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City council implements virtual SAN for data protection 20 September, 2007 10:53:06
Disaster recovery simplified with asynchronous mirroringMelbourne-based Kingston City Council has virtualised its storage environment with high-availability data protection and off-site disaster recoverywhich integrates seamlessly with its VMWare server environment. - +
Datamonitor Sees Bright Prospects for Government Vendors 13 September, 2007 10:48:41
The Australian public sector is becoming an increasing attractive prospect for vendorsThe Australian public sector is becoming an increasing attractive prospect for vendors thanks to a renewed focus on delivering greater broadband access and a determination to streamline public sector back office processes. - +
Blog: IBM Tries to Patent... Patent Licensing 25 October, 2007 11:06:16
Ok, so it's a little off-topic. But we've talked about IBM's wacky patents before, and this one is just too good not to note. - +
Blog: SAP Gets Business Intelligence. What Do You Get? 09 October, 2007 12:56:35
Question: How many months does it take for an ERP vendor to respond to a rival's major play? - +
Blog: More Outsourcing Innovation Consternation 18 September, 2007 11:01:01
Some numbers from Forrester Research further illustrate the gap between expectation and reality when it comes to the level of innovation brought to bear by IT services providers.
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Adobe launches hosted services, adds Flash to Acrobat 03 June, 2008 09:02:44
Adobe to launch Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storageAdobe this week is set to unveil the next version of its Adobe Acrobat software, which adds support for the company's Flash multimedia technology. The company also plans to launch a new Web site offering users free hosted services for document creation, sharing and storage. - +
Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53
The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year. - +
Networking's greatest debates in Management 29 October, 2007 07:16:21
Classic debates include Outsourcing vs. keeping it in-house, Industry standards vs. proprietary technologies and Frameworks vs. point productsA look at the greatest all time Management controversies in the history of the networking industry. - +
Universities struggle to keep up with storage demands 18 October, 2007 11:40:48
Students, faculty clamor for space to store fast-growing audio, video, text filesExploding data growth on college campuses, driven by rich media, virtual classrooms and fast-growing e-mail files, is forcing IT managers to quickly find ways to quickly boost storage capacity. - +
Data centers get religion 10 October, 2007 12:43:32
Would you house a data center in a diamond mine or an old chapel? These organizations did, with great success.Are you looking for a new data center? One that promises an abundant supply of energy and offers the latest in cooling technology?
Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. Newsletter Subscription
NAS vs. SAN
The argument over the humble file serving network-attached storage and the data-intensive storage-area network is a popular topic for the less than storage-savvy industry pundit. But a battle between NAS and SAN was never meant to be. NAS came out of the NetWare and Microsoft file servers used in the 1980s to provide access to files for network clients. Network Appliance first commercialized the concept of a NAS appliance, which would serve up files and be based on a stripped down network operating system.
NAS has been adopted by legions of Network Appliance users and bunches of Windows users for hosting Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server. It is used by millions of others for storing their file-oriented data.
SANs were adopted to partition storage traffic from the rest of the LAN and by doing so, speed up transaction-intensive databases, ERP and CRM systems.
"Separating ownership of a server from its storage and placing all the storage devices directly on a Fibre Channel network allows a many-to-many connection from servers to storage, and from storage to other storage devices. This approach grants the benefits of traditional networking to storage devices, such as increased scalability, availability and performance," consultant Barb Goldworm once wrote in a Network World newsletter.
SAN backers say the technology is best when performance is paramount for business-critical applications such as databases, ERP or CRM systems. NAS, they say is hindered by performance concerns. If you talk to some of these NAS users though, they will say that using NAS to host business-critical applications has never been a problem.
A recent test of a BlueArc NAS system showed more than 192,900 operations per second. -Deni Connor
Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI
Fibre Channel is dead." That was the controversial conclusion of one participant in a heated debate at an industry conference in 2000. Industry vendors were investigating a new protocol -- storage over IP -- that they said would replace the then dominant Fibre Channel. That newfangled transport protocol, which allowed storage traffic to flow across the Gigabit Ethernet network, would become iSCSI -- it would be implemented by individuals who were familiar with Ethernet networking, but not with the more complicated and expensive Fibre Channel.
Spin forward seven years and the battle between Fibre Channel and iSCSI is now passe. Fibre Channel isn't dead -- it's still the dominant storage protocol -- and iSCSI is being implemented at an increasing rate. According to IDC, while iSCSI commanded just 3 percent market share in external disk storage systems (with Fibre Channel accounting for the rest), the research firm expects that market share to increase to 21 percent by 2010. Now the two technologies even exist in the same network.
