ST Nov-Dec 2023

Front Cover 1.qxd 30-Nov-23 12:35 PM Page 1 

STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

November/December 2023 

Vol 23, Issue 6 

The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE: 

Is Al reliant on Flash? 

D.R. STRATEGIES: 

Application recovery planning 

DATA PROTECTION: 

ARCHIVING: 

The resurgence of tape 

Ransomware fears rising 

COMMENT - RESEARCH - INTERVIEWS - CASE STUDIES - OPINIONS - PRODUCT REVIEWS

Hybrid storage architecture, optimized for 

SSD cache acceleration 

The TS-hx87XU-RP rackmount NAS series features unique 6 

+ x drive bay architectures*, with 6 2.5-inch SSD bays and 

12/16/24 HDD bays. 

High-speed 10GbE & 2.5GbE connectivity 

for bandwidth-demanding tasks 

Dual 10GBASE-T and dual 2.5GbE high-speed connectivity 

enhances virtualization, intensive file access, and large 

backup/restoration tasks. 

High-speed PCIe Gen 4 slots for additional 

NAS functionality 

PCIe expandability allows for installing 10/25GbE adapters, 

QM2 cards, or Fibre Channel cards to increase application 

performance. 

All-in-one, License-free business 

backup solution 

QNAP’s backup solution covers most business systems, 

including PC/Mac, VMs, containers, popular cloud services, 

SaaS, and file servers. 

* The TS-h987XU-RP NAS has a different a drive bay architecture compared 

to the other three models. 

www.qnap.com 

Copyright © 2022 QNAP Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

ST Contents NovDec.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:52 AM Page 1 

INDUSTRY ROUNDTABLE: 

Is Al reliant on Flash? 

November/December 2023 

Vol 23, Issue 6 

CONTENTS 


The UK’s number one in IT Storage 

MAGAZINE 

CONTENTS 

D.R. STRATEGIES: 

Application recovery planning 

DATA PROTECTION: 

Ransomware fears rising 

ARCHIVING: 

The resurgence of tape 

COMMENT - RESEARCH - INTERVIEWS - CASE STUDIES - OPINIONS - PRODUCT REVIEWS 

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

Turning the ransomware tide 

OPINION: STORAGE STRATEGIES….......................…….6 

Dene Lewis, CTO at CAE Technology Services Ltd, looks at how and why data storage 

has evolved, what is being done to innovate and solve the potential issues modern 

storage presents - as well what the future may hold 

12 

RESEARCH: DATA PROTECTION…........................……..8 

A new Veeam survey has revealed business leaders' growing anxiety about dealing with 

ransomware and the psychological, human and financial damage the attacks are 

causing 

CASE STUDY: MR DATENTECHNIK…….................……10 

Leading German IT provider MR Datentechnik has launched a new data storage service, 

built on Quantum ActiveScale object storage 

14 

ANALYSIS: DISK BASED BACKUP….......................…..12 

Jerome M. Wendt of DCIG argues that cyber security and resilience are effectively 

redefining today's 100-plus disk-based backup target models 

OPINION: CYBER RESILIENCE……........................……..14 

If you haven't already, make sure you put enterprise storage cyber resilience and 

recovery on your to-do list, argues JT Lewis, Director of Channels EMEA and APJ at 

Infinidat 

MANAGEMENT: DATA ARCHITECTURE…….........……16 

Matt Peachey, Vice President, International at Dremio, argues that open is the smart 

way forward for data management 

20 

STRATEGY: TAPE STORAGE……............................…….18 

Matt Ninesling, Senior Director Tape Portfolio, Spectra Logic, shares three current use 

cases that are driving organisations to take a second look at tape technology 

CASE STUDY: HOSTED.NL…………….......................……20 

Dutch IT firm Hosted.nl is 'breaking the boundaries of traditional hosting infrastructure' 

with high-performance managed storage clusters running on StorPool and VMware 

RESEARCH: RANSOMWARE…………......................……22 

Nearly 60% of companies are 'very' to 'extremely' concerned about ransomware 

attacks, according to new research from Hornetsecurity 

30 

ROUNDTABLE: FLASH/AI………...........................………24 

Storage magazine gathered a selection of industry experts to discuss how flash 

storage and AI have impacted each other, and how flash prices are set to change 

ANALYSIS: CONTENT GROWTH…......................……..28 

Tom Dunning, CEO of Ad Signal, looks at the potential environmental impact of 

relentless content growth 

MANAGEMENT: DATA MIGRATION………..................…….30 

Kevin Wild, head of presales at Syniti, explains how to manage complex data 

migration in the real world 

STRATEGY: DISASTER RECOVERY ……................……32 

Sam Woodcock, Senior Director of Cloud Strategy, 11:11 Systems, explains the 

importance of architecting a DR plan for application recovery in the cloud 

32 

RESEARCH: CYBER-ATTACKS……......................………34 

To mitigate ransomware attacks, IT professionals must consider both business-related 

and infrastructure data equally, suggests new research 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk @STMagAndAwards Nov/Dec 2023 


MAGAZINE 

03

ST Comment.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:52 AM Page 2 

COMMENT 

EDITOR: David Tyler 

david.tyler@btc.co.uk 

SUB EDITOR: Mark Lyward 

mark.lyward@btc.co.uk 

REVIEWS: Dave Mitchell 

PUBLISHER: John Jageurs 

john.jageurs@btc.co.uk 

LAYOUT/DESIGN: Ian Collis 

ian.collis@btc.co.uk 

SALES/COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES: 

Lucy Gambazza 

lucy.gambazza@btc.co.uk 

Stuart Leigh 

stuart.leigh@btc.co.uk 

MANAGING DIRECTOR: John Jageurs 

john.jageurs@btc.co.uk 

DISTRIBUTION/SUBSCRIPTIONS: 

Christina Willis 

christina.willis@btc.co.uk 

PUBLISHED BY: Barrow & Thompkins 

Connexions Ltd. (BTC) 

35 Station Square, Petts Wood 

Kent BR5 1LZ, UK 

Tel: +44 (0)1689 616 000 

Fax: +44 (0)1689 82 66 22 

SUBSCRIPTIONS: 

UK £35/year, £60/two years, 

£80/three years; 

Europe: £48/year, £85 two years, 

£127/three years; 

Rest of World: £62/year 

£115/two years, £168/three years. 

Single copies can be bought for £8.50 

(includes postage & packaging). 

Published 6 times a year. 

No part of this magazine may be 

reproduced without prior consent, in 

writing, from the publisher. 

©Copyright 2023 

Barrow & Thompkins Connexions Ltd 

Articles published reflect the opinions 

of the authors and are not necessarily those 

of the publisher or of BTC employees. While 

every reasonable effort is made to ensure 

that the contents of articles, editorial and 

advertising are accurate no responsibility 

can be accepted by the publisher or BTC for 

errors, misrepresentations or any 

resulting effects 

TURNING THE RANSOMWARE TIDE 

BY DAVID TYLER 

EDITOR 

Welcome to the November/December issue of Storage magazine, which 

features not one, not two, but three surveys into ransomware/cyberattacks, 

and how prepared - or otherwise - organisations are for what increasingly 

feels like a 'not if, but when' scenario for most of us these days. 

In a piece from Zerto about ransomware preparedness, we learn that only one in 

seven businesses are able to fully recover their data following an attack - a statistic 

that should really have all of us rushing off to check just how ready our business 

systems are! 

The most recent high profile news story on the subject featured the British Library, 

who appear in the last few weeks to have lost vast amounts of HR data including 

passport information - information that could be of value to ID fraudsters, for example. 

"Given the high frequency of ransomware attacks and the impacts of successful ones 

such as data and infrastructure loss, many organisations are left with damages that 

have an effect well beyond IT," comments Christophe Bertrand, practice director at 

ESG. 

Elsewhere a recent Veeam survey suggests that ransomware is now seen as a greater 

concern than either the current state of the economy or the effects of Brexit by most UK 

businesses. The consequences of any kind of ransomware attack can be far wider 

than many might imagine: according to Veeam, 20% of businesses considered 

dissolving within a year of an attack, 32% reported that their staff worked longer 

hours, and 42% of respondents said they experienced greater than normal customer 

losses. 

Given the significant financial damage caused by ransomware, it's clear why some 

businesses simply don't make it through. As well as the cost of the ransom itself - if 

indeed it is paid - companies lost an average of 35% of their annual turnover in the 

three months following an attack, and 39% lost over 40%. 28% experienced a 

revenue-hitting drop in productivity. 

So, what are organisations doing to prepare for and combat these threats? Our third 

piece on the subject, courtesy of Hornetsecurity, gives some indications: their annual 

survey suggests that well over 90% of respondents rank ransomware protection as 

'very' to 'extremely' important in terms of IT priorities for their organisation, and over 

85% confirmed they have a disaster recovery plan in place for a ransomware attack. 

There is some reassurance as well in their finding that the number of ransomware 

victims actually appears to have gone down slightly in 2023. It can only be hoped 

that this is the beginning of a turning of the tide, as organisations become more 

vigilant in their data protection. 

04 STORAGE 

MAGAZINE 

Nov/Dec 2023 

@STMagAndAwards 

www.storagemagazine.co.uk

DON’T 

SaaSSS 

GET YOUR 

KICKED! ! 

TAKE CONTROL NOW AND 

PROTECT YOUR SaaS DATA 

Global SaaS vendors like Microsoft, Google and Salesforce 

don’t assume any responsibility for your data hosted 

in their applications. So, it’s up to you to take control 

and fully protect your SaaS data from cyber threats or 

accidental loss. Arcserve SaaS Backup offers complete 

protection for your SaaS data, eliminating business 

interruptions due to unrecoverable data loss. 

Arcserve SaaS Backup 

Complete protection for all your SaaS data. 

arcserve.com 

The unified data resilience platform 

Arcserve-SaaS-297x210-BLUE-AD-AW.indd 1 10/03/2023 10:20

CAE 6.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:53 AM Page 2 

OPINION: 

OPINION: STORAGE STRATEGIES 

WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF DATA STORAGE? 

DENE LEWIS, CTO AT CAE TECHNOLOGY SERVICES LTD, LOOKS AT HOW AND WHY DATA STORAGE 

HAS EVOLVED, WHAT IS BEING DONE TO INNOVATE AND SOLVE THE POTENTIAL ISSUES MODERN 

STORAGE PRESENTS - AS WELL WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD 

af 

The data storage industry has evolved 

significantly over the last 30 years, but 

there has been a real step change within 

the last decade. Not only has the amount of 

data, especially unstructured data, increased, 

but cloud-based storage has prompted 

companies - and individuals - to adopt a 

'store everything' mindset rather than take the 

time to consider the true value of that 

information. 

While cloud access to data has been a 

critical driver for business innovation, many 

data storage strategies have not kept pace 

with the diverse needs of digital 

transformation. How many businesses can 

confidently point to their five-year strategy and 

demonstrate not only an ability to scale to 

meet data growth but also the key availability, 

performance, sustainability and security 

features? 

UNCAPPED GROWTH 

The data we produce and utilise has grown at 

a phenomenal pace - by 2025 we will be 

storing 160 zettabytes a year, much of it in the 

cloud. The challenge for businesses - and the 

IT industry - is that the growth in data 

volumes, especially unstructured data, is not 

gradual. Each technology innovation, in highresolution 

imagery, for example, can double 

storage demands overnight. 

data. Organisations are investigating the use 

of AI to optimise business processes, which 

creates an additional data source that 

ultimately will support business growth, but it 

will need to be stored and that storage costs 

money as well as having an environmental 

impact. 

Every aspect of stakeholder engagement 

and interaction now demands increasing data 

volumes - all of which need to be stored 

multiple times to ensure business continuity 

and support disaster recovery plans. The 

evolution of storage technology means large 

quantities of data can be stored in smaller 

footprints at the edge, the data centre, or in 

the cloud - supporting distributed data 

growth. 

While the millions, possibly even billions of 

personal photographs and videos stored and 

posted to multiple social media locations are, 

without a doubt, a significant contributing 

factor, businesses are also struggling with 

data growth that has fundamentally 

outstripped expectations. 

Just consider the storage implications 

when an NHS Trust upgrades its CT 

scanner software, improving 

the quality and hence the 

size of high-resolution 

images two, three, or 

even four-fold in one 

moment. 

Or the rapid 

evolution of IoT, 

which is allowing 

businesses to 

generate 

increasingly high 

levels of valuable 

But is this financially, or environmentally 

sustainable? Unfortunately, there is no clearcut 

'yes' or 'no' answer. Why? Because, as 

much as the individual components of data 

storage have become super-efficient, the 

reality is that the power consumption required 

has exponentially increased - leaving some 

real considerations for organisations looking 

to optimise or create a data storage strategy. 

