ST May-Jun 2020

STOR 

MAGAZINE 

STORAGE 

The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

May/June 2020 

Vol 20, Issue 3 

A WORLD OF RISK: 

Traditional data protection is no longer fit for purpose 

HPC STORAGE: 

The hidden costs 

CLOUD MIGRATION: 

Learning lessons from DRaaS 

STORAGE ROUNDTABLE: 

Life after Coronavirus 

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

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A WORLD OF RISK: 

CLOUD MIGRATION: 

 

STORAGE ROUNDTABLE: 

 

ge 1 


Vol 20, Issue 3 

CONTENTS 

STOR 

MAGAZINE 


CONTENTS 

 

HPC STORAGE: 

 

 

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

NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED… 

06 

LIFE AFTER CORONAVIRUS…..6 

Storage magazine asked experts from across the sector for their 

predictions for the storage industry in a post-pandemic world 

STRATEGY: 

MALWARE PROTECTION...........8 

A backup is a vital tool when recovering from a ransomware 

attack, explains Andrew Fitzgerald of Cohesity, but as part of a 

more extensive data management solution, can also help stop 

this and other malware in its tracks 

08 

RESEARCH: HPC STORAGE…..12 

New research into buyers of storage in HPC environments 

reveals that TCO is now considered almost as crucial as 

performance itself 

18 

OBJECT LESSONS……….........…16 

Martin Ellis of OCF looks at how an object-based workflow 

approach can work for research data storage 

A WORLD OF RISK……….........…18 

New research from Acronis shows that over 40% of 

organisations globally suffered data loss resulting in downtime 

last year 

28 

MANAGEMENT: DRAAS……….20 

Moving applications to the cloud? These lessons learned from 

successful DRaaS deployments can help, says Scott Sparvero of 

iland 

RESEARCH: SDS…….................24 

DataCore's annual market survey reveals that software-defined 

storage is now considered a standard technology in modern IT 

departments, whilst some diverse environment users are 

struggling with availability, flex and performance 

30 

GREEN DATA CENTRES……..…28 

David Watkins of VIRTUS Data Centres examines how the data 

centre industry is delivering on its 'green commitments' 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk @STMagAndAwards May/June 2020 

^ 


MAGAZINE 

03

COMMENT 

EDITOR: David Tyler 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 

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Articles published reflect the opinions 

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NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE 

RESUMED… 

BY DAVID TYLER 

EDITOR 

There has been much talk as the Coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the 

world of a 'new normal'; a hope that some kind of positives might eventually come 

out of what feels - for the moment at least - almost entirely negative. People point 

to satellite images showing that the almost overnight cessation of industrial activity in 

places like China has had a massive impact on pollution in the air. Closer to home 

we've all noticed how we can hear birdsong all day now, even in cities, and as councils 

cut back on 'non-essential' activities we've seen unmown grass verges spring to life and 

become havens for pollinators and insect life. 

Ultimately though I think we all know that, once the virus is properly under control, 

life will probably return very quickly to how it was a few short months ago. News 

footage after this last sunny weekend as lockdown restrictions were being partially lifted 

have shown people, not suddenly imbued with a new-found respect and love for nature 

and the wider world, but cramming themselves into trains to get to the beach, where 

they proceed to leave all their rubbish scattered all over the place for someone else to 

clean up. 

Where some changes might stick long-term though, is in how we use technology to do 

our jobs. Even two months ago, Zoom was a niche product aimed at a small market - 

now it has become ubiquitous across businesses globally. The near-instant rise in video 

conferencing, after years of tech companies trying to promote it as an alternative to 

physical meetings, is a great example of IT showing us a better way to do things. 

This issue of Storage includes a roundtable feature where we bring together some 

insights from a number of technology experts on what the world will be like after the 

virus. Komprise's Krishna Subramanian comments: "While it's encouraging that the 

lockdown in the UK is slowly starting to ease, it's important for business leaders to 

recognise that this doesn't mean their employees will all be back in the office any time 

soon - if ever. We have moved into a very different 'normal' where remote working has 

become the standard, and this is likely to continue in some form even once the 

pandemic is over." 

So, will things go back to normal? It very much depends on your definition of 'normal', 

of course. Things will be different - but maybe some things will be better after all. 

David Tyler 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 

^ 

04 STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 


@STMagAndAwards 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk

MANAGEMENT: ROUNDTABLE 

LIFE AFTER CORONAVIRUS 

STORAGE MAGAZINE ASKED EXPERTS FROM ACROSS 

THE SECTOR FOR THEIR PREDICTIONS FOR THE 

STORAGE INDUSTRY IN A POST-PANDEMIC WORLD 

It goes without saying that everything has 

changed over the past couple of months. 

The shock of how quickly the current crisis 

took hold and how dramatically the situation 

snowballed has put many organisations under 

unequivocal and significant strain. 

A CLOUD-FIRST APPROACH 

Martin Taylor, Deputy CEO at Content Guru 

says, "For many businesses that found 

themselves reliant on legacy on-premise 

communications infrastructure, and especially 

for those that had been sitting on the fence for 

some time, procrastinating over whether, how 

or when to embrace new cloud-based 

technology, the coronavirus crisis could prove 

to be the much-needed catalyst for positive 

long-term change. 

"For the contact centre industry, which 

employs more than 4 per cent of the UK's 

working population, the last few months could 

prove to be a fast-acting stimulant, injecting 

increased remote working and adoption of 

cloud technologies. After the height of this 

pandemic is over, I expect we will see most 

contact centres looking at how they can adopt 

a cloud-first approach that allows agents to 

work from wherever they are based, so they 

can future-proof their business models against 

situations like this in the future." 

Tom Cotton, Agile Workspace Technical 

Director at Six Degrees, explains why now is 

the chance to make longer term 

considerations around cloud and agile 

working strategies: "I believe we will see an 

exponential increase in the uptake of cloud 

services over the coming months. This will be 

driven by a number of factors, not least users 

becoming accustomed to the lack of 

commuting and seeing more of their family. 

Many will not want to transition back to their 

old ways of working any time soon. 

"With so many transformational applications 

and technology becoming cloud-native, and 

considering the inherent security, 

performance and agility benefits of the cloud, 

there are compelling arguments for 

transitioning away from local infrastructures 

to embrace the potential of cloud technology. 

However, I advise organisations to plan their 

cloud adoption journeys carefully to ensure 

their technology roadmaps align with their 

wider go-forward strategies - technology 

should never be introduced simply for 

technology's sake." 

NEW FOCUS ON BUSINESS 

CONTINUITY 

Alan Conboy of Scale Computing comments: 

"For many businesses around the world, the 

upheaval caused by the virus has been nothing 

short of chaotic. Deploying a work-from-home 

strategy smoothly and securely, as well as the 

enormous spike in ransomware attacks during 

recent months, have been the root of concern 

among many business owners, governments, 

and schools. The focus for all organisations 

right now, and post-pandemic, must be 

business continuity: investing in systems that 

combine preventative measures and planned 

reactive measures to ensure that an 

organisation can continue doing business, 

despite potential threats, like those caused by 

the pandemic. In the IT world, this may include 

backup, disaster recovery (DR), easily deployed 

work-from-home solutions, and cybersecurity. 

"While in the midst of the chaos it may seem 

06 STORAGE May/June 2020 


www.storagemagazine.co.uk 

MAGAZINE

MANAGEMENT: ROUNDTABLE 

"We have moved into a very different 'normal' where remote 

working has become the standard, and this is likely to continue 

in some form even once the pandemic is over. For many 

businesses that are able to support employees working 

remotely, it is likely that this will become the new norm, rather 

than employees mainly being office-based." - Krishna Subramanian, Komprise 

irrelevant, or even a waste of time, to think 

longer term about business continuity. 

However, the potential for many organisations 

to keep a vast majority of their workforce 

working remotely, even as we begin to come 

out of the other side of COVID-19, in order to 

save on the cost of an office space, means it 

would be wise for organisations to consider 

investing in solutions and processes that are 

simple to implement, manage, and maintain 

remotely. Solutions that have built-in backup 

and DR, allow users to work remotely, safely, 

and securely, and provide protection from 

ransomware are becoming increasingly 

important in the new and uncertain times we 

are living through." 

UPDATED DATA PROTECTION 

Steve Blow, UK Systems Engineering Manager 

at Zerto, explains why the spike in 

ransomware attacks has elevated 

organisations' senses to best protecting their 

data: "Ransomware attacks are not new or 

even uncommon, and they will continue to be 

prevalent long after we see the other side of 

this global pandemic. But one thing many 

businesses have become more aware of since 

the start of the pandemic, is the importance of 

a modernised data protection strategy to 

safeguard their valuable and sensitive data. 

And they are not wrong - just a single 

employee clicking a malicious link in their 

emails could mean a ransom must be paid for 

all business data encrypted. 

"Cybercriminals often exploit vulnerabilities in 

employee emails, so it is crucial to have the 

right cyber-defences in place to avoid a 

disaster where critical data could be at risk - 

especially when it comes to government or 

healthcare organisations. Having appropriate 

role-based access control and an extensive 

tiered security model will help minimise risk. 

But the attack itself is only half of the problem 

because, without sufficient recovery tools, the 

resulting outage will cause loss of data and 

money, as well as reputational harm. 

"Over the coming months it is important that 

we see more organisations utilising tools that 

allow them to roll back and recover all of their 

systems to a point in time just before an 

attack. This level of IT resilience will prove to 

be paramount, as emails continue to exist at 

the core of most organisations, they remain a 

standing target for ever-sophisticated cyber 

criminals, whether in the middle of a 

pandemic or not." 

This is a sentiment Krishna Subramanian, 

COO at Komprise, echoes: "While it's 

encouraging that the lockdown in the UK is 

slowly starting to ease, it's important for 

business leaders to recognise that this doesn't 

mean their employees will all be back in the 

office any time soon - if ever. We have moved 

into a very different 'normal' where remote 

working has become the standard, and this is 

likely to continue in some form even once the 

pandemic is over. For many businesses that 

are able to support employees working 

remotely, it is likely that this will become the 

new norm, rather than employees mainly 

being office-based. 

