whitepapers.windowsnetworking.com/Storage

Building High Performance iSCSI SAN Configurations

IP storage using Internet SCSI (iSCSI) provides opportunity for many organizations looking to extend existing Fibre Channel SANs to stranded servers, or looking to deploy Ethernet-based SANs. It can reduce costs by allowing IT managers to take advantage of existing, familiar Ethernet networks. Often the biggest complaint white new technology like iSCSI is its ability to provide more than simple functionality and connectivity.

New Life for Dead Storage Technologies

After a decade and a half optical technologies in the enterprise storage market account for only a fraction of 1% of enterprise storage hardware spending. For a traditional optical-based enterprise storage supplier, these are tough facts to acknowledge. Yet there will be a dramatically different future.

Managing PST Files from Discovery to the Archive

As the need to retain corporate data has increased to meet regulatory requirements-- and best practice may dictate email meeting certain internal policies-- the very existence of PSTs is putting email more and more "at risk. So what can you do about PSTs?

3 Reasons to Archive Email

Compliance, capacity management and e-policy enforcement. Which factors are driving email archiving at your organization? And how do you pick a solution that solves your specific problems without breaking the bank? There are many internal and external forces driving the need to archive.

Policy, Workflow, Automation: Foundation Of Storage Operations Management

This white paper details the use of automated, policy-based management in a Storage Operations Management (SOM) solution. A SOM solution includes a broad range of functions that enable administrators to actively manage and automate their entire storage network.

Storage Management Simplified with Virtualization

Imagine a world where storage management is simplified; everything works together; there are no configuration issues when upgrading, and vendors all cooperate to allow information to be easily stored and retrieved seamlessly. This was a reality in the mainframe world, but the deployment of open systems shattered these concepts.

Cluster Class High Availability for the Microsoft Technology Platform

This document introduces Neverfail Heartbeat, a technology that enables the protection of applications against many potential failures, including application failure, operating system failures, and hardware, network or site failures, at a reasonable cost.

Data Compression: Benchmark & ROI Analysis

Data storage demands are growing exponentially every year. PKWARE gives you hard data on getting the most out of storage space without costly hardware upgrades using PKZIP.

Uncompressed High-Definition Video Solution With Cisco Multiprotocol Shared SAN

Today, most video post production for standard-definition content has moved onto disk-based, non-linear editing (NLE) systems. These systems offer improved flexibility over linear, tape-based systems by allowing a workstation fast access to any part of the digital media file.

Managing Storage Growth with an Affordable and Flexible IP SAN

Enterprise data requirements grow at 50 - 100 percent a year, creating a constant storage infrastructure management challenge. As new storage is brought into the environment, it is typically added within inflexible single server-silos.

Scalable Windows-Based NAS Using Melio File System

NAS solutions built using the Windows Storage Server 2003 on standard Intel platforms provide a very cost effective solution to file serving. Servers built on this platform can export file services using CIFS, NFS, and other protocols, which provides a convenient platform to consolidate files.

Removable Storage Technologies: A Comparative Overview

Most data storage devices can be broadly characterized as either fixed media or removable media. This paper briefly examines and compares magnetic tape, magneto-optical disk, and removable magnetic disks, and identifies their positioning, future trends, and market applications.

Encryption: The Business Case for Protecting Data at Rest

Read how Spectra Logic Corporation's BlueScale Encryption integrates hardware encryption directly into the electronics of a tape library, offering a practical, affordable, & scalable option.

Virtual Tape Libraries Without Complexity

Disk in the form of - that is, disk presented as tape - can be added without requiring huge changes to existing backup strategies. This is more straightforward than adding disk into an existing environment, because adding disk without the VTL interface requires complex and unavoidable changes to existing strategies.

Business and IT Requirements for High Availability

The primary IT concern today is to ensure that the applications and information that drive critical business processes are available when they are needed, whenever they are needed. We present a description of the required architecture and operation for an automatic failover solution, demonstrating how a solution should be carefully engineered for ease of operation and management.

Centralized and Offsite Backup

Mitigate risk and lower costs by letting your disaster recovery replica server double as a server for performing an offsite backup. This informative white paper will teach you how...