TIME TO TAKE RESPONSIBILITY 

The IT industry continues to innovate and 

address the rising data storage challenge. 

Storage density improvement has seen the 

price per gigabyte for storage reduce in 

recent years, dropping by over 80% from 

2009 to 2022, allowing businesses, in theory, 

to scale up data storage and positively impact 

the bottom line. 

The storage market has moved on from the 

old days of installing rack upon rack of 

mechanical spinning disks, which aside from 

being low on capacity, gave IT teams a 

06 STORAGE Nov/Dec 2023 


www.storagemagazine.co.uk 

MAGAZINE

CAE 6.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:53 AM Page 3 

OPINION: 

OPINION: STORAGE STRATEGIES 

"So, is it viable to retain our 'store everything' approach, when data centres are 

estimated to be responsible for up to three per cent of global electricity consumption 

today, and projected to touch four per cent by 2030? And if so, what is the sustainability 

compromise? Businesses face ever more serious demands regarding sustainable 

operations and reporting - as well as stakeholder expectations." 

constant headache of ensuring optimum 

performance. Those days are behind us, but 

there are now different solutions available that 

bring their own financial, operational, and 

sustainability challenges to overcome. 

It is important to note that storing data in the 

cloud can be perceived as easy and relatively 

pain-free to manage, but shifting or migrating 

data between cloud services, or from onpremises 

to the cloud is complex. 

Organisations dealing with high volumes of 

data at scale need to consider where they 

want to put the data and make the most 

appropriate and well-informed decisions 

about their data storage strategy up-front, 

rather than getting deep into a project and 

then making the choice. 

Although cost in financial terms is always 

considered, it may not always be fully 

understood by businesses comparing different 

options for hybrid cloud solutions. And 

increasingly, important costs such as 

environmental and sustainability factors are 

rarely considered by businesses at the 

planning stage. 

MUST WE STORE EVERYTHING? 

So, is it viable to retain our 'store everything' 

approach, when data centres are estimated to 

be responsible for up to three per cent of 

global electricity consumption today, and 

projected to touch four per cent by 2030? 

And if so, what is the sustainability 

compromise? 

Businesses face ever more serious demands 

regarding sustainable operations and 

reporting - as well as stakeholder 

expectations. The volume of data stored is not 

an issue that can be influenced by regulators, 

as it will differ from business to business. 

Governments globally, however, are keen to 

achieve ESG goals. 

I firmly believe that the industry will continue 

to innovate and build with sustainability at the 

core of its objectives, to build sustainable 

ways of storing data and sustainable storage 

device technology, from hard drives to 

storage arrays and data services that 

maximise efficiency and enable every business 

to reduce the carbon footprint per terabyte of 

storage. 

STRATEGIC PLANNING - THE 

BALANCING ACT 

This is not an issue for the IT industry alone. 

The responsibility also sits with businesses to 

put in place robust data management and 

storage strategies. However fast the data 

grows, what are the implications of having a 

reactive approach to investment in cloud 

storage without considering the business 

needs for cost, performance, security and 

sustainability? 

Given the scale of data growth, businesses 

must plan ahead, having a multi-year 

approach to data storage. A comprehensive 

five-year forward view should encompass 

both the intended strategy and structural 

framework, along with a well-defined plan. It 

should take into account not just the 

anticipated data expansion and its influencing 

factors but also utilise this data to evaluate 

strategic alternatives for data storage that 

align with the organisation's objectives. 

Put simply - how and where should data be 

stored? And for what reason? 

THINKING LATERALLY 

Data storage cannot be considered in 

isolation from the rest of the IT and wider 

business strategy. We need to be thinking 

strategically and holistically about data 

storage - not just picking it off as a tactical 

issue in an isolated area of the business. It 

must be considered as a broad strategic 

approach that spans edge, data centres, the 

cloud and everything in between. 

Creating the right data strategy is far more 

nuanced than simply spinning up another 

cloud storage subscription and, at every step, 

organisations should be considering the 

sustainability implications of storage 

decisions. 

Of course, there are difficult questions 

ahead as the demands for data change 

again. Generative AI and Machine Learning 

algorithms will require access to petabytes of 

data to accurately train AI models, which will 

impact financial and sustainability factors. 

Ultimately, data growth has significantly 

increased and will continue to do so. What 

happens when everybody gets online? 

There is set to be another massive step 

change in data volumes and data usage. The 

question is how is the world, as both 

individuals and businesses, going to respond? 

More info: www.thisiscae.com 


@STMagAndAwards Nov/Dec 2023 


MAGAZINE 

07

Veeam 09.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:54 AM Page 2 

RESEARCH: RANSOMWARE 

af 

RANSOMWARE A BIGGER CONCERN THAN 

THE ECONOMY OR BREXIT FOR UK BUSINESS 

A NEW VEEAM SURVEY HAS REVEALED BUSINESS LEADERS' GROWING ANXIETY ABOUT DEALING WITH 

RANSOMWARE AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL, HUMAN AND FINANCIAL DAMAGE THE ATTACKS ARE 

CAUSING 

Surging cyberattacks have significantly 

elevated UK business leaders' anxiety 

about ransomware, with 43% ranking it 

as more of a concern than all other critical 

macroeconomic and business challenges, a 

new local survey from Censuswide, 

commissioned by Veeam Software, has 

revealed. 

Earlier this year, the Veeam Data Protection 

Trends Report 2023 found that 85% of 

global businesses surveyed suffered at least 

one attack last year, so it's not surprising that 

UK business leaders rate ransomware as a 

more significant threat to their organisation 

than the economic crisis (41%), skills 

shortages (34%), political uncertainty (31%), 

and Brexit (30%). However, the psychological 

and human impact that this is having on 

business leaders and their employees is far 

more deep-rooted than previously 

understood. 

RISK OF BUSINESS COLLAPSE 

Censuswide surveyed 100 directors of UK 

companies with over 500 employees who 

had suffered a ransomware attack in the past 

18 months. The study unearthed several 

concerning results: 61% are anxious about 

the prospect of another ransomware attack. 

This might well be explained by the fact that 

71% agree that their business would collapse 

if it suffered another attack, and 56% believe 

another incident would force the organisation 

to make redundancies. In fact, 77% of 

organisations reduced staff numbers after the 

last attack and over 50% were unable to 

make new hires due to paying a ransom. 

The survey also uncovered the severe toll 

cybercrime places on people's wellbeing: 

54% of respondents said they experienced a 

decline in their overall health, while 26% left 

the role they were in altogether. Troublingly, 

it's not just security and IT staff that are 

affected. 71% of respondents believe that 

ransomware attacks critically disrupted most 

departments in the company. 

The marketing team is seen as bearing the 




MAGAZINE

Veeam 09.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:54 AM Page 3 


"It's understandable that ransomware is a leading cause of stress for business leaders 

and their employees, especially as it's now a case of 'how often' rather than 'if' or 'when' 

cyber-attacks will strike. With cybercriminals constantly evolving the pursuit of their next 

victim, businesses must do all they can to reduce ransomware's human and economic 

consequences by protecting and backing up their data to ensure rapid recovery after an 

attack. This will not only keep businesses running as usual in the face of the very real 

threat of ransomware but will also considerably alleviate the ripple effects it can have on 

people and businesses." 

costs, nearly half (49%) experienced increased 

customer complaints, and 47% reported team 

stress. 

largest brunt, with 82% while other business 

units not usually associated with dealing with 

the aftermath such as operations (73%), 

production/R&D (73%) and HR (70%), were 

also adversely influenced. 

The undesirable consequences people are 

experiencing may be partly attributed to the 

effect ransomware attacks can have on their 

careers and livelihoods. According to the 

survey, 20% of businesses considered 

dissolving within a year of an attack, 32% 

reported that their staff worked longer hours, 

and 42% of respondents said they experienced 

greater than normal customer losses. 

Given the significant financial damage 

caused by ransomware, it's clear why some 

businesses don't make it. As well as the cost of 

the ransom itself - if paid - companies lost an 

average of 35% of their annual turnover in the 

three months following an attack, and 39% 

lost over 40%. 28% experienced a revenuehitting 

drop in productivity. 

SKILLS ISSUES 

At the same time, businesses are battling the 

ongoing skills shortage and challenging 

economic conditions, making the effects of 

ransomware even greater. In the wake of an 

incident, 56% said they had increased hiring 

Dan Middleton, Regional Vice President UK&I 

at Veeam, said about the findings: "It's 

understandable that ransomware is a leading 

cause of stress for business leaders and their 

employees, especially as it's now a case of 

'how often' rather than 'if' or 'when' cyberattacks 

will strike. With cybercriminals 

constantly evolving the pursuit of their next 

victim, businesses must do all they can to 

reduce ransomware's human and economic 

consequences by protecting and backing up 

their data to ensure rapid recovery after an 

attack. This will not only keep businesses 

running as usual in the face of the very real 

threat of ransomware but will also considerably 

alleviate the ripple effects it can have on 

people and businesses." 

The findings highlight the urgent need for 

businesses to build up cyber resilience. 

Fortunately, companies are taking steps to 

tackle the ransomware threat head-on. 43% of 

those surveyed implemented a backup and 

recovery strategy after experiencing an attack, 

and 37% optimised their backup and recovery 

strategy, showing how backup is increasingly 

viewed as the best line of defence. 

More info: www.veeam.com 




MAGAZINE 

09

Quantum 10.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:55 AM Page 2 

CASE STUDY: MR STUDY: 

DATENTECHNIK 

af 

SIMPLE, SCALEABLE, RESILIENT 

LEADING GERMAN IT PROVIDER MR DATENTECHNIK HAS LAUNCHED A NEW DATA STORAGE SERVICE, 

BUILT ON QUANTUM ACTIVESCALE OBJECT STORAGE 

Headquartered in the German state of 

Bavaria, MR Datentechnik offers a full 

range of IT solutions and managed 

services. Organisations engage the company 

for everything from infrastructure deployment 

and systems integration to digitisation initiatives 

and fully outsourced IT management. 

Recently, the leadership team at MR 

Datentechnik decided to launch a new storage 

service to support customers' needs to preserve 

and protect fast-growing data volumes. The 

service, which would be designed for online 

storage of object data, could be used for 

backup and recovery, archiving, and data 

security. This online service would enable 

organisations to retrieve data rapidly - anytime, 

from anywhere. 

Creating an S3-compatible service was a top 

priority. The MR Datentechnik team wanted to 

support S3 applications and workflows and 

facilitate integration with S3 cloud storage 

environments. 

For the service's launch, the MR Datentechnik 

team decided to focus first on the backup use 

case. As a result, the underlying storage 

platform for the service had to integrate 

seamlessly with the latest version of Veeam 

Backup & Replication. 

BUILDING A NEW STORAGE SERVICE 

In designing the new service, the MR 

Datentechnik team explored numerous storage 

solutions, including solutions from several 

leading public cloud providers. Ultimately, the 

team selected Quantum ActiveScale object 

storage. 

Quantum ActiveScale is S3 compatible, 

which allows MR Datentechnik's clients to use 

the storage service with S3-enabled apps and 

workflows. For example, using this service 

based on ActiveScale, organisations can easily 

replicate data to S3 cloud storage 

environments. 

"Quantum ActiveScale provides the reliable, 

highly scalable S3-compatible object storage 

we needed for building our new 

storage service," says 

Jochen Kraus, Managing Director, MR 

Datentechnik. "The platform is stable even 

under high loads, and it offers sophisticated 

software that is extremely useful for our multitenant 

environment." 

SEAMLESS VEEAM INTEGRATION 

Quantum ActiveScale provides tight integration 

with Veeam Backup & Replication - the 

industry-leading backup, recovery, and data 

security solution for on-premises and cloud 

workloads. ActiveScale is part of a 

comprehensive portfolio of Quantum Veeam 

Ready products, which also includes Quantum 

flash storage, backup appliances, and tape 

storage solutions. 

ActiveScale is fully qualified as a Veeam 

Ready Object Repository with Immutability. This 

designation reflects ActiveScale's ability not 

only to act as a backup repository, but also 

provide outstanding 

ransomware 




MAGAZINE

Quantum 10.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:55 AM Page 3 

CASE STUDY: MR STUDY: 

DATENTECHNIK 

"Quantum ActiveScale provides the reliable, highly scalable S3-compatible object 

storage we needed for building our new storage service. The platform is stable even 

under high loads, and it offers sophisticated software that is extremely useful for multitenant 

management." 

protection with immutable Veeam backups 

based on ActiveScale's object locking feature. 

