ST Nov-Dec 2022

STOR 

MAGAZINE 

STORAGE 

The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

November/December 2022 

Vol 22, Issue 6 

CLEARING THE BOTTLENECK: 

Deploying all-flash for faster restores 

INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE: 

Open Source storage 

ENERGY COSTS: 

Data centre strategies 

RESEARCH: 

The data protection gap 

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

On-Prem Cloud Success Stories 

IDC Interviews with Three IT Leaders Achieving Superior Cost, 

Control and Competitive Advantage 

Powered by Intel ® 

Learn more at 

www.supermicro.com/en/on-prem-cloud

The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

CLEARING THE BOTTLENECK: 

Deploying all-flash for faste restores 

November/December 2022 

Vol 22, Issue 6 

CONTENTS 

STOR 

MAGAZINE 


CONTENTS 

INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE: 

Open Source storage 

ENERGY COSTS: 

Data centre strategies 

RESEARCH: 

The data protection gap 

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

COMMENT….....................................................................4 

Open targets 

06 

08 

RESEARCH: DATA PROTECTION…........................……..6 

Over three quarters of IT leaders see a worrying 'protection gap' between tolerable 

data loss and how IT is protecting their data, according to new Veeam research 

STRATEGY: ENERGY COST REDUCTION………….……….8 

Eric Bassier, Senior Director, Product at Quantum, explains how a move from disk to 

tape storage can save on data centre costs not only in terms of hardware acquisition 

but also in energy usage 

ROUNDTABLE: OPEN SOURCE……........................……12 

In our latest industry roundtable, Storage magazine asked a panel of storage sector 

experts: have Open Source technologies paved the way for faster products and 

services development, and what advice would you give an organisation looking to 

adopt Open Source storage? 

REVIEW: INFINIGUARD….........................................……18 

RESEARCH: HYBRID CLOUD……............................……19 

Fujitsu/CIF research stresses the need to enhance support - especially with legacy 

integration - for organisations looking to make the most of hybrid cloud 

12 

ANALYSIS: SUSTAINABILITY…………….................…….20 

Data centres are more sustainable than recent media stories might have you think, 

explains David Watkins, Solutions Director at VIRTUS 

MARKET FOCUS: MANUFACTURING……..............…..23 

Manfred Berger, Senior Manager Business Development at Western Digital, examines 

the need for enhanced data management in the microfactory of the future 

STRATEGY: ALL-FLASH………..............................………24 

George Axberg of VAST Data explains how affordable all-flash storage can be a 

game-changer for backup and - more importantly - restore 

20 

RESEARCH: REMOTE WORKING………....................….27 

New research published by Arcserve warns that the explosion in remote working is 

leaving data increasingly fragmented and unprotected 

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS: STORAGE ARRAYS………….28 

David Treadwell, Solutions Director at Titan Data Solutions, talks about Seagate's nextgeneration 

Exos X storage arrays - offering twice the performance alongside 

self-healing technology - and how this latest innovation further enhances Titan's 

storage proposition 

24 

MANAGEMENT: HYBRID CLOUD……….…................….30 

Gareth Beanland, General Manager, UK&I, Infinidat, explains how the right approach 

to storage architecture can help organisations rein in their OPEX costs 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk @STMagAndAwards Sept/Oct 2022 


MAGAZINE 

03

COMMENT 

EDITOR: David Tyler 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 

SUB EDITOR: Mark Lyward 

mark.lyward@btc.co.uk 

OPEN TARGETS 

BY DAVID TYLER 

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resulting effects 

The final issue of Storage magazine for 2022 includes an in-depth panel 

discussion around the impact of Open Source technologies on the storage sector, 

and as you'd expect there are some widely varying opinions on show in the 

article. While most of us would agree that OS has helped pave the way for rapid 

development and deployment of new systems, it is hard to argue with the idea that this 

has brought with it some whole new issues of management and support. Is it possible 

that the agility benefits of Open Source are being outweighed by a growing need for 

more internal skills for maintenance, for example? 

One standout comment was from CTERA's Aron Brand: "Open Source technologies 

such as Linux, Kubernetes, and Samba provide IT vendors with a huge base of 

intellectual property they can build upon, totally free. By publishing portions of our 

code on Open Source, we were able to access a deep reservoir of technological 

knowledge and expertise, and benefit from highly professional peer review and 

feedback. If your company has the technical chops for Open Source, this can be a 

great way to leverage the knowledge of the community and reduce your maintenance 

burden." Note the emphasis there on "IF your company has the technical chops" - even 

today, Open Source is not for the faint-hearted. 

In addition there are concerns around security and resilience of systems developed 

using Open Source approaches. Nakivo's Veniamin Simonov argues: "Open Source 

storage software enables businesses to meet their storage needs more affordably than 

proprietary software. However, it comes with a catch, namely global availability… 

making it a central attraction point for cybercriminals. OS software code gets updated 

frequently by developers around the world; unfortunately, not every developer is wellintentioned, 

and this global accessibility makes creating a breach less challenging." 

Nonetheless, the fact is that most large customers today are relying on Open Source 

software to varying degrees, be it commercial or community versions. The benefits of 

the Open Source approach range from reduced costs to increased flexibility and 

shorter times to market. However, reliance on the developer community to bring the 

code closer to completion, or even just to spot and address issues, might be a risky 

strategy. 

Alex McDonald of the SNIA does not mince his words: "I like Open Source projects 

for their initial impact and vision, but they can lead to longer-term poor maintenance 

processes and responsiveness, and a lack of development direction as they mature. 

Faster doesn't mean better either." Perhaps those four words - 'faster doesn't mean 

better' - should be written in large bold type across the first page of any future tender 

that insists on Open Source? 

04 STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

Nov/Dec 2022 

@STMagAndAwards 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk

DON’T TAKE THE 

PROACTIVE 

IMMUTABLE 


OUT 

OF YOUR 

IT SECURITY 

STRATEGY! 

KILL RANSOMWARE ATTACKS WITH 

PROACTIVE IMMUTABLE STORAGE 

Make OneXafe a cornerstone of your IT security strategy 

and you can be sure your data is well protected from cyber 

threats or accidental loss. And, instant recovery from 

clean snapshots means you can confidently SAY NO to 

ransomware demands, allowing you to focus on getting 

your business back up and running fast. 

Complete your killer strategy with immutable storage. 

arcserve.com/onexafe

RESEARCH: 

RESEARCH: DATA PROTECTION 

HEADING FOR AN EMERGENCY? 

OVER THREE QUARTERS OF IT 

LEADERS SEE A WORRYING 

'PROTECTION GAP' BETWEEN 

TOLERABLE DATA LOSS AND 

HOW IT IS PROTECTING THEIR 

DATA, ACCORDING TO NEW 

VEEAM RESEARCH 

New research from Veeam Software 

has revealed that UK and Irish 

businesses are headed for what 

the company describes as 'a data 

protection emergency'. Nearly eight in ten 

(79%) of UKI IT decision makers and 

professionals disclosed gaps between their 

data dependency, backup frequency, SLAs 

and ability to get back to productive 

business when asked by researchers 

compiling the Veeam Data Protection 

Trends Report 2022. 

improve results. 

Despite this, businesses appear to be 

losing the battle when it comes to 

defending against ransomware attacks. 

EMEA data from the Veeam Ransomware 

Trends Report 2022 shows that 88% of 

ransomware attacks attempted to infect 

backup repositories to disable victims' 

abilities to recover without paying the 

ransom, 75% of those attempts being 

successful. 

Meanwhile, 76% of respondents admitted 

falling prey to at least one ransomware 

attack in the past year, with 65% now using 

cloud services as part of their data 

protection strategy to increase resiliency. 

Twenty percent of IT leaders polled say they 

will change backup solutions for cost 

reasons, while 23% are looking to 

Furthermore, one in three organisations 

say that most or all of their backup 

repositories have been impacted as part of 

a ransomware attack. 

While companies report that 47% of data 

centre servers, 50% of remote offices and 

44% of cloud instances are impacted in an 

06 STORAGE Nov/Dec 2022 


www.storagemagazine.co.uk 

MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: 

RESEARCH: DATA PROTECTION 

"While it's becoming increasingly common for 'production' to outpace 'protection,' the 

growing gap between what organisations expect and what IT is placed to deliver is 

worrying. Add in the fact that ransomware is almost a guaranteed threat that every 

organisation must prepare for and we are clearly headed for a data protection 

emergency. To protect your data, you need a secure, immutable backup in place as 

your last line of defence, and while IT departments are under pressure to cut costs, 

data protection budgets should never be reduced. It's a false economy to think you 

can save money on your data protection strategies." 

from the URL below. 