Cost of Losing Information

The primary information management concern in the enterprise today is to ensure that the knowledge necessary to drive critical business processes is available where it needs to be, when it needs to be. The costs of failure to do this are high.

Continuous Data Protection

Traditional backup systems provide a critical layer of insurance, but they represent all-or-nothing strategies that do not cover the minute by minute daily data writes to the disk. Continuous data protection fills in this gap by capturing changes to data while users are working. In the event of a data interruption, administrators can automatically reconstitute the data in reverse order to a point before it was corrupted or lost.

Advancing Productivity Where Complexity and Urgency Collide

Creating business value is the ultimate goal of investing in new IT technologies. This paper offers recommendations for both IT users and vendors that are vital to ensure that this goal is met.

Introducing Symantec Backup Exec 11d for Windows Servers

The latest release of Backup Exec allows you to eliminate backup windows and recover individual Exchange messages, folders, and mailboxes - without mailbox backups. Learn more about how Symantec Backup Exec™ 11d for Windows® Servers provides continuous, cost-effective, and high-performance disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and recovery for Windows server data.

Top 10 Reasons for Using Disk-based Online Server Backup and Recovery

Learn the top ten reasons why SMBs are embracing online server backup and recovery for automatic, continuous backup, reliable server data disaster recovery and freeing limited technical staff for move value-driven tasks.

Curb the Data Chaos: Download Top Ten Tips for Stepping Up to SAN

EMC, the world leader in storage and IT management, developed these Top 10 Tips for SMBs considering stepping up to SAN. The following tips can help you make informed decisions when selecting the hardware and technologies that you use.

Top 10 Data Protection Tips for SMBs

The amount of data on business computers has grown astronomically over the past few decades. If a company loses this data, business grinds to a halt. The following tips can help you select the hardware and software you need to safeguard the integrity of your data, guarantee accurate restores, and manage backups without placing an undue burden on IT personnel.

Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape Backups with EMC Insignia Solution for Data Protection

By utilizing the speed and reliability of the EMC CLARiiON® AX150 networked storage system and the convenience of EMC Retrospect® 7.5 for Windows backup and recovery software, SMBs can implement fast, effective, reliable data protection that is easy to set up and manage without placing undue strain on IT resources.

Protecting Backup Media with AES Encryption

Offsite media can be lost or stolen while in transit, exposing sensitive information to potential misuse. By using AES encryption on backup data, a business can feel confident that sensitive customer information will remain safe and secure, even if the backups tapes are lost of stolen.

Top 10 Microsoft Exchange Storage and Protection Tips for SMBs

The following tips can help you keep Exchange running smoothly and let you bounce back quickly from hardware failures that could threaten your Exchange server.

Top 10 Tips for Web-Based Collaboration in SMBs

The following tips can help you select Web-based collaboration software that offers all the features you need to get your entire team working together effectively.

Multi-Tier Storage Strategies

This white paper covers the use of new growth-oriented file systems with snapshot capabilities, iSCSI for network layer independence, and a collection of other technologies provided by various vendors and open source projects to create a multi-tiered storage solution with self-service data restoration, long term growth, and disaster recovery.

The Storage Area Network Goes Global

As the demand for bandwidth grows, so does the reach of networks. Users need to access data globally, from multiple locations around the world, quickly and transparently without breaking budgets. Data centers locked into servicing only local users unnecessarily constrain growth and expansion.

Enabling Cost Effective Global Enterprise Storage Area Networks Using 10 Gigabit Ethernet

The demands on Storage Area Networks (SANs) go far beyond where they were only a few years ago. It is no longer good enough to just provide a large pool of scalable storage with good performance.

11 Reasons to Upgrade to Symantec Backup Exec

Imagine being able to eliminate your backup windows and recovery individual Exchange messages, folders, and mailboxes - without mailbox backups. Read this document to find out how Backup Exec 11d for Windows Servers provides the gold standard in continuous, cost-effective, high-performance disk-to-disk-to-tape backup and recovery.

Simplified Data Protection for Small to Medium Businesses

Once a business clears the financial hurdle and begins to plan their data protection strategy the choices can appear daunting. Do they select tape or disk? Apply differential or incremental backups? How much will a new system cost and how much time will it take to implement? What data should be included in the backup? This article attempts to address these concerns.