"This will be more challenging for some 

businesses and industries than others, but it will 

become clear as this pandemic continues 

which businesses have been able to manage 

the change well enough for it to become more 

permanent. Even still, there will be increased 

challenges for IT departments to support 

employees using IT equipment or accessing 

secure systems outside of the office. A data 

management solution is one method for 

improving the ability for employees to work 

efficiently from home, as it can help to keep all 

of the data stored by a business in order, and 

can help employees to retrieve this data more 

quickly, saving them time that can be better 

spent on tasks which require their expertise." 

MAINTAINING CONNECTIONS 

While the pandemic has put many businesses 

into survival mode, it has also accelerated a 

range of - particularly digital - workplace 

trends. Liam Butler of SumTotal comments 

that, while many of these developments may 

be here to stay; they are already triggering 

long-term changes to workplace practices: "As 

restrictions on society continue to be lifted and 

the business community takes stock of these 

changes, we are realising they have gone far 

beyond simply absorbing the economic 

impact. For many industries and business 

areas, the measures have opened up a more 

sustainable, effective and collaborative 

working environment." ST 


@STMagAndAwards May/June 2020 


MAGAZINE 

07


STRATEGY: MALWARE PROTECTION 

BACKUP: MORE THAN MERE RANSOMWARE 

INSURANCE 

A BACKUP IS A VITAL TOOL WHEN RECOVERING FROM A RANSOMWARE ATTACK, EXPLAINS ANDREW 

FITZGERALD, SALES DIRECTOR, UK & IRELAND, COHESITY, BUT AS PART OF A MORE EXTENSIVE DATA 

MANAGEMENT SOLUTION, CAN ALSO HELP STOP THIS AND OTHER MALWARE IN ITS TRACKS 

When it comes to cyber-crime, one of 

the most worrying developments has 

been the spread of ransomware, 

with foreign exchange service Travelex just one 

of many businesses targeted in recent months. 

These days you don't have to be a big name to 

be attacked, we're all potential targets, and 

protecting our data against ransomware 

should be a crucial part of any malware 

strategy, as should a robust backup regime to 

allow for speedy recovery should the worst 

happen. However, don't assume that just 

because you're taking backups, you can rest 

easy at night: it's not that easy. 

THEY KNOW WHERE YOUR DATA LIVES 

The bad guys aren't stupid. They know that 

companies routinely backup their data and 

that most see this as the best way of 'insuring' 

against malicious data encryption. They also 

know that a lot of organisations now store 

backups online, often on public cloud 

platforms and, just as often, using cloud 

syncing services such as Dropbox, OneDrive 

and Google Drive. 

Similarly, many disaster recovery solutions rely 

on active/active replication to networked data 

stores to work. But ransomware will now 

routinely target all these resources, as well as 

live data, making it increasingly common for 

victims to discover that, when they need them 

the most, their backups and DR systems are 

also encrypted and of no use. 

The knee-jerk reaction to this trend will be for 

companies to review their backup policies and 

in the UK many will follow recently updated 

guidance from the National Cyber Security 

Centre, emphasising the need to make offline 

backups to mitigate against ransomware 

attacks. Which is all very well except, as with a 

lot of ransomware advice, the assumption is 

that backup is a tool of last resort, only of use 

when recovering from attacks when it can, in 

fact, be used to help prevent them. 

PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE 

When it comes to putting this into practice, the 

best approach is to always include both 

backup and anti-malware protection as 

integral components of an overarching data 




MAGAZINE


STRATEGY: MALWARE PROTECTION 

"The days when backups were taken to tapes and stored in 

offsite vaults are over. Ransomware prevention requires a 

multi-layered approach that balances speed and ease of 

recovery against security. So, as well as offline copies, 

companies will likely take snapshots, typically using automated 

replication tools. Criminals have advanced their methods and 

now look to target backups, removing or encrypting them as 

part of the attack. However, there is a way past this." 

management strategy. And not, as commonly 

happens, bolting them on as an afterthought. 

Equally, it's essential to understand that the 

required data management products have 

varying capabilities which, in some cases, will 

limit how far you can go beyond the 

backup/restore basics. That doesn't mean you 

shouldn't try - there's a lot at stake - and if the 

tools at your disposal aren't up to the job, it's 

worth looking around for alternatives. 

The question is: what sort of functionality, 

beyond simple backup and restore, do you 

need? Unfortunately, there is no magic 

formula, although those drawing up a 

shopping list could do worse than think about 

these three questions: 

1. Can you scan your backups? 

Proactive vulnerability scanning is the first line 

of malware prevention, but scanning live 

production systems and shared assets (such as 

NAS appliances) across an extensive 

distributed infrastructure is far from easy. 

Scanning backups is a lot less problematic as it 

can be done without impacting on system 

availability and, because backups are more 

likely held centrally, without having to manage 

scanning at scale across multiple endpoints. 

Importantly, however, we're not just talking 

here about tools to simply scan backups and 

bin them if they contain malware, but as a 

means of ringing alarm bells and taking preemptive 

action when malware and potential 

vulnerabilities are detected. 

2. Can you lock down your backups? 

The days when backups were taken to tapes 

and stored in offsite vaults are over. 

Ransomware prevention requires a multilayered 

approach that balances speed and 

ease of recovery against security. So, as well as 

offline copies, companies will likely take 

snapshots, typically using automated 

replication tools. Criminals have advanced 

their methods and now look to target backups, 

removing or encrypting them as part of the 

attack. However, there is a way past this. 

Your backups need to be stored in an 

immutable (locked) state that can't be 

mounted, modified or deleted and while not 

all backup programs support this, a lot do, 

and it can also be implemented using more 

extensive data management platforms. 

3. Can you recover easily, quickly and at 

scale? 

Recovery is a complex and lengthy process, 

especially where an organisation is 

dependent on a large hybrid infrastructure 

spanning multiple clouds and on-premise 

data stores. Tools that can be used to 

recover at scale and focus both on rapid 

Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and fast 

Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) are crucial 

here and should be prioritised as without 

them, recovery can take days - or longer - 

potentially leading to business failure. 

Of course, there are lots of other factors 

to consider and answers to find, especially 

with ransomware attacks becoming ever 

more ingenious, making it essential to 

keep data management strategies under 

constant review. Moreover, while there is 

no one-size-fits-all solution, whatever 

approach you take, it should always be 

based on sound data management 

hygiene and, as already stressed, the 

application of multi-layered defences 

capable of isolating backups from 

production data stores. 

Or you could just pay the ransom - but 

we all know that isn't solving the core 

problem; instead, you're just funding more 

ransomware initiatives later down the line. 

More info: www.cohesity.com 




MAGAZINE 

09

OPINION 

OPINION: WORKING FROM HOME 

THE RIGHT TOOLS FOR WORKING FROM HOME 

COLLABORATING FROM HOME IN AN EFFECTIVE MANNER MEANS MUCH MORE THAN EMAIL AND 

MESSAGING ATTACHMENTS, EXPLAINS DAVE GIORDANO, CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, ALFRESCO 

Remote working is a work-style that 

companies and employees alike have 

had to sharply adjust to. With such a 

rapid change, procedures are likely hastily 

implemented or not implemented at all. For 

the sake of efficiency in the short term, 

employees take shortcuts in sharing documents 

on email, speed hacks become ingrained as 

normal behaviour and document processing 

best practices fall by the wayside. 

To get the best of both worlds, we need to 

embrace the technology enabling remote 

working, as well as the provision of electronic 

document management and workflow. There 

are some best practices for developing 

productive and efficient document processing 

systems and habits over email and messaging 

attachments which organisations can easily 

and quickly implement to make this happen. 

1. Cloud sharing and storage usage 

While email and instant messaging are great 

ways to distribute content, attaching 

documents as a habit can have some longterm 

consequences including: 

Bloated email and messaging servers where 

multiple attachments (to multiple people) 

are consistently passed back and forth 

Versioning difficulties where, as documents 

evolve, tracking which is the most current 

can be difficult 

Concurrency issues when it comes to 

working documents where having more 

than one person updating the 

document can result in multiple 

changes and inefficiencies in 

consolidating to one version 

Distribution issues with attachments or 

other means where documents tend to be 

floating around with little control 

Security issues where attached documents 

are difficult to control in the email itself 

Similar issues exist with messaging tools like 

Slack or Teams. Multiple copies result in poor 

control of the documents. Depending on the 

document type and process, sharing tools 

that provide file storage and synchronisation 

services can better avoid the email 

attachment issues with a consistent and 

shared document repository. 

2. Bypassing email attachments with links 

While email or messaging is an easy hack to 

quickly distribute a document, a better process 

focuses on sending links and bringing users 




MAGAZINE

OPINION 

OPINION: WORKING FROM HOME 

back into a controlled environment where they 

can be the most efficient by: 

Seeing the most recent version where 

updates in real-time to a document can be 

seen and reviewed by an editor 

Collaborating on the document where 

changes can be tracked and new 

comments inserted 

Not bloating email or messaging with 

document attachments so that weighty file 

transfer and security issues with file trust 

can be avoided 

Collaborative software is far more effective 

than a back-and-forth volley of emails. Some 

great recent examples of new content 

management and update notification features 

on business software include collaborative 

integration on Slack, where new features can 

be utilised to send task notification alerts 

straight to the user in the application rather 

than relying only on emails that could get lost. 

There is a similar integration feature now with 

Microsoft Teams, where direct messaging helps 

alert users to task updates and notifications. 

3. Reviewing documents with online tools 

Other benefits of links versus attachments 

includes quick viewing and acting on 

documents. Rather than downloading the 

document and launching a PC application 

to view/manipulate the content, links to 

document repositories can quickly take 

advantage of the browser and page-bypage 

viewing. 

Tied to the viewing mentioned above, 

software which allows users to see both the 

document as well as the annotations is really 

helpful. For efficiency, rather than manually 

scrolling through a large 100-page document 

page and losing your place, such software 

allows for quick searching to just the 

annotations and provides high-speed viewing. 

4. Annotation vs. editing 

Collaborative approaches with Google Drive, 

Office 365 or other methods are great, but 

reviewers need to remember to turn on 

"suggestion" mode for certain scenarios when 

authors are looking for feedback but not edits. 

Annotation is a great means for collecting 

suggestions without running the risk of users 

feeling they are enabled or required to 

wordsmith or make changes to a document. 

Software which provides the means to 

collaboratively annotate where users see 

annotations and comments from multiple 

users real-time - saving the annotations as 

layers rather than directly in the document - 

allows collaboration to happen in a secure 

manner as required. For a browser-based 

approach, these features can be accessed 

from home computers as long as they have a 

modern browser. 