ActiveScale also now supports integrated 

space reporting using the Veeam Smart Object 

API (SOSAPI) simple monitoring of Veeam 

storage usage. 

With ActiveScale as the foundation for their 

new storage service, the MR Datentechnik 

team - and its clients - can take advantage of 

the powerful new capabilities of Veeam 

Backup & Replication version 12. For example, 

Veeam v12 introduces direct-to-object storage 

capabilities, enabling ActiveScale to act as a 

standalone repository as well as a primary 

backup repository in the Veeam Performance 

tier. This eliminates the need to copy 

production data to an intermediary system 

before moving it to ActiveScale. This capability 

helps MR Datentechnik offer a faster, simpler, 

and more cost-effective service to customers. 

Also, with Veeam v12, MR Datentechnik's 

service provides an ideal target for backing up 

NAS devices and file shares. Veeam v12 

optimises performance with metadata caching, 

thus reducing overall data transfer 

requirements when backing up to the MR 

Datentechnik storage cloud. 

ACHIEVING GROWTH TARGETS EARLY 

Building on ActiveScale has helped MR 

Datentechnik to drive swift growth for the new 

storage service. "Thanks to ActiveScale's ability 

to automate the onboarding process, we can 

onboard customers in under a day," says 

Kraus. "With that fast onboarding, we've been 

able to add customers to this service much 

more quickly than we anticipated. We have 

reached our two-year growth target goals in 

less than a year." 

In addition to protecting customer 

environments, MR Datentechnik's internal 

teams are also benefiting from the new service 

by employing it as a backup target for their 

own internal IT systems and other managed 

services infrastructure. 

As MR Datentechnik continues to add 

customers, the company can scale its 

ActiveScale-based service easily and without 

disruption. ActiveScale enables MR 

Datentechnik to scale compute, networking, 

and storage resources to support billions of 

objects and exabytes of capacity for their own 

disaster recovery and backup needs, as well as 

for their S3 Service offerings to their customers. 

The platform's Dynamic Data Placement 

feature automatically optimises placement of 

objects across resources, eliminating the need 

for manual rebalancing. 

Capacity on demand software licensing and 

seamless, non-disruptive expansion give MR 

Datentechnik flexibility to accommodate the 

company's precise needs, incrementally, 

without large-scale overhauls. "The simple 

scalability of ActiveScale means we can 

continue to onboard new customers and 

provide those customers with a rapidly 

expandable service," says Kraus. 

MAXIMISED RESILIENCY FOR ALWAYS- 

ON SERVICE 

Managed service providers need to build their 

offerings on reliable, resilient platforms to 

reduce any possibility of customer downtime. 

ActiveScale's rolling system upgrade capability 

and erasure coded data durability help MR 

Datentechnik deliver an always-on service that 

can tolerate component and site failures 

without jeopardising availability. 

CONTROLLING COMPLEXITY 

To provide a fully managed service as 

economically as possible, MR Datentechnik 

needed a storage platform that could 

minimise administrative complexity. The 

ActiveScale web-based interface helps 

simplify management of accounts, users, 

access keys, health monitoring, capacity, 

performance, and more. 

In addition, the platform's DevOps features 

enable easy integration. "ActiveScale offers 

extensive options for connecting to our 

existing management infrastructureincluding 

through RESTful APIs, a 

command-line interface, SSH, and 

Prometheus-based metrics, monitoring, and 

alerting," says Kraus. 

For backup services, the MR Datentechnik 

can take a fully integrated approach to 

administration. "With the close integration of 

ActiveScale and Veeam, we can handle 

every aspect of the managed backup service 

efficiently - from implementation to 

onboarding to ongoing management of 

customer environments," says Kraus. 

FLEXIBILITY FOR ADDITIONAL 

USE CASES 

MR Datentechnik continues to onboard new 

customers who are using the storage service 

for backup with Veeam Backup & 

Replication. At the same time, Kraus 

envisions additional use cases: "With S3 

compatibility, we can expand the storage 

service to other workflows. By building on 

Quantum ActiveScale, we have a very 

flexible platform for meeting a broad 

spectrum of customer needs." 

More info: www.quantum.com 




MAGAZINE 

11

DCIG 12.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:56 AM Page 2 

ANALYSIS: 

ANALYSIS: DISK BASED BACKUP 

MOVING TARGETS 

JEROME M. WENDT OF DCIG ARGUES THAT CYBER SECURITY AND RESILIENCE ARE EFFECTIVELY 

REDEFINING TODAY'S 100-PLUS DISK-BASED BACKUP TARGET MODELS 

af 

Until quite recently organisations 

largely defined disk-based backup 

targets by three characteristics: how 

fast they backed up data, their data 

deduplication ratios, and the data 

protection protocols they offered and/or 

supported. While these attributes still 

matter, organisations increasingly prioritise 

new cyber security and resilience features 

when acquiring disk-based backup targets. 

RANSOMWARE PUTS FOCUS ON 

BACKUP 

Ransomware, perhaps more so than any 

other factor, has cast a spotlight on 

organisational backup processes. Backups 

no longer represent a mundane task that 

organisations must complete. Now 

organisations need confirmation of 

successful backups, that ransomware does 

not compromise them, and that they can 

recover them quickly. 

Further, these new requirements will ideally 

accompany the deduplication, 

performance, and data protection protocol 

features already available on backup 

targets. The challenge becomes how to 

deliver both these established and new 

features in a manner that meets today's 

organizational expectations. 

Providers have certainly made 

advancements in delivering more cyber 

security and resilience features to satisfy 

these desires. However, no offering yet 

checks all the boxes for delivering every 

established and new feature that 

organisations may want. 

This has resulted in a generation of diskbased 

backup products that offer a mixed 

bag of features. Almost all disk-based 

backup targets, regardless of the provider, 

will ensure fast, successful backups. 

However, organisations will then need to 

determine which features, established or 

new, they want to prioritise in their diskbased 

backup target. 

Offerings from established providers will 

better support deduplication and data 

protection protocols, while offerings from 

new providers tend to better meet new 

demands for fast restores at scale and 

resilience. Cyber security remains in a state 

of flux with providers at various stages of 




MAGAZINE

DCIG 12.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:56 AM Page 3 

ANALYSIS: 

ANALYSIS: DISK BASED BACKUP 

"While overlap exists between cyber security and resilience, one does not 

automatically encompass the other. For instance, cyber security does not automatically 

equate to fast restores or a highly available backup target. If anything, a cyber secure 

disk-based backup target may even delay restores and recoveries. Rather, fast restores 

and high availability fall more under the classification of resilience. This becomes 

problematic if organisations view those two features as prerequisites in their 

environment. In cases like this, they may need to make a trade-off between cyber 

security and resilience when selecting a backup target." 

implementing different aspects of it. 

INITIAL INSIGHTS 

As DCIG researches and prepares to 

release one or more 'Top 5' reports on diskbased 

backup targets in 2024, here are 

some initial insights it has into these 

offerings. 

Over 100 disk-based backup target 

models: Organisations, and large 

enterprises especially, may only view diskbased 

backup targets as being primarily 

available from Dell, ExaGrid, HPE, 

Quantum, and Veritas. However, the new 

demands for cyber security and resilience 

have spawned a wave of innovation. Both 

emerging and established primary storage 

providers have refocused their storage 

solutions to optimise them for backup. 

Enterprise storage providers such as 

Huawei, NetApp, and Pure Storage now 

specifically optimise their solutions for 

backup. This has also prompted new 

entrants into this space to include Arcserve, 

Infinidat, Infortrend, iXsystems, Nexsan, 

Nimbus Data, Racktop Systems, and VAST 

Data. Each of these has at least one model 

and, in some cases, over a dozen models. 

This total does not even include the growing 

number of software-defined storage 

providers who now play in this space. 

Implementations of cyber security features 

vary widely: Almost every disk-based 

backup target provider says its product 

includes cyber security features. That largely 

holds true. However, each product's cyber 

security features may not match the needs 

of your organisation. 

For instance, most if not all products now 

offer data immutability. However, on at least 

one product, a backup it hosts does not 

become immutable until an hour after the 

backup completes. Other providers permit 

administrators to log into the product's 

management console and change or delete 

immutable backups. This represents only 

one example of how providers implement 

cyber security features differently on their 

respective solutions. 

Cyber security ≠ resilience. Organisations 

may equate a backup target's cyber security 

features with resilience. While overlap exists 

between cyber security and resilience, one 

does not automatically encompass the 

other. For instance, cyber security does not 

automatically equate to fast restores or a 

highly available backup target. If anything, 

a cyber secure disk-based backup target 

may even delay restores and recoveries. 

Rather, fast restores and high availability 

fall more under the classification of 

resilience. This becomes problematic if 

organisations view those two features as 

prerequisites in their environment. In cases 

like this, they may need to make a trade-off 

between cyber security and resilience when 

selecting a backup target. 

EMERGING PRIORITIES 

As these three initial insights from DCIG's 

research into today's disk-based backup 

targets reveal, their features have evolved 

significantly. Notably, organisations no 

longer prioritise data deduplication ratios in 

the same way they once did. 

While these factors still matter, cyber 

security and resilience now emerge as new 

priorities in disk-based backups. This has 

led to multiple new entrants into this space 

of both existing and new players looking for 

a foothold in this space. Further, some have 

experienced success since they better 

deliver on the new cyber security and 

resilience features that more organisations 

prioritise. 

More info: www.dcig.com 




MAGAZINE 

13

Infinidat 14.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:57 AM Page 2 

OPINION: 

OPINION: CYBER RESILIENCE 

KEY TAKEAWAYS FOR CYBER RESILIENCE 

IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY, MAKE SURE YOU PUT ENTERPRISE STORAGE CYBER RESILIENCE AND 

RECOVERY ON YOUR TO-DO LIST, ARGUES JT LEWIS, DIRECTOR OF CHANNELS EMEA AND APJ AT 

INFINIDAT 

af 

Pressures in the C-Suite have been 

rising for some time, due to 

escalating fears about what 

cybercriminals can do to threaten 

business operations. The 2023 Voice of 

the CISO report highlights this, showing 

that expectations of cyberattack risks 

among CISOs have risen to 68%, 

compared with 48% a year ago. Over 

60% believe their organisations are 

insufficiently prepared to cope with a 

targeted attack, compared with just 50% a 

year ago. 

They are not alone in worrying about 

cyber vulnerabilities. CEOs also rank 

cyber threats as one of their top worries 

and recent research suggests they do not 

feel confident when it comes to mitigating 

the threat of a cyber security incident 

either. This was a key finding of a recent 

CEO study conducted by Saïd Business 

School at the University of Oxford. Three 

quarters of the leaders surveyed admitted 

to feeling uncomfortable making 

decisions about cyber threats and security. 

One area that is consistently overlooked 

when planning a cybersecurity strategy is 

the resilience and recovery of enterprise 

data storage systems. Infinidat has 

dedicated years of research and product 

development to developing a proven 

portfolio of technology solutions to help 

detect cyber attacks, and, if you do have 

an attack, to help in delivering near 

instantaneous recovery. But before 

investigating these 

solutions, every 

member of 

the C-Suite 

should 

appreciate some key facts about why 

ensuring storage systems are cyber 

resilient is so important. 

#1 NOT IF, BUT WHEN… 

Every 39 seconds, an organisation 

somewhere in the world suffers a cyber 

attack. You are right to be concerned. The 

question is not if your enterprise will suffer 

a cyber attack, but when and how often. 

And if penetrating the firewall is a given, 

this also means it's highly likely that 

primary and secondary data being stored 

by an enterprise will be compromised at 

some point too. 

#2 CYBER CRIMINALS ARE 

PATIENT BEASTS 

When cyber attackers 

target an enterprise, they 

don't immediately 




MAGAZINE

Infinidat 14.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:57 AM Page 3 

OPINION: 

OPINION: CYBER RESILIENCE 

"Immutable snapshots are like the vital 'secret sauce' of storage cybersecurity. They 

allow the end user to effectively roll back the clock and recover guaranteed, 

uncorrupted copies of their data, before the execution of any malware or ransomware 

code introduced by an attacker. Immutable snapshots ensure data integrity because 

they prevent data copies from being altered or deleted by anyone." 

pounce, but wait for a while before 

demanding a ransom. Sometimes they will 

have planned their eventual move for over 

6 months. Research conducted by the 

Ponemon Institute verifies this, suggesting 

that the average number of days before a 

data breach is identified can be as high 

as 287. 

It means the hackers have a much 

greater chance of their ransomware 

demands being met because without the 

right controls in place, data stored can be 

fully compromised. In that timeframe, 

data could have been exposed to all kinds 

of criminal activity. 