SMB Backup: Make a Wise Decision

This white paper covers the need for backup and the unique challenges faced by small and medium sized businesses when addressing storage needs. He then highlights different backup options and selection criteria for choosing the best backup solution.

Third-Generation Backup/Restore Technology

The challenge of managing, protecting and storing digital data is a major issue for businesses of every size and category. Companies generally rank the improvement of their storage infrastructure as a top objective, and the escalation of data protection costs has become an overriding concern. According to recent research, the data storage capacity of the average North American enterprise is now 59 terabytes, and the projected annual production data growth is 20 to 30 percent.

Another Year on in the ILM Journey

Quocirca conducted two surveys separated by 12 months that looked at the data management infrastructure of UK and Irish businesses and how this was linked to their ability to respond to the whims of the regulators. In the year between the two surveys a lot had changed.

Archive Management Service Protects Data and Saves Time

Organizations face a double whammy when it comes to data archive management. On one hand, the volume of digital and paper archives is growing exponentially. Industry analysts report that digital hard disk storage has grown 85 percent a year over the last eight years and 2.7 billion new sheets of paper are filed into folders every day.

Use of Efficient Data Storage Increases Revenue

Data keeps growing with no signs of stopping. An effective storage solution seamlessly scales to meet an organization’s growing appetite for capacity, while ensuring availability and fast access. SAN storage should be designed to deliver strong top-end performance so throughput does not degrade as storage needs scale higher.

Business Success Dependent on Data Protection Capabilities

Disruption to your production environment is costly, and any loss of information can be disastrous. Consequences may include loss of revenue and company reputation, lower shareholder confidence, potential exposure to business continuity risk, or sanctions and fines for noncompliance with regulatory requirements. Organizations need an effective and reliable way to safeguard corporate information in the wake of an unforeseen downtime event.

Real-Time Data Protection and Recovery Crucial in Times of Disaster

Well-publicized disasters highlight the need for an effective and timely data recovery solution. While current tape and disk backup provide some peace of mind, they do not keep up with the demands placed on your business. You cannot afford to wait hours (or days) to recover your critical applications and data.

Improving Storage Infrastructure Utilization

Endless capital requests for additional storage resources are the bane of existence for many storage directors and infrastructure VPs. This white paper proposes a more effective approach to solving the utilization challenge in complex SANs.

Why Organizations Need to Archive Email

In a survey conducted throughout November and December 2004, SERVO asked 100 of their top customers which projects they were most likely to accomplish in 2005. Interestingly, email archiving made it to the top 5 corporate priorities and this finding can easily be backed up as recent market trends show a six-fold increase in demand for email archiving solutions.

Learn About Network Attached Storage and Integrating Storage into Datacenter Operations

VPs of Infrastructure and Operations are under constant pressure to more rapidly provision infrastructure to support applications, hit cost reduction targets, and maintain or improve application availability for network attached storage. To meet these goals, they are the directors of a carefully orchestrated dance of network, server, storage and datacenter operation teams.

California Credit Union Achieves Regulatory Compliance with Neoscale

CCU sought to encrypt its backup tapes for keeping customer data secure in transit and in storage at the offsite tape-vault vendor’s facility. As a financial institution, CCU was subject to stringent government regulations. With nearly 60 gigabytes of data to encrypt each night, CCU knew that a software solution was out of the question.

Ad-Hoc Information and Intellectual Property: The Need for Management and Archival

File servers continue to proliferate, and email has moved from a basic tool for exchanging documents to an inherent part of an organization’s communication and collaboration portfolio. With such ad-hoc information sources now being a mission critical function, the need for data management and archival is becoming critical.

Gaining Maximum Value from Information and Data

Mid-sized organizations have similar issues to large organizations when it comes to the storage and management of information and data, yet they often have limited capability to attract, retain and maintain the skills that large organizations will use in managing their data assets. There is a strong need for more effective tools that will enable mid-sized organizations to manage their data assets and gain the greatest value from them.

Payformance Protects Confidentiality of Payment Processing Information with NeoScale

Given Payformance’s longstanding commitment to protecting the privacy of its clients’ information, the company has decided to investigate data encryption solutions for its primary hard drive storage and secondary backup tape storage. With its multi-vendor interoperability, NeoScale’s CryptoStor storage security appliances emerge as the obvious choice.