"While it's becoming increasingly common 

for 'production' to outpace 'protection,' the 

growing gap between what organisations 

expect and what IT is placed to deliver is 

worrying," said Dan Middleton, Vice 

President UK & Ireland, Veeam. "Add in the 

fact that ransomware is almost a 

guaranteed threat that every organisation 

must prepare for and we are clearly 

headed for a data protection emergency." 

attack, paying the ransom is not a recovery 

strategy. Nearly one in three (29%) of 

organisations who paid the ransom still 

could not recover their data. However, 

22% of organisations could recover without 

paying any ransom due to having sufficient 

data protection. 

TECHNOLOGIES FOR SURVIVAL 

Eighty four percent of organisations rely on 

backup logs or media readability to assure 

recoverability, meaning only 16% routinely 

test by restoring and testing functionality. 

However, just over half (52%) of 

organisations first restored to an isolated 

sandbox before recovering data after a 

ransomware attack. 

Veeam commissioned a quantitative 

research study into data protection market 

trends, adoption, and perceptions across 

enterprise organisations globally. The 

research has been conducted of 3,000 IT 

decision makers (at organisations with 

more than 1,000 employees) from 28 

countries, using an unbiased quantitative 

approach to ensure impartiality for the 

results. The full report can be downloaded 

"But what's more concerning is the 

effectiveness of attackers to proactively 

destroy their victim's data backup 

repositories," he went on. "To protect your 

data, you need a secure, immutable 

backup in place as your last line of 

defence, and while IT departments are 

under pressure to cut costs, data protection 

budgets should never be reduced. It's a 

false economy to think you can save 

money on your data protection strategies. 

Instead, by investing wisely and taking a 

modern approach to data protection, you 

not only gain an advantage over attackers 

but also increase business resiliency which 

can give you the edge over competitors." 

More info: go.veeam.com/wp-dataprotection-trends-2022 


@STMagAndAwards Nov/Dec 2022 


MAGAZINE 

07

STRATEGY: 

STRATEGY: ENERGY COST REDUCTION 

POWER PLAY 

ERIC BASSIER, SENIOR DIRECTOR, PRODUCT AT QUANTUM, 

EXPLAINS HOW A MOVE FROM DISK TO TAPE STORAGE CAN 

SAVE ON DATA CENTRE COSTS NOT ONLY IN TERMS OF 

HARDWARE ACQUISITION BUT ALSO IN ENERGY USAGE 

Electricity prices have been rising 

steadily for years but due to the 

current global energy crisis, those 

prices are about to skyrocket to levels never 

seen before. This year, in the UK alone 

energy prices increased by 54% in April 

2022 and they were due to increase by a 

further 80% in October - however, the new 

Energy Price Guarantee limited this increase 

to 27%. In the face of ever increasing 

prices, companies are looking for ways to 

reduce their energy consumption and 

ultimately, their costs. 

Depending on the industry, the enterprise 

data centre is a major energy consumer, 

making it a candidate for one of the 

primary sources where a company can 

reduce electricity consumption. Fortunately, 

there's a well-known technology that 

promises great potential for saving energy in 

the data centre: tape storage. 




MAGAZINE



"For years, technology manufacturers have been trying to make the increasingly 

powerful systems and servers within a data centre as efficient as possible. 

However, since the demands on availability and performance for applications 

are constantly increasing, the savings potential is diminished. Apart from 

computing power, data storage is one of the most power-consuming 

components of the data centre. And since the amount of data to be stored is 

increasing exponentially in virtually all sectors, possible savings are not only a 

question of the acquisition costs for the storage servers, but also of the 

exponentially increasing amount of energy that must be used to operate them." 

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION DRIVES 

POWER CONSUMPTION 

Due to ongoing digital transformation 

across all industries, data centres are not 

only becoming more critical to business 

operations, but they are also becoming 

significantly larger and more powerful - 

and consequently, they are consuming 

more and more electricity. For years, 

technology manufacturers have been 

trying to make the increasingly powerful 

systems and servers within a data centre 

as efficient as possible. 

However, since the demands on 

availability and performance for 

applications are constantly increasing, 

the savings potential is diminished. Apart 

from computing power, data storage is 

one of the most power-consuming 

components of the data centre. And since 

the amount of data to be stored is 

increasing exponentially in virtually all 

sectors, possible savings are not only a 

question of the acquisition costs for the 

storage servers, but also of the 

exponentially increasing amount of 

energy that must be used to operate 

them. 

MORE DATA IS BEING STORED - 

BUT NOT USED 

When it comes to data storage, it is 

important to realise that 90 percent of 

all data that exists today has only been 

created in the last 10 years. More 

increasingly, this data is retained for 

compliance or business reasons, but may 

not be used for years, if ever. Common 

storage solutions, however, are geared 

towards the constant availability of data 

- even when that data is not being 

accessed frequently - and mostly use 

power-intensive architectures based on 

hard disks. 

Given this trend of more data being 

generated and stored, regardless of how 

often that data is used, this traditional 

storage paradigm needs to be 

reconsidered if companies are looking to 

save on energy costs. 

The challenge is to create a storage 

architecture that enables effective 

management of data over longer life 

cycles for a wider variety of workloads - 

at a significantly lower cost of 

acquisition and energy consumption. 




MAGAZINE 

09



"The potential savings in electricity used for operation and cooling by using 

tape storage are significant. To calculate the overall TCO savings that can be 

achieved with tape storage, the LTO Consortium has created a useful LTO 

calculator. Using a model calculation where 10 PB of cold data, increasing by 

35 percent annually, is moved from hard disks to tape storage, it arrives at a 

total cost of ownership reduction over 10 years of 86 percent. The savings 

mainly result from lower acquisition and energy costs. Since the price of 

electricity has been rising steadily for years and will probably continue to do so 

in the foreseeable future, the potential for savings from the electricity used will 

become even greater." 

TAPE: CHEAPER TO ACQUIRE 

AND RUN 

The main argument in favour of tape 

storage has always been lower acquisition 

costs. Per gigabyte, the cost of tape 

hardware is about half that of disk-based 

storage. In the overwhelming majority of 

hard disk arrays sold today, all hard disks 

are constantly spinning, even when no data 

is being read or written. Tape libraries, on 

the other hand, use little to no energy when 

data is not being read or written and very 

little energy when it is, with almost no heat 

dissipation that needs to be cooled. 

The potential savings in electricity used 

for operation and cooling by using tape 

storage are significant. To calculate the 

overall TCO savings that can be achieved 

with tape storage, the LTO Consortium has 

created a useful LTO calculator. Using a 

model calculation where 10 PB of cold 

data, increasing by 35 percent annually, is 

moved from hard disks to tape storage, it 

arrives at a total cost of ownership 

reduction over 10 years of 86 percent. 

The savings mainly result from lower 

acquisition and energy costs. Since the 

price of electricity has been rising steadily 

for years and will probably continue to do 

so in the foreseeable future, the potential 

for savings from the electricity used will 

become even greater. 

DRASTIC ENERGY COST 

REDUCTION 

Managing data centre energy 

consumption is a necessary challenge to 

make IT more sustainable. At the same 

time, data availability must also be 

guaranteed. To achieve this balancing act, 

more and more organisations are turning 

to tape storage. 

Tape is cheaper to purchase and 

operate, particularly as organisations 

generate more data that needs to be 

stored but not accessed frequently, 

including energy consumption. 

Organisations looking for ways to improve 

their energy footprint in the face of everincreasing 

energy prices should consider 

tape as an important part of their data 

storage strategy. And as a winning side 

effect, it can even improve an 

organisation's carbon footprint. 

More info: www.quantum.com 




MAGAZINE

ROUNDTABLE: OPEN SOURCE 

OPEN GOALS 

IN OUR LATEST INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE, STORAGE MAGAZINE ASKED A PANEL OF STORAGE SECTOR 

EXPERTS: HAVE OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGIES PAVED THE WAY FOR FASTER PRODUCTS AND 

SERVICES DEVELOPMENT, AND WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE AN ORGANISATION LOOKING TO 

ADOPT OPEN SOURCE STORAGE? 

Open Source (OS) is big business. 

Originally seen as the rebel of the 

IT industry, today not only does it 

command the attention of individual 

developers and small communities of 

programmers, but also that of large, global 

companies, organisations which now 

realise that it makes business sense to 

embrace this approach. In a bid to benefit 

from the growth of OS adoption, 

Accenture, Intel, and Microsoft are just a 

few of the big table players who have 

opened their doors to it. 

It has evolved to such an extent that today 

it sees vendors collaborate and develop 

joint technologies and launch or run 

initiatives around it. The SODA Foundation 

for example, that aims to foster an 

ecosystem of open source data 

management and storage software for data 

autonomy, counts industry innovators such 

as Fujitsu, IBM, NTT, Scality, Seagate, and 

Vodafone among its members. 