5. Leveraging electronic approval 

Too often documents are approved via email 

without proper audit or controls. Efficiently 

storing as a record with the correct signatures 

is difficult when the email is the only audit trail 

of an approved document. In addition, this is 

often not stored in the correct system of record. 

Software which offers true electronic 

signature compatible with the high legal 

standards, as well as integration with 

document signing software, is key. This 

integration lets you seamlessly send documents 

from a content management repository to be 

signed, then onwards to be automatically filed 

as the document of record. 

One area businesses need to focus on is 

the need to apply rules and requirements to 

reduce the number and requirements for 

signature. Efficient systems not only allow 

for electronic approval, but also the 

intelligence to determine who should be 

approving and when. 

6. Processing documents using intuitive features 

Gaining efficiency and productivity around 

documents is more than just sending and 

receiving documents, but how to best enable 

users to work with the documents as part of 

their job function. Efficiency and productivity, 

when it comes to the processing of claim 

documents, includes: 

Integrations into other systems to simplify 

document management implementation 

and maintain the document's security 

Correspondence recorded with the 

documents so that audit activity is 

automatically captured in the system and 

documents stay linked to the email 

without being duplicated again in the 

claim folder 

Automated document creation and 

combining of documents where a form 

drives to collect the relevant information 

and fills out the correct template 

Side-by-side organised viewing so that 

users can use separate tabs of the same 

document and don't lose their place in 

the document list by viewing 

7.Switching to paperless 

Keeping employees productive with 

documents also includes keeping external 

parties just as efficient when it comes to 

sending documents. Rather than mail or 

email documents, innovative companies are 

building or leveraging third-party tools to 

have vendors or other third parties contribute 

electronic copies and index correctly. 

Many companies are switching to paperless 

models, so they value portals that can accept 

- and often require - indexing from a vendor 

or third-party, rather than an email which will 

require reviewing and indexing internally. 

FUTURE PROOFING 

Once the lockdown finishes, it is likely more 

office employees will incorporate remote 

working into their work-style regularly, as 

research has found that 82% would like to 

work remotely one day a week or more 

after the COVID-19 crisis is over. Remote 

working offers businesses a unique 

opportunity to test out efficient document 

management strategies. However, in order 

to cater to this growing demand, 

companies need to adapt and refine their 

policies on digital tools and document 

sharing now in order to ensure efficiency 

and productivity down the line. 

More info: www.alfresco.com 




MAGAZINE 

11

RESEARCH: HPC STORAGE HPC STORAGE 

REVEALING THE HIDDEN COSTS OF HPC 

NEW RESEARCH INTO BUYERS OF STORAGE IN HPC ENVIRONMENTS REVEALS THAT TCO IS NOW 

CONSIDERED ALMOST AS CRUCIAL AS PERFORMANCE ITSELF 

followed by the time and cost needed to 

tune and optimise the storage 

systems. 

Total cost of ownership (TCO) now 

rivals performance as a top criterion 

for purchasing high-performance 

computing (HPC) storage systems, 

according to an independent study 

published by Hyperion Research. 

While performance still ranked first 

(57%), TCO tied with purchase price at 

37% as the second most important 

consideration cited by users. This points to 

an important shift, as HPC storage buyers 

have historically given less credence to 

ongoing operating costs, particularly 

millions of dollars lost due to downtime. 

Almost half of the surveyed respondents 

experience storage system failures once a 

month or more, with some outages 

leading to downtimes that can last as long 

as a week. A single day of downtime costs 

can range from US$100,000 to more 

than US$1 million. 

The report, commissioned by Panasas, 

surveyed data centre planners and 

managers, storage system managers, 

purchasing decision-makers and key 

influencers, as well as users of HPC 

storage systems. Hyperion surveyed 

organisations with annual revenues from 

less than US$5 million to more than 

US$10 billion. 

"A clear implication of this study is that 

to compete effectively, storage vendors 

need to deliver value far beyond the initial 

purchase price," said Steve Conway, 

senior advisor, HPC market dynamics at 

Hyperion Research. "They must pay 

attention to the full range of buyer 

considerations, including reliability, cost 

of management, responsive support and 

uninterrupted application user 

productivity." 

Among the salient points covered by the 

research findings were the following: 

Growth Drivers. The largest factors driving 

the growth of HPC storage capacity were 

iterative simulation workloads and new 

workloads such as AI and other Big Data 

jobs (see chart above). 

Growth Inhibitors. The most often-named 

challenge for HPC storage operations was 

recruiting and hiring qualified staff, 

Total Cost of Ownership. Despite being 

deliberately presented without a 

definition, TCO emerged as the second 

most important of all purchasing criteria 

for the surveyed group of HPC storage 

buyers, tied with "price" and trailing only 

"performance." Even though the 

definitions respondents had in mind will 

presumably have differed in some 

particulars, as a group these buyers 

endorsed the importance of TCO. 

Downtime. Almost half of the surveyed 

sites experience storage system failures 

once a month or more frequently (see 

chart on p14). Downtimes range from less 

than one day to more than a week. 

Supporting high productivity for users of 

HPC servers (scientists, researchers, 

analysts and engineering staff) is of 

paramount importance to data centre 

managers and other senior officials at 

HPC sites. 

In some industries, a day of downtime 

can cost the organisation more than $1 

million in lost revenue. Lack of storage 

system resiliency in the face of failures 

and changing requirements has been an 

ongoing issue for some file systems. 

Optimal time to customer problem 

resolution is particularly challenging when 

there are multiple layers in the customer 

support chain. 

Satisfaction and Loyalty. Although a large 

majority (82%) of respondents were 

relatively satisfied with their current HPC 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: HPC RESEARCH: HPC STORAGE 

"HPC storage buyers have come to expect downtime as 

the norm in HPC storage, trading off the lowest cost of 

acquisition for the inevitable headaches and lost 

productivity caused by system downtime. As a result, HPC 

storage vendors skimp on the development expenses 

associated with reliability, manageability and support; 

something we don't do at Panasas." - Faye Pairman, Panasas 

storage vendors, a substantial minority 

said they are likely to switch storage 

vendors the next time they upgrade their 

primary HPC system. The implication here 

is that a fair number of HPC storage 

buyers are scrutinising vendors for 

competencies as well as price. 

Storage Source. HPC buyers as a group 

have grown sophisticated enough about 

storage to pay more attention to the 

product than to who sells it to them. 

The study showed that most buyers 

sometimes purchase storage at the same 

time as the HPC system it will support, 

other times separately. Many buyers don't 

care whether the storage system is sold by 

a dedicated storage vendor or a system 

vendor intermediary. It's the product and 

the support staff that count most. 

A clear implication of this study is that to 

compete effectively, storage vendors need 

to deliver value far beyond the initial 

purchase price. They must pay attention 

to the full range of buyer considerations, 

including reliability, cost of management, 

responsive support and uninterrupted 

application user productivity. 

"HPC storage buyers have come to 

expect downtime as the norm in HPC 

storage, trading off the lowest cost of 

acquisition for the inevitable headaches 

and lost productivity caused by system 

downtime," commented Faye Pairman, 

president and CEO at Panasas. "As a 

result, HPC storage vendors skimp on the 

development expenses associated with 

reliability, manageability and support; 

something we don't do at Panasas. 

“With the release of PanFS 8, we go 

beyond delivering the lowest cost of 

ownership that we are known for by 

offering our high-performance file system 

on commodity hardware to provide the 

lowest cost of acquisition as well - making 

the buying decision easy." 

TCO DEFINED 

TCO is a term variously used in the HPC 

community and therefore deliberately 

presented to respondents of this study 

without a definition. This had the 

advantage of enabling the respondents to 

apply their own definitions. 

When they did, TCO emerged as one of 

the top purchasing criteria of the surveyed 

sites - tied in importance with "price" and 

second only to the "performance" of HPC 

storage systems under consideration. 

HPC storage systems have become 





MAGAZINE 

13

RESEARCH: HPC STORAGE HPC STORAGE 

significantly more important in the current 

era of digital transformation and highperformance 

data analysis, including AI 

methods such as machine and deep 

learning. 

To meet emerging requirements for what 

the U.S. Department of Energy calls 

"extreme heterogeneity" - the convergence 

of simulation and analytics, traditional and 

enterprise environments, and 

interoperation with cloud infrastructures - 

HPC storage systems, like other parts of 

the HPC ecosystem, have become more 

complex and more challenging to manage 

in many cases. 

As the study shows, HPC storage systems 

are subject to downtimes that can 

increase costs while lowering productivity, 

and finding qualified job candidates to 

help manage HPC storage systems can be 

a major challenge. These trends are likely 

to continue. 

In addition to the rising importance of 

TCO, the survey findings also challenge the 

accepted HPC storage narrative that costeffective 

performance necessitates 

complexity and unreliability. Consider the 

following key findings: 

Recruiting and hiring qualified staff, 

followed by the time and cost needed to 

tune and optimise the storage systems, 

were the two most often-named 

challenges for HPC storage operations - 

findings that go hand in hand with high 

levels of downtime. 

More than three-quarters of respondents 

experienced reduced productivity in the 

past year due to storage issues. One in 

eight sites experienced this more than 

10 times in the past 12 months. 

When asked how long it took to recover 

from a storage system failure, 40% of 

HPC sites typically require more than 

two days to restore their storage system 

to full functionality. 

With all of these factors in mind, the 

conclusion of the research advises HPC sites 

to evaluate a wide range of HPC storage 

vendors before making a purchase 

decision. There are important differences in 

the vendors' products, strategies and 

support - a wider search could pay large 

TCO dividends. 

The full report "The Importance of TCO for 

HPC Storage Buyers" is available for 

download here: 

https://www.panasas.com/resources/hyperi 

on-research-new-study-details-importanceof-tco-for-hpc-storage-buyers/ 

More info: www.panasas.com 




MAGAZINE

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the next IT 

challenges 

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WHERE YOUR DATA IS ALWAYS SAFE, ALWAYS ACCESSIBLE, ALWAYS OPTIMIZED

TECHNOLOGY: OBJECT STORAGE 

OBJECT LESSONS 

MARTIN ELLIS, PRE-SALES ENGINEER AT OCF, LOOKS AT HOW AN 

OBJECT-BASED WORKFLOW APPROACH CAN WORK FOR 

RESEARCH DATA STORAGE 

Today's "left-over" data can be the basis 

of tomorrow's breakthrough. As we 

keep data for longer and try harder to 

share and re-use data, it becomes critical 

that data is accurately catalogued and easily 

retrievable. Although long touted as the 

saviour to the scalability crisis being waged 

on file systems, object storage still remains 

niche outside of web-scale deployments. 