#3 PREVENTION IS ALWAYS BETTER 

THAN CURE 

Data is one of the most important 

strategic assets for an enterprise - 

McKinsey has coined the phrase 'datadriven 

enterprise.' It describes how data 

is behind every decision, interaction and 

process. If effective cyber security is about 

being ready to thwart the problems that 

arise from a security breach, enterprises 

should be trying a different approach to 

protect their data: one that involves 

thinking beyond the traditional toolkits of 

firewalls or cyber management software 

and being ready with an antidote, to stop 

damage from spreading. 

TIME TO PROTECT DATA, BUT 

HOW? 

When it comes to securing an enterprise's 

data storage, there are some essentials to 

building a storage cyber defence strategy. 

These include ensuring the immutable 

nature of the data, recovered from a copy 

you can trust. Air-gapping to separate the 

management and data planes to protect 

the data. A secure forensic environment, 

to analyse the data thoroughly and ensure 

the fastest recovery speeds possible, is 

critical. 

Immutable snapshots are like the vital 

'secret sauce' of storage cybersecurity. 

They allow the end user to effectively roll 

back the clock and recover guaranteed, 

uncorrupted copies of their data, before 

the execution of any malware or 

ransomware code introduced by an 

attacker. Immutable snapshots ensure 

data integrity because they prevent data 

copies from being altered or deleted by 

anyone. Even internal systems 

administrators are locked out of 

immutable snapshots manipulation. It 

means that the enterprise can be 

confident that any disruption or damage 

caused by the intrusion can be minimised. 

Logical air gapping adds a further layer 

of security, by separating the storage 

management and data planes of the 

immutable snapshots. There are three 

types of air gapping. Local air gapping 

keeps the data on premises, remote air 

gapping makes use of a remotely hosted 

system and hybrid air gapping combines 

the two. 

Fenced forensic environments help 

speed up the recovery process by 

providing a secure area to perform a 

post-attack forensic analysis of the 

immutable snapshots. The purpose here 

is to carefully curate data candidates and 

find a known good copy. The last thing 

an enterprise wants to do after an attack 

is to start restoring infected data that has 

malware or ransomware infiltrated within 

it. Once the forensic analysis is complete, 

it is safe to restore a copy to primary 

storage systems. 

The right cyber storage resilience 

solution is part of a "set it and forget it" 

process. Once the immutable snapshots, 

logical air gapping, fenced forensic 

environment and cyber attack recovery 

processes have been established, the 

whole restoration will progress like 

clockwork. This is all part of being an 

agile enterprise, one that's cyber resilient 

as well as cyber secure. Significantly, very 

few enterprise storage vendors can offer 

this level of cyber resiliency on both 

primary and secondary data. 

Data is an important strategic asset, 

critical to long term business success and 

yet many enterprises lack a fully 

integrated a cyber storage resilience 

program. Storage must be regarded as 

an essential part of effective cyber 

resilience, so make sure it's on your to 

do list! 

More info: www.infinidat.com 




MAGAZINE 

15

Dremio 16.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:58 AM Page 2 

MANAGEMENT: DATA ARCHITECTURE 

af 

EMBRACING OPEN DATA ARCHITECTURE 

MATT PEACHEY, VICE PRESIDENT, INTERNATIONAL AT DREMIO, 

ARGUES THAT OPEN IS THE SMART WAY FORWARD FOR DATA 

MANAGEMENT 

For the past decades, data has been 

propelling business operations. Whether 

an organisation offers tangible goods or 

intangible services, crucial information about 

partners, workforce, processes, and clients 

forms the backbone of a company's wellbeing. 

At the heart of any computing system is data 

storage, therefore the selection of the 

appropriate solution to store it will significantly 

impact how efficiently an organisation's network 

and accompanying infrastructure cater to the 

business requirements. 

The primary expectation from a data storage 

system is to safely keep valuable data while 

allowing users and applications to retrieve it 

seamlessly and swiftly when required. However, 

with the volume of data growing exponentially 

and never deleted, businesses started to add 

more storage capacity. 

The issue deepens where data warehouse 

vendors store data in a proprietary format. 

Data gets locked into the platform, making it 

difficult and costly to extract if and when a 

business wants to. Further, maintaining and 

troubleshooting issues often require teams with 

deep subject matter expertise in the ecosystem - 

an expensive outlay. 

Given the multitude of data storage 

alternatives and system setups, organisations 

can get dragged into the rabbit hole whilst 

adding more data to their systems - a very 

inefficient approach. Organisations must 

embrace open-source standards, technologies 

and formats to ensure fast and cost-effective 

analytics with the best engine for each 

workload. This provides the agility to innovate 

with the next wave of technology without 

draining resources or time. 

EVOLUTION OF DATA ARCHITECTURE 

Previously, companies depended on 

conventional databases or warehouses for their 

Business Intelligence (BI) demands. However, 

these systems presented certain difficulties. The 

typical data warehouse setup requires investing 

in expensive on-premises hardware, 

maintaining structured data in proprietary 

formats, and dependence on a centralised IT 

and data department for analysis. Other 

obstacles included technical interoperability, 

system orchestration, and, more critically, 

scalability. 

However, things changed in 2006 with the 

launch of Hadoop, built on the Map-Reduce 

paradigm capable of parallel processing and 

producing enormous data sets over large 

clusters of commoditised hardware. This 

framework facilitated handling vast datasets 

distributed over computer clusters, making it 

immensely appealing for businesses 

accumulating more data with each passing 

day. Still, databases like Teradata and Oracle 

encapsulated storage, computation, and data 

within a single, interconnected system, offering 

no separation of compute and storage 

components. 

Between 2015 and 2020, however, the 

widespread usage of the public cloud altered 

this approach, enabling the separation of 

compute and storage. Cloud data vendors like 

AWS and Snowflake facilitated this separation 

in cloud warehouses, enhancing scalability and 

efficiency. Nevertheless, data still had to be 

ingested, loaded, and duplicated into a single 

proprietary system, which was attached to a 

solitary query engine. Employing multiple 

databases or data warehouses necessitated the 

storage of multiple data copies. Moreover, 

companies were still charged for transferring 

their data into and out of the proprietary 

system, which resulted in excessive costs. 

Enter more contemporary and open data 

architecture, where data exists as an 

independent layer. This includes highlighting a 

clear division between data and compute. Data 

is stored in open-source file formats and table 

formats and accessed by decoupled and elastic 

compute engines. Consequently, different 

engines can access the same data in a loosely 

tied architecture. In these architectures, data is 

stored as its own independent tier source in 

open formats within the company's cloud 

account and made accessible to downstream 

consumers through various services. 

This transformation parallels the shift in 

applications from monolithic architectures to 

microservices. A comparable transition is 

presently occurring in data analytics, with 

companies migrating from proprietary data 

warehouses and ceaseless ETL (Extract, 

Transform, Load) processes to open data 

architectures like cloud data lakes and 

lakehouses. 

SEPARATING COMPUTE AND STORAGE 

FOR EFFICIENCY 

Over the years, there have been many 

discussions around the detachment of compute 

from storage within the industry, primarily due 

to its contribution to enhancing efficiency, which 

resulted in several advantages. 

Firstly, the reduction in raw storage costs was 

so significant that they practically disappeared 

from IT budget spreadsheets. Secondly, 

compute costs became segregated, leading to 

customers paying only for what they utilised 

during data processing, which lowered overall 

expenses. Lastly, the independent scalability of 

both storage and compute facilitated ondemand, 

elastic resource precision, adding 

flexibility to architecture designs. 

However, these changes took time to 

materialise. Expensive Storage Area Networks 

(SANs) and less costly but often complex 

Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems have 

existed for quite a while. Both storage models 

were limited due to administrative and 




MAGAZINE

Dremio 16.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:58 AM Page 3 

MANAGEMENT: DATA ARCHITECTURE 

"Decoupling compute and storage in public clouds is 

more straightforward to administer and relatively 

inexpensive. Besides, these compute and storage cloud 

services are virtually unlimited in scalability, eliminating 

legacy hardware procurement issues. They also offer 

supreme levels of availability and performance." 

procurement overheads. Mass adoption of 

separating compute and storage only became 

feasible with public cloud computing. 

Decoupling compute and storage in public 

clouds is more straightforward to administer 

and relatively inexpensive. Besides, these 

compute and storage cloud services are 

virtually unlimited in scalability, eliminating 

legacy hardware procurement issues. They also 

offer supreme levels of availability and 

performance. Therefore, the separation of 

compute from data brings forth three 

immediate benefits: 

A significant reduction in complicated and 

expensive data copies and movements as 

the data warehouse as the sole source of 

truth gets replaced by accessing data in 

open formats in the data lake, eliminating 

data silos. 

Open data standards and formats provide 

universal data access from infinite services 

and applications, creating the freedom to 

pick the best solutions. 

An open architecture ensures that future 

cloud services can directly access the data, 

avoiding going through a data warehouse 

vendor's proprietary format or 

moving/copying data from the data 

warehouse. 

THE OPPORTUNITIES OF OPEN 

ARCHITECTURE 

Cloud data warehouse providers enticed firms 

with the allure of scalability and cost-efficiency 

that was unsustainable with on-premises 

solutions. However, after uploading their data 

into the warehouse, organisations were 

restricted entirely to the vendor's ecosystem or 

denied access to other promising technologies 

that could extract more value from their data. 

Open architecture is a significant advantage 

of cloud data lake/lakehouse over the data 

warehouse. As a result, organisations are 

reassessing their strategies to use an open 

architecture that promotes flexibility and reestablishes 

ownership of their data. This shift 

signifies three things: 

The flexibility to utilise various superior 

services and engines on the company's 

data. This allows the use of diverse 

technologies like superior SQL, Databricks 

or any other data-processing tool. Given 

that companies have numerous use cases 

and requirements, utilising the best-suited 

tool yields higher productivity - especially for 

data teams - and lower cloud costs. It's also 

important to remember that no single 

vendor can offer all the processing 

capabilities a company requires. 

Not being confined to one vendor. Platform 

changes become profoundly challenging 

when dealing with a data warehouse 

holding up to a million tables and hundreds 

of complex ingestion pipelines. 

Comparatively, if an organisation uses a 

superior SQL on its cloud data lake today 

and a new tool emerges tomorrow, it's 

possible to query the existing data with the 

new system without migrating it. 

The ability to benefit from future 

technological advancements. Avoiding 

becoming locked-in is crucial, as it keeps 

vendors from exploiting a company 

financially. But more significant is the 

capacity to adopt and benefit from 

emerging technology, even if the current 

vendor remains favourable. If a superior 

machine learning service or a better batch 

processing engine is invented, organisations 

can have peace of mind that they can use 

the tool freely. 

Application architectures have demonstrated 

that a service-oriented approach allows 

maximum scale, flexibility, and agility. While 

separating compute and storage marked an 

essential first step in reducing analytic costs, it 

doesn't offer the kind of benefits visible in 

modern application architectures. However, by 

disengaging compute from data, the benefits of 

application design can now be used for data 

analytics, especially given the critical 

importance of data for all businesses. 

As a result, open data architecture brings forth 

many benefits, from flexibility, independence, 

and future-proofing to creating new avenues 

for gaining valuable business insights. In the 

rapidly evolving digital era, embracing open 

data architectures is more than a strategic 

choice; it's a decisive move towards a more 

flexible, scalable, and insightful future. 

More info: www.dremio.com 




MAGAZINE 

17

Spectra 18.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:59 AM Page 2 

STRATEGY: TAPE STORAGE 

THE RESURGENCE OF TAPE 

MATT NINESLING, SENIOR DIRECTOR TAPE PORTFOLIO, SPECTRA LOGIC, SHARES THREE CURRENT USE 

CASES THAT ARE DRIVING ORGANISATIONS TO TAKE A SECOND LOOK AT TAPE TECHNOLOGY 

af 

As every aspect of our world becomes 

more digitised, data storage has been 

elevated from an "afterthought" to a 

primary enabler of business, research, social 

and financial progress. And as the role of data 

storage changes, the technology behind 

storage has advanced significantly. Nowhere is 

this more evident than in the advancement of 

tape technology. 

The inherent characteristics of tape - density, 

affordability, removability - have always made 

tape a top consideration for archiving, 

compliance and data protection goals. When 

combining these attributes with new 

technology, such as S3-compatible object 

storage, tape becomes a game changer in 

addressing the critical challenges facing 

modern businesses and organisations today. 

Too often, the discussion has focused on 

"either/or" scenarios for storage - disk or tape, 

on-premises or cloud. By front-ending disk, 

tape and cloud with an object interface, the 

conversation can now focus on the attributes 

required of storage for any particular job. And 

that's driving organisations to take a second 

look at tape technology. 

ARCHIVES: THE VISION FOR AI WILL 

REQUIRE TAPE ACCESS 

AI and associated machine learning models 

require massive amounts of data in order to 

"train" and provide improvements in everything 

from research algorithms to line manufacturing 

to self-driving cars. 

Depending on the level of automation, selfdriving 

cars will generate between 1.4 and 19 

terabytes (TB) of data per hour, as 

presented by autonomous driving 

technology Systems Architect 

Stephan Heinrich at the 2017 Flash Memory 

Summit. A single car could produce anywhere 

between 380 TB to 5.1 petabytes (PB) of data 

in a single year. This is just one example of the 

massive amounts of data created by and used 

by AI. 

Because AI is driving virtually every aspect of 

business, research, and development, multipetabyte 

archives are becoming organisational 

standards. Recent lawsuits over the use of 

copyrighted materials for the training of AI 

models, as well as defamation litigation 

responding to false information generated by 

AI chatbots, only highlight the need for this 

training data to be preserved for the long term. 

These archives must be accessible and 

searchable. The introduction of S3-compatible 

object-based tape makes today's tape 

technology the ideal building block for such 

archives. Object-based tape is highly scalable, 

searchable and can even be tagged for future 

retrieval. 

Combined with new developments in tape 

density, which enable a native storage capacity 

of 50TB on a single cartridge, tape not only 

maintains its cost-competitive edge against 

other storage approaches such as disk and 

cloud, it is the unequivocal dominant leader in 

affordability. 

Additionally, modern tape offerings provide 

much greater data integrity and reliability, 

incorporating error correction codes and 

automated data integrity verification checks to 

minimise the risk of data degradation over 

time. In the event of catastrophic data loss or 

corruption, having archived AI training data on 

tape provides a reliable means of data 

recovery as the tape is stored offline, 

presumably securely, and is less susceptible to 

accidental deletions. Archiving AI training data 




MAGAZINE

Spectra 18.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:59 AM Page 3 

STRATEGY: TAPE STORAGE 

"Object-based tape is highly scalable, searchable and can even be tagged for future 

retrieval. Combined with new developments in tape density, which enable a native 

storage capacity of 50TB on a single cartridge, tape not only maintains its costcompetitive 

edge against other storage approaches such as disk and cloud, it is the 

unequivocal dominant leader in affordability. Additionally, modern tape offerings 

provide much greater data integrity and reliability, incorporating error correction codes 

and automated data integrity verification checks to minimise the risk of data 

degradation over time." 

on tape ensures that the data remains intact 

and can be successfully retrieved if and when it 

is needed. 

COMPLIANCE: WITH OPPORTUNITY 

COMES RESPONSIBILITY 

The new digitised world comes with 

tremendous opportunity for advancements in 

virtually every sector of every market. It also 

comes with possible liabilities and 

vulnerabilities. Most industries and 

organisations have specific compliance and 

regulatory requirements regarding data 

retention and archiving. 

The geopolitical preservation of records is a 

critical aspect of national and international 

security, historical documentation, and 

governance. Records, ranging from 

government documents and historical archives 

to sensitive intelligence data, are mission 

critical in preserving a nation's history, ensuring 

accountability, and safeguarding sensitive 

information. 

Tape is the ideal choice for ensuring 

compliance with stringent regulatory 

requirements. Write-Once-Read-Multiple 

(WORM) tape media allows organisations to 

not only preserve data but also prove chain of 

command. Tape technology can be a valuable 

tool in this context for the archival and longterm 

preservation of records. 

Due to the low cost and density of tape 

storage, multiple copies of data can be stored 

on separate tapes, in separate locations, 

ensuring that historical versions are readily 

available for recovery in the event of natural 

disasters, fires, or other catastrophic events. 

Tape technology can help governments and 

organisations subject to legal requirements 

regarding the preservation of records meet 

compliance obligations by providing a secure 

and tamper-proof archiving solution. 

DATA PROTECTION: THE ULTIMATE 

LAST LINE OF DEFENCE 

Meeting all compliance and regulatory 

requirements becomes meaningless if an 

organisation's data is compromised by 

ransomware. In today's world of storage, this is 

the ultimate vulnerability. The third quarter of 

2023 set a new record with 1420 cases of 

ransomware reported in a single quarter, 

according to cyber threat intelligence solutions 

provider Cyberint. No industry is exempt: 

business services, manufacturing, retail, 

finance, insurance, real estate, healthcare and 

critical infrastructure have all been attacked. 

There are many ways to protect online data, 

but even with the most ardent of approaches, if 

data is electronically accessible, a ransomware 

virus is capable of infecting it. This was recently 

demonstrated by the attack on cloud provider, 

CloudNordic. Ransomware succeeded in 

encrypting the disks on all servers, including 

their primary and secondary backup servers. 

The majority of its customers lost all data 

hosted with the company. 

Tape is the ultimate last line of defence 

against ransomware attack. Once a tape is 

ejected, it is completely offline, creating what is 

referred to as an "air gap." Without an 

electronic connection, data can't be hacked, 

deleted, or encrypted. A successful 

ransomware attack is virtually impossible when 

tape is employed. Even if an organisation's 

storage systems are compromised, including 

their online or cloud backups, offline tape 

backups are immune to ransomware. 

TAKE ANOTHER LOOK 

Tape has long been the single most costeffective 

solution for long-term storage of large 

data sets and archives. Continued research 

and development spanning several decades 

has delivered key advancements in data 

accessibility, transfer speeds, and storage 

capacity. In an era marked by burgeoning data 

sets, evolving data governance standards, and 

increasing cybersecurity threats, tape's ability to 

facilitate secure, rapid storage and retrieval of 

petabytes to exabytes of data makes it shine as 

a dependable and cost-effective option for 

meeting these pressing needs. 

More info: www.spectralogic.com 




MAGAZINE 

19

Storpool 20.qxd 01-Dec-23 10:59 AM Page 2 

CASE STUDY: HOSTED.NL STUDY: 

"…IT JUST WORKS" 

DUTCH IT FIRM HOSTED.NL IS 'BREAKING THE BOUNDARIES OF TRADITIONAL HOSTING 

INFRASTRUCTURE' WITH HIGH-PERFORMANCE MANAGED STORAGE CLUSTERS RUNNING ON 

STORPOOL AND VMWARE 

af 

Hosted.nl is a leading Dutch cloud 

and managed IT services provider. 

With over 14 years on the market, 

1000+ customers, and 2500+ servers, the 

company is recognised for its high-quality 

service and innovative technology solutions. 

Hosted.nl offers laaS solutions, public and 

private cloud, containers as a service, 

network solutions, and connectivity. 

MIXED WORKLOADS 

The team at Hosted.nl was looking for an 

alternative to replace their old and poorlyperforming 

iSCSI storage. They had used 

storage from different vendors in the past, 

including DELL Equallogic, EMC VNXe, 

Tintri. 

Hosted.nl was searching for a solution to 

support mixed workloads - from shared web 

hosting, hosted desktops, and e-mail 

hosting (Exchange) to private and hybrid 

clouds. Currently, the company is running 

workloads on VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, Xen, 

etc. Other requirements for the new storage 

solution were high performance, scalability, 

reliability, and good support. 

StorPool has fully replaced the legacy DELL 

and EMC storage which Hosted.nl was 

using previously - and it works perfectly with 

VMware. Hosted.nl currently runs VMware 

ESXi 6.0.0 and will be migrating towards 

6.7 very soon. 

"We do not need to worry about 

maintaining the storage platform itself as it 

just works. With StorPool we experience 

extremely low response times, very high skill, 

and knowledge from both the tech and the 

business teams. Also, they are very kind 

people in real life and that is one unique 

selling point," shared Erik Jan Visscher, 

Director and Founding Partner of Hosted.nl. 

A considerable advantage is that the team 

is able to focus on the things they need to 

do in their daily operation. There is no more 

need to worry about maintaining the storage 

platform itself as 'it just works'. 

In the past, when Hosted.nl needed more 

storage and/or performance, they it meant 

way more work to scale out their operation, 

balance workloads, etc. Now, they just add 

drives or nodes, and expand their storage 

capacity. 

PAY-AS-YOU-GROW 

More importantly, they get more 

performance. Hosted.nl confirmed that 

StorPool's support has never let them down 

and are available to help 24/7. Another 

advantage which needs to be considered is 

the pay-as-you-grow model, which 

Hosted.nl finds very interesting and 

attractive. 

Key benefits of the StorPool solution include: 

High performance 

Improved scalability and flexibility 

Saved time on staff 

Downtime reduction 

Exceptional team of experts 

"We are looking to replace Tintri in the 

future as well. StorPool outperforms all the 

other storage platforms we have used, not 

only performance-wise but also in 

scalability, support and redundancy," 

concluded Erik Jan Visscher. 

More info: www.storpool.com 




MAGAZINE

The future is here. 

Tiered Backup Storage 

• Fastest backups 

• Fastest restores 

• Scalability for fixed-length backup window 

• Comprehensive security with ransomware recovery 

• Low cost up front and over time 

Thank you so much 

to all who voted, and 

congratulations to our fellow 

Storage Awards 2023 winners! 

Visit our website to learn more 

about ExaGrid’s award-winning 

Tiered Backup Storage. 

LEARN MORE

Hornetsecurity 22.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:00 AM Page 2 


RANSOMWARE AN ONGOING ISSUE 

NEARLY 60% OF COMPANIES ARE 'VERY' TO 'EXTREMELY' CONCERNED ABOUT RANSOMWARE ATTACKS, 

ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH FROM HORNETSECURITY 

no insurmountable losses." 

af 

RANSOMWARE PROTECTION IS A 

NECESSITY 

Reassuringly, 93.2% of respondents rank 

ransomware protection as 'very' to 

'extremely' important in terms of IT 

priorities for their organisation, and 

87.8% of respondents confirmed they 

have a disaster recovery plan in place for 

a ransomware attack. 

In its annual ransomware survey, 

Hornetsecurity revealed that more than 

nine in ten (92.5%) businesses are 

aware of ransomware's potential for 

negative impact, but just 54% of 

respondents said their leadership is 

'actively involved in conversations and 

decision-making' around preventing such 

attacks. Four in ten (39.7%) said they 

were happy to 'leave it to IT to deal with 

the issue'. 

Commenting on the findings, 

Hornetsecurity CEO Daniel Hofmann, 

said: "Our annual Ransomware Survey is 

a timely reminder that ransomware 

protection is key to ongoing success. 

Organisations cannot afford to become 

victims - ongoing security awareness 

training and multi-layered ransomware 

protection is critical to ensure there are 

However, that leaves more than one in 

eight organizations (12.2%) without a 

disaster recovery plan. Of those 

companies, more than half cited a 'lack of 

resources or time' as the primary reason. 

Additionally, one-third of respondents 

said a disaster recovery plan is 'not 

considered a priority by management'. 

CHANGES OVER TIME 

This survey has been conducted annually 

over the past three years and has 

included asking respondents if their 

organisation has fallen victim to a 

ransomware attack. 

Since 2021, Hornetsecurity has found 

relatively small changes in the percentage 

of respondents saying their organisations 

have fallen victim to a ransomware 

attack: 21.1% in 2021, 23.9% in 2022, 

but a new low of 19.7% in 2023. 

Additionally, companies that reported 

paying a ransom are down from 9.1% in 

2021 to 6.9% in 2023. 

Some of the data in this survey show 

positive results, with a majority of 

respondents reporting they understand the 




MAGAZINE

Hornetsecurity 22.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:00 AM Page 3 


"Although organisations have reported fewer ransomware attacks in 2023, the threats 

haven't necessarily decreased. Cybersecurity awareness among all users remains a 

crucial element to further decrease the risk of falling for these threats, especially as 

attacks become more sophisticated with new technologies." 

importance of protection, and a drop in 

ransomware attack victims in 2023, 

showing companies are becoming more 

vigilant in their data protection. 

Ransomware attacks continue to evolve, 

though, so organisations must maintain 

this vigilance. In 2023, 81% of 

respondents reported they are receiving 

end-user training in comparison to 2021, 

when only 71.2% reported they had 

received training. 

"Although organisations have reported 

fewer ransomware attacks in 2023, the 

threats haven't necessarily decreased," 

Hofmann said. "Cybersecurity awareness 

among all users remains a crucial element 

to further decrease the risk of falling for 

these threats, especially as attacks 

become more sophisticated with new 

technologies." 

TOOLS TO COMBAT ATTACKS 

The survey also revealed the most used 

tools to combat potential threats: 

ransomware are: 

 

 

Immutable storage (40.6% of 

respondents) 

Tight control of user and application 

permissions (38.3%) 

 

 

 

87.8% used to end-point detection 

software with anti-ransomware 

capabilities 

84.4% cited 'email filtration and 

threat analysis' 

22.4% mentioned 'AI-enabled security 

solutions' as a tool they are now using 

to combat ransomware within their 

organisation. 