For end users, Open Source can be an 

effective path to cost savings. Of course, 

it's easy to try out some free or 

exceptionally low-cost OS software away 

from the production environment. But when 

it comes to deploying it at the front line, it's 

another story. 

That's why any organisation looking to 

adopt Open Source technologies should go 

through an exhaustive check list before 

taking the plunge. "It really comes down to 

examining the potential for success that the 

Open Source platform has for your 

organisation," says Andrew Moloney, Chief 




MAGAZINE


"I have mixed feelings on Open Source 

technologies. Open Source can easily make 

some developments and collaboration quicker, 

but sometimes innovation can get stifled because 

IP can be too free flowing, resulting in holdbacks 

on truly wonderful ideas because of IP 

concerns."- Tim Klein, ATTO 

Marketing Officer at SoftIron. "We see a lot 

of companies adopting Open Source 

technologies and then finding out that there 

wasn't the sort-of 'enterprise-ready' support 

structure to deliver what they needed at the 

production level. In those cases, they have 

to find the support out in the wild, which can 

be a real challenge. Doing some due 

diligence is critical to both the short, and 

especially long-term success of an Open 

Source implementation." 

This is a widely held view among vendors, 

given that OS software often lacks a level of 

refinement and finish in terms of usability 

when compared to commercial systems. 

Paul Speciale, Chief Marketing Officer at 

Scality, explains: "We do see organisations 

using Open Source storage software for 

dev/test, and pilot projects. Many of those 

same projects later elect to use 

commercially supported software in 

production, for a combination of reasons 

related to ease-of-use, features/capabilities, 

and quality of support. Also, from those 

customers who have elected to use Open 

Source in production, the cost of the 

enterprise support offering from those 

vendors often equals the cost of commercial 

licence subscriptions, so any perceived cost 

advantages are quickly negated." The OS 

model, however, still has an extraordinarily 

strong appeal: according to the survey 

paper 'The State of the Software Supply 

Chain: Open Source Edition 2021' from 

VMware, 95% of companies use OS 

software in production. 

KEEP AN EYE ON QUALITY 

Open Source will give an IT organisation 

benefits with regards to cost and speed for 

example, but it may fall down when it comes 

to scope and/or quality. An OS project 

could be realised quickly, but it may also fail 

just as quickly. Matt Starr, Chief Technology 

Officer at Spectra Logic, expands on this 

point: "Open Source projects are great in a 

university setting where innovative science 

projects are encouraged. However, usage of 

Open Source storage by mainstream 

enterprises can pose massive issues. For 

example, when the system goes down, the 

corporate CIO does not want to hear that 

there is no support for the solution because 

it was 'designed over the weekend'." 

Today, a large number of businesses rely 

on Open Source software to enhance the 

delivery of their services, and yet are 

unaware of this. The OS model enables 

solutions to be developed faster, it tends to 

show up bugs quicker, and allows 

organisations to tap into talent pools 

outside their business boundaries. On the 

other hand, it is critical for OS users to 

keep on top of any issues related to the 

product in question, as soon as these 

become known, and to have the ability to 

take the necessary steps to minimise or 

eliminate the resulting impact. 

Rakesh Jain, a representative of the SODA 

Foundation governing board and of IBM 

Research, reinforces these points: "Given 

that Open Source software doesn't come 

with any warranty and official support, the 

organisations have to spend some extra 

effort in ensuring that its quality is up to the 

mark to their expectations. I would 

recommend that the organisations adopting 

an Open Source storage software become 

actively involved in that project's community, 

become a member of the end-user 

community if the project offers one, and 

employ a full DevSecOps approach while 

adopting the software so that any issues can 

be identified early in the cycle and can be 

addressed by the community as well." 

So are there must-haves at the top of the 

planning list when considering the OS path? 

"Implementing enterprise-grade data 

protection, and strong security would be at 

the top of the list," Krista Macomber, senior 

analyst at the Evaluator Group tells us. 

DIPPING INTO THE TALENT POOL 

In today's market, where everyone is looking 

to remain competitive, and maintain or gain 




MAGAZINE 

13


"We see a lot of companies adopting Open Source 

technologies and then finding out that there wasn't 

the sort-of 'enterprise-ready' support structure to 

deliver what they needed at the production level. In 

those cases, they have to find the support out in the 

wild, which can be a real challenge. Doing some due 

diligence is critical to both the short, and especially 

long-term success of an Open Source 

implementation."- Andrew Moloney, SoftIron 

market share, business agility is 

paramount. Whether an organisation can 

rapidly adapt to changes in business and 

customer demands, can spell its success or 

doom. Open Source allows businesses to 

not waste time reinventing the wheel, but to 

focus on a specific aspect of the 

technology they need to develop, building 

on what an exceptionally large, global 

pool of technical talent, has already 

created. This leads to much shorter times 

to market. 

Many vendors have been tapping into the 

OS talent pool for this and more reasons: 

"SoftIron has built its business from the 

outset with Open Source at its heart. Our 

approach enables us to produce the best 

outcomes for our customers without 

locking them into our solution," SoftIron's 

Moloney tells us. "When we eliminate 

vendor lock-in for our customers, it forces 

us to do whatever is necessary to cater to 

their needs or risk losing them to someone 

else. You will see us continually make 

investments into the communities we are a 

part of, including contributing code, 

participating in the ongoing maintenance 

of these communities, and engaging with 

them to solve modern challenges." 

For similar reasons, Speciale explains why 

Scality has been keen on Open Source from 

the start: "Since Scality was founded in 

2009, we've been very involved in open 

communities and development; when object 

storage was in its infancy, Scality was one of 

the first adopters of S3 with an Open Source 

project. In 2017, our dedicated engineers 

built and released Zenko, an open software 

code-base for managing data across AWS, 

Google Cloud, and Azure to avoid cloud 

vendor lock in. Zenko was accepted as a 

SODA Foundation EcoProject and Linux 

developers can use it with the support of 

industry-standards organisations such as 

SODA and the Linux Foundation. We have 

also used OS technology extensively in our 

storage solutions; for example, we leverage 

Kafka, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes, 

MongoDB, and of course our own OS 

Zenko technology for multi-cloud 

enablement." 

PATCH QUICKLY FOR SECURITY 

However, Open Source has its flaws. Just 

like proprietary technologies, OS solutions 

are a target for cyber criminals. And while 

organisations are allocating increasing 

proportions of their IT budgets to security, 

the number of threats is also on the rise - 

fast. According to researchers at 

Cybersecurity Ventures, global ransomware 

damage costs are set to exceed $265 billion 

by 2031. 

SoftIron's Moloney says "Reports of attacks 

on the software supply chain, whether it be 

Open Source or not, have become much 

more common in recent years; but there's a 

level of transparency inherent in OS that can 

at least assist in revealing attacks that might 

otherwise be obfuscated." 

A 2022 end user survey carried out by 

Acronis shows that 69% of EMEA 

organisations allocate between 4 and 15% 

of their IT budgets to IT security, with this 

budget rising to over 25% for 20% of 

organisations in South Africa and 18% in 

the UAE. Despite the OS model being 

open to security risk from code 

vulnerabilities, Spectra Logic's Starr 

believes Open Source solutions may have 

a security advantage against vendors' own: 

"In many cases, Open Source is faster to 

patch against a new-found variant due to 

community collaboration." The key is to 

ensure any Open Source technologies in a 

data centre are constantly patched to 

counteract known issues. 




MAGAZINE


"Open Source technologies such as Linux, Kubernetes, and 

Samba provide IT vendors with a huge base of intellectual 

property they can build upon, totally free. By publishing 

portions of our code on Open Source, we were able to 

access a deep reservoir of technological knowledge and 

expertise, and benefit from highly professional peer review and 

feedback. If your company has the technical chops for Open 

Source, this can be a great way to leverage the knowledge of the 

community and reduce your maintenance burden."- Aron Brand, CTERA 

AVAILABILITY COMES AT A COST 

"Open Source storage software enables 

businesses to meet their storage needs more 

affordably than proprietary software," 

according to Veniamin Simonov, Director of 

Product Management at NAKIVO. "However, 

it comes with a catch, namely global 

availability, that allows anyone to modify, 

examine, and share the software, making it a 

central attraction point for cybercriminals. 

OS software code gets updated frequently by 

developers around the world; unfortunately, 

not every developer is well-intentioned, and 

this global accessibility makes creating a 

breach less challenging. Since OS software 

lacks service and support packages, 

mitigating the impact of such incidents on 

business operations can be very challenging. 

Hedging bets would not be the best action 

when the stakes include critical data, 

considering the global ransomware threat." 

It is not just vendors who are banging the 

security drum. Evaluator Group's Macomber 

also encourages OS users to be aware of 

cyber threats and take all necessary 

measures to thwart them: "Cyber criminals 

do not discriminate. Additionally, Open 

Source software has some unique security 

vulnerabilities that hackers will exploit, and 

often times organisations have lax practices 

when it comes to tracking and updating 

known vulnerabilities of the various OS 

components that they use." 

MULTIPLE PROTECTION LAYERS 

Another independent expert who strongly 

encourages users to protect themselves from 

these threats is Jain, from the SODA 

Foundation and IBM. He says: "[Open 

Source] vulnerabilities are public knowledge 

and need to be addressed on a higher 

priority basis. However, one can plan for it 

by deploying the storage software such that 

there are multiple layers of protection; for 

example, have a setup such that it is not 

easy for adversaries to reach the storage 

software to be able to exploit it. Simply put, 

do not expect to not have any cyber security 

issues, but plan in advance on how to 

address them on short notice." 

When it comes to the integration of OS 

solutions, interoperability can be 

challenging. One of the SODA Foundation 

goals is to have certified suppliers via 

standard specification for products, 

compliance, and certification, and a 

compliance lab for seamless interoperability. 

What would the benefits of such a 

programme be for vendors and for end 

users? Scality is one of the founding 

members of the foundation and Speciale, its 

CMO, shares his thoughts on the 

advantages of having a common 

framework: "Standardisation is a powerful 

way to simplify data management and 

promote data autonomy and mobility for 

end users. That is the reason Scality is one 

of the founding members of the SODA 

Foundation." 

SoftIron's Moloney is also a supporter of 

the idea of vendor certification but sees its 

limitations: "For all of the advantages of 

Open Source, its flexibility comes at the 

expense of complexity. So any attempt to 

abstract some of that complexity away 

through testing and certification to help 

broader adoption can only be a good thing 

for the community as a whole. That said, 

while this type of testing and certification 

can be useful in assuring some basic levels 

of compatibility between what can quickly 

become a huge number of Open Source 

projects, in our experience the real 

challenges tend to happen as you integrate 

into the customer environments, which often 

encompass integrations beyond those within 

the scope of any of these types of projects, 




MAGAZINE 

15


"Open Source storage software enables businesses to 

meet their storage needs more affordably than 

proprietary software. However, it comes with a catch, 

namely global availability, that allows anyone to 

modify, examine, and share the software, making it a 

central attraction point for cybercriminals. OS software 

code gets updated frequently by developers around 

the world; unfortunately, not every developer is wellintentioned, 

and this global accessibility makes 

creating a breach less challenging. Since OS software 

lacks service and support packages, mitigating the 

impact of such incidents on business operations can 

be very challenging."- Veniamin Simonov, NAKIVO 

especially with more proprietary projects." 

Spectra Logic's Starr takes the argument 

further: "I do not think certified suppliers 

should be considered, mostly because of 

the number of certifications out there. For 

example, certifications like this do nothing 

to allow a storage device to connect to a 

secure government network. Those 

certifications are completely different, and 

the same goes for many corporations." 

Having a standardised framework for 

developers to align to could indeed further 

speed up the creation and adoption of OS 

solutions, building on the existing pace of 

technology development and innovation 

inherently linked to the Open Source 

model. This is arguably one of the 

attractions of Open Source, as Jain 

explains: "Open Source technologies have 

had considerable impact on faster 

development, both of Open Source 

projects and tools, as well as proprietary 

software. This is because the processes and 

methods used in the Open Source world 

are time tested and matured, and now 

used in proprietary software product and 

services development." 

Scott Sinclair, senior analyst at ESG 

Global agrees: "Open Source technologies 

have made it easier for new start-ups to 

enter the space, which fuels more 

innovation." 

LEVERAGING THE COMMUNITY 

The Open Source world also encourages 

innovation in the commercial side. "The 

combined efforts of the OS Community 

respond to the needs of that space and 

gradually build out a solution that supports 

all the valuable features and capabilities. 

That process continues until all significant 

needs are met, and restarts as needs 

change over time," comments Curtis 

Anderson, software architect at Panasas. 

"Successful Open Source projects allow 

significant innovation, but they also disrupt 

any existing commercial solutions unless 

those are responsive to customer needs. If 

they are not, the OS alternatives will grow 

much faster and the commercial solution 

will be forced to change and innovate. 

Having an Open Source project in a 

market niche breaks up enclaves 

dominated by solutions that are not 

responsive to customer needs." 

"Open Source technologies such as Linux, 

Kubernetes, and Samba, provide IT 

vendors with a huge base of intellectual 

property they can build upon, totally free," 

explains Aron Brand, CTO at CTERA. "By 

publishing portions of our code on Open 

Source, we were able to access a deep 




MAGAZINE


"Open Source projects are great in a university setting where innovative science 

projects are encouraged. However, usage of Open Source storage by mainstream 

enterprises can pose massive issues. For example, when the system goes down, the 

corporate CIO does not want to hear that there is no support for the solution 

because it was 'designed over the weekend'."- Matt Starr, Spectra Logic 

reservoir of technological knowledge and 

expertise, and benefit from highly 

professional peer review and feedback. If 

your company has the technical chops for 

Open Source, this can be a great way to 

leverage the knowledge of the community 

and reduce your maintenance burden." 

FOR OR AGAINST? 

The experts we spoke to have varying 

views on whether the OS approach has 

accelerated technology development and 

whether Open Source generally is good 

news. Data storage industry expert and 

chair of the Storage Networking Industry 

Association (SNIA) EMEA Alex McDonald 

does not mince his words: "I like Open 

Source projects for their initial impact and 

vision, but they can lead to longer-term 

poor maintenance processes and 

responsiveness, and a lack of development 

direction as they mature. Faster doesn't 

mean better either." 

McDonald's comment finds further 

validation in the reality that once a piece 

of code is shared with the Open Source 

community, a developer may take that and 

build something new with it but, 

depending on the path that software takes, 

it may or may not become a very reliable 

and stable technology. Moloney is singing 

from a similar song sheet when he says 

"There's a double-edged sword here: 

quickly deploying Open Source 

technologies on generic hardware can 

produce some very mediocre results 

without the skilled intervention of (a team 

of) talented engineers." 

Starr brings up an interesting point, 

highlighting the need to look at the entire 

process, from initial development to 

deployment in production environments: 

"Open Source technologies have paved 

the way for faster products and services 

development, but you still need to test OS 

software. So the development efforts are 

faster, but the testing remains the same." 

Tim Klein, president and CEO at ATTO 

has seen the Open Source industry 

develop over the past forty years, and 

believes there are pros and cons to the 

effect this approach has on a solution's 

time to market: "I have mixed feelings on 

Open Source technologies. Open Source 

can easily make some developments and 

collaboration quicker, but sometimes 

innovation can get stifled because IP can 

be too free flowing, resulting in hold-backs 

on truly wonderful ideas because of IP 

concerns." 

This is a very valid point: the moment an 

individual developer, or a company looking 

to profit from their technology, moves their 

code into the OS community to benefit 

from a much larger talent pool and a 

quicker time to availability, they need to 

have a solid business plan to monetise said 

product, one that making the code 

available to other developers will not 

jeopardise. This could indeed slow down 

the development of, or even stop, some 

innovative technologies, possibly to the 

disadvantage of thousands of 

organisations that might benefit from them. 

WHAT NEXT? 

Nonetheless, many vendors have come 

round to the idea that embracing Open 

Source may make more financial sense for 

them than fighting it (looking at you, 

Microsoft). This is in part due to the fact 

that vendors that get involved in OS 

projects will find recruiting talent easier, 

and that most large customers today are 

relying on Open Source software to 

varying degrees, be it commercial or 

community versions. 

So where now? The benefits of the Open 

Source approach are significant and range 

from reduced costs to increased flexibility 

and shorter times to market. However, 

reliance on the general developer 

community to bring the code closer to 

completion, or even just to spot and 

address issues, can be a risky strategy. 

Vendors need to ensure they put all the 

necessary policies in place to confidently 

bring a technology to market that their 

customers can adopt and trust. What 

about end users? In order to benefit from 

the advantages of the many Open Source 

technologies available today, they would 

be wise to pick solutions that have some 

form of commercial support to avoid 

encountering problems that may have a 

direct - and possibly significant - impact 

on their productivity and, ultimately, 

bottom line down the road. ST 




MAGAZINE 

17

PRODUCT REVIEW REVIEW 

INFINIDAT INFINIGUARD 

The alarming rise in 

ransomware attacks 

shows clearly that many 

enterprises are spending too 

much time trying to secure the 

network perimeter and not 

enough on storage system 

cyber resilience. This apparent 

disconnect between storage 

and cybersecurity is costing 

them dearly with many 

organisations having to pay 

huge ransom fees to recover 

encrypted data. 

Infinidat specialises in cyber storage 

resilience on its InfiniGuard solution with 

InfiniSafe technology, which provides a wealth 

of data protection and anti-ransomware 

measures. These include immutable snapshots 

that can never be modified or deleted, logical 

air-gapping, and a fenced and isolated 

forensic environment. 

The solution delivers an industry leading 

ingest rate of up to 180TB/hour with the latest 

B4320 modern data protection system offering 

dedicated InfiniSafe space and backup space 

totalling around an 85PB (50PB for backup 

and 30PB for InfiniSafe) effective storage 

capacity. A key feature is Infinidat's near 

instantaneous data recovery as irrespective of 

the size of the backup store, data recovery is 

always 20 minutes or less - and that's 

guaranteed. In fact, when Infinidat launched 

the B4320, it demonstrated recovery of a 

13PB Veeam backup dataset in only 12 

minutes and 55 seconds. 

InfiniGuard has a solid foundation being built 

on the InfiniBox storage platform, thus 

delivering all of its enterprise features in 

performance, resiliency and data availability to 

the InfiniGuard solution. 

Infinidat dispels the notion that enterprise 

storage is difficult to manage as it presents a 

very shallow learning curve. Delivered turnkey 

with InfiniGuard pre-installed, engineers install 

drives on-site, apply updates and run a service 

check, with the handover measured in hours 

rather than days. 

InfiniGuard presents an intuitive web 

management console and to be production 

ready, customers only need to apply 

appropriate network addresses to the integral 

deduplication engines (DDEs) and replication 

services, if needed. Creating NAS shares is a 

breeze as you choose a protocol, and mount 

it ready for use by your chosen application 

with Infinidat supporting all major backup 

software vendors. 

InfiniGuard presents three DDEs, two primary 

and one for standby duties. The standby DDE 

delivers full failover services should either 

primary DDE fail and Infinidat guarantees that it 

will take no more than 20 minutes to migrate 

all data, users, shares and 

DDE personalities across. 

Snapshot recovery is swift, a 

simple click to choose your 

point in time and hit the 

Recover button. Infinidat 

doesn't miss a beat as a 

system recovery snapshot is 

also taken during this phase to 

ensure you can go forward to 

where you were after recovery. 

Logical air-gapping is 

achieved internally at both the 

storage and networking level. At the rear of 

the system are twelve 10-Gigabit or FC ports 

dedicated to each DDE for handling 

production and private networks. Using 

VLANs or physical switches, the DDE can be 

completely isolated from the production 

network. 

The standby DDE actually has a dual 

purpose. Its complete isolation allows you to 

create a safe forensics environment and carry 

out essential tasks such as data recovery 

validation and failover testing without impacting 

the production network. 

Storage systems can be monitored with the 

InfiniMetrics application, a user-friendly web 

powered AIOps tool for all Infinidat systems for 

the life of the products. It provides a wealth of 

operational information including data sizes, 

throughput, reduction rates, attached clients 

and backup operations. 

Product: InfiniGuard 

Supplier: Infinidat 

Web site: www.infinidat.com 

Sales: info@infinidat.com 

VERDICT: Enterprises worried about ransomware attacks can rest easy with Infinidat's innovative InfiniGuard on their side. Its clever combination 

of multiple deduplication engines, immutable snapshots and air-gapped forensics networks provide essential protection and Infinidat's 

highly efficient data recovery services will have your production networks up and running in a few minutes with satisfaction guaranteed. 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: HYBRID CLOUD 

PUBLIC CLOUD STAGNATING IN FAVOUR OF 

HYBRID CLOUD 

FUJITSU/CIF RESEARCH STRESSES THE NEED TO ENHANCE SUPPORT - ESPECIALLY WITH LEGACY 

INTEGRATION - FOR ORGANISATIONS LOOKING TO MAKE THE MOST OF HYBRID CLOUD 

increasingly common." 

This need for greater support is especially 

pertinent when looking to the future: 88% 

expect to accelerate their cloud adoption 

in the next 12 months, while 42% consider 

cloud migration one of their organisation's 

most important IT projects (second only to 

cybersecurity on 58%). Further, 80% cite 

cloud infrastructure as an important 

technology over the next five years, while 

68% mention cloud SaaS. 

New research from Fujitsu UK - in 

conjunction with the Cloud 

Industry Forum (CIF) - has 

revealed that 60% of organisations have a 

hybrid cloud strategy in place, comfortably 

ahead of the 36% that embrace a cloudfirst 

arrangement. This underlines how the 

appetite for public cloud is decreasing as 

more businesses opt for the convenience 

and flexibility of hybrid, indicating that 

cloud providers should optimise their 

hybrid offerings to meet this demand. 

The data was taken from the joint Fujitsu 

UK and CIF white paper 'The 

transformational impact of cloud'. While 

the desire to embrace cloud - and in 

particular hybrid cloud - remains high, the 

research also found that 58% of 

respondents said their company struggles 

to keep up with new cloud technology, 

while 57% said cloud has introduced more 

complexity to the organisation. 

The prime concern on the minds of 

leaders is that new technology will fail to 

integrate with legacy technology 

(mentioned by 44%), which demonstrates 

the need for better support for companies 

increasing their cloud adoption. 

Graham Bromham, Head of Regional 

Sales & Service Providers at Fujitsu UK, 

commented on the research findings: 

"Cloud continues to offer great potential in 

helping companies transform their 

approach to IT and deal with future 

challenges, providing they receive support 

to make these projects a long-term 

success. It is clear from the research that 

many businesses still need assistance in 

making this happen, particularly when it 

comes to integrating legacy applications 

as cloud-based approaches become 

Bromham added: "A company's choice of 

cloud approach is very much a workloaddependent 

decision. There are 

applications and workloads perfectly 

suited to a cloud or SaaS approach, but 

the time, risk and cost associated with 

refactoring and migrating legacy 

workloads are often barriers to successful 

cloud adoption." 

He concluded: "This is why the appetite 

for hybrid cloud is particularly strong. The 

most successful cloud providers will be 

those who can deliver this effectively for 

their customers as they decide the future 

direction of their IT estate." 

Readers can download the full report 

from the following URL: 

https://cloudindustryforum.org/wp- 

content/uploads/2022/09/The- 

Transformational-Impact-Of-Cloud- 

2022.pdf 

More info: www.fujitsu.com/uk 




MAGAZINE 

19

ANALYSIS: SUSTAINABILITY 

DATA CENTRES: THE ONGOING JOURNEY TO 

SUSTAINABILITY 

DATA CENTRES ARE MORE SUSTAINABLE THAN RECENT MEDIA STORIES MIGHT HAVE YOU THINK, 

EXPLAINS DAVID WATKINS, SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR AT VIRTUS 




MAGAZINE


If you believe the mainstream media 

headlines, the data centre industry has had 

a bad few months. The news that Thames 

Water was looking into the impact of data 

centres on water supplies was closely followed 

by a story on house building being halted in 

some north London boroughs due to data 

centre-related electricity capacity issues. 

However, the truth is that both issues have 

been sensationalised by the British media, 

with limited investigative reporting into 

whether data centres were actually the culprit 

of their accusations. Whilst many of us in the 

industry, felt (rightly) that the stories were 

unjustified, they did serve to shine a spotlight 

on how providers can better promote all the 

work that has and is being undertaken to 

mitigate the impact that data centres are 

having on the environment. 

In fact, the data centre industry has long 

been committed to ensuring sustainability and 

efficiency, with providers working hard to use 

resources responsibly. Companies in the 

sector are committed to innovative and 

operate sustainability with renewable 

strategies that include 'green' renewable 

sources of power, rainwater harvesting, zero 

water cooling systems, recycling, waste 

management and much more. 

The reality is that society and businesses 

need data centres as the critical infrastructure 

underpinning the economy and modern life, 

so it's important for people outside of the 

industry to recognise that data centres are 

fundamental to how everything functions. We 

already know that without them, businesses, 

education, hospitals and more simply couldn't 

operate, but this is not widely understood 

beyond our industry. 

COOLING AND SUSTAINABILITY GO 

HAND-IN-HAND 

In order to keep data centres working 

efficiently, effective cooling systems are vital to 

maintain optimum conditions in terms of 

temperature and humidity. And today, more 

and more providers are turning to chilled 

water systems as an economical, effective and 

efficient way to maintain cooling. 

It's important that the general public 

understands that the water used for cooling 

systems is mostly sourced sustainably, for 

example from bore holes or using unpurified 

water: NOT the supply as we rely upon for 

household use. What's more, the majority of 

large data centres use 'closed loop' chilled 

water systems, meaning that water is charged 

into the system during construction and then 

continually circulated within a facility, rather 

than needing new water consistently pumped 

into the building. 

Indirect evaporative cooling does require 

water periodically for adiabatic functionality, 

but it is still more energy efficient. This type of 

cooling uses fresh air from outside the 

building, which is filtered and then delivered 

into the data centre for cooling purposes. This 

only requires the use of fans, so the overall 

energy consumption is lower. As outside 

temperatures rise, firstly compressors are 

brought on-line to provide additional cooling, 

and only at high temperatures (24°C or 

higher) is water consumed. Given that data 

centres operate around the clock, and 

temperatures above 24°C typically only occur 

for a few hours a day across a small number 

of months per year in the UK, water usage is 

minimised. 

Today, adiabatic cooling makes up a 

relatively small percentage of the overall 

cooling infrastructure in the UK, but 

promisingly the sector is increasingly looking 

to deploy this method more widely, using 

alternative water sources, without impacting 

mains supplies. 

Immersion cooling systems is another 

technology that is gaining traction. This 

involves bespoke IT hardware, that is 

immersed in dielectric liquids. These liquids 

are much better thermal conductors than both 

air and water, and do not require as much 

supporting infrastructure to ensure the IT 

equipment stays at the right operating 

temperature. This is not suitable for standard 

IT equipment yet but is an option for higher 

density computing requirements. 

LOOK AGAIN AT POWER 

CONSUMPTION 

It is well known that data centres require 

significant power to run. But, contradicting 

some of the headlines, energy consumption is 

another area where significant environmental 

strides have already been made. 

Renewable energy has been a game 

changer for the industry. For example, VIRTUS 

uses 100 per cent certified renewable energy, 

from sources including hydro, wind and solar. 

And encouragingly, renewable energy is now 

not only more affordable than fossil fuels, but 

is often more reliable too. 

Diesel powered generators continue to be 

the main source of standby energy for data 

centres, and are also focus areas for 

sustainability. Research into alternative fuel 

sources is well under way. The use of 

Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil instead of diesel 

in generators has the potential to reduce 

carbon emissions by up to 90 per cent as well 

as eliminating sulphur dioxide emissions and 

reducing harmful nitrogen oxides, and there 

are a number of these deployments already 

operational. 

Data centres are highly focussed on energy 

efficiency when it comes to their day-to-day 

operations too, for example limiting power 

use to essential services only. Most data 

centres will use LED fittings to reduce energy, 

supplemented with occupancy sensors in 

areas that are frequently unmanned so lights 

will be automatically activated only when 

someone is present. This can reduce lighting 

costs in internal areas by 60 per cent 

compared with manual systems on. 

Data centre investment is also leading to 

significant improvements to the national 

mains grid, with data centres often directly 

funding the additional resources required, 

such as substations, to deliver the required 




MAGAZINE 

21


"Many data centre providers are demonstrably driving 

change and leading by example, showing other 

sectors that it is possible to 'green' even the most 

power intensive industry. Ultimately, the misleading 

headlines are doing a disservice to an industry which 

is committed to boosting sustainability and mitigating 

its environmental impact. However, it must be 

recognised that, as well as the significant progress, 

there is still work to be done and providers are setting 

themselves ambitious sustainability targets as they 

work to meet net zero obligations in the years ahead." 

power. The industry also has a long-term 

planning strategy to ensure capacity is 

available, so future power is secured 

ahead of time to limit clashes with local 

requirements. 

Combined with investments in Power 

Purchase Agreements (PPA) projects, this is 

increasing the availability of renewables, 

reducing the use of fossils fuels and the need 

to 'import' energy sources - all of which aids 

the UK's path to energy independence. And, 

as the demand for energy increases with the 

transition to electric vehicles, grid 

enhancement is essential. 

AN ONGOING JOURNEY 

Many data centre providers are demonstrably 

driving change and leading by example, 

showing other sectors that it is possible to 

"green" even the most power intensive 

industry. Ultimately, the misleading headlines 

are doing a disservice to an industry which is 

committed to boosting sustainability and 

mitigating its environmental impact. 

However, it must be recognised that, as 

well as the significant progress, there is still 

work to be done and providers are setting 

themselves ambitious sustainability targets 

as they work to meet net zero obligations in 

the years ahead. 

Data centre providers are laser focused 

on their ongoing sustainability journey and 

are making even more resource and 

operational efficiencies - implementing 

scalable data centre designs and extending 

the lifecycle of their technology through a 

circular economy. They are already looking 

further afield than their own sustainability 

initiatives and tackling their wider partner 

network and supply chain (addressing those 

all-important Scope 2 emissions). 

We know that by harnessing the 

brightest minds and cutting-edge 

technology, there's plenty more good work 

to come as data centre providers commit 

to a greener future. 

More info: www.virtusdatacentres.com 




MAGAZINE

MARKET FOCUS: FOCUS: 

MANUFACTURING 

BUILDING THE MODERN 

MANUFACTURER 

MANFRED BERGER, SENIOR MANAGER BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AT 

WESTERN DIGITAL, EXAMINES THE NEED FOR ENHANCED DATA 

MANAGEMENT IN THE MICROFACTORY OF THE FUTURE 

The pandemic has had a significant impact 

on the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), 

particularly when it comes to productivity 

and fulfilment, pushing firms to digitalise 

quickly and mounting demands to fulfil a 

backlog of orders. 

According to the Product Lead Time Index, 

manufacturing and industrial machinery firms 

were one of the top industries to slash their 

lead times on product fulfilment compared to 

pre-pandemic levels, dropping by 47.76% 

between 2019/20 and 2021/22. It's clear that 

manufacturing has a keen focus on cutting 

lead times, and innovation must continue to 

ensure lead times don't go through the roof. 

One solution making inroads on the 

manufacturing scene is the microfactory - a 

small, modular plant that offers a proximal, 

just-in-time option for manufacturing. Being 

data powered, (alongside some other 4IR) this 

new kind of facility bucks the economies of 

scale of more traditional factories, and 

embraces a small-scale, localised solution to 

global supply chain challenges. 

However, whilst microfactories do allow 

significant reductions on lead times, what 

impact does it have on data storage? In most 

of the cases, new data-intensive technologies 

require more information to be stored, and 

new solutions to be implemented, and 

microfactories are no different. 

Microfactories thrive on their speed, agility, 

and 'shiftability'. Much like their standardised 

counterparts, microfactories optimise 

operations by leveraging technologies 

including data science, IoT sensors, and 

machine learning. Where they stand apart, 

though, is in their agility and modularity. Their 

smaller scale means that facilities can be 

reconfigured rapidly, allowing them to adjust 

between products or to open a new operations 

site overnight. 

A prime example of a microfactory is 3D 

printing. Being able to rapidly change what it 

produces in a short time, generally only shifting 

one or two components, is the baseline of what 

a microfactory should be. However, 3D printers 

need to mine and query hot data very quickly, 

something flash storage can do well. 

Manufacturers will also need a record of every 

part, machine, person, and movement that 

went into the creation of the end product. 

From hot data to warm/cold data, the data 

storage required to run a microfactory is 

immense and requires unique solutions. 

MICROFACTORIES & DATA ANALYSIS 

Microfactories are ultimately powered by data, 

while also producing valuable data in 

themselves. The first step in creating an IT 

environment for microfactories is to plan for 

huge quantities of data. Nearly every aspect of 

a microfactory is a data point collected and 

analysed to improve the additive 

manufacturing process. No longer just 

machines, IoT devices come with the ability to 

learn and interact with their spaces. While this 

data collection is prevalent throughout the 

Fourth Industrial Revolution, microfactories are 

designed with this consideration from the 

ground up and leverage their smaller scale 

when building their data storage architecture. 

Every cycle, every day, every product, and 

every process produce data that is captured 

and analysed in real-time. One example is the 

close monitoring of temperature in these closed 

loop environments, which can have a huge 

impact on the consistency, dimensional 

deviations, and quality of manufactured goods. 

Leveraging factory data, operators can quickly 

identify an issue and address it, with minimal 

disruption to operations. Analysing the data 

and changing something as small as a single 

overheated component can prevent faulty 

products and save materials, time, and money, 

an ideal implementation of 4IR technologies. 

ENHANCED STORAGE FOR 

ENHANCED DATA 

However, with this enhanced use of data, there 

must be consideration given to the storage of 

said data. As we continue to automate and 

innovate in industry, and dissipate out-of-date 

processes, our data storage needs become 

greater than ever. 

Attempting to grow and modernise without the 

storage facilities in place and the infrastructure 

to handle the large swathes of data will cause 

your system to function at a less than 

productive rate. 

Ultimately, to form a truly successful 

microfactory, you must ensure that your storage 

needs can be met, and your foundation has 

been laid to easily scale for a long and 

successful service. 

More info: www.westerndigital.com 




MAGAZINE 

23

STRATEGY: ALL-FLASH 

FASTER RESTORES: CLEARING THE 

BOTTLENECK 

GEORGE AXBERG OF VAST DATA EXPLAINS HOW AFFORDABLE ALL-FLASH STORAGE CAN BE A 

GAME-CHANGER FOR BACKUP AND - MORE IMPORTANTLY - RESTORE 




MAGAZINE


It seems like every week another 

ransomware attack against a major 

company is in the news-and those are 

only the attacks announced publicly. 

Gartner expects at least 75% of IT 

organisations to face one or more 

ransomware attacks by 2025. And many 

of the IT leaders I meet operate with a 

"not if or when, but how many" mindset. 

It used to be enough for organisations 

to develop a hardened network 

perimeter that would satisfy security 

concerns, but the interconnectedness of 

today's various on-prem, hybrid cloud, 

and SaaS applications present a massive 

opportunity for bad actors to infiltrate 

your network. 

That means the primary DR 

consideration for almost any 

organisation is how fast you can recover. 

Having backup data is only part of the 

equation. You must ensure you can 

quickly restore those backups - and this 

is where legacy backup targets cannot 

help you. 

THE EVOLVING NATURE OF 

RESTORES 

We used to think about RTO objectives 

in hourly timeframes, but today's 

sophisticated attacks that lock up entire 

IT estates have shifted such intervals to 

weeks, if not months. And while the 

nature of ransomware attacks is well 

understood, the path to recovery is less 

clear. Some organisations will pay the 

attackers the ransom to (presumably) 

regain access to their data, while others 

may choose to immediately start 

restoring data to their last known noninfected 

state. If you can do the latter 

well, you can save your organisation 

massive ransom payouts, and more 

importantly, protect yourself from future 

attacks. 

The path to fast restores is typically 

dependent on a few variables: 

"Disk doesn't do random IO well, thanks to timeconsuming 

disk head movement. And when you 

consider that a large dataset was 500GB when 

PBBAs came to market in the early 2000s, it's no 

wonder that today's backups weigh heavily upon the 

limitations of the architecture. The result is that 

large, full system recoveries via legacy backup 

appliances can last weeks. In fact, let's consider it a 

modern data protection truth: deduplication on hard 

drives will never work for fast restores." 

1. Your network topology, or the path 

your data takes to move from source 

to destination and the time it needs 

to get there. Organisations often 

optimise bandwidth through data 

reduction, load balancing, throttling, 

etc. 

2. Your number of data movers 

(physical or virtual), i.e. the backup 

agents running on your servers. 

Increasing the number of data 

movers in a system enables multistreamed 

restores. 

3. Your landing zone, or a clean 

network destination for the recovery 

of your immutable data, or 

indestructible snapshots, in the event 

of an attack. 

4. Your data protection target. In 

enterprise data centres this is most 

often the bottleneck, as traditional 

backup appliances read (restore) 

data about 20% as fast as they write 

(backup) data. Therefore, even if you 

do everything else right (steps 1-3 




MAGAZINE 

25


above), restores are only as fast as 

the read performance of the backup 

target. 

Purpose-built backup appliances 

(PBBAs) simply cannot deliver strong 

read performance. While they can write 

data quickly to disk and deduplicate it to 

optimise for capacity, these same 

characteristics inherently limit them from 

restoring large-scale data sets quickly, 

which is the name of the game in the 

ransomware era. PBBAs are a bit like 

Hotel California in that way: easy to get 

data in for a backup, but hard to get it 

out for a restore. 

In fact, the smaller the system block 

size (Dell EMC PowerProtect/Data 

Domain has variable block lengths 

between 4kb and 8kb, for example) the 

more individual blocks that must be 

rehydrated via random IO when 

restoring data. Disk doesn't do random 

IO well, thanks to time-consuming disk 

head movement. (Read more about the 

"rehydration tax" in conventional storage 

systems in our data reduction white 

paper: https://vastdata.com/all-datareduction-is-not-created-equal-whitepaper/) 

And when you consider that a large 

dataset was 500GB when PBBAs came to 

market in the early 2000s, it's no wonder 

that today's backups weigh heavily upon 

the limitations of the architecture. The 

result is that large, full system recoveries 

via legacy backup appliances can last 

weeks. 

In fact, let's consider it a modern data 

protection truth: deduplication on hard 

drives will never work for fast restores. 

It's for this reason that Data Domain and 

other legacy PBBAs never discuss restore 

performance in their spec sheets, leaving 

customers to discover their recovery 

limitations at the worst possible times. 

Backup throughput and fitting your 

backup jobs into tight windows is 

important, but as my colleague Howard 

Marks likes to say, "You only back up to 

restore". 

Therefore, it's imperative to ensure that 

your backup storage has the 

performance to meet your RTO needs. 

For many organisations, this means a 

backup target built on all-flash storage 

while leveraging global data algorithms 

that optimise cost without impacting 

performance. 

ALL-FLASH RESTORES ARCHIVE 

ECONOMICS 

I joined VAST to lead our data protection 

division and help customers understand 

how they could use an all-flash storage 

system for all of their data - backups and 

archives included. 

VAST has flipped the script on backup 

target restore performance: the 

fundamental differences in our DASE 

architecture allows our system to read 

data 8x faster than we write it. And so 

whereas legacy PBBAs like Dell 

PowerProtect/Data Domain are almost 

always where restores bottleneck, VAST 

Universal Storage is the fastest part of 

the restore function. 

But performance is just one part of the 

equation. With VAST customers enjoy an 

exabyte-scale platform with a single 

global data reduction pool, rather than 

having multiple dedupe pools with the 

same data on each pool. 

Moreover, our architecture and data 

algorithms enable unprecedented levels 

of flash affordability and system 

longevity that eliminate the complexity of 

buying, deploying, and managing 

backup infrastructure. No longer do 

customers have to balance cost versus 

restore performance or worry about 

capacity and scale. 

More info: www.vastdata.com 




MAGAZINE

RESEARCH: 

RESEARCH: REMOTE WORKING 

REMOTE WORKING CREATES 

'DATA VULNERABILITY GAP' 

NEW RESEARCH PUBLISHED BY ARCSERVE WARNS THAT THE 

EXPLOSION IN REMOTE WORKING IS LEAVING DATA INCREASINGLY 

FRAGMENTED AND UNPROTECTED 

Arcserve has announced findings from its 

annual independent global research 

study showing UK businesses are 

overlooking remote working in their data 

backup and recovery plans. The report finds 

that many organisations fail to ensure 

operational compliance and business continuity 

when faced with fragmented data and 

dispersed technologies. 

increased the complexity of managing and 

protecting data: 

80% of ITDMs said that hybrid and multicloud 

strategies increase the complexity 

and vulnerability of data flow 

81% say changes in compliance and data 

privacy have impacted them. The most 

significant impact is an increase in costs 

In the research study of experiences and 

attitudes of UK IT decision makers (ITDMs), 

participants reported whether they had a 

backup and recovery solution in place for 

remote workers: 

One-third have backup and recovery 

systems in place for all remote employees 

10% said they had no backup and recovery 

solution in place for any of their remote 

workers. 

55% had plans in place for some workers 

but not all 

For those companies that do a remote 

backup, there was a considerable variance in 

the level of importance placed on them: 

42% believe that there is no difference in 

backing up on-site employees 

47% of UK companies said they had better 

systems in place for on-site employees 

Only 11% said they had better backup 

systems for remote employees 

The study also looked at whether the rise in 

hybrid working and multi-cloud operations has 

The research was conducted by Dimensional 

Research and went to 1,121 IT decisionmakers. 

All participants had a budget or 

technical decision-making responsibility for 

data management, data protection, and 

storage solutions at a company with 100 - 

2,500 employees and at least 5 TB of data. 

The survey was fielded in Australia, New 

Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, 

Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United 

States, and Canada. 

Florian Malecki, executive vice president of 

marketing at Arcserve commented on the 

findings: "Ransomware attacks have skyrocketed 

in organisations with employees in 

less-secure home-office environments and 

much more data in the cloud. We encourage 

companies to implement the 3-2-1-1 backup 

and recovery strategy, including immutable 

storage solutions, so data remains intact and 

easily recoverable. By implementing Arcserve's 

Unified Data Resilience solutions, businesses 

can quickly recover from a data-destructive 

event and flourish in the new world of work, 

with all the challenges and possibilities it holds." 

More info: www.arcserve.com 




MAGAZINE 

27

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS: STORAGE ARRAYS FOCUS: 

A NEW LEVEL OF RAID ARRAY 

AVAILABILITY, RELIABILITY, 

AND PERFORMANCE 

DAVID TREADWELL, SOLUTIONS DIRECTOR AT TITAN DATA 

SOLUTIONS, TALKS ABOUT SEAGATE'S NEXT-GENERATION EXOS X 

STORAGE ARRAYS - OFFERING TWICE THE PERFORMANCE 

ALONGSIDE SELF-HEALING TECHNOLOGY - AND HOW THIS 

LATEST INNOVATION FURTHER ENHANCES TITAN'S STORAGE 

PROPOSITION 

With an unprecedented increase in 

data creation, enterprises are 

being challenged to find new 

ways to manage increasing volumes of 

information while using it to improve their 

business outcomes. How businesses cope 

with the increasing growth and sprawl of 

data will have a huge impact on their 

success moving forward. 

Seagate recently announced its nextgeneration 

Exos X systems, advanced 

storage arrays powered by Seagate's sixth 

generation controller architecture. The 

new Exos X systems feature up to twice the 

performance of the previous generation 

and enhanced enterprise-class durability. 

To help protect the stored data, Exos X 

systems incorporate ADAPT (Advanced 

Distributed Autonomic Protection 

Technology) erasure coding with Seagate's 

innovative self-healing storage technology 

ADR (Autonomous Drive Regeneration). 

From Titan's point of view these latest 

innovations bring significant benefits: the 

Seagate Exos X Storage Arrays are 

suitable for environments ranging from 

small businesses to large enterprises that 

often have petabyte-scale data sets. The 

controllers provide reliability and selfhealing, 

as well as ease of setup, 

maintenance, and expansion. They are 

also built for speed and resilience and will 

deliver consistently high performance and 

reliability. 

Titan can provide everything from presales 

technical consultancy, solution 

design and deployment, as well as postsales 

support and the Seagate EXOS 

storage arrays are often at the core of 

many of the solutions we provide. One 

question that your end customers might 

ask is "Why should I upgrade to this new 

generation of Exos?" 

The answer is straightforward: nextgeneration 

RAID offers twice the 

performance for faster backup, media 

editing, and analytics while delivering 

improved ADAPT technology and 

Autonomous Drive Regeneration. You also 

get all the features synonymous with the 

Seagate platform, while ultimately 

reducing your customers' TCO. 

Ken Claffey, Senior Vice President at 

Seagate is also very clear on the 

advantages of the new systems, 

commenting: "Featuring the new 

controller engineered and built by 

Seagate, the new Exos X systems can 

achieve a new level of RAID array 

availability, reliability, and performance 

for better efficiency while significantly 

reducing administrative burden. Exos X 

systems will help our data centre 

customers form a future-proof data 

management strategy." 

There is equal enthusiasm from Dorin 

Vanderjack, Vice President and General 

Manager at Intel: "We are delighted with 

the introduction of Seagate's new RAID 

controller that delivers high performance 

and cost-effective system solutions." He 

added. "At this time of unprecedented 

data growth, integrating Intel Xeon D 

Processors with Seagate's enhanced ASICbased 

architecture improves customers' 

total cost of ownership and helps drive 

greater business value from their 

hardware and from their data." 

For any resellers or MSPs wanting to talk 

to their customers about this new 

generation of Seagate Exos X controllers, 

then Titan can support you all the way 

through the process from initial concepts 

and discussion, right the way through to 

final delivery of a tailored solution. 

More info: www.titandatasolutions.com 




MAGAZINE

MANAGEMENT: HYBRID CLOUD 

NOW IS THE TIME TO FUTURE- 

PROOF YOUR STORAGE 

GARETH BEANLAND, GENERAL MANAGER, UK&I, INFINIDAT, EXPLAINS 

HOW THE RIGHT APPROACH TO STORAGE ARCHITECTURE CAN HELP 

ORGANISATIONS REIN IN THEIR OPEX COSTS 

It's annual budgeting time. The economic 

climate remains highly unpredictable and it's 

making long term strategy decisions much 

more difficult. Finding ways to be as flexible as 

possible, across all aspects of IT infrastructure, is 

really important. CIOs are having to balance 

the implications of constantly increasing 

operating costs with a continuous need for 

advanced enterprise storage systems. Critically, 

they are also struggling to find people with the 

right skills to run them. 

This dilemma is beginning to make CIOs seek 

ways to review existing approaches and the 

concept of IT being fully cloud based. Having to 

weigh the implications of increasing service 

costs means that some companies are 

rethinking their cloud and data storage 

strategies, with an emphasis on selectivity. 

Decisions are being made about which 

applications should reside in the cloud and 

which could be brought back on-premises, to 

create OPEX savings, ensure application 

performance, and drive cyber storage resilience. 

In the past, a transition like this would have 

required CIOs to accept some big 

compromises. Accustomed to the many 

advantages of managing data in the cloud, 

returning to what can be perceived of as a more 

'traditional' way of operating, with on-premises 

storage and data management centres, could 

be regarded as a step backwards. But is it? 

Advances in storage technology mean that 

today, 'moving to the cloud' is less about 

location and can be better described as an 

experience. 

Key to appreciating this is to reconsider what 

cloud storage actually is. Rather than thinking of 

the cloud as a destination, it's more helpful to 

see it as an experience. One that offers 

unlimited scalability, guaranteed performance 

levels, cyber storage resilience, and minimal 

impact on IT resourcing requirements. Viewed 

like this, there is little difference between 

outsourcing storage to the cloud and hosting it 

on-premises, particularly if you configure your 

data centres as a private cloud that can 

communicate with the public cloud - the hybrid 

cloud. Importantly given the current economic 

uncertainty, Infinidat's advanced softwaredefined 

storage architecture and solutions mean 

users get clear, hyperscale style benefits, but with 

on-premises style cost controls - along with 

guaranteed SLAs for performance, 100% 

availability, and cyber storage resilience and 

recovery. 

For existing application users, there are further 

benefits to be seen because migrating noncloud 

native apps to a cloud provider can be 

problematic, whereas Infinidat's unique 

architecture accommodates these systems 

without modifications. Infinidat's AI-based 

Neural Cache approach means users can also 

benefit from 'set it and forget it' management 

and unmatched real-world application 

performance, easing any potential strains on 

internal IT resources. And very importantly, 

Infinidat also supports storage consolidation, 

which means users benefit from lower energy 

costs, a reduced carbon footprint, cutting IT 

manpower needs, and an overall reduction in 

storage OPEX. 

Where cost reduction is needed, enterprises 

need a range of consumption approaches and 

Infinidat's flexible approach makes it 

particularly easy for organisations. The simplest 

and most traditional model available is a 

standard up-front purchase. It offers important 

cost saving advantages thanks to AIOps and 

deep machine learning capabilities that allow 

Infinidat to consolidate many storage systems 

into a much lower number. Additionally, 

Infinidat offers Elastic Pricing, combining 

Infinidat's Capacity on Demand model with 

OPEX burst capability. The final option is FLX 

(Storage-as-a Service), whereby customers 

simply pay for what they use. 

By working with Infinidat, enterprises will 

achieve the same cloud-like experience and 

benefit from the chance to consolidate existing 

storage arrays without compromising future 

scalability, but at a fraction of the cost. 

Uniquely Infinidat makes it possible for 

enterprises to create a full cloud-like 

experience but on-premise, and with a 

guaranteed future cost per terabyte moving 

forwards. 

At a time when prices everywhere are volatile 

and no one can predict what's around the 

corner, Infinidat is offering users the ultimate 

enterprise cloud-like storage experience: 

stability, certainty, and a means to prevent 

spiralling costs, with guaranteed performance, 

guaranteed cyber storage resilience, and 

guaranteed availability, with future growth 

taken into account. 

More info: www.infinidat.com 




MAGAZINE

Proven High Performance 

for Server Storage 

Rigorous testing between Kingston ® Enterprise SSDs and Adaptec ® Smart Storage adapters reveal an ideal 

solution for server-based storage systems that require maximum bandwidth and I/O connectivity, 

low-power consumption, high reliability, plus options for data availability, thus delivering a robust and 

scalable solution that can handle the toughest system workloads and configurations without 

compromising performance. 

“Working with a valued technical partner such as Microchip allows us to highlight that Kingston SSDs are 

tested and qualified to work with Microchip Adaptec RAID/HBA adapters. As part of this collaboration, 

technical teams on both ends work closely together to perform qualification testing to ensure both 

products work in harmony. We look forward to our continued collaboration to bring additional value to our 

partners and customers that use our products in combination.” Balamayuran Sivapalan Field Application 

Engineer - EMEA 

Learn more about Adaptec RAID and HBA Smart Storage Adapters, a family of full-featured, 

high-performance enterprise storage adapters built for a variety of storage requirements. 

Read Our 

Customer Story 

microchip.com 

The Microchip name and logo and the Microchip logo 

are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology 

Incorporated in the U.S.A. and other countries. All other 

trademarks are the property of their registered owners. 

© 2022 Microchip Technology Inc. All rights reserved. 

MEC2446A-UK-09-22

ST Nov-Dec 2022

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