Fibre Channel is being used in enterprises to host transaction- and data-intensive operations because of its performance and its assured delivery of data; iSCSI, an inexpensive technology that operates on top of Gigabit Ethernet, is being used by organizations that don't have dedicated and storage-savvy IT personnel and in small and midsize businesses and departments in the enterprise to host mid-range business-critical applications that do not require the blazing performance of Fibre Channel.
Today, the industry is vetting iSCSI to run on 10Gbps Ethernet, where it can take advantage of TCP offload, remote DMA and I/O virtualization capabilities. Research firm Dell'Oro Group sized the 10Gbps Ethernet switch market at 100,000 port shipments in the fourth quarter of 2006 with revenue of US$1 billion. As 10Gbps Ethernet continues to grow, there may be no way to stop iSCSI's market momentum.
Fibre Channel, on the other hand, may at some time be replaced by the proposed Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), a technology that relies on the lossless, enhanced Ethernet specification. This technology, which layers Fibre Channel over Ethernet, will be attractive to companies that want to operate storage and networking on a converged network. FCoE products are expected to be available from Cisco, Brocade, Network Appliance, Nuova Systems, Emulex and QLogic sometime in 2009. -Deni Connor
2008 CIO Summit
19th August, 2008 Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney Developed in partnership with CIO Magazine, IDC, INTEP and the CIO Executive Council.
The world of the CIO is extremely complex and diverse. Multiple priorities demand attention and decisions are needed instantly. Individual teams need to be driven towards common goals, and businesses strive to become more mobile, agile and responsive. For CIOs, the challenge never ends.
Every year the CIO Summit identifies what is top of mind for CIOs across Australia and New Zealand, and offers insight for CIO benchmarking and vendor strategic planning alike.
Recent IDC research shows that over 59% of CIO's believe that 'to achieve their business strategies, technology should be used more aggressively than today.'
Join us on August 19th to discover how this is possible with the latest technologies including Virtualisation, Web 2.0, IP Surveillance and Software as a Service (Saas).
Click here for more information.
Please email Denyse_Robertson@idg.com.au for further information.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Best Western forced to play defense on data breach disclosure 29 August, 2008 08:08:00
Could hotel chain have done a better job of defusing story about system intrusion?The headline in this week's Glasgow Sunday Herald -- "Revealed: 8 million victims in the world's biggest cyber heist" -- was a grabber. - +
US Terror threat system crippled by technical flaws 28 August, 2008 09:53:00
US Congress charges that US$500m project to prevent another 9/11 is a complete failure.A US House subcommittee is charging that a US$500 million IT project intended to "connect the dots" on terrorists and help prevent another 9/11 is a failure; it can't even handle basic Boolean search terms, such as "and, or and not." - +
Malware infects space station laptops 28 August, 2008 08:15:00
Not the first time, says NASA; astronauts load up Norton AntiVirusMalware has managed to get off the planet and onto the International Space Station, NASA confirmed yesterday. And it's not the first time that a worm or virus has stowed away on a trip into orbit. - +
Separation of duties and IT security 28 August, 2008 09:40:00
Muddied responsibilities create unwanted risk. Kevin Coleman says auditors may start labeling poorly defined IT duties as a material deficiency.Separation of duties is a key concept of internal controls and is the most difficult and sometimes the most costly one to achieve. This objective is achieved by disseminating the tasks and associated privileges for a specific security process among multiple people. - +
How to recruit and retain the best young security employees 27 August, 2008 08:32:00
Today's youngest generation of workers, known as Generation Y, have different career goals than their parents did. What do you need to know to get them to work for you?The final installment in a series of articles about generational differences and security. Part one looked at managing workers in different age groups. Part two examined the types of security concerns that are most commonly associated with different generations in the general workforce. This article provides recruiting and retention advice for security employees.
Tumbleweed appoints O2 Networks to its Australian Channel Partner Program 29 August, 2008 12:31:00
HP ProCurve Brings Big Business Gigabit Switching Features to Small Businesses 29 August, 2008 12:00:00
GlobalConnect Provides Treatment for Healthcare Provider’s Contact Support Requirements 29 August, 2008 09:59:00
Sybase and Logica Partner To Mobilise The Supply Chain 29 August, 2008 09:47:00
New global landscape for qualitative researchers with Spanish and Chinese software releases 29 August, 2008 09:34:00
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Radicati Market Quadrant 2008 on Corporate Web Security
An Analysis of the Market for Corporate Web Security Solutions, revealing Top Players, Mature Players, Specialists and Trail Blazers. Read on to discover who makes the grade.
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