Parallel file systems such as Spectrum Scale 

are great at delivering multiple petabytes as a 

single file system but for some the volume of 

data is becoming not a technological issue 

but a human issue. The directory structure 

becomes too cumbersome for us to navigate 

and a new workflow is needed. In this space, 

I see object storage truly thriving. 

At OCF we work with many object storage 

vendors. Many have a feature to use erasure 

coding to reduce replication capacity 

overheads. When you're going for site-level 

resiliency, object stores start to become 

unbeatable. For a traditional high availability 

3-site file solution comprising mirrored 

active/active replicas and an asynchronous 

off-site DR copy your file will be taking up at 

least three times its size in storage capacity. 

With a 3-site object store, some technologies 

can get this down to 1.5x. Though personally 

I wouldn't advise lower than ~1.7x as you 

still want some resiliency in addition to a 

whole site going down. 

The greatest disadvantage here is that at 

1.5x, or even 1.7x erasure coding over three 

sites, each site has less than a full copy of the 

data. If an object is to be retrieved it requires 

an inter-site network transfer and compute 

overhead to re-assemble the whole object. 

The result: space efficient dispersed object 

stores are inherently slow. 

TEAM WORK 

An object store should be a repository or 

means of sharing data. We shouldn't try to 

replace file storage with objects, rather 

use the strengths of each together to 

achieve more. 




MAGAZINE

TECHNOLOGY: OBJECT STORAGE 

"A growing number of our life science customers are adopting AI and an object-based 

workflow would be great here. For AI, you typically need a lot of data, often more than 

one practitioner can generate. The ability to pull many thousands of output files, tagged 

with what was sampled and observed from potentially hundreds of projects would be a 

treasure trove to AI researchers wanting to expand their dataset." 

Depending on the scheduler and cluster 

management system being used, data can be 

pre-staged onto clusters' local fast scratch file 

storage using API calls as part of the job 

submission script ready for when the job is 

allocated CPU time. 

Similarly, any output written to the HPC's 

scratch file storage can be assembled into an 

object and published to the object store. 

Objects can be tagged with not just date-time 

but also any input parameters and the 

submission script included allowing researchers 

to more easily manage and locate outputs from 

many similar but different iterations. 

As a specialist in HPC and research data 

storage, I view object storage with my HPC 

hat on. In HPC land, much of the largest 

data sets are generated by scientific 

instruments like high resolution 

microscopes, spectrometers and 

sequencers. In an object based workflow, 

files generated by these instruments can 

immediately be objectised, tagged with 

appropriate metadata like researcher, 

project, instrument settings, what was 

sampled, and conditions which the data 

should be shared (example as required by 

some funding bodies). The resulting objects 

are then ingested into an object store 

for preservation. 

If a researcher needs to re-visit the output 

they can do, and they can easily cache 

whole projects on their local systems. With 

data catalogued in an object storage 

solutions metadata management system it 

can be published and shared, giving 

researchers wanting more data - but without 

extra funding - the ability to query past 

projects for similar instruments and samples. 

INTEGRATING WITH HPC 

Although object stores tend to be too slow 

to efficiently support HPC resources, the 

programmatical nature of object interfaces 

allows them to integrate well into 

HPC workflows. 

FUELLING AI 

A growing number of our life science customers 

are adopting AI and an object-based workflow 

would be great here. For AI, you typically need 

a lot of data, often more than one practitioner 

can generate. 

The ability to pull many thousands of output 

files, tagged with what was sampled and 

observed from potentially hundreds of projects 

would be a treasure trove to AI researchers 

wanting to expand their dataset. 

In conclusion although I do not foresee object 

storage replacing file storage for active 

research data, they do offer an excellent means 

to curate and preserve data efficiently in a 

geographically dispersed solution with a 

programmatical interface to support research 

computing systems. 

More info: www.ocf.co.uk 




MAGAZINE 

17

RESEARCH: 

RESEARCH: CYBER PROTECTION 

A WORLD OF RISK 

NEW RESEARCH FROM ACRONIS HAS REVEALED THAT OVER 40% OF ORGANISATIONS GLOBALLY 

SUFFERED DATA LOSS RESULTING IN DOWNTIME LAST YEAR 

Acronis marked its recent inaugural 

World Cyber Protection Week by 

revealing that 42% of companies 

experienced a data loss event that 

resulted in downtime in 2019. That high 

number is likely caused by the fact that 

while nearly 90% are backing up the IT 

components they're responsible for 

protecting, only 41% back up daily - 

leaving many businesses with gaps in the 

valuable data available for recovery. 

The figures revealed in Acronis' 2020 

World Cyber Protection Week Survey 

illustrate the new reality that traditional 

strategies and solutions to data protection 

are no longer able to keep up with the 

modern IT needs of individuals and 

organisations. 

The survey, completed by nearly 3,000 

people, gauges the protection habits of 

users around the globe. The findings 

revealed that while 91% of individuals 

back up data and devices, 68% still lose 

data as a result of accidental deletion, 

hardware or software failure, or an outof-date 

backup. 

Meanwhile on a global level 85% of 

organisations aren't backing up multiple 

times per day, only 15% report that they 

do. 26% back up daily, while 10% aren't 

backing up at all, which can mean days, 

weeks, or months of data lost with no 

possibility of complete recovery. In the UK 

specifically, based on almost 300 

respondents, only 13% back up daily and 

10% admit to never doing it. 

Of those professional users who don't 

back up, nearly 50% said they believe 

backups aren't necessary, a belief the 

survey results contradict: 42% of 

organisations reported data loss resulting 

in downtime this year and 41% report 

losing productivity or money due to data 

inaccessibility. Furthermore, only 17% of 

personal users and 20% of IT 

professionals follow best practices, 

employing hybrid backups on local media 

and in the cloud. In the UK, 51% of the 

organisations surveyed have admitted a 

data loss in 2019 that resulting in 

business downtime. 

These findings stress the importance of 

implementing a cyber protection strategy 

that includes backing up your data 

multiple times a day and practicing the 3- 

2-1 backup rule: create three copies of 

your data (one primary copy and two 

backups), store your copies in at least two 

types of storage media, and store one of 

these copies remotely or in the cloud. 

CHANGING THE GAME 

With increasing cyber-attacks, traditional 

backup is no longer sufficient to protect 

data, applications, and systems, relying 

on backup alone for true business 

continuity is too dangerous. Cyber- 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: 

RESEARCH: CYBER PROTECTION 

"Everything around us is rapidly becoming dependent on digital, and it is time for 

everyone to take cyber protection seriously. Cyber protection in the digital world 

becomes the fifth basic human need, especially during this unprecedented time when 

many people must work remotely and use less secure home networks." 

criminals target backup software with 

ransomware and try to modify backup 

files, which magnifies the need for 

authenticity verification when restoring 

workloads. 

The survey indicated a universally high 

level of concern about cyber-threats like 

ransomware. 88% of IT professionals 

reported concern over ransomware, 87% 

are concerned about social engineering 

attacks like phishing, and 91% are 

concerned about data breaches. In the 

UK however, these numbers surprisingly 

lower to only 15% being highly concerned 

by ransomware threats or social 

engineering attacks. 

The survey also revealed a lack of 

insight into data management, exposing a 

great need for cyber protection solutions 

with greater visibility and analytics. The 

surprising findings indicate that 30% of 


professionals wouldn't know if their data 

was modified unexpectedly. 30% of 


professionals aren't sure if their antimalware 

solution stops zero-day threats. 

Additionally, 9% of organisations reported 

that they didn't know if they experienced 

downtime as a result of data loss this year. 

"Individuals and organisations keep 

suffering from data loss and cyberattacks. 

Everything around us is rapidly 

becoming dependent on digital, and it is 

time for everyone to take cyber protection 

seriously," said Acronis Chief Cyber 

Officer, Gaidar Magdanurov. "Cyber 

protection in the digital world becomes 

the fifth basic human need, especially 

during this unprecedented time when 

many people must work remotely and use 

less secure home networks. It is critical to 

proactively implement a cyber protection 

strategy that ensures the safety, 

accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and 

security of all data, applications, and 

systems - whether you're a home user, an 

IT professional, or an IT service provider." 

More info: www.acronis.com 

WORLD CYBER PROTECTION WEEK RECOMMENDATIONS 

Whether you are concerned about personal files or your company's business continuity, Acronis has five simple recommendations to ensure 

fast, efficient, and secure protection of your workloads: 

Always create backups of important data. Keep multiple copies of the backup both locally (so it's available for fast, frequent recoveries) 

and in the cloud (to guarantee you have everything if a fire, flood, or disaster hits your facilities). 

Ensure your OS and applications are current. Relying on outdated operating systems or apps means they lack the bug fixes and security 

patches that help block cyber-criminals from gaining access to your systems. 

Beware suspicious emails, links, and attachments. Most virus and ransomware infections are the result of social engineering techniques 

that trick unsuspecting individuals into opening infected email attachments or clicking on links to websites that host malware. 

Install anti-virus, anti-malware, and anti-ransomware software. Be sure to also enable automatic updates so your system is protected 

against malware, with the best software also able to protect against zero-day threats. 

Consider deploying an integrated cyber protection solution. It should be a solution that combines backup, anti-ransomware, anti-virus, 

vulnerability assessment and patch management in a single solution. An integrated solution increases ease of use, efficiency and 

reliability of protection. 




MAGAZINE 

19

MANAGEMENT: DRAAS 

DRAAS 

DRAAS: NOT JUST FOR DISASTERS 

MOVING APPLICATIONS TO THE CLOUD? THESE LESSONS LEARNED FROM SUCCESSFUL DRAAS 

DEPLOYMENTS CAN HELP, SAYS SCOTT SPARVERO, CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, ILAND 

Disaster Recovery-as-a- 

Service (DRaaS) is often 

the first step organisations 

take on the path to cloud 

adoption. It is a flexible, costeffective 

way to deliver essential 

DR capability without all the 

CAPEX costs and pains of 

managing a physical DR site. 

With DRaaS, businesses quickly 

realise the benefits of cloud 

services, so it's no surprise that 

many will consider a more 

permanent move to the cloud 

through Infrastructure 

as a Service 

(IaaS). 

But, before you go from toe-in-the-water to 

taking the full cloud plunge for the rest of your 

applications, here are a few lessons you can 

learn from DRaaS. 

Lesson One: Determine what you need, 

before it's too late 

Setting up DRaaS focuses the mind on two 

questions. "What do I need to run my 

business?" And, "How much power and 

capacity do my applications need?" On a 

day-to-day basis, we don't ask these 

questions. Instead, we add incremental 

compute power and capacity when needed. 

But before moving production applications 

to the cloud - whether for DRaaS or IaaS - you 

must calculate your existing resource 

demands. This requires an assessment or 

environment analysis tool, such as the iland 

Catalyst tool, to help predict your current and 

future needs over several months. In many 

cases, these tools enable you to test your 

environment before deploying. 

This assessment and testing in a DRaaS 

model is duplicated easily in an IaaS 

environment. The beauty of a cloud 

assessment is its ability to uncover your 

deficiencies before making the migration in a 

safe, controlled environment, long before a 

crisis occurs. 

Lesson Two: DRaaS is not just for disasters 

Once your DRaaS environment is in place, 

it's there when you need it with an isolated, 

production-ready copy of your environment 

in the event of unplanned downtime or data 

loss. DRaaS also provides a sandbox where 

you can test security implementations, new 

hardware and software upgrades and new 

applications before you unleash them to a 




MAGAZINE

MANAGEMENT: MANAGEMENT: DRAAS 

"Once your DRaaS environment is in place, it's there when you need it with an 

isolated, production-ready copy of your environment in the event of unplanned 

downtime or data loss. DRaaS also provides a sandbox where you can test security 

implementations, new hardware and software upgrades and new applications 

before you unleash them to a production environment. The result is, you can run 

doomsday scenarios to predict outcomes from events that can produce 

infrastructure outages, or simply gain reassurance that an upgrade or system 

change won't produce unforeseen consequences." 

production environment. 

The result is, you can run doomsday 

scenarios to predict outcomes from events 

that can produce infrastructure outages, or 

simply gain reassurance that an upgrade or 

system change won't produce unforeseen 

consequences. 

Lesson Three: Try before you buy - cost, 

performance, resilience 

After deploying cloud-based DR, you can 

begin recording real-world performance 

and capacity metrics that will help give you 

an idea of what it will take to move the rest 

of your infrastructure to the cloud. You can 

predict how your environment will perform 

in the cloud, what it will cost, and identify 

efficiencies and potential risks. 

Your DRaaS experience offers insights and 

analysis of performance and costs of doing 

business in the cloud, which you can use to 

justify additional cloud strategies. 

You can also take this opportunity to test 

the resiliency and connectivity of your future 

cloud infrastructure. For example, if your DR 

site is in another part of the country that 

produces a latency problem - you'll know 

that your infrastructure needs to be hosted in 

a closer data centre. 

Lesson Four: Eliminate the "fear" of cloud 

migration with DR as a stepping-stone 

Starting a cloud migration from scratch can be 

daunting. It's a lot of work to evaluate and plan 

around your workloads, applications, network 

and security and compliance at once. But, if 

you start with a cloud-based DR, you have time 

to work out those critical interdependencies 

incrementally. As you explore what you're 

planning to recover and how you'll orchestrate 

the process, you can ease into conducting 

business in the cloud and become familiar with 

cloud management tools. 

You'll also learn how to work with data 

centres and your cloud service provider. Issues 

such as data sovereignty and security 

standards need to be dealt with on a timely 

basis. Working with your provider before you 

deploy, in terms of management and 

establishing SLAs, will accelerate your time to 

deployment with other cloud services. 

These testing and management experience 

with DRaaS will go a long way to building 

confidence in the cloud, and with working with 

your cloud service provider. It will also give 

you the flexibility to deploy mission-critical 

applications at the best time for your business. 

For example, comfort and familiarity with the 

provider will enable you to plan ahead for a 

cloud migration during an optimal timeframe, 

such as when your on-premise 

hardware and licenses are about to expire. 

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK 

Of course, there are challenges when adopting 

any new operational and financial strategy, 

including cloud services. Time, in particular, is 

always a limited resource. But, as disaster 

recovery is pretty much non-negotiable, at least 

you can kill two birds with one stone if you 

leverage your work with DRaaS to expedite your 

move to IaaS. 

Security concerns can be another impediment 

as you weigh the potential risks of entrusting 

sensitive data that has previously been retained 

on-premises and moving it to the cloud. Seek 

reassurance from your CSP over standards, 

certifications and the level of consultancy they 

can offer to ensure you have the right security 

and compliance in place to make the move 

painless and risk-free. 

Ultimately, moving to the cloud allows you to 

refocus your IT initiatives to deliver value, rather 

than merely keeping the lights on. It also helps 

reduce costs by diverting resources away from 

hardware maintenance and support. By starting 

with DRaaS and learning these key lessons, you 

can lay the groundwork for a future in the cloud 

with an investment that pays long-term dividends. 

More info: www.iland.com 




MAGAZINE 

21

CASE STUDY: COSTAIN STUDY: COSTAIN 

MOVING TOWARD 'CLOUD-AWARE' BACKUP 

LEADING INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS COMPANY COSTAIN IS IMPLEMENTING A 

BACKUP-AS-A-SERVICE OFFERING FROM DAISY 

undertaking for the past six years. As 

such, the 'eBackup - Veeam solution' put 

together by Daisy meets their needs 

exactly. The solution will support Costain 

both in the Cloud and on-premise. As 

always Daisy's aim is to provide customers 

with flexibility and agility and the 

assurance a trusted partner will be 

delivering the solution." 

Daisy Corporate Services (DCS) has 

been selected by Costain as its 

preferred partner to help support 

the development of its Cloud-first strategy. 

Costain is one of the UK's leading smart 

infrastructure solutions companies. DCS 

will provide Costain with a flexible, 

integrated backup solution to support its 

continuing move to the Cloud. The 

solution will incorporate DCS's Backup as 

a Service (BaaS) eBackup product and 

also leverage Daisy's Veeam Platinum 

Partner status. 

Through its focus on integration and 

strategic alignment with other vendors 

such as Veeam, DCS was well placed to 

help Costain on the next stage of its IT 

transformation strategy. DCS combined its 

eBackup Solution with Veeam's simple, 

easy-to-use platform. The platform 

provides customisable features and 

mature relationships with storage vendors 

which enables multi-Cloud backup and 

restore capabilities. These capabilities 

integrate and collaborate with products 

such as Office 365 and open the door to 

unfettered flexibility. Also, Daisy's eBackup 

solution provides the essential, and 

enterprise-class, backup requirements 

needed by UK businesses. 

Costain's decision to select DCS means 

Daisy's relationship with Costain now 

spans over 15 years. The partnership has 

progressed from Daisy supplying simple 

break-fix telephony services to a full endto-end, 

technology-driven solution. With 

solutions built specifically for each 

customer, DCS offers companies like 

Costain the freedom of not being tied to 

one specific vendor with the ability to be 

able to move from one product to another. 

Wendy Broughton, Head of Vertical 

Sales, DCS said: "For the last 15 years, 

Daisy has worked closely with Costain's 

Senior Management Team and IT 

technologists to ensure we understand 

both the business and its IT strategy. The 

insight we have gained meant we could 

align the most relevant technologies and 

services that would work within the Cloudfirst 

strategy Costain has been 

Barry King, Principal IT Infrastructure 

Architect, Costain Group, commented: "As 

Costain continues its journey to the Cloud, 

we look for partners and vendors whose 

technology-vision and strategy are aligned 

with our own. When it came to 

modernising and enhancing our legacy 

backup and recovery solution, we needed 

two crucial elements. First, a product that 

was 'Cloud-aware' and whose own feature 

development could keep pace with the 

'evergreen' nature of the Cloud. Second, a 

trusted partner who understood our 

business, vision and technology roadmap." 

"The Veeam Availability Suite provided 

as part of the Daisy eBackup Service was 

a clear winner," King went on. 

"Furthermore, Daisy's eBackup service has 

allowed Costain to transform our legacy 

backup solution at pace. Costain's 

DevOps team is working side-by-side with 

Daisy to deliver the power of the Veeam 

Availability Suite across our Microsoft 

Cloud, on-premise data centres and 

remote sites. We now have a solution that 

can adapt to our changing IT landscape 

and take advantage of permanent secure 

cloud storage both from Daisy and 

Microsoft Azure." 

More info: www.dcs.tech 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: SDS SDS 

SOFTWARE-DEFINED STORAGE MOVES TO 

THE MAINSTREAM 

DATACORE'S 8TH ANNUAL CONSECUTIVE MARKET SURVEY REVEALS THAT SOFTWARE-DEFINED 

STORAGE IS NOW CONSIDERED A STANDARD TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN IT DEPARTMENTS, WHILST 

SOME DIVERSE ENVIRONMENT USERS ARE STILL STRUGGLING WITH AVAILABILITY, FLEX AND 

PERFORMANCE 

These storage infrastructures include 

software-defined storage (SDS), 

hyperconverged, block, file, object and 

Cloud storage. The expansion of the survey 

into areas such as Cloud hints broadly 

towards DataCore's new hunting grounds of 

hyperconverged, Cloud, and file and object, 

but nonetheless provides readers with some 

interesting peer adoption insights to 

consider in their own planning. 

The comprehensive 22 page report starts 

with a useful summary that sets the tone for 

the detail within the report. Key summary 

takeaways include: 

DataCore has just released the 

findings of its eighth annual survey 

on the state of global adoption of 

software-defined storage (SDS) revealing 

some interesting findings. Given a rather 

more glamorous title this year, the market 

survey, "Storage Diversity Seen as 

Imperative to IT Modernisation Efforts," 

explores the data storage industry's 

thoughts on technology maturity, 2020 

budget planning, current and future 

deployment plans and key concerns for 

data storage management. The number 

of respondents grew YOY by 20%, polling 

550 IT professionals worldwide across a 

range of verticals from a mix of 

organisation sizes, (ranging from 500 to 

5,000+ employees) to relay the 

experiences of those who are currently 

using, or evaluating, a variety of data 

storage infrastructures to solve critical 

data storage challenges. 

73% of respondents have more than 

one data centre and 81% quote usage 

of more than one storage vendor. 

Dealing with heterogeneous storage 

infrastructures continues to be a fact of 

life in most IT departments-yet diversity 

presents its own set of management 

challenges. 

When asked to detail the top three 

capabilities that are currently lacking 

from respondent's own storage 

infrastructure, the survey pinpoints high 

availability, business continuity/disaster 

recovery, and capacity expansion 

without disruption as being key grey 

areas. 

Limited flexibility is recorded as the top 

technology disappointment or false start 

that respondents have encountered in 

their storage infrastructures. 

Block storage continues as a principal 

investment priority in terms of powering 

high-performance, mission-critical 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: RESEARCH: SDS 

applications such as databases and 

other enterprise applications, as well as 

serving as primary storage. 

In terms of deployments, 64% of 

respondents fell within the range of 

"strongly considering" software-defined 

storage to "standardising on it." The top 

business drivers for implementing SDS 

are to future-proof infrastructure, to 

simplify management of different types 

of storage and to extend the life of 

existing storage assets. 

The adoption rate of hyperconvergence 

remains fairly similar to software-defined 

storage and is growing year on year, 

with 60% of respondents falling within 

the range of 'strongly considering' it to 

'standardising on' it. HCI has seen broad 

adoption in recent years, but the 

numbers show that SDS has caught up. 

IT increasingly views that HCI is primarily 

a subset of SDS - another way to 

implement it. 

Containers show strong growth, with 

42% of respondents deploying 

containers in some manner, a high 

percentage for a relatively new 

technology. However, those who are 

deploying containers detail they want to 

see better centralised management 

capabilities, because their top 

disappointments include lack of 

sufficient storage tools or data 

management services. 

Lastly, in a nod toward the importance of 

AI and machine learning to come, 86% 

of respondents agreed that predictive 

analytics is now important in simplifying 

and automating storage management 

One of the most interesting key summary 

findings is the detail behind the top three 

capabilities that respondents want from their 

storage infrastructure but are not currently 

receiving. These are noted as being high 

availability, business continuity/disaster 

recovery, and capacity expansion without 

disruption (see diagram). 

Respondents noted that when problems 

prevent applications from reaching data at 

one location, high availability without 

downtime needs to kick in fast and currently 

fails to do so. While they are seeking "zero 

downtime, zero touch" failover to maximise 

business continuity, respondents identify they 

require capabilities such as synchronous 

data mirroring and failover to mirrored 

copies to occur instantaneously and 

automatically without disruption, scripting or 

manual intervention. Similarly, built-in 

automation should take care of 

resynchronisation and failback to normal 

operations after the original cause of the 

outage is resolved. 

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery 

planning were cited as the second 

disappointment area, with the survey being 

completed before the impact of COVID-19 

hit fully. The backdrop to this 

disappointment is easier to understand than 

high availability disappointments. Previously, 

organisations standardised on a single allinclusive 

model of data storage. But these 

days such singularity is neither practical nor 

affordable, resulting in multiple diverse 

systems that make up the storage 

infrastructure. 

Viable alternatives separate business 

continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) 

functions from the discrete storage systems. 

This is accomplished by up-levelling the 

services responsible for data replication, 

snapshots, continuous data protection and 

roll-backs into a device-independent layer. 

With a uniform control plane for BC/DR 

data services in place, the location, 

topology and type of data storage become 

interchangeable. 

Adding extra storage capacity without 

disruption is listed as the third concern, with 

many forward-looking IT initiatives stopped 

dead in their tracks due to the potential for 

disruption. Yet the survey shows that 

unprecedented data growth continues 

requiring continuous expansion of storage, 

but the technologies involved are often 

simply too different, with very diverse 

methods of operation. This is especially true 

when introducing new options to the 

storage infrastructure. 

The procedures for provisioning capacity, 

protecting data and monitoring behaviour 

vary drastically from one model to another 

- even among those from the same 

manufacturer. However, these difficulties 

may be sidestepped with a universal 

control plane that treats new storage 

options as interchangeable components 

under a common set of administrative 

services. The user employs the same 

familiar operations to allocate disk space, 

safeguard data and track the overall health 

and performance of the storage resources - 

varied as they may be. 

When DataCore released their first survey 

back in 2012, most of the industry was still 

functioning in a hardware-centric mindsetleaving 

users skeptical about the true 

promise of SDS. However, with years of now 

proven success, SDS is well on its way to 

becoming a standard technology that 

DataCore wanted it to be back then, with 

64% of survey respondents falling within the 

range of "strongly considering" to 

"standardising" on software-defined storage. 

"IT teams have rapidly expanded storage 

capacity, added expensive new storage 

arrays, and deployed a range of disparate 

point solutions to keep up with escalating 

demands. This has created a chaotic storage 

layer that continues to be the root of many IT 

challenges," said Gerardo Dada, chief 

marketing officer at DataCore. "We have 

seen that many companies are now 

exploring the power of consolidating storage 

under a single, unified, software-defined 

platform to simplify and optimise primary, 

secondary, and archive storage tiers, 

managed by modern technologies such as 

predictive analytics and artificial intelligence." 

To view the complete report, please visit: 

www.datacore.com/document/8th-annualstorage-industry-report 




MAGAZINE 

25

EVENT 

E VENTS: STORAGE A WARDS 2020 

DECISION TIME, REVISITED 

NOMINATIONS FOR THIS YEAR'S - SADLY POSTPONED - STORAGE AWARDS ARE STILL OPEN AND THE 

EVENT ITSELF IS VERY MUCH STILL HAPPENING. SEE THE FULL LIST OF CATEGORIES ON THE OPPOSITE 

PAGE, AND MAKE YOUR NOMINATIONS NOW 

The Storage Awards, like so many other 

things of course, have been severely 

impacted by the ongoing Coronavirus 

pandemic and the resulting lockdown, and 

as we have already shared with you the 

original event date has sadly had to be 

postponed. 

The new date for your diaries, assuming 

the world has returned to some semblance 

of normality by then, is Thursday 15th 

October 2020, at the same venue, the 

Leonardo Royal City Hotel near Tower 

Bridge, London. 

I'm sure this comes as no surprise to most 

of our readers/sponsors/attendees. It wasn't 

a decision taken lightly, as you can imagine, 

as there has already been a huge amount of 

work done and investment made in the June 

ceremony - but I've no doubt you will all 

agree that in the current circumstances it is 

the only decision that makes sense. 

Please note that nominations will now stay 

open until 13th July, so there is still plenty of 

time to make sure your voice is heard. 

With everything that has been happening, 

there are still lots of sponsorship 

opportunities available, so if you're 

interested in using the industry's biggest 

networking event as an opportunity to 

promote your business, contact Lyndsey 

Camplin on 07946 679853 or email 

lyndsey.camplin@storagemagazine.co.uk. 

We look forward to seeing you all on the 

dancefloor in October. 

STORAGE AWARDS XVI REVISED TIMELINE: 

Monday 13th July – Nominations Close 

Monday 20th July – Finalists Announced, 

Voting Opens 

Thursday 1st October – Voting Closes 

Thursday 15th October – Awards Ceremony 

in London, Winners Announced 

More info: www.storage-awards.com 

26 STORAGE 



www.storagemagazine.co.uk

EVENT 

E VENTS: STORAGE A WARDS 2020 

AWARDS CATEGORIES IN FULL 

INNOVATION OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE MAGAZINE "ONE TO WATCH" AWARD - COMPANY 

STORAGE MARKETING TEAM OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE MAGAZINE "SERVICE TO INDUSTRY" AWARD 

CHANNEL EXCELLENCE AWARD 

STORAGE EVENT OF THE YEAR 

RANSOMWARE PROTECTION COMPANY OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE INNOVATORS AWARD 

DATA PROTECTION COMPANY OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE MONITORING & REPORTING VENDOR OF THE YEAR 

OBJECT STORAGE VENDOR OF THE YEAR 

HYPER-CONVERGED PRODUCT VENDOR OF THE YEAR 

HYBRID STORAGE VENDOR OF THE YEAR 

CLOUD BACKUP & DISASTER RECOVERY HYBRID PLATFORM OF THE YEAR 

FLASH/SSD STORAGE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

CLOUD ENABLER OF THE YEAR 

CLOUD PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

CLOUD MANAGEMENT PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

SOFTWARE DEFINED STORAGE (SDS) COMPANY OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE PERFORMANCE OPTIMISATION PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

CAPACITY STORAGE VENDOR OF THE YEAR 

CHANNEL PARTNER PROGRAM OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE MAGAZINE SOLUTION OF THE YEAR 

(THIS AWARD IS DECIDED BY INDEPENDENT PANEL AND IS NOT OPEN TO PUBLIC VOTE) 

EDITOR'S CHOICE - PRODUCT 

(THIS AWARD IS DECIDED BY THE MAGAZINE EDITOR AND IS NOT OPEN TO PUBLIC VOTE) 

EDITOR'S CHOICE - VENDOR 

(THIS AWARD IS DECIDED BY THE MAGAZINE EDITOR AND IS NOT OPEN TO PUBLIC VOTE) 

THIRD PARTY MAINTENANCE COMPANY OF THE YEAR 

SECURITY STORAGE RESELLER OF THE YEAR 

CORPORATE STORAGE RESELLER OF THE YEAR 

SPECIALIST STORAGE RESELLER OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR 

STORAGE PRODUCT OF THE YEAR 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk @STMagAndAwards May/June 2020 

^ 


MAGAZINE 

27

FEATURE: 

FEATURE: GREEN DATA CENTRES 

MAKING THE CARBON-ZERO 

DATA CENTRE A REALITY 

DAVID WATKINS, SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR FOR VIRTUS DATA 

CENTRES, EXAMINES HOW THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY IS 

DELIVERING ON ITS 'GREEN COMMITMENTS' 

renewable energy in new and innovative ways. 

A good example of this at work is a campus 

in the southwestern tip of Iceland, which runs 

almost entirely on geothermal and 

hydroelectric power. The Icelandic data centre 

owners claim theirs to be the world's first 

carbon-neutral data centre, and the industry is 

suitably impressed. BMW has already moved a 

large portion of its German clusters to the 

campus, and more organisations look set to 

follow. Australia, too, is rising to the green 

challenge in terms of renewable energy - a 

data centre in Port Melbourne now includes 

one of Australia's biggest solar arrays for 

generating its own power, providing customers 

with the opportunity to choose 100 per cent 

renewable power for their IT infrastructure. 

As businesses all over the world seek to 

capitalise on today's digital economy, 

the data centre remains one of the 

most crucial components of business 

infrastructure. However, as global warming 

continues at an alarming rate, many are 

asking whether it is really possible to sustain 

such a power-hungry industry whilst 

simultaneously trying to save the planet. 

The issue is well discussed. It's no secret that 

the data centre industry is a contributor 

towards climate change and the pressure to 

reduce its environmental impact is high on the 

priority list of governments all over the world. 

Today, data centres generate two percent of 

the world's 50 billion metric tonnes of 

greenhouse gasses every year, but the EU 

Commission recently set a "green deadline", 

noting that the industry "should become 

climate neutral by 2030." Customers are 

expecting change too - as businesses ask their 

providers for evidence of robust sustainability 

and carbon reduction measures. 

So how can the data centre industry meet its 

environmental targets while maintaining 

service and delivering on continually growing 

customer demand? 

HARNESSING RENEWABLE ENERGY 

Renewable energy is on the rise. Late 2019 

saw renewables surpass fossils fuels as the 

largest generation source of UK energy for the 

first time. Global supplies from renewable 

power, including wind, solar and hydro are ontrack 

to surpass supplies of gas, oil and coalfired 

stations in the near future - and falling 

prices through technology improvement and 

scale means that it's now more affordable than 

ever to harness renewable energy sources. 

Renewable energy projects are an area of 

continued success for the industry and it's 

heartening to see companies adopting 

Our own green roots are in evidence too. All 

of the energy we consume at VIRTUS Data 

Centres is from 100 per cent renewable 

sources thanks to our partnership with Bryt 

Energy who generates power from wind, solar 

and tidal sources. Our LONDON2 data 

centre facility in Hayes also incorporates a 

borehole dug at the inception of the site, using 

natural water sources for cooling reducing 

demand on the mains water supply. Combined 

with the local climate, and efficient cooling 

technology this delivers low Water Usage 

Efficiency (WUE) for the site. 

When it comes to green credentials it's true 

that every little bit counts. That's perhaps why 

some experts talk about "shades of green" - 

mooring the idea that not all renewables are 

the same - some are greener than others, 

despite all claiming to be sustainable. For 

example, burning bio-mass is carbon neutral, 

but not as sustainable as using wind, solar and 

tidal power. 

For data centre providers in the UK looking to 

capitalise on renewable energy usage, 

Ofgem's Renewable Energy Guarantee of 

Origin (REGO) scheme has been an important 

development. A REGO certificate is meant to 

prove the renewable source of the energy 

provided, offering reassurance to purchasers. 




MAGAZINE

FEATURE: 

FEATURE: GREEN DATA CENTRES 

"Today, data centres generate two percent of the world's 50 

billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gasses every year, but the EU 

Commission recently set a "green deadline", noting that the 

industry "should become climate neutral by 2030." Customers are 

expecting change too - as businesses ask their providers for 

evidence of robust sustainability and carbon reduction measures." 

However, it should be noted that, according to 

Good Energy, it is possible for suppliers to 

trade and purchase REGOs without 

purchasing the renewably-sourced electricity - 

and, by stocking up on REGOs, companies 

can claim to offer 100 per cent renewable 

energy tariffs without holding contracts with 

renewable producers. 

A FOCUS ON COOLING 

It goes without saying that servers can't be 

allowed to overheat, otherwise data loss and 

shortened server life are simply inevitable. But 

keeping servers cool has historically used lots 

of grid-based energy to do the job. However, 

the industry is innovating at a pace, and is fast 

developing ways to keep equipment cool 

while, at the same time, minimising the 

environmental impact. For example, a 

Frankfurt data centre has reduced its water 

consumption through an on-site reverse 

osmosis water treatment plant, and harvested 

rainwater to feed the plants that cover the 

exterior walls and roof. Outside air is used for 

cooling more than 60 per cent of the time in 

this innovative design. 

Google's Hamina, Finland data centre 

makes use of seawater for cooling purposes. 

And, not to be outdone, Facebook adopted a 

cooling system at its Lulea, Sweden data 

centre that uses the chilly outside air to ensure 

its equipment is kept at the optimum 

temperature. At VIRTUS Data Centres, we are 

continually looking to optimise how our water 

cooling technology functions. 

For once, the inclement British weather is 

working in our favour. Free cooling 

capabilities mean that, if the temperature is 

below a certain level, the air in the data 

centre can be chilled without any mechanical 

cooling - just using the ambient conditions of 

the outside air. When you consider that all 

data centres operate 24 hours a day, using 

the natural cooler temperatures at night 

makes perfect sense. 

A CRADLE TO GRAVE APPROACH 

It's not good enough to just concentrate on 

one area like power, or cooling, or 

developing a sustainable supply chain which 

favours suppliers with green credentials. 

Instead, environmental ambitions must be 

built into every aspect of data centre 

construction and maintenance. When it 

comes to construction, BREEAM standards 

examine the green credentials of commercial 

buildings, verifying the performance of 

buildings and comparing them against 

sustainability benchmarks. 

By adhering to BREEAM standards, data 

centre providers can lead with energy efficient 

and effective design from the start, adopting 

the latest in building technologies and 

sustainable sourcing of materials for these 

buildings - ensuring a smarter, cleaner way of 

consuming energy and water. 

Once a building is up and running there 

are plenty of every day concerns to address 

too. Highly efficient UPS (Unlimited Power 

Supply) systems, for example having the 

ability to hibernate parts of the system when 

they aren't being used - saving on 

unnecessary power use. 

The better providers don't just look at 

running the site, but adjunct areas too, such 

as how staff are getting to and from the data 

centre and transport links optimising the use 

of public transport and installing charging 

points for electric vehicles. 

Some data centres are working hard to 

mitigate the environment effects of a 

technology hungry society. There's no doubt 

that business and society will continue to 

demand new technology, but at the same 

time, technology usage will increase the 

demand for data centres to house servers to 

store and share data. In turn the power 

needed to keep the data centres up and 

running will also grow. 

In modern society, energy is a necessary 

evil, yet, it is clear that the industry needs to 

take action and accelerate its search for new 

ways to minimise carbon emissions and 

increase energy efficiency. 

Some data centre providers are marrying 

performance with sustainability - ensuring 

that they are embracing moves like zero 

carbon energy sources, whilst maintaining 

security of supply, service uptime and 

customer satisfaction. 

More info: www.virtusdatacentres.com 




MAGAZINE 

29

CASE STUDY: SADDLEBACK STUDY: SADDLEBACK 

A SMOOTHER RIDE 

A STREAMLINED BACKUP AND RECOVERY SOLUTION KEEPS CYCLING PRODUCTS SPECIALIST 

SADDLEBACK ON TRACK FOR INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION 

there's no crossover time to worry about 

between solutions, allowing me to pinpoint 

exactly where I can restore our data. It 

also gives us greater clarity on our 

backed-up data than our previous 

recovery solution. Having an all-in-one 

platform has really helped minimise our 

downtime and keeps our operations 

flowing smoothly." 

Established in 2004, Bristol-based 

distributor and retailer of eliteperformance 

cycling products 

Saddleback is a multi-million-pound 

company with 53 employees in the UK. It 

boasts a portfolio of the world's leading 

road cycling and mountain biking brands. 

Despite the company's success, its 

backup solution was diverting the IT team's 

time away from helping to grow the 

business. Saddleback's IT & Operations 

Manager John Wager explained: "How we 

addressed our backup concerns was 

certainly counter-productive. The previous 

solution was managed within four different 

consoles and required a great deal of 

admin effort on a daily basis, which 

hindered our operations." 

When looking for a new backup solution, 

Saddleback turned to its Kidderminsterbased 

technology partner of seven years, 

OGL Computer. The managed services 

provider recommended and implemented 

Datto. A fully managed backup and 

recovery solution, Datto has already 

proven itself by not only protecting 

Saddleback when an entire test server 

failed to boot after an upgrade went 

wrong, but also against a malware 

incident. Saddleback was able to restore 

all data from a previous point prior to the 

cyber-attack, quickly and efficiently so that 

business continued uninterrupted. 

The Datto backup solution is highly 

scalable for companies like Saddleback 

that are experiencing rapid data growth. 

The solution consists of one device located 

in Saddleback's UK headquarters that 

backs up all the business' data hourly 

during working hours. A full backup of the 

device is then stored in Datto's UK data 

centre every evening. 

With the new technology in place, 

Saddleback's IT team can now focus on 

other tasks such as international e- 

commerce expansion and supporting 

employees working from home. 

John continued, "Since we've had Datto 

installed, it's allowed us to bring all our 

elements together into a single console. 

The entire operation can now be backed 

up or restored in one place, which also 

means I can create more restore points as 

OGL Computer's Steve Bennett 

commented: "Saddleback needed a robust 

and proven backup and recovery solution 

for a large and soon-to-be growing 

volume of data. OGL has implemented 

Datto to give them peace of mind and 

enable continued success. In addition to 

our backup solution covering all of 

Saddleback's assets, if the worst was to 

happen and a disaster occurred at 

Saddleback's offices, we can either power 

up their server onto their local device, or 

simply power up the server in the Datto 

data centre." 

Using OGL Computer's technology 

solutions, Saddleback is aiming for 

continued success and growth, as John 

explains: "It's essential to back up our 

data, but that should be the norm, 

regardless of the industry. Our IT and data 

may not be the most exciting part of the 

business but it's the foundation on which 

we all work. Our accounts, 

merchandising, warehouse, brand experts 

and creative departments all rely on our IT 

and data, and to lose that would be 

unthinkable. A robust backup solution 

should be paramount for every business." 

More info: www.ogl.co.uk 




MAGAZINE

PRODUCT REVIEW REVIEW 

BUFFALO TERASTATION 6000 SERIES 

Arevolution in the use, application 

and regulation of data requires 

organisations to consider a range 

of storage solutions. Which to select and 

how to integrate them is significantly 

influenced by the data and its intended 

use. Network attached storage (NAS) has 

always been a strong contender and the 

new Buffalo TeraStation 6000 series 

confirms NAS as a flexible, credible and 

powerful storage element and in this 

case, one enhanced by the cloud and 

not compromised by it. 

Available in desktop and rackmount 

with hard drive capacity options, Buffalo 

supplies populated devices which, tested 

immediately prior to despatch, improves 

out of the box operation and support. 

Our test model, the TS6400DN, had 4 x 

4TB NAS hard drives, a 2.1 GHz Intel 

Atom C3538 Quad-Core processor (8 

GB ECC RAM), 1 x 10GbE, 2 x 1GbE 

Ethernet ports and two USB 3.0 ports: 

also a VGA port, a Kensington lock, a 

reset button behind a locked door which 

can be disabled, an LCD panel, a power 

cord securing hook and naming label. 

All Buffalo products enjoy a 3-year 

warranty which can be extended. 

Product benefits will vary by 

application. If ransomware and business 

continuity concern you then the new 

Snapshot feature offers cost-effective and 

rapid recovery that challenges traditional 

backup. Snapshot starts with a full 

backup including meta-data, then only 

incremental backups to capture changes. 

It's actually quite clever; if for example a 

large image is edited, the increment only 

includes the changes, not the entire file. 

We downloaded NAS Navigator2 to 

find and monitor any Buffalo products 

then used the browser based 

management UI to adjust the Snapshot 

frequency and its use of public cloud 

services, including Dropbox, OneDrive & 

Azure. When ransomware has blocked 

file access, restoring data using the last 

known-good increment is a fast way to 

get digital services back online. 

Snapshot is also useful to resolve 

accidental deletion and editing errors. 

Indicative of the thought put into this 

product, the GDPR Right to Erasure 

Policy can be accommodated in 

Snapshots and if policy requires, 

Snapshots can be archived away from 

the NAS. 

TeraStation essentially works out of the 

box but the rich menu of options allows 

an organisation to really tailor the role 

of NAS in its storage estate. On first 

power-up a setup wizard rapidly steps 

through initial configuration and from 

the UI you can configure network shares, 

determine properties of shares and view 

the NAS estate. 

Logging in to the UI provides access to 

all options including those viewed 

during setup, from menu headings, 

Dashboard, File Sharing, Storage, 

Cloud Storage, Applications, Network, 

Backup and Management. The 

Dashboard navigates the Administrator 

to memory, storage, CPU and system 

details along with a colour-coded 

message bar alerting critical conditions. 

Other options are self-explanatory and 

allow File Shares to be hidden and 

configured in high detail, including user 

access, recycle bin use and quotas. 

Groups can be created to aid 

collaboration and RAID modes selected. 

Should the default RAID 6 not suit at 

setup, you can select a different one 

which is implemented incredibly quickly. 

Security and management is covered 

with detailed system logging and AES 

encryption. 

If required TeraStation can be used as 

an iSCSI Device, allowing direct TS6000 

to TS6000 backup without impacting 

network server loads. This is just one 

example of the extensive flexibility and 

choice offered and in a mixed vendor 

estate, TeraStation supports rsync, leaving 

the organisation in charge of its data. 

Product: TeraStation 6400DN 

Supplier: Buffalo 

Web site: www.buffalo-technology.com 

Email: sales@buffalo-technology.com 

Telephone: 0845 3511005 

Price: TS6400DN1604-EU - 

£1269.00 

VERDICT: In a modern, digitally transformed network the challenge for Network and IT managers will be to decide where not to 

deploy the feature-rich NAS TeraStation 6000: its application range, workload capability and flexibility is substantial. 




MAGAZINE

CASE STUDY: 

CASE STUDY: ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING 

CLINICAL PRECISION 

THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF NURSING IS SUPPORTING FRONTLINE NURSES DURING THE COVID-19 

PANDEMIC WITH AN ONLINE INFORMATION HUB 

contribution of the college and its members for 

future generations and enable the RCN to 

supply evidence that demonstrate its role and 

actions during the pandemic. 

Fiona Bourne, Archive Manager at the RCN, 

commented: "A lot of nursing students have 

just qualified, and they're going straight into 

the workforce to tackle the pandemic. Without 

that depth of experience, it's part of our job to 

ensure that they have access to vital clinical 

information as well as the most up to date 

advice and guidance so they can come up to 

speed quickly and safely." 

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), 

the world's largest nursing union and 

professional body, representing more 

than 450,000 nurses, student nurses, 

midwives and nursing support workers in 

the UK and internationally, has partnered 

with digital preservation specialist Preservica 

to ensure vital medical and clinical 

guidance is made available online and 

preserved for its 450,000 members during 

the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The information is critical to supporting frontline 

NHS nurses, midwives, student and newly 

qualified nurses, support workers and retired 

nurses "returning to duty" at this unprecedented 

time. The initiative is helping reassure RCN 

staff and senior decision-makers that records 

documenting decisions and actions of the 

RCN, as well as advice given to members, are 

being actively collected. Actions include the 

RCN lobbying the UK government on the 

availability of testing and PPE (Personal 

Protective Equipment) for its members. 

REAL-TIME DIGITAL PRESERVATION & 

ACCESS 

Led by the RCN's archives team, the college 

has already made more than a thousand 

historical clinical guidance publications 

available online through a secure members 

portal. The very latest information on tackling 

infectious diseases and a full summary of all 

UK government advice and statements is 

available on the RCN website. 

The team is also actively capturing and 

preserving RCN website bulletins related to 

COVID-19, and working with the RCN's 

comms team to harvest testimonials of frontline 

nurses that have been shared on social 

media. The aim is to document the 

The RCN is using Preservica's online digital 

preservation and discovery platform to quickly 

capture, preserve and make material securely 

accessible to members no matter where they 

are or what device they might be using. The 

college is also participating in an initiative 

launched by Preservica called 

#ourcovid19story that is donating additional 

free cloud storage to the user community for 

COVID-19 related collections. 

This has taken pressure off the RCN archive 

team enabling them to ensure information is 

collected and made available in near-realtime 

without worrying about storage space. 

The cloud hosted Preservica application has 

also meant that the team have been able to 

remain productive while working remotely 

during "lockdown". 

Fiona added: "If, as seems likely in the future, 

there is a public enquiry about the 

government's response to the pandemic, we'll 

be able to provide evidence promptly and 

effectively to the relevant body. That same 

evidence will show what the organisation has 

done in terms of advice and support for nurses 

and care workers across the NHS and the 

independent sector, and the contribution of 

key staff to government advisory committees". 

More info: www.preservica.com 




MAGAZINE 

33

OPINION: NAS NAS 

MAKING DATA ACTIVE 

NETWORK ATTACHED STORAGE SOLUTIONS ARE HELPING TO MAKE ORGANISATION'S DATA MORE 

ACCESSIBLE, SAFER AND MORE WIDELY AVAILABLE. TRANSPARENCY MARKET RESEARCH SHARES ITS 

OWN FINDINGS 

For evolving business operations, the 

future of advanced data storage and 

data recovery solutions is bright. 

Exploding volumes of data across all 

industry verticals has provoked serious 

questions concerning the effective 

management of this data, especially when it 

is unstructured. Audio, video, text files and 

websites are examples of unstructured data 

that must be managed effectively. 

When considering unstructured data, 

media and entertainment, IT and 

telecommunications are just some of the 

industry sectors that generate data worth 

millions of dollars. The critical nature of this 

data makes it susceptible to loss due to the 

technical glitches associated with traditional 

storage solutions and establishes the 

requirement for extended storage, close to 

the network edge. One consideration for 

this is network attached storage (NAS). 

NAS YOUR WAY 

Statistics suggest that mid-market and 

enterprise organisations are major users of 

NAS, which they use to provide an 

additional layer of storage to deal with 

capacity. Thus, to serve enterprise 

environments, vendors are being driven 

towards the creation of customised NAS 

solutions. 

Network attached storage solutions find use 

in many other ways. As the volume of data 

explodes, NAS solutions can provide high 

performance and scalability to deal with 

expanding network demands. 

Meanwhile, for businesses, a reliable and 

failsafe data recovery mechanism is essential. 

So much so that businesses readily understand 

that poor recovery of data can lead to severe 

business loss. 

NAS SOLUTIONS FOR SMALL 

ORGANISATIONS 

Network attached solutions are growing in 

popularity. One reason for this is that NAS 

provides an affordable and reliable way to 

store large amounts of data on-premise, 

allowing organisations to retain direct control. 

Network attached storage solutions offer 

organisations easy access to their data, without 

which companies are not able to provide the 

level of service that their customers might 

expect. The repercussions of poor customer 

service due to data access problems include 

loss of sales and impeded team collaboration. 

The possibilities for network attached storage 

solutions to assist with storage-related needs 

are extensive. They include ease of operation, 

scaling, affordability, and easy backup. All of 

these are required by and attractive to small 

and medium size organisations, which explains 

why network attached storage solutions are 

increasingly popular with a wide range of 

organisations. 

Because network attached storage solutions 

can offer significant configuration options for a 

range of applications and uses, adoption is 

likely to increase. For example, small office 

and home office (SOHO) is one sector that is 

benefiting from the use of network attached 

storage and the pricing, performance, and 

other requirements of this sector can be met by 

a number of vendors. 

Some NAS devices are designed for home 

use and they can be used to store multimedia 

files and automate backup. And with the 

growing number of smart homes, NAS devices 

provide important services. They can be used 

to provide centralised storage for internet of 

things (IoT) devices, security systems and smart 

TV. With such increasing adoption of NAS 

solutions, product manufacturers are 

developing compact devices to enhance 

performance. 

NAS: PRIVATE CLOUD FOR 

ORGANISATIONS? 

The advantages of network access storage 

extend beyond these many examples. When 

laying the foundation of a private cloud, NAS 

environments can offer clear cut business 

gains. Users on a local area network (LAN) 

can access the shared storage resource using 

a standard network connection. 

With NAS, data is accessible at all times, 

making it easy for organisations to focus on 

what they want to achieve rather than how to 

do it. This may include collaboration among 

employees, responding to customers in a 

particular or timely manner, or promptly 

following up sales and other matters as 

information is consolidated. 

Whatever the data related challenge, NAS 

has a creative, innovative and easy to deploy 

and manage contribution to make. 

More info: 

www.transparencymarketresearch.com 




MAGAZINE

ST May-Jun 2020

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