The most common primary security 

features to protect backups from 

Air-gapped storage (27.8%). 

Given the unpredictable nature of 

ransomware attacks, 76.2% of 

respondents said their business has 

changed the way it backs up its data. The 

73.6% of respondents who have a 

recovery plan in place for their Microsoft 

365 data are 'very' to 'extremely' confident 

in their chosen solution, while 55.1% of 

respondents are 'very' to 'extremely' 

confident that their data backups would 

be safe from a ransomware attack today. 

More info: www.hornetsecurity.com 




MAGAZINE 

23

Roundtable 24.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:01 AM Page 2 

ROUNDTABLE: FLASH/AI 

WOULD WE HAVE TODAY'S AI WITHOUT FLASH? 

STORAGE MAGAZINE GATHERED A SELECTION OF INDUSTRY EXPERTS TO DISCUSS HOW FLASH 

STORAGE AND AI HAVE IMPACTED EACH OTHER, AND HOW FLASH PRICES ARE SET TO CHANGE 

af 

Flash memory was, without doubt, a 

ground-breaking technology when it 

first entered enterprise data centres 

around two decades ago and immediately 

began transforming the performance of a 

wide range of applications. We wanted to 

understand the relationship between flash 

and the revolutionary developments that 

are now happening in artificial intelligence 

(AI), so we assembled a group of experts 

and asked them how much impact flash 

has had on AI and on the related fields of 

analytics, IoT and edge computing. 

We also asked our experts how much 

those technologies will change the 

adoption rate of flash. Because cost is a 

driving factor affecting the implementation 

of any technology, and flash prices have 

tumbled over the last twenty years, we then 

asked whether our experts expect flash 

prices to continue falling over the next 

five years. 

A HARD RELATIONSHIP TO DEFINE 

The more data that an application needs to 

access, the greater the performance boost 

delivered by storing data in flash rather 

than on spinning disk. Because AI is a 

highly data-intensive application, it might 

seem reasonable to presume that without 

flash, there would be no modern AI. 

However more than one member of our 

panel questioned that notion. 

"Some in this industry argue that we would 

not have today's AI without the past 

decade's shift to solid state storage. While 

that may be true, it's enormously difficult to 

prove. AI training consumes enormous 

resources, and SSDs have accelerated the 

advancement of computing performance 

across the board, so AI will have benefited 

from this," said Jim Handy, general director 

at analyst firm Objective Analysis. He 

added: "The same holds true of any 

discipline based on advanced computing 

technology, whether it's analytics, nuclear 

physics, or meteorology." 

David Norfolk, practice leader for 

development and government at analyst 

firm Bloor Research, said: "Insofar as flash 

makes storage faster, cheaper, and more 

reliable, it enables data-intensive 

innovations such as AI/ML, analytics, IoT, 

and edge processing. Conversely, these 

innovations need more fast, cheap, reliable 

storage and I'd expect flash take-up to track 

the take-up of these innovations." 

Leander Yu, president and CEO of Graid 

Technology said: "Flash memory and allflash 

array storage solutions are all about 

performance. The killer apps of AI/ML and 

analytics are where customers are investing 




MAGAZINE



"The future price of flash would depend on cost of capital, energy costs, 

supply and demand, which is heavily dependent on overall growth of IT 

infrastructure. So, if you believe that the world economy is going to grow 

and IT infrastructure will grow even faster, then in the next 1-2 years the 

price of flash will be increasing. Then fab capacity will catch up and in a 

few years price will go back to the slow downward trend." - Boyan Krosnov, StorPool 

in their IT infrastructure, and these 

workloads demand the performance 

delivered by all-flash storage." 

A wider view is taken by Peter Donnelly, 

director of products at storage networking 

vendor ATTO, who said: "I believe that 

we're in the middle of a dramatic change in 

how and where data is collected and 

consumed. This is driving the need for the 

disaggregation of the data centre. It's not to 

say that data centres will cease to exist, but 

they are becoming less structured and more 

flexible. This is an important dynamic that is 

driving the need for flash memory and flash 

storage. How do we access and use data 

that is across the country, or even around 

the world, in a way that makes it seem like 

it's located locally? Flash helps answer that 

challenge, and it enables emerging 

technologies like AI and data analytics at a 

scale that was impossible until now." 

CHANGING THE ARCHITECTURE OF 

FLASH-POWERED STORAGE 

But even if the impact of flash on AI, 

analytics, IoT, and edge processing is 

difficult to quantify, flash is certainly a key 

element in the IT infrastructure built to 

handle those workloads. When it comes to 

implementing AI, that infrastructure is about 

to receive more attention than it has to 

date, according to Randy Kerns, senior 

strategist at analyst firm the Futurum 

Group. 

"I think we are just beginning to see the 

importance of the underlying device 

technology used for AI/ML," he says. 

"Currently the focus has been on the 

algorithms and data conditioning from 

multiple sources to operate on and build 

the training and test data. Rightfully so, 

getting the functional aspects working has 

been where the attention has been placed. 

Now, as this is maturing, the importance of 

improving the technology and getting 

results faster will bring the technologies for 

storage into greater consideration. Some 

implementations may be further along than 

others, but we will see more importance in 

AI/ML and use of flash storage as a given." 

The ability of flash to handle small, 

random data accesses or IO operations fits 

the needs of AI/ML and analytics. "Hard 

disk drives are steampunk devices. SSDs 

have, as a result of their enormous IOPs 

advantages, taken over all workloads that 

involve small and/or random transfers. 

AI/ML training and analytics involve 

randomness in their I/O workloads, and 

IoT is dominated by extremely small 

transfers, making both early success stories 

for all-flash storage systems," said Curtis 

Anderson, software architect at Panasas. 

As well as contributing to the take-up of 

all-flash storage systems, the performance 

needs of AI/ML are also driving 

architectural changes within those systems. 

"Architectural considerations around how 

data enters and leaves the storage are also 

important. This is why traditional HPC 

storage is well suited to AI workloads, and 

there are many new storage companies 

entering the marketplace who are 

leveraging flash and NVMe [the storage 

protocol used to access flash] to deliver low 

latency across the board and eradicate any 

potential bottlenecks at the storage layer," 

said Amos Ankrah, solutions specialist at 

Boston. 

SCALE OF FLASH USAGE VARIES 

HUGELY 

AI applications such as autonomous driving 

and large language models (LLMs) are in 

Anderson's words 'poster children' for the 

use of huge datasets to train AI models. As 

an example, he cites Tesla's use of more 

than a staggering 200PB of what the car 

maker calls 'hot-tier cache capacity'. 

However, Anderson says most organisations 

are using far smaller datasets for AI 

development. "The vast majority (by count) 

of AI/ML projects have (significantly) less 

than 100TB of capacity needs," he said. 

That is 2,000 times less capacity than 

Tesla's hot tier. 

Anderson and his colleagues at Panasas 

expect that these more typical AI datasets 

will grow, but only slowly. That is just as 

well, because flash is significantly more 

expensive than disk, but its usage is often 




MAGAZINE 

25



"Hard disk drives are steampunk devices. SSDs have, as a result of their enormous 

IOPs advantages, taken over all workloads that involve small and/or random 

transfers. AI/ML training and analytics involve randomness in their I/O workloads, 

and IoT is dominated by extremely small transfers, making both early success stories 

for all-flash storage systems."- Curtis Anderson, Panasas 

essential for AI training. The gap between 

disk and flash performance is even wider 

for AI than for other applications, because 

of the general random nature of AI data 

access. 

For decades, storage vendors have 

compensated for the relatively low speed 

at which disk drives handle semi-random 

requests to access data by identifying hot 

or frequently-accessed data and storing it 

in very fast DRAM-memory read caches. 

"Read caching helps a lot when a small 

percentage of the data is being accessed 

multiple times. AI/ML doesn't fit often with 

those traditional I/O access patterns which 

forces organisations to take a largely 

flash-based approach for many AI/ML 

workloads," said Steven Umbehocker, 

founder and CEO at OSNexus. 

PERFORMANCE NOT THE ONLY 

FLASH VIRTUE 

Performance is not the sole advantage that 

flash offers compared to disk, as SSDs 

consume less power while also potentially 

being more reliable and able to withstand 

challenging environments. "In applications 

like IoT, edge processing, and TinyML 

(machine learning at the edge) one of the 

top design priorities is the ever-increasing 

drive to decrease power consumption - 

both dynamic and standby power - while 

ensuring the highest possible 

performance. On top of this, for any IoT 

design, keeping costs down is another 

huge priority," said Coby Hanoch, CEO 

and founder of Weebit Nano. 

The ability of flash to survive harsh 

environments is another advantage. "If we 

mean at the edge, infrastructure at cell 

towers and other local infrastructure, then 

solid state storage, particularly SSDs, are a 

definite enabling technology since they 

perform better at extremes of temperature 

that other storage technology, such as hard 

disk drives, which would find these difficult," 

said Tom Coughlin, president of analyst 

firm Coughlin Associates, and member of 

the Compute, Memory and Storage 

Initiative at industry body SNIA. 

Roy Illsley, chief analyst at research firm 

Omdia, highlighted another physical 

characteristic of flash when he said: "A 

second aspect worthy of note is that for 

edge use-cases the ability to operate from 

a small footprint so the AI inferencing 

workloads can be deployed in remote 

locations means flash is the storage of 

choice when physical space is a restraining 

factor." 

Dennis Hahn, principal analyst at Omdia, 

said that flash storage at the edge is often 

within hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI.) 

"In use-cases like edge, processing realtime 

results is often the case, so fast flash 

storage local to the processing servers is 

necessary. In its research, Omdia has 

found that these edge systems are 

frequently HCI systems using SSD devices." 

But this does not mean that IoT data is 

always stored in flash. " Data collection like 

that of IoT often focuses more on cost, and 

the data frequently travels over the 

relatively slow internet. [As a result] bulk 

storage solutions like HDD are more 

frequently used. But, ultimately, flash comes 

into play for its speed in enabling IoT data 

processing." 

Referring to the NOR variant of flash that 

is embedded in system-on-a-chip 

processors, Weebit Nano's Hanoch adds: 

"In devices performing AI or ML at the 

edge, flash is used not only for code / 

firmware storage and boot, but importantly 

flash, and even more so newer types of 

NVM like ReRAM, is also used to store the 

neural network weights needed for AI 

calculations. To support this functionality 

while keeping cost and power to a 

minimum, we're seeing designs pushing to 

more advanced nodes such as 28nm and 

22nm, currently the sweet spot for IoT and 

edge devices. This requires NVM that is 

embedded in an SoC monolithically, but 

embedded flash can't scale to 28nm and 

below, so designers can't integrate it with 

other functionality on a single die. This is a 

huge challenge in designing these small, 

inexpensive, often battery powered 

devices." 

PRICE GAP BETWEEN DISK AND 

FLASH TO REMAIN 

The variant of flash memory that hugely 

dominates flash usage is NAND flash. Until 

the late 90s, NAND flash was a very 

expensive and rarely used technology. This 

situation changed in the late 90s when 

makers of battery-powered devices such as 

MP3 players and mobile phones were 




MAGAZINE



"Some in this industry argue that we would not have today's AI without the past 

decade's shift to solid state storage. While that may be true, it's enormously difficult to 

prove. AI training consumes enormous resources, and SSDs have accelerated the 

advancement of computing performance across the board, so AI will have benefited 

from this."- Jim Handy, Objective Analysis 

searching for a data storage medium that 

consumed less power than miniature disk 

drives. NAND flash fit the bill, production 

soared, and prices plummeted. Surprisingly 

however, it was not until around 2004 that 

NAND flash became cheaper than DRAM 

memory. 

However, the important price comparison 

has always been between flash and disk. 

Although the price of flash has been falling 

for the last twenty years, so has the price of 

disk drives, when both are measured in 

terms of dollars per unit of storage 

capacity. For the last decade the gap 

between the two has been relatively steady. 

"SSD $/TB have maintained roughly the 

same 5x-7x multiplier over HDD $/TB over 

the last ten years," said Anderson. That 

estimate of the price difference was echoed 

by Umbehocker and by Giorgio Regni, 

CTO at Scality, who both put the per-TB 

price difference at five-fold. 

"We don't think the market is pushing flash 

vendors very hard to change that in the 

future," said Anderson. Referring to socalled 

fabs - the fabrication plants that 

make flash and other semiconductor chips 

- Anderson added: "There are only a 

handful of flash fabs around the world and 

new ones aren't being built at a rate that 

will outstrip the growth in the demand for 

flash." Again, this view was shared by other 

experts, who pointed to the need to build 

new fabs to increase global output, and the 

enormous expense of doing so, which 

ranges from hundreds of millions to billions 

of dollars per fabrication plant, and the 

years of planning and construction 

required. 

FLASH COST TO CONTINUE 

FALLING 

On a short-term basis, flash prices have a 

history of dramatic variations. For 

Objective Analysis, Handy said: "During 

shortages prices typically flatten, but 

sometimes they increase a little. In very rare 

cases they increase substantially, like they 

did in 2018. When the shortage flips to an 

oversupply there's always an alarmingly 

rapid price collapse. We had that collapse 

in the second half of 2022, when prices fell 

by up to 70%." 

Boyan Krosnov, CTO and co-founder at 

StorPool, outlined the factors that influence 

long term price trends for flash. "The future 

price of flash would depend on cost of 

capital, energy costs, supply and demand, 

which is heavily dependent on overall 

growth of IT infrastructure. So, if you 

believe that the world economy is going to 

grow and IT infrastructure will grow even 

faster, then in the next 1-2 years the price 

of flash will be increasing. Then fab 

capacity will catch up and in a few years 

price will go back to the slow downward 

trend." 

Shawn Meyers, field CTO at Tintri agrees: 

"The worldwide economy will be the largest 

driving factor, outside of new revolutionary 

breakthroughs in flash manufacturing. 

Supply chain ripples will follow the bullwhip 

effect for the foreseeable future." However, 

between price collapse and price surges, 

per-TB prices slowly fall, according to 

Objective Analysis' Handy, who said the 

price trends are surprisingly predictable 

and that his company produces the 

industry's most consistently accurate price 

forecasts. So how fast does Objective 

Analysis believe flash prices will fall over 

the next five years? "From now until mid- 

2028, the average price decline will be 

about 15% per annum," Handy said, 

adding that a possible shortage in mid-tolate 

2024 would be followed by oversupply 

and price collapse in 2026. 

However, Regni at Scality predicted an 

ever faster decline in price for the lowestcost 

QLC variant of flash. "Based on 

roadmaps from hardware and disk 

manufacturers, we see a decline in the cost 

(measured as $ per Terabyte) of highdensity 

(QLC) flash SSDs to decrease 

dramatically. Data shared with us shows a 

60%+ decline between 2022 and 2025," 

said Regni for Scality. 

That 60% decline in price cited by Regni 

for QLC flash equates to a 26% compound 

average reduction from 2022 to 2025, 

which would be significantly faster than 

Handy 's 15% prediction for overall flash 

prices over the longer time period of 2023 

to 2028. Regni added: "While this is a 

faster decrease than equivalent highdensity 

HDDs, we still see HDDs 

maintaining a 5x cost advantage over SSDs 

in the same time frame," he said. ST 




MAGAZINE 

27

Adsignal 28.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:05 AM Page 2 

ANALYSIS: 

ANALYSIS: CONTENT GROWTH 

af 

IS AI MAKING TECH EVEN LESS 

ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY? 

TOM DUNNING, CEO OF AD SIGNAL, LOOKS AT THE POTENTIAL 

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF RELENTLESS CONTENT GROWTH 

The amount of digital data in the world is 

growing by 23 per cent year on year 

and, as a result, is quickly becoming a 

serious environmental issue. Crucially, many 

people are unaware that this is even an issue 

at all. 

At any point in time the world is only using 20 

per cent of the available capacity, yet 

organisations continue to provision more 

capacity, partly due to the concern over limited 

availability driven by rarity of resources. 

Backup upon backup is created of each item 

of content so that each organisation in the 

chain can meet Service Level Agreements 

(SLAs) and Disaster Recovery (DR) 

requirements; multiply this by the rapid growth 

of social content and the number of 

photos/videos people now take for each shot 

they use. Streaming services continue to grow 

in viewership and offer an ever-increasing 

library of content. 

We are collectively stumbling down a path of 

environmental damage that will grow 

exponentially unless we take immediate action. 

THE DANGER OF RISING DATA 

We're living in an era of rapid technological 

development and it's unreasonable to expect 

people and businesses to stop innovating, stop 

adopting, and stop using technology 

altogether in order to reduce the carbon 

emissions caused by rising data. 

The key, therefore, is to find solutions that can 

scale the reduction of carbon emissions of 

data alongside the growth of data content. 

Over 3.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions 

are estimated to be generated by data centres 

and network traffic. This makes network traffic 

responsible for even more CO2 emissions 

than the global aviation industry (2.1 per 

cent). 

That figure is a significant issue, and one 

made even worse by predictions that data 

centres will generate 14 per cent of global 

CO2 emissions by 2040, comparable to the 

agricultural industry. 

Businesses and large organisations in 

particular are taking data and technology for 

granted, focusing on how they can leverage it 

to boost efficiency and generate bigger 

profits. All the time this is happening, data 

volumes are rising, and network traffic is 

increasing with little to no thought from the 

people doing the damage. 

Video storage is a particular 

environmental danger, accounting for an 

estimated 70 per cent of the CO2 emissions 

generated by data centres. It's the densest 

content format that we have and equates to 

roughly 1.84 per cent of the world's CO2 

emissions. 

Ultimately there are only three ways to 

reduce the carbon related to content storage: 

1. Reduce file sizes - normally through 

compression rather than reduced quality 

2. Store less - challenging as content grows 

3. Store it on more sustainable solutions 

In reality, a high volume of the large video 

storage comes from duplicated versions, many 

of which producers struggle to identify. As a 

result, content producers and holders can 

have a huge impact on emissions reduction 

just by de-duplicating high volumes of video 

storage. One UK broadcaster is holding 127 

versions of the same episode but only around 

20 of these are unique needed versions. 

The technology to achieve this is already out 

in the marketplace, solutions like Ad Signal's 

Match and Compose products can reduce 

emissions down from 1.84 to 0.5 per cent, for 

example, while also making it commercially 

beneficial to do so by reducing the storage 

and data transfer burden of duplicated videos. 

Video is the low hanging fruit; it isn't feasible 

for industries like aviation to make such a 

drastic reduction. 

HOW 'AI WILL BURN THE WORLD' 

The biggest threat to sustainability across the 

board is AI. AI has seen rapid adoption across 

the world this year, whether it be businesses 

utilising large language models (LLMs) such as 

ChatGPT to drive efficiencies or generating 

data to understand the content and its 

potential usage. However, there is an 

enormous environmental cost associated with 

AI that's only increasing alongside adoption. 

While businesses and people have seen 

benefits from AI, the components that power 

it, such as Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), 

require carbon-heavy materials to produce. 

Alongside that, the powering of these 




MAGAZINE

Adsignal 28.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:05 AM Page 3 

ANALYSIS: 

ANALYSIS: CONTENT GROWTH 

in this, bringing together innovative businesses 

that are pulling together to make a difference 

in the field. That starts with universal 

transparent monitoring led by legislation in 

order to measure the climate impact of 

organisations and hold them accountable. 

Carbon calculators should be available for 

all AI products that use non-renewable energy, 

even if it is carbon offset. Carbon offset does 

not outright prevent damage: it seeks to 

mitigate it and it cannot be the whole solution 

to our problems, though mitigation is better 

than nothing. 

components and the colossal cooling required 

significantly multiply the carbon emissions 

produced by AI. 

AI is plotted for a 37.3 per cent Compound 

Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) by 2030 which 

we believe to be underestimated. The training, 

reviewing and retraining process for AI models 

typically takes numerous iterations before it is 

ready for commercialisation. It's this training 

process which has the biggest compute 

demand and therefore the majority of the 

environmental damage, which we should 

expect to happen in the next 2-3 years, rather 

than by 2030. Our Match product can reduce 

the cost and carbon of AI processing on video 

by more than 75 per cent. 

A further damaging feature is the object 

storage of AI models, requiring libraries of 

images, audio and video for training 

purposes. In this area at least, companies can 

adopt carbon efficient solutions for 

deduplication to reduce some of these 

emissions. 

AI IS NOT THE PEG FOR EVERY HOLE 

Collectively, we need to understand that the 

best thing for businesses and for longevity is a 

healthy environment. 

That has not been the approach taken by 

many business decision makers when it comes 

to AI. IDC forecasts 90 per cent of new 

enterprise apps will use AI by 2025. In reality, 

many of these applications do not need AI 

(many using it as a gimmick) or could achieve 

the same benefits with other technology. 

While it's impossible to expect everyone to 

give up AI, especially since it has brought 

some benefits for businesses, it's those jumping 

on the AI trend blindly that are contributing to 

the stark rise in network traffic, data volumes 

and subsequently carbon emissions. 

HOW TECH PLAYERS CAN REDUCE 

EMISSIONS 

The biggest and arguably most important step 

that we can collectively take to reduce the 

environmental impact of data content growth 

is raising awareness of the extent of the issue. 

We all have our own preconceived notions of 

'sustainability' but ultimately, we're talking 

about climate change and reducing carbon 

emissions. The definition of our collective goal 

as a society is important and as part of that, it 

is essential that greenwashing is stopped. 

Organisations such as the Digital 

Sustainability Alliance are playing a crucial role 

We also need monitoring for thermal 

damage not related to power, such as 

immersion cooling. Immersion cooling reduces 

power for cooling by 30 per cent, however the 

server heat is still released on the planet, 

causing damage. Without transparent 

monitoring services, consumers cannot make 

informed choices and we are obscuring key 

information on the impact on our planet. 

Between businesses, organisations and 

education bodies, we can all gather the pieces 

of the sustainability puzzle and it's important to 

aggregate that data together so that we all 

have a combined understanding. 

SUSTAINABLE TECH FOR THE FUTURE 

Ultimately, sustainability is a choice. That 

remains true even through economic 

uncertainty and budget constraints. There is a 

plethora of companies out there with 

sustainable technology solutions and these 

companies should be considered when 

businesses are making tech choices. 

A common misconception is that 

sustainability comes at the expense of cost or 

performance, but many of the companies 

developing these sustainable technologies are 

doing it with an environmental-first approach. 

This not only ensures carbon savings, but also 

cost savings and performance boosts, making 

them an obvious tech choice and an easy way 

to reduce the emissions of rising data. 

More info: www.ad-signal.io 




MAGAZINE 

29

Syniti 30.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:06 AM Page 2 

MANAGEMENT: DATA MIGRATION 

FACING MIGRATION ISSUES HEAD ON 

af 

KEVIN WILD, HEAD OF 

PRESALES AT SYNITI, EXPLAINS 

HOW TO MANAGE COMPLEX 

DATA MIGRATION IN THE REAL 

WORLD 

Data migrations are complex and 

they can be daunting, especially 

when it comes to moving large 

amounts of data across enterprise 

resource planning (ERP) systems. That's 

not hyperbole, it's a statement borne of 

experience. I've seen first-hand that there 

is no such thing as a simple migration 

and when you add in multiple source 

systems or multiple targets, complexity 

ramps up quickly. 

How do we manage that complexity and 

get to a stage where the outcome is 

predictable? Is that even possible in the 

real world, where we're also managing 

our day-to-day priorities too? 

THE CHALLENGES 

Before we get started, it's important to 

recognise that no two migrations are the 

same. Single source to single target 

migration has its share of challenges. But 

it's rare to find a large-scale 

transformation that is a straightforward, 

single source to single target affair. 

Instead you're more likely to find multiple 

source systems or multiple targets, which 

exponentially increases the complexity. 

Often, data exists in different formats, 

meets different standards or, sometimes, 

may not exist at all. This is a challenge I 

regularly come across when companies 

migrate as part of a merger or acquisition 

But although it is true that each 

migration is different, the solution is 

universal. A successful migration relies on 

preparation and putting in the 

groundwork. 

PREPARING FOR MIGRATION 

To tackle migration complexity head-on, a 

solid, repeatable methodology is 

essential. A strategy that not only 

addresses the challenges at hand but also 

ensures a predictable outcome. By 

'predictable outcome,' I mean a scenario 

where, on day one after cut-over, the data 

seamlessly supports the business 

processes. Anything short of this is a 

failure. 

But it won't happen without data 




MAGAZINE

Syniti 30.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:06 AM Page 3 

MANAGEMENT: DATA MIGRATION 

"Single source to single target migration has its share of challenges. But it's rare to find 

a large-scale transformation that is a straightforward, single source to single target 

affair. Instead you're more likely to find multiple source systems or multiple targets, 

which exponentially increases the complexity. Often, data exists in different formats, 

meets different standards or, sometimes, may not exist at all. But although it is true that 

each migration is different, the solution is universal. A successful migration relies on 

preparation and putting in the groundwork." 

preparation and cleansing: a crucial part 

of any migration. 

Many customers tell me that their data 

only needs light-touch cleansing and 

preparation. My experience says 

otherwise. Often-times, these statements 

are based on gut feeling or blind faith 

rather than solid fact. Would you be 

willing to bet millions of dollars on that? 

That is often what is at stake when 

migrations fail. 

I understand that no company has 

unlimited time and resources, so it's 

important to think carefully about how you 

prepare and focus on the activities that 

will have the most impact. 

UNDERSTAND YOUR DATA - 

OBJECTIVELY 

Poke your data, prod it, manipulate it. 

Whatever you do, make sure you are 

walking into your transformation with eyes 

open. 

Armed with this understanding, identify 

the gaps and put a plan in place to 

address them. Most gaps can be 

addressed during the migration process 

but the trickier ones will require time and 

expertise. Identifying these gaps in 

advance means you can plan 

appropriately and make sure activity is 

completed ahead of the migration - so 

you don't run out of time and have to 

compromise on quality. 

ROBUST REPORTING 

Establish a reporting process to track how 

preparation activities are progressing and, 

more importantly, identify potential delays 

as early as possible. Everybody gets side 

tracked at some point and most of the 

business people involved in the process 

will also have a day job running at the 

same time. 

So take time at the start of the project to 

put in place performance indicators and 

alerts to identify potential delays before 

they snowball into substantial issues. If it 

looks like progress is stalling, have a 

contingency plan to make sure data 

quality remains a priority in the lead up to 

the migration. 

JUST ONE THING 

With every migration, priorities compete 

and it can be difficult to give everything 

the focus it needs. But preparation is key, 

and this is amplified as you start to layer 

in the additional complexity of multiple 

systems, large data volumes, or complex 

processes. So if you do just one thing 

differently ahead of your next migration, 

spend time on preparation for a 

successful, less stressful process. 

More info: www.syniti.com 




MAGAZINE 

31

11-11 32.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:06 AM Page 2 

STRATEGY: 

STRATEGY: DISASTER RECOVERY 

af 

THE GROWING NEED FOR APPLICATION 

RECOVERY PLANNING 

SAM WOODCOCK, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF CLOUD STRATEGY, 11:11 SYSTEMS, EXPLAINS THE 

IMPORTANCE OF ARCHITECTING A DR PLAN FOR APPLICATION RECOVERY IN THE CLOUD 

Today being impacted by a cybersecurity 

incident is almost inevitable and it is not 

a question of if, or even when, but how 

often an organisation will be attacked. 

According to Veeam's 2023 Data Protection 

Trends Report, which surveyed 4,200 business 

and IT leaders on their IT and data protection 

strategies and plans, 85% of organisations 

said they have had at least one ransomware 

attack in the last 12 months and 79% of 

respondents said they have a protection gap. 

Additionally, according to the UK's 

Information Commissioner's Office, one in 

three data breaches in 2022 were caused by 

ransomware. Therefore, as well as considering 

preventative cybersecurity measures, 

companies also need to think about whether 

and how they will recover from a malicious 

attack, how quickly they can recover their 

systems and applications and the cost of 

recovery to the business. 

DO YOU HAVE A PLAN? 

A fundamental question every organisation 

should ask themselves is: would we survive a 

cybersecurity attack? Along with: do we know 

our level of preparedness; do we know how to 

recover our critical applications; do we 

understand the risks the organisation faces 

and do we regularly test our recovery plans? 

Here at 11:11 Systems, we know that 

recovering from a data-compromising cyber 

attack requires planning, investment, 

capabilities, procedures, and so much more. 

Additionally, we understand how important it is 

for organisations to recognise the difference 

between traditional disaster recovery - in 

response to incidents such as wildfires, 

earthquakes, and extreme weather conditions 

- and compromised data recovery in the event 

of a cybersecurity incident. 

Unfortunately, as the statistics above 

highlight, the latter is the more likely and more 

impactful disaster recovery event and 

unfortunately an interruption to operations 

caused by a cyber attack can cost businesses 

an enormous amount, financially and 

reputationally. 

CYBER AND BACK-UP TEAMS MUST BE 

ALIGNED 

Another key finding from the Veeam research 

was that the vast majority of organisations 

surveyed had a hybrid environment, with an 

even split across architectures and workloads 

in the cloud, in virtual set ups, and onpremises. 

The key takeaway here is that 

modern data protection solutions must provide 

equitable capabilities across all architectures 

(physical, virtual, and cloud). 




MAGAZINE

11-11 32.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:07 AM Page 3 

STRATEGY: 

STRATEGY: DISASTER RECOVERY 

In addition, organisations should plan for 

workloads moving across clouds and even 

back on-premises, and data protection 

strategies should accommodate for that 

fluidity. This means cyber and backup teams 

must be aligned, and backup must be part of 

an organisation's wider cybersecurity strategy 

and integrate with modern systems 

management. 

Interestingly, the research went on to 

highlight that 37% of victim organisations of a 

ransomware attack had a 'no pay' policy, but 

regardless of their policy 80% of companies 

paid the ransom anyway. More concerningly, 

15 to 20% of those who paid still couldn't 

recover their data. So, what should an 

organisation do to ensure that it can recover 

important applications? 

In our cloud-centric world, organisations are 

creating an incredible amount of applications 

and data to drive their operations. IT teams 

use complex software programmes and 

applications that rely on other applications, 

external services, distributed systems, and 

various data sources. Application recovery 

planning helps organisations quickly recover 

critical data, applications, or systems in case 

of an unexpected outage or a cyber incident. 

APPLICATION RECOVERY REQUIRES 

CAREFUL PLANNING 

Determining how to protect and recover an 

application can often be easier than 

determining how quickly your business needs 

that application recovered. Establishing the 

correct recovery point objective (RPO) targets 

at an application level is a critical part of DR 

planning. 

It's important to understand best practices for 

building an application recovery plan for both 

simple and complex applications - especially 

with dependent external software programmes 

and services. 

The key to this is understanding how different 

components of the application interact with 

each other. This involves identifying all the 

external services and dependencies that the 

application relies on and understanding how 

they work together. 

CONSIDER COMPATIBILITY AND 

VERIFICATION 

In other words what technology should it 

leverage and where is the best place to bring 

applications back up and running from a 

compatibility perspective? Key questions to 

consider here are: 

Is my hypervisor and versioning compatible 

with the cloud solution? 

Is my virtual guest hardware also 

compatible? 

How can I ensure that the architecture of 

my VMs is considered and compatible with 

the cloud? 

When considering connectivity, questions to 

think about include whether you have enough 

bandwidth to leverage cloud services as well 

as how to select the best cloud location for a 

positive and seamless end user experience. 

Likewise, how can you validate that 

connectivity will allow the organisation to meet 

its RPO objectives? 

In a complex hybrid environment with many 

different components, it is also important to 

consider application dependency and to map 

out how applications work, how they 

communicate, and which are dependent on 

each other. To tackle these challenges, it is 

essential to understand the application 

architecture and the dependencies between its 

different components. This may involve 

conducting a detailed application analysis 

and identifying all external software services, 

systems, and dependencies. 

This type of exercise should be undertaken 

on a continuous basis because the situation is 

dynamic and can change very quickly. A 

deep understanding of application and 

infrastructure is critical to successful 

application recovery, as is understanding end 

user access and ensuring a seamless user 

experience. 

So, what are the key steps an organisation 

should take to recover applications from an 

attack? 

1. Identify and isolate the affected systems: As 

soon as the attack is detected, the first step is 

to identify the affected systems and isolate 

them from the rest of the network to prevent 

further spread of the infection. 

2. Assess the damage: The next step is to 

assess the extent of the damage caused by the 

attack, including the loss of data and the 

compromise of critical systems. This 

assessment will help determine the application 

recovery strategy. 

3. Restore from back-ups: If you have 

backups available, you can use them to 

restore the system to its previous state. To 

ensure data integrity and system functionality, 

you should thoroughly test the recovery 

process. 

4. Rebuild affected systems: If backups are 

unavailable or the data gets corrupted, you 

must rebuild the affected systems from scratch. 

This process involves rebuilding the operating 

system, applications, and data, which can be 

time-consuming and challenging. 

5. Improve security measures: Once the 

system has been restored or rebuilt, it is 

essential to improve the security posture to 

prevent attacks in the future. 

To mitigate these risks, it is critical to have a 

robust application recovery DR plan in place 

that includes regular back-ups, testing, and 

security measures to prevent such attacks. 

Having a clear communication plan is vital to 

inform stakeholders of the situation and the 

recovery. As the statistics in the Veeam Data 

Protection Trends report highlight, having a 

DR plan for application recovery in the cloud 

isn't an option - it's a must. 

More info: www.1111systems.com 




MAGAZINE 

33

Zerto 34.qxd 01-Dec-23 11:07 AM Page 2 

RESEARCH: CYBER-ATTACKS 

RANSOMWARE: ONLY ONE IN SEVEN 

BUSINESSES RECOVER 100% OF THEIR DATA 

TO MITIGATE RANSOMWARE ATTACKS, I.T. PROFESSIONALS MUST CONSIDER BOTH BUSINESS-RELATED 

AND INFRASTRUCTURE DATA EQUALLY, SUGGESTS NEW RESEARCH 

af 

As the time and cost of securing data through 

the entirety of the data backup process 

continue to rise, new methods of protection 

arise to ensure the maximum security of 

backed up data. Air-gapping has become a 

viable solution for these environments, with 

more than three-quarters of organisations 

using, testing, or expressing interest in this 

solution. By leveraging backups stored in 

volumes inaccessible by default and only 

accessible during protected backup sessions, 

cyber attackers are prevented from displacing 

or destroying backup data. 

Amajor new study announced by Zerto 

has confirmed that ransomware 

continues to pose a serious threat and 

is viewed today as one of the top concerns for 

viability within organisations. Companies are 

becoming increasingly aware of the damage 

caused by these attacks and understanding 

the dire reality of the potential compromise. 

The research indicates that nearly two-thirds 

(65%) of respondents consider ransomware to 

be one of the top three most serious threats to 

the viability of the organisation. 

The study was conducted by ESG and cosponsored 

by Zerto. Its findings, published in 

a new e-book (available via the URL below) 

titled "2023 Ransomware Preparedness: 

Lighting the Way to Readiness and Mitigation," 

show that organisations can lose vital minutes 

to hours of time in recovery, resulting in 

significant and unacceptable consequences 

for large-scale operations. Combined with 

evolving techniques and targets designed to 

motivate payment from victim organisations, 

this data highlights the crucial need to 

reengineer recovery processes for ransomware 

attacks. 

In addition, nearly 60% of respondent 

organisations report an impact to regulated 

data, such as personally identifiable 

information, in successful ransomware attacks. 

The study also indicates that configuration 

data faces an increasingly significant risk of 

compromise, with more than half of 

respondents indicating this data class was 

affected by a successful ransomware attack. 

This shows that attackers understand affecting 

infrastructure of a company at the core is an 

effective way to halt production in its tracks. As 

a result, IT professionals preparing to mitigate 

ransomware attacks must consider both 

business-related and infrastructure data 

equally in their efforts. 

Despite the importance of this solution, the 

response breakdown shows only slightly more 

than one in four (27%) organisations have 

deployed it at this point, while 18% are in the 

process of testing and deploying an airgapped 

solution. This confirms that while it is 

seen as a viable strategy, there is still much 

work to be done in the market overall to 

ensure that the vast majority have it in place. 

"Given the high frequency of ransomware 

attacks and the impacts of successful ones 

such as data and infrastructure loss, many 

organisations are left with damages that have 

an effect well beyond IT," commented 

Christophe Bertrand, practice director at ESG. 

"Attackers often go beyond valuable data 

assets by undermining key infrastructure 

components and exposing significant gaps, 

including those in the backup infrastructure 

itself. IT leaders must understand that the 

nature of the threat goes well beyond just data 

and focus on protecting and further leveraging 

their backup and recovery infrastructure to derisk 

and minimise business impact through 

advanced capabilities." 

More info: www.zerto.com/page/esg-the-longroad-ahead-to-ransomware-preparedness/ 




MAGAZINE

Advancing EPYC 

Performance and Density 

with New H13 Systems 

New Cloud, AI, and Technical Computing Solutions with 128-Core 

AMD EPYC 9004 Series Processors and 3D V-Cache Technology 

Learn More at www.supermicro.com/Aplus 

© Supermicro and Supermicro logo are trademarks of Super Micro Computer, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

eNews.qxd 12-Apr-19 10:51 AM Page 1

ST Nov-Dec 2023

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?