UT Health Science Center at Houston Safeguards Personal Health Information with NeoScale

The HSC network services group supports more than 2000 desktops, servers and backend systems such as e-mail, file, networking, application and storage services for general administration, dental and medical schools. HSC wanted to manage and reduce HIPAA compliance costs and processes associated with protecting PHI data within its storage infrastructure – a legacy SAN environment with evolving applications.

Moving to a Blade World: How Blade Computing Improves Your Business

The evolution of Blade Computing has moved from mere server consolidation to a way of managing IT assets which brings significant business benefits. This paper aims to explain those benefits to the business and IT manager, and show how blade computing can be implemented to save money and improve the way IT serves the business needs.

Blade Server and Storage

With the introduction of blade products - like the HP BladeSystem c3000 and the new All-in-One SB600c storage blade - customers are more likely to turn to blades for their day-to-day server infrastructure needs. Learn more today.

Melio FS Simplifies Storage Management and Virtual Machine Migration

Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center that enables increased physical server utilization and centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure.

Scalable NAS & SAN Storage Systems Using Microsoft Windows Storage Server 2003 R2

A Windows-based Storage server can utilize its internal disk drives, or connect to an external storage array, which provides more flexibility for expansion and allows file services to be integrated into an existing SAN.

Centrally Manage SAN Storage Configuration and Assignment for Microsoft Windows Servers

Clustered volume manager enables administrators to centrally configure and assign storage assets in a SAN storage environment in Microsoft System Management Server 2003 and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 environments.

Document Management Case Study: Salter, Feiber, Murphy, Hutson & Menet, P.A.

Like most law firms, Salter Feiber deals with vast amounts of documents, a significant portion of which needs to be kept for long periods of time. "We tried to keep the files closed during the last 12 months onsite," says Kim Chewning, Firm Administrator. "Everything else was sent to a third party for storage in a secure facility." However, as the archive grew, so did the storage cost.

TeraCloud Storage Analytics: The Power of Knowledge

Storage spawns where it is needed. This leaves IT to manage many islands of storage devices scattered across the enterprise. Compliance requirements, multimedia-rich applications, unstructured content and a proliferation of databases are pushing IT departments to increase the size and complexity of their storage networks. All of this is occurring at a time when the need for centralized storage management has never been greater.

Technical Sheet: TeraCloud Storage Framework

TSF delivers the first Java-enabled enterprise Storage Resource Management (SRM) solution that simplifies the administration and management of distributed and mainframe storage resources across the entire enterprise, from a single point of control. TSF helps you plan more effectively, lower administration costs, and puts you in control of your storage environment.

Email Archival: For Compliance, Discovery & Storage

Lisa Morgan, Director Channel Programs, and Vince Smolek, Technical Services Manager at Computhink discuss the benefits of ViewWise, an email archive service.

Death to PST Files- The Hidden Cost of Email Mismanagement

Email has become the lifeblood of modern business, with more than three quarters of an organization’s business-critical data stored there. In this white paper, you’ll learn more about the business challenges created by email archives and PST files, and how the MessageLabs Email Archiving Service can help reduce the associated risks.

ROI and Other Cost Benefits of Reputation-Based Services

Reputation systems add a critical first line of advanced protection to help organizations accurately detect and block all types of threats to their messaging, web, and network environments. In simplest terms, deploying a reputation service at the network edge is analogous to having a peephole in the front door of your house. You let in people you know and trust, question the ones you don’t know and shun the ones who look suspicious. Just by taking these simple measures you reduce your risk.

IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC): Reducing the Complexity and Cost of Managing Storage Networks

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) Labs performed a hands-on analysis of IBM's System Storage SAN Volume Controller storage virtualization solution in order to validate its value proposition to customers. ESG Labs found that SAN Volume Controller is a rock-solid, feature-rich platform that delivers on the promise of network based storage virtualization: reducing the complexity and cost of managing SAN attached storage.

5 Benefits of IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Based on Real World Deployments

It has become clear that storage virtualization has become a core element of the storage strategy of forward-thinking end users and that the technology is finally delivering the value that it had promised earlier this decade. In this paper by Taneja Group, you'll learn about IBM SAN Volume Controller, its architecture and features, and about 5 tangible benefits of storage virtualization.

Rightsizing Blades for the Midmarket

Blades are one of the fastest-growing segments in the IT industry. This white paper examines the requirements for servers, storage, and blade systems in the midmarket; describes the features and capabilities of the HP c3000; and outlines some of the challenges and opportunities HP will face as it seeks to extend its innovative HP BladeSystem c-Class product line to serve the needs of the midmarket.

TheInfoPro Study: Why Deduplication Technology is Causing a Paradigm Shift in Storage Tiering

This recent research paper by TheInfoPro goes in depth as to why deduplication has sustained its #1 position on the TIP Storage Backup and Recovery Technology Heat Index®. 15% of storage organizations have already deployed deduplication technology and 59% of storage organizations are planning to deploy “dedupe” by the end of 2008. Managing storage growth, capacity reporting and planning, and backup management are the top pain points for most storage organizations.

ESG Lab Report: Data Deduplication and Disk-to-Disk Backup Systems - What to Know and Ask

While disk-to-disk (D2D) backup systems have been widely accepted as functionally superior to tape, they still carry a significant cost penalty. However, with the addition of data deduplication technology, D2D systems now provide compelling operational and cost efficiencies, thanks to increased manageability and reduced storage and bandwidth needs.

ESG Lab Validation Report: SEPATON S2100-ES2 Virtual Tape Library (VTL) with Deduplication

With the ability to backup/restore over 17TB per hour and achieve deduplication ratios in excess of 50:1, ESG deems SEPATON VTL solutions "outstanding". See more unparalleled results and learn how SEPATON dramatically improves data protection efficiency in the full report.

The ROI Case for WAN Vaulting - Extending Disk-to-Disk to Offsite Disaster Recovery

Systems and storage expert Barb Goldworm describes the benefits of deduplication and disk-to-disk (D2D) backup for disaster recovery (DR) and how these techniques are extended to deliver cost-effective offsite data protection. You’ll learn the benefits of deduplication and D2D backup, how D2D can be extended to deliver cost-effective offsite data protection and DR, and how to build a business case for WAN vaulting.

Buying Less Storage with NetApp

This paper takes a look at using data virtualization to provide end-to-end data reduction efficiencies. It features three user case studies on how through data virtualization, users were able to have a significant impact on bottom-line expenses as they relate to the storage acquisition and ongoing data storage management costs.

Beyond Backup: Disk to Disk Backup Comes of Age

Assessing the wide array of D2D options can be daunting. In this paper, we compare disk backup solutions and offer guidance for evaluating the different types of advanced data protection solutions and provide guidance for identifying the solutions that will meet your needs.

NetApp NearStore VTL Integration with Symantec NetBackup

This white paper details how the combination of NetBackup and NearStore VTL brings performance, reliability and usability into the data center, allowing you to better utilize and enhance legacy investments in tape hardware and media.

Deduplication Comes of Age

Advanced Single Instance Storage (A-SIS) deduplication can help you reduce storage consumption up to 95%. A behind the scenes look at how this free technology leverages the NetApp WAFL® file system to conserve disk space while keeping system overhead low.

Virtualizing Storage for VMware Success

If you’ve virtualized your servers but not your storage, you’ve done only half the job. Learn how FAS deduplication and other NetApp technologies can help you cut storage costs in half, reduce your VMware RTO to minutes, and increase your overall operating efficiency.

NetApp Technical Case Study: Using SAN with VMware to Facilitate Storage and Server Consolidation

This technical case study reviews how the combination of VMware software and NetApp storage solutions provide significant advantages for companies consolidating servers and storage to reduce costs and increase operational efficiency. VMware allows companies to reduce server counts by 50% or more without major application changes, while making it possible to adapt much more rapidly to support new projects and new applications.

Oracle on NetApp, Part 1: Using NFS for Simplicity/Manageability

Download this behind-the-scenes look at how NetApp Engineering has driven standards, enhancements, and best practices for Oracle on NFS, plus updates on the impact of emerging standards like NFSv4 and Direct NFS.

Oracle on NetApp, Part 3: Why Protocol Should Be Irrelevant

In the final installment of this special feature, we bring you a case study of Catholic Heathcare West running Oracle on NFS, FC, and iSCSI. CHW believes that unified storage—not a particular storage protocol—is the key thing.

Why Choose BladeS over HPc3000?

Clients setting up smaller offices want to invest in the same type of technology as their larger competitors. Larger clients setting up remote branches need compute power not only at their head office, but also at distributed locations where key decisions that impact the local operation are made.This white paper compares the IBM BladeCenter S offering to the HP c3000 offering and articulates why IBM BladeCenter S is the best choice for small blade chassis platforms.

Titan 3000: No Compromise for Unstructured Data

The Titan 3000 family of high performance network storage hardware from BlueArc is yet another example of the company's innovative abilities, with enhanced and eye-popping capacity and performance specifications matched to its strong, familiar—and growing—feature and management capabilities. With perfect timing, it looks as if this product is a good match for emerging market needs.

Intelligent Platform for File Services: Titan 3000 Series

BlueArc’s Titan 3000 Series is designed to meet the requirements of today’s sophisticated enterprise data centers and vertical applications with new levels of storage performance, scalability and reliability. Titan is the first storage solution that consolidates and manages up to 4 petabytes of data in a single storage pool.

The Green Side of BlueArc

Using a custom-built NAS server and hardware-accelerated file system, BlueArc is able to deliver both high performance and industry leading energy efficiency.

Experiencing Data De-Duplication: Improving Efficiency and Reducing Capacity Requirements

As with many new technologies, there is a lot of confusion in the market about data de-duplication. In fact, recent ESG Research reveals strong interest in and awareness of data de-duplication among organizations of varying sizes and industries. ESG believes such strong interest in data de-duplication this early in the adoption curve could be indicative of either underlying confusion in the market about what constitutes data de-duplication and what doesn’t or the compelling nature of data de-duplication.

The Evolving Role of Tape in the Data Center

The majority of data is very seldom accessed. The old 80/20 rule still applies today. Twenty percent of the data is accessed eighty percent of the time. The other eighty percent of the data is not accessed very often. The need to store data for a long period of time, coupled with the knowledge that much of data will be infrequently (or never) accessed helps to define one of the new roles of tape in the data center.

Quantum DXi-Series: Disk Backup and Remote Replication Appliances

Customers have been augmenting their legacy tape-based backup and recovery processes with Quantum’s portfolio of Virtual Tape Library (VTL) systems and disk-based backup appliances for improved performance and reliability since 2002. This report highlights the capabilities of the company’s latest offering for midrange and distributed enterprise environments, the DXi-Series disk-based backup and replication appliances.

DXi Series Datasheet: Disk Backup and Remote Replication Solutions

The DXi-Series disk backup solutions leverage data de-duplication technology to increase disk capacities 10 to 50 times and replicate data between sites over existing WANs. The DXi Series spans the widest range of backup capacity points in the industry, from 1.2TB to 240TB of raw disk capacity. Read more about the DXi Series and how its technology can benefit your data center.

Data De-duplication and Disk-to-Disk Backup Systems

Disk-to-disk (D2D) backup, combined with data de-duplication, is an emerging category within the data protection ecosystem that ESG believes has the potential to change the entire landscape. D2D backup with data de-duplication solutions minimizes the disk and/or the bandwidth capacities required to store and move data used for protection purposes. Data de-duplication solutions optimize physical storage and bandwidth by using less of each to protect your data.

Guidelines for the Evaluation of Enterprise De-Duplication Solutions

This document is intended for the use of Enterprise1 Storage Professionals, focused on Data Protection — Backup, Restore,DR and Archive operations — who are interested in evaluating the potential impact of de-duplication technologies to their business. There is much hyperbole associated with de-duplication. The purpose of this document is to help readers distill the essence from the hype, as the basis for sound decision-making.

Diligent HyperFactor: Redefining De-Duplication

New technologies exist that can radically slim down the physical storage requirements for secondary disk storage. Taneja Group refers to these technologies as Capacity Optimization (CO) technologies. In this technology brief, we will examine what IT teams should be looking for in a capacity optimization solution, and then share our perspective on the Diligent HyperFactor technology.

Considerations for Enterprise-Scale VTLs

Virtual tape library (VTL) solutions are taking hold in companies of all sizes, but not all VTLs are equipