infrastructure 

toward cloud environments (both public and 

private) based on commodity Web-scale 

infrastructure. SDS solutions run on 

commodity, off-the-shelf hardware, delivering 

all the key storage functionality in software. 

Relative to legacy storage architectures, SDS 

products deliver improved agility (including 

faster, easier storage provisioning), 

autonomous storage management 

capabilities that lower administrative costs, 

and the ability to use lower-cost hardware. 

"For IT organisations undergoing digital 

transformation, SDS provides a good match 

for the capabilities needed - flexible IT 

agility; easier, more intuitive administration 

driven by the characteristics of autonomous 

storage management; and lower capital 

costs due to the use of commodity and offthe-shelf 

hardware," said Eric Burgener, 

research director for Storage at IDC. "As 

these features appear more on buyers' lists 

of purchase criteria, enterprise storage 

revenue will continue to shift toward SDS." 

Within the SDS market, the expansion of 

three key sub-segments - file, object, and 

hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) - is 

being strongly driven forward by nextgeneration 

data centre requirements. Of 

these sub-segments, HCI is both the fastest 

growing with a five-year CAGR of 26.6% 

and the largest overall with revenues 

approaching $7.15 billion in 2021. 

Object-based storage will experience a 

CAGR of 10.3% over the forecast period 

while file-based storage and block-based 

storage will trail with CAGRs of 6.3% and 

4.7%, respectively. 

Because hyperconverged systems typically 

replace legacy SAN- and NAS-based 

storage systems, all the major enterprise 

storage systems providers have committed to 

the HCI market in a major way over the past 

18 months. This has made the HCI subsegment 

one of the most active merger and 

acquisition markets as these providers 

prepare to capture anticipated SAN and 

NAS revenue losses to HCI as enterprises 

shift toward SDS solutions. 

The IDC study, 'Worldwide Software- 

Defined Storage Forecast, 2017-2021: SDS 

Market Growth Significantly Outpaces 

Enterprise Storage Growth, Led by HCI', 

provides a forecast by revenue and capacity 

for the worldwide SDS market. The forecast 

focuses on end-user consumption of four 

categories of SDS solutions - block, file, 

object, and HCI - which cover cumulative 

shipments of solutions sold to customers by 

storage system suppliers and ISVs. The HCI 

sub-segment includes a combination of 

block, file, and object-based storage 

platforms, depending on vendor 

implementation. For each of these 

categories, IDC has estimated value (enduse 

spend) as well as capacity shipped. 

More info: www.idc.com 

^ 




MAGAZINE

OPINION 

OPINION: SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE 

FIRST STEPS TOWARDS SOFTWARE-DEFINED 

STORAGE 

BRETT DENLY, REGIONAL DIRECTOR AT DATACORE SOFTWARE, EXPLAINS SOME OF THE KEY BENEFITS 

AN ENTERPRISE CAN EXPECT TO RECEIVE FROM SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE 

Software-defined, in business terms, 

drives the economic gains from flexibility 

and future-proofing needed to reduce 

risk, manage growth and improve 

productivity. Our industry has suffered from 

vendors selling 'rip and replace' products to 

keep up with innovation with little regard to 

the big picture. If each new product creates 

silos of incompatibility, management becomes 

complex and costs escalate unnecessarily. 

Software-defined models provide customers 

with a long-term strategy and the flexibility to 

work infrastructure-wide, and across hybridcloud 

deployments while preserving the 

value of their past investments in storage. 

SDS allows storage to transcend hardware 

and bridge to cloud models. It is a key 

vehicle to modernisation that unifies old and 

new technologies, making underlying 

changes and deployment models for storage 

invisible to the applications on which 

organisations depend. 

The key benefits that an enterprise can 

expect to see include: 

Cost savings: SDS will increase storage 

utilisation, driving down CapEx, and 

automate/simplify management, 

reducing OpEx. 

Performance: Using a range of 

technologies (including caching, autotiering, 

parallel I/O, etc.), softwaredefined 

storage should offer enterprises 

better performance (measured not only 

by IOPS and throughput, but more 

importantly, reduced latency as well). 

Availability: Software-defined storage 

should be able to take storage devices 

and make them highly available, above 

and beyond the redundancy in the boxes 

themselves, covering a larger set of fault 

domains than an individual storage 

device can handle. 

Flexibility: SDS will abstract and pool a 

wide array of heterogeneous storage, 

allowing greater agility (e.g. rapid 

provisioning of capacity) with unified 

management across the storage pool. 

While not all products offer the above 

capabilities, enterprises that are evaluating 

SDS options should look for products that 

provide all of these. 

WHO STANDS TO BENEFIT? 

The types of enterprise that stand to benefit 

most from SDS are those that have a need 

for better performance and availability from 

their storage infrastructure; have a diverse 

set of storage; need to become more 

efficient in utilising and managing their 

storage; and/or need to respond faster 

(from a storage perspective) to the needs of 

their business. 

Are there ever cases where it doesn't make 

sense to adopt SDS? Even small environments 

can benefit from software-defined storage. 

However, if servers have not been virtualised, 

or if the enterprise is using primarily SaaS 

applications (not much storage infrastructure 

under management), some enterprises may not 

find SDS worthwhile. 

THE FIRST MOVE 

Some good tips to begin moving toward the 

adoption of SDS include, 'start small'. Pick an 

application that isn't getting the 

performance/availability/flexibility/cost savings 

from storage and start with SDS there. Scale 

up/out: scale up or scale out the application as 

needed (so it's clear the product can provide 

both as needed). Add more applications: 

continue adding applications to the 

environment and bring more and more storage 

under SDS management. 

It's important from the outset that you select a 

good SDS product to avoid compatibility 

issues. A solid product will support a wide 

range of storage devices covering abstraction, 

pooling and management. It's wise to look for 

a vendor that has a lot of experience with SDS 

(not a first or second generation technology) 

and substantial proof points (such as customers 

using the product in production environments). 

A couple of things to remember on your 

journey: don't initially fall prey to a narrow 

vision of SDS that limits flexibility, scalability and 

efficiency. Software-defined is all about 

flexibility. Don't restrict yourself from the outset. 

Lastly, remember the essence of SDS; the 

"magic" is in the software. An appliance is 

merely the delivery vehicle for ease of 

purchasing/deployment. 

More info: www.datacore.com 



^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

25

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: UNALASKA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT 

COLD STORAGE 

DESPITE A NOTORIOUSLY INACCESSIBLE LOCATION, UNALASKA'S CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT IS 

ENJOYING A NEARLY INSTANTANEOUSLY RECOVERABLE STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE THANKS TO 

ONEBLOX FROM STORAGECRAFT 

Infrastructure simplification is a concept 

popping up very often lately with IT 

managers across all kinds of 

organisations. But it's nothing new for 

small, and budget constrained IT shops 

that have always looked at ways of 

keeping their infrastructure simple, very 

manageable and highly serviceable. 

Unalaska City School District (UCSD) is 

no exception; in fact, its needs are even 

more constrained due to its particular 

position on the map. 

Located on the Aleutian Chain, 

approximately 800 air miles southwest of 

Anchorage, Alaska, Unalaska is home to 

4,000 permanent residents and boasts the 

U.S's most productive commercial fishing 

port of Dutch Harbor, which is also wellknown 

as the home of successful TV show 

"The Deadliest Catch". 

Accessible only by airplane or boat, there are 

no roads to Unalaska. The deep water and 

ice-free International Port of Dutch Harbor 

serves cargo ships and large container vessels 

throughout the year, making this port one of 

the busiest transportation hubs in the North 

Pacific. In this remote location, approximately 

400 students are educated from preschool 

through to the 12th grade by the Unalaska 

City School District. These students are 

supported by approximately 70 teachers and 

staff members. Brent Bain, the Sr. Technology 

Coordinator for the entire school district, is 

also its sole IT staff member, supporting over 

550 computers spread out between the 

Elementary and Secondary schools. 

StorageCraft is helping Unalaska City School 

District to avoid complexity while greatly 

improving the storage infrastructure and 

related services to students and teachers 

thanks to simplicity, reliability, serviceability and 

manageability of StorageCraft OneBlox and 

OneSystem. 

UNUSUAL CHALLENGES 

Such a peculiar IT environment has very 

interesting needs. UCSD has all of the 

characteristics of a low budget IT shop yet at 

the same time, it needs highly reliable and 

easy to manage storage infrastructure. 

When Brent Bain started his activity as Sr. 

Technology Coordinator at UCSD, he was 

faced with a very difficult situation. The 

infrastructure was obsolete and the school 

district's budget was very tight. Every single 

spending decision is undertaken very carefully. 

UCSD found that the majority of production 

servers were file servers and a major pain point 

was the backup infrastructure was still using 

tape. But, instead of looking to add (and 

^ 




MAGAZINE

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: UNALASKA CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT 

maintain) other new servers, they chose to 

explore the market for a more manageable 

storage solution. "Legacy NAS and SAN 

solutions are too complex and expensive, 

especially as I look at our future growth 

requirements," explains Bain. 

Additionally, UCSD being situated in a very 

remote area made it virtually impossible, and 

very expensive, to obtain spare parts or 

technical on-site support within a reasonable 

timeframe. At the same time, most of the 

traditional vendors have very strict rules on 

the type and the number of disks you can put 

in your system (at one time) which also 

presents a big problem for the potential 

longevity of the storage system. 

The list of requirements doesn't stop here 

though. UCSD wanted strong Active Directory 

compatibility, and scalability to support the 

unpredictable growth of a newly instituted 

"save-everything" policy. This new policy will 

not only impact the primary storage capacity, 

but also its Symantec Backup Exec 

infrastructure. 

FREEDOM OF CHOICE 

StorageCraft OneBlox was selected by UCSD 

due to its modern scale-out architecture, 

innovative data protection features, and 

affordability. Moreover, OneBlox enables 

UCSD to have complete freedom of choice 

when it comes to serviceability and storage 

capacity expansion of the system. 

Support for all Microsoft file sharing 

protocols (SMB 2.0, 2.1, and 3.0) and Active 

Directory are at the heart of a strong 

integration with Windows servers and clients, 

enabling a seamless consolidation process. 

Consolidation is made possible through the 

efficiency of inline deduplication and 

continuous data protection, which helps save 

more data more securely in a single system. 

Thanks to this characteristic it has been 

possible to implement a newly simplified 

backup strategy that no longer involves tapes. 

Now the Backup Exec server writes directly to 

OneBlox and then is replicated to another 

OneBlox at another school on the island. 

OneBlox, with its ability to use off-the-shelf 

hard drives and mix them in various sizes in 

the same Ring, enables the UCSD to buy 

commodity hard disks anywhere, at the best 

price - without the constraints or limitations 

usually found with other legacy storage 

vendors. This feature is also helpful when it 

comes to replacing failed disks in a remote 

location like Unalaska. 

RESTORED IN MINUTES 

UCSD has already consolidated 5 file servers, 

supporting different workloads and up to 250 

concurrent active users during working hours. 

At the same time, the efficiency and scalability 

of OneBlox allows UCSD to adopt the new 

save-everything strategy while providing far 

improved service to both students and 

teachers. In fact, now teachers and staff do 

not spend any time trying to delete 

information to free up storage capacity. 

Before they were spending about one day a 

month managing storage, now they are able 

to focus on education. 

Moreover, thanks to the snapshot-based 

Continuous Data Protection functionality 

available on OneBlox, students can now 

autonomously retrieve any lost files from 

snapshots in minutes, instead of hours. 

Numerous times restore requests have been 

submitted as the students are on the way to 

class and Brent has been able to recover the 

file before class begins. 

UCSD also leverages OneBlox's remote 

replication to have a copy of information off 

campus, and with the new disk-based backup 

strategy, instead of tapes, much safer, more 

reliable, and faster restores. UCSD has plans 

to extend the remote replication to various 

schools in the same district to improve 

backup and local disaster recovery 

procedures. 

Storage management, based on the 

OneSystem cloud platform, is another step 

towards simplification because OneBlox 

doesn't need a local console installed on a 

separate server. It sends all health and 

configuration information to a cloud service 

which is always accessible via a web browser. 

The cloud-based management delivers ease 

of use and reliability of the system resulting in 

very few administration tasks which are also 

easy to perform. In fact many operations 

require zero configuration, such as adding 

storage capacity. 

VIRTUALLY FUTURE-PROOF 

The next step in the consolidation process will 

be server virtualisation. In fact, OneBlox will 

soon be adopted to store Virtual Machine 

data, enabling even more savings and better 

data protection. 

UCSD needed a new cost effective storage 

solution with the goal of simplifying and 

consolidating its IT infrastructure. Thanks to 

StorageCraft it was made possible and UCSD 

has also enhanced the overall quality of 

service, decreased recovery times, and 

improved the overall TCO of the entire 

infrastructure. Moreover, the promise of 

further consolidation for VM data storage will 

give UCSD additional opportunities to 

improve TCO, consolidation, and availability 

of the infrastructure. 

The advanced data protection capabilities 

of OneBlox's object-based architecture 

enable UCSD to buy commercial off-the-shelf 

commodity hard drives and become freely 

independent to acquire replacements or 

upgrades. This makes the solution much 

more serviceable over time and much more 

durable when compared to traditional 

vendors over the long term. 

Brent Bain concludes: "The amount of time 

I've had to spend managing storage has been 

cut in half, because it just works!" For an IT 

department where file services are among the 

most critical applications delivered to the 

school, it's clear that Unalaska City School 

District has achieved its objective and has 

found an enterprise-class solution. 

More info: www.storagecraft.com/oneblox 



Nov/Dec 2017 

^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

27

STRATEGY: EMAIL ARCHIVES 

TIME TO BREAK UP WITH 

YOUR OLD-SCHOOL ARCHIVE 

ALMOST 90% OF ORGANISATIONS HAVE ENCOUNTERED PROBLEMS 

WITH THEIR EMAIL ARCHIVING SOLUTION - BUT THEY NEEDN'T, 

ARGUES GLENN BROWN, CLOUD ARCHIVING EXPERT AT MIMECAST 

Data archives have a vital role to play 

in today's information-driven world. 

They provide a digital repository of 

corporate data which, used effectively, can 

boost productivity and efficiency by enabling 

employees to access email whenever and 

wherever they are. In addition they help to 

ensure legal, regulatory and compliance 

obligations can be met quickly and easily. 

But traditional on-premise archiving is 

flawed: 88% of organisations say they have 

experienced problems with their existing 

archiving solution. Nearly 60% cite 

administrative complexity as a top 

challenge, while 40% experience a lack of 

scalability. Another 56% are plagued by slow 

search performance. 

If this sounds familiar, the most likely 

reason is that you're making at least one of 

these costly, complicated and avoidable 

mistakes: 

1. Settling for "good enough" search 

Time-short users expect fast results in one go 

when performing a search of their archive. 

Unfortunately, the average number of 

searches a user has to run to find what they 

are looking for is five. Half of organisations 

say search queries take longer than five 

minutes each, with 20% reporting search 

completion times of up to ten minutes. 

Inefficient search can impact an 

organisation's ability to quickly respond to 

legal inquiries. It can also prevent businesses 

from meeting regulatory compliance 

obligations and external requests, like 

Subject Access Requests and Right To Be 

Forgotten requests under the GDPR. 

2. Not planning for downtime 

Uninterrupted access to email and archives 

during server downtime is a win-win for 

everyone: lines of communication stay open, 

productivity remains high, and disruption after 

a cyber-attack remains low. However in the 

event of a system failure, one third of 

businesses say uninterrupted access to email 

isn't currently possible. 

3. Storing data in one place 

Incidents like technical failure, human error 

and cyber-attacks happen - and without 

sufficient backup and recovery in place, they 

can destroy data. It only takes one corrupt 

email, one mistaken "delete" or one phishing 

attack to totally wipe corporate memory. Only 

50% of organisations can recover their data 

after such an incident. A further 47% say they 

can recover only some of their data. These 

data destruction incidents are usually very 

specific in nature and usually occur a long time 

before being discovered, so finding data in a 

backup can be an expensive task, if the data is 

even available. 

OLD-SCHOOL ARCHIVING CAN'T 

KEEP UP 

The reality is that traditional archiving can't 

hold up to the turbulence and fast pace of 

modern business. Archives need to index and 

store data immediately. They need to be 

tamper-proof and perpetual. Users need the 

ability to sync files, folders, data, contacts 

and calendars - and to recover them if an 

attack occurs. It's essential that businesses 

can continue working as normal; end-users 

find what they need when they need it; have 

fast search and e-discovery capabilities - no 

matter what. 

The only way to guarantee all of this is to 

create a central repository of corporate data 

that is stored in a fully-encrypted, immutable 

and redundant system in the cloud. 

THE "PERFECT-WORLD" ARCHIVE 

Over 205 billion email messages are sent 

every day and in a world dominated by 

email, only cloud archives (such as Mimecast 

Cloud Archive) offer the scale, performance 

and advanced features needed to operate a 

business effectively. Cloud archiving not only 

enables businesses to reduce risk and cost, it 

can increase employee productivity, and 

decrease complexity for administrators. It can 

go beyond traditional boundaries of archiving 

by creating a central repository of data that is 

100% available and fully secure. 

By aggregating semi-structured email data 

from across multiple platforms, organisations 

gain long-term business insights and create a 

digital corporate memory. This dramatically 

decreases the risk of data loss or corruption 

from cyber-attack, human error, sabotage or 

technical failure. Advanced e-discovery 

capabilities also streamline governance and 

compliance and enable users to restore 

mailbox data - on demand. Modern archives 

can also maintain email continuity in the 

event of server downtime or loss of 

connectivity. 

Your business shouldn't have to hang on to 

an old-school solution that can't perform to 

today's standards. A cloud archiving solution 

can give the flexibility and agility needed to 

run more efficiently and boost productivity. It's 

now the era of the "perfect-world" archive. 

More info: www.mimecast.co.uk 

^ 




MAGAZINE

OPINION 

OPINION: THIRD-PARTY SUPPORT 

THIRD-PARTY SUPPORT: A LOGICAL CHOICE 

THERE ARE SOME VERY GOOD REASONS TO CONSIDER AN ALTERNATIVE TO OEM SUPPORT, SUGGESTS 

SIMON BITTON, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING (EUROPE), PARK PLACE TECHNOLOGIES 

of the storage arrays you want to cover. You 

are best off looking at companies that meet 

the following criteria: 

Storage maintenance companies are an 

important part of the increasingly 

popular third-party IT maintenance 

market. Among the available vendors are 

storage specialists, companies that only 

support storage appliances from the likes of 

EMC, NetApp, IBM, HP and others. There are 

also more broadly capable companies, such 

as Park Place Technologies, whose services 

extend to include server and networking 

hardware maintenance. 

WHY REPLACE THE OEM? 

Some of the most common reasons for looking 

beyond OEM storage support are: 

Cost: Third party storage maintenance 

companies can save customers up to 60% off 

OEM storage maintenance prices. 

Service quality: Many customers get tired of 

escalation procedures, sluggish replies, and 

limited access to expert engineers. A thirdparty 

storage maintenance company can 

provide a more comprehensive and 

personalised solution that is easier to use and 

more effective. 

Comprehensive coverage: OEM storage 

maintenance, even at the premium level, is a 

hardware insurance policy, the same type of 

security blanket you can purchase with a 

refrigerator. Some third-party maintenance 

companies provide a more comprehensive, 

proactive version of storage support that can 

actively reduce staff burdens, increase uptime, 

and enhance the environment. 

No expiration date: Yes, third-party storage 

maintenance contracts do have an annual 

renewal date, but many providers don't set an 

end point for when they'll cease to offer 

agreements on End of Service Life (EOSL) 

hardware. The OEMs, on the other hand, are 

continually using this tactic to leave customers 

high and dry and compel them to buy new 

hardware. 

Your short list of potential storage 

maintenance companies may vary based on 

which of these features - maybe some others 

that we haven't considered - are most attractive 

in your situation. 

DEEP STORAGE EXPERTISE 

You want to make sure potential support and 

maintenance providers have great knowledge 

A background with the OEM's storage devices: 

Nearly all storage maintenance companies will 

list what OEM equipment they are comfortable 

supporting. Make sure your favoured OEMs 

make the list before you sign on. You don't 

want your storage environment to be the one 

the engineers learn on! 

Support-led: Some third-party maintenance 

companies know storage pretty well, but their 

services are led by hardware resale, consulting, 

or other specialties. This tends to lead to lower 

quality service and sometimes a bias toward 

hardware of a particular OEM. A third-party 

maintenance company that leads their service 

provision on support and maintenance services 

is almost always a better choice. 

BROAD CAPABILITIES 

Consider whether to go with a storage 

specialist or a generalist. Although both 

options can work, a full-service third-party 

maintenance provider is a worthwhile option 

because they have: 

An understanding of the whole environment: A 

provider with knowledge of storage, server, 

and networking equipment - even if that 

knowledge is segmented among different 

engineer specialists - can take a global view of 

the environment and interacting systems when 

complex issues arise. 

Ability to grow: A company that covers a stable 

of OEM products can step in to take over a 

greater amount of the maintenance burden, 

freeing your staff for other purposes. Simpler 

maintenance arrangements: The more a thirdparty 

maintenance company can do, the less 

you have to devote internal resources to nonstrategic 

maintenance tasks. 

More info: www.parkplacetechnologies.com 



^ 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

29

OPINION 

OPINION: STORAGE NETWORKS 

TESTING THE LIMITS OF 

STORAGE NETWORKS 

REVOLUTIONARY ADVANCES IN DATA STORAGE 

TECHNOLOGY REQUIRE A CONSIDERED RESPONSE 

WHEN IT COMES TO TESTING, ARGUES TOM 

FAWCETT, VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER 

AT VIAVI SOLUTIONS 

As businesses embrace a brave new 

digital world, enterprise IT is striving to 

accommodate unprecedented growth in 

data, while at the same time supporting 

increasingly complex workflows. Likewise, 

pressure to reduce costs and energy 

consumption has prompted increased adoption 

of cloud and cloud-native applications; a trend 

compounded by the expectation that Service 

Level Agreements (SLAs) will ensure on-demand 

access to information anytime, anywhere. 

As a result, the traditional data centre is 

compelled to undergo revolutionary 

transformation. Correspondingly, data storage 

technology has advanced rapidly to enable 

management of more data, with faster delivery 

speeds, across hybrid network environments. 

LINKING STORAGE 

Since the advent of the IP-based networking 

standard iSCSI, ultra-low latency Ethernet 

switching technology has advanced to 

become a viable means of linking data 

storage facilities, enabling a converged data 

centre storage model. Ethernet networks are 

now being effectively used to build Storage 

Area Networks (SANs). 

Converged Ethernet fabric architectures, 

such as NVMe over Fibre, Fibre Channel over 

Ethernet (FCoE) and RDMA over converged 

Ethernet (RoCE), accelerate data transfer over 

the network fabric, connecting servers and 

storage systems. Network professionals have 

adopted these technologies, reducing both 

latency and cost. However, the introduction of 

new storage technologies introduces new 

troubleshooting challenges concerning 

performance and reliability of business 

critical applications. 

When implementing an Ethernet storage 

network there are a number of potential 

problems to be mindful of, including TCP/IP 

and iSCSI errors, protocol violations, 

connection sequence errors, and establishing 

with certainty if pings are working. Any errors in 

these areas can interfere with secure and 

reliable storage and the retrieval of missioncritical 

data. 

STORAGE SHOULDN'T BE TESTING 

To prevent potential errors from impeding 

business productivity, IT administrators and 

storage solution suppliers rely on a variety of 

network test and measurement tools. However, 

as more competing application protocols 

converge over Ethernet, a dizzying array of tests 

and tools has proliferated for each specific 

technology or protocol, challenging IT 

managers to choose or risk busting the budget. 

Fortunately, there is a trend toward multiprotocol 

test and analysis tools capable of 

supporting all predominant speeds and 

application-level protocols. 

VIRTUAL REALITY CHECK 

In addition to adopting converged Ethernet 

technologies to reduce latency, data centres are 

embracing virtualisation to increase storage 

network capacity. Virtualisation enables the 

sharing of physical resources among many 

virtual machines (VMs) to manage I/O 

infrastructure efficiently. It also creates new 

challenges for storage administrators. 

With the consolidation of many virtual 

servers on just a few storage devices, virtual 

storage networks are prone to bottlenecks as 

VMs compete for storage resources. 

Moreover, the relationships among VMs, 

physical hosts and the storage device are 

highly fluid and dynamic, increasing the 

complexity of storage networks. This means 

that visibility into the network tends to be 

limited, making it difficult to isolate whether 

performance issues are originating on the 

local area network (LAN), the server, or the 

storage network. Because they are shared by 

many applications, virtualised infrastructures 

undergo frequent changes in load patterns. 

As the numbers of VMs multiply the result is 

an I/O blender effect where predictable 

patterns become randomised, creating 

dynamic points of congestion and raising the 

likelihood of intermittent problems. These 

random issues can only be detected by 

analysing I/O load patterns, therefore greater 

visibility into I/O workloads is needed to 

diagnose and correct these issues. This 

requires an ability to capture storage traffic 

being generated at different infrastructure 

locations in real time. 

As storage networks grow in complexity and 

importance to overall business value, 

performance and reliability of each piece of 

infrastructure is critical to productivity and profit. 

Today's advanced testing tools designed for nextgeneration 

technologies and protocols enable 

faster, more accurate troubleshooting and 

deeper analysis, preventing network downtime. 

More info: www.viavisolutions.com 

^ 




MAGAZINE

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EVENT: IP EXPO EUROPE IP EXPO EUROPE 

STANDING ROOM ONLY 

THIS YEAR'S IP EXPO EUROPE HAD AN UNUSUALLY CELEBRITY- 

TINGED LINE-UP AS PROFESSOR BRIAN COX ATTRACTED A 

RECORD-BREAKING CROWD TO HIS OPENING KEYNOTE, 

FOLLOWED LATER BY CHESS GRANDMASTER GARRY KASPAROV 

DISCUSSING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 

October's IP EXPO Europe kicked off 

at ExCel London with a dive into 

"where science and IT collide" 

thanks to an opening keynote from 

Professor Brian Cox OBE. The presence of 

a real-life celebrity made the opening of the 

show even more hectic than usual, with 

capacity crowds and a genuine 'standing 

room only' atmosphere for Cox's keynote. 

He took to the stage in front of a jampacked 

crowd that was overflowing out into 

the show floor to explain how technologies 

like AI, IoT and analytics are driving an IT 

revolution towards incredible computer 

power, more storage and innovative 

solutions like graphene and quantum 

computing. A post-keynote press briefing 

demonstrated Cox's laconic goodwill as 

well as his intelligence, as he skilfully and 

patiently dealt with a variety of occasionally 

bizarre lines of questioning from the media. 

AI is a larger part of the show than ever 

before and today's seminar and keynote 

sessions gave thought to the evolution of 

this technology. Conrad Wolfram, Strategic 

Director at Wolfram Research shared his 

thoughts on why, in this age of analyticsdriven 

decision making and AI, 

organisations are often disappointed with 

the results. Garry Kasparov, Security 

Ambassador for Avast and chess 

grandmaster delved into whether or not 

super-intelligent AI is really compatible with 

human existence, whilst Brad Anderson, 

Corp. VP Enterprise Mobility at Microsoft 

spoke about the company's new 

technologies, designed to protect 

businesses from increasingly sophisticated 

and damaging online threats. 

Commenting on IP EXPO Europe 2017, 

Bradley Maule-ffinch, EMEA Portfolio 

Director at IP EXPO event series said: "AI 

and machine learning are becoming the 

norm for organisations striving to extract 

value from the growing quantities of data 

available in the modern world. Our 

speakers and exhibitors at IP EXPO Europe 

today have addressed key questions around 

AI, from its impact on society, to practical, 

legal and ethical questions about how to 

apply the technology now." 

Additional highlights from day one included: 

An eye-opening panel discussion on the 

future of cybersecurity featuring Wendy 

Nather, Principal Security Strategist 

DUO Security, Mikko Hypponen, Chief 

Research Officer F-Secure, Rik 

Furguson, Global VP Security Research 

Trend Micro and James Lyne, Global 

Security Advisor Sophos 

A timely panel discussion on the 

efficient implementation of cloud 

communications featuring Manek 

Dubash, Technology Journalist, Charles 




MAGAZINE

EVENT: IP EXPO EVENT: IP EXPO EUROPE 

Aylwin, Director of Channel 8x8, Dave 

Mailer, Principle Consultant 4C 

Strategies and Tom McDonald, 

Managing Director Exsel Group. 

A forward-thinking talk by Adrian 

Hornsby, Technical Evangelist at 

Amazon Web Services covering the 

AWS IoT platform, latest developments 

and live demos & walk-throughs 

featuring Raspberry Pi. 

A comprehensive view on the future of 

AI, both sophisticated and automated, 

by Dave Palmer, Director of Technology 

Darktrace. 

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER KEYNOTE 

The second day of the show saw a cerebral 

keynote from AI-pioneer Stuart Russell, 

Professor of Electrical Engineering and 

Computer Sciences at UC Berkley, on the 

reality of AI and whether or not we, as 

humans, should be concerned about its 

evolution. 

With the inaugural MACHINA Summit.AI 

colocated with IP EXPO Europe it was 

unsurprising to see AI become a big topic 

of discussion across both days of the show. 

In light of the ongoing debate on the topic, 

Russell also delved into the recent highprofile 

argument between Elon Musk and 

Mark Zuckerberg, dismissing their concerns 

and instead suggesting a complete 

reorientation of the field. 

AI wasn't the only area in high demand 

among attendees. This year's show also 

featured a significant focus on cyber security. 

Award-winning writer and comedian 

Bennett Arron gave a lively and 

informative keynote on the dangers of 

identity theft and how best to protect 

yourself from it. Social Engineer and 

"people hacker" Jenny Radcliffe shared the 

results from her 'live social hack'. Whilst, 

Joanne Bone from Irwin Michell LLP 

uncovered more on preparation for the 

upcoming GDPR legislation. 

Among the many highlights for visitors on 

day two were several sessions on DevOps, 

including a particularly insightful talk from 

Colin Beales of Microsoft on 'zero to 

DevOps with Microsoft Azure'. Jason 

Hammons from Pure Storage delved into 

synchronous replication in front of a 

captivated audience. Whilst wrapping up 

the day's sessions the collective that was 

Chris Swan of DXC, Mandi Walls of Chef 

and David Lewis from Akamai Technologies 

took a humorous look at some IT terms 

which belong in the jargon bin. 

Commenting after day two's events, 

Bradley Maule-ffinch said: "As always our 

speakers and exhibitors have really gone 

above and beyond to make this year's 

show an incredible success, and as a 

result we've seen record attendance 

across both days at the show. With such a 

wide range of topics covered we've been 

able to provide attendees with a 

comprehensive view of IT at the cutting 

edge. It's also been fantastic to see so 

much conversation about the next 

evolution of technology in AI and 

Machine Learning." 

IP EXPO Europe returns for 2018 on 3rd and 

4th October at ExCeL London. For further 

details of the event visit 

www.ipexpoeurope.com and join in the 

conversation by following @IPEXPO on Twitter. 

More info: www.ipexpoeurope.com 



Nov/Dec 2017 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

33

OPINION: TAPE BACKUP TAPE BACKUP 

IS TIME RUNNING OUT FOR TAPE? 

THERE ARE FOUR GOOD REASONS TO MOVE AWAY FROM TAPE BACKUP, SAYS ANDY SYREWICZE, 

MICROSOFT MVP AND TECHNICAL EVANGELIST AT ALTARO SOFTWARE 

It's amazing how many IT pros we talk to 

who are spending a great deal of time 

working with backups. Not to say that 

properly maintaining your backup system isn't 

important; it's just that your backup solution 

should work for you, not the other way around! 

While software is one thing, it is often the case 

in these situations that backup hardware, 

medium included, is the cause of the time 

suck. More often than not, tape seems to be a 

culprit. 

While tape has been great for many 

organisations, it really is beginning to show its 

age. When it comes to something as critical as 

your backup and recovery solution, it is nice, 

admittedly, to have the medium you've become 

used to over the years, right? Sadly, all good 

things must come to an end and we must 

objectively review our solutions from time to 

time. In talking with customers considering a 

change, we find one of the four points below 

tends to be the catalyst. 

TAPE IS A DYING MEDIUM 

Let's be objective here. Tape technology is 

largely the same as it's been over the last 

couple of decades. Sure, breakthroughs have 

been made in reliability and failure rates have 

been reduced, but there are many issues that 

still plague tape users today. Add to this the 

fact that disk storage has become very cost 

effective for large data sets, and also the fact 

that the public cloud is giving organisations a 

global reach for offsite storage, and tape is 

really starting to look less appealing. 

TAPE IS CUMBERSOME AND COMPLEX 

There isn't an IT guy anywhere that likes 

working with tape. It's clunky, has support 

issues, and requires regular physical 

maintenance. Disk storage tends to be static 

and "in-place" once you set it up, and requires 

little attention until you have to ultimately 

replace a disk (this is assuming you're not 

going with a drive rotation methodology, but 

even that practice is on the downturn as a 

result of public cloud and improved overall 

bandwidth worldwide). 

RECOVERY TESTING IS HARDER WITH 

TAPE 

This is due to the simple task of using tape 

media. You have to get tapes out of storage, 

which may take time depending on their 

location. You may have to swap in multitudes 

of tapes to complete test recoveries, especially 

if you are reconstituting the data for an entire 

site. Additionally, most organisations have an 

official process wrapped around the movement 

of backup tapes from production to archival 

locations, which consumes employee time 

daily. 

Altaro's easy-to-use backup software for Hyper-V and VMware, Altaro VM Backup, is 

trusted by 40,000+ organisations worldwide. 

GET 

YOUR 

FREE 

COPY 

Don't miss out! Scan the QR code to download your free copy or visit go.altaro.com 

TAPES OFTEN FAIL 

With enhancements in LTO drives over the 

years, tape has become a very reliable 

medium. However, due to our human 

condition, many organisations do not properly 

store, access, and maintain their tape libraries. 

Finally, with tapes being what they are, they are 

more prone to theft than a disk spinning in a 

server somewhere. It's just simple semantics. 

If your organisation uses tape today, there 

isn't a big emergency requiring you to vacate 

that medium right now. However, as time 

moves on, it's going to get more difficult to 

deal with the medium's shortcomings, both 

technically and fiscally - especially as things in 

the disk and public cloud markets continue to 

improve. If you'd like to start taking advantage 

of disk-based backup today you can do so by 

using a solution designed with disk and cloud 

storage in mind, Altaro VM Backup. 

More info: www.altaro.com 

^ 




MAGAZINE

2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 

Storage is changing... 

Data is at the cornerstone of any organisation. The way in which you handle it 

will determine the effi ciency and performance of your business. 

You need a specialist storage provider with the expertise to deliver a system with 

the performance and fl exibility to evolve as your business changes, adopting new 

technologies and adding capacity on demand. 

You need Q Associates. 

We have 30 years award winning expertise, and we’re just getting started. 

For award-winning storage advice, contact 

storage@qassociates.co.uk

ST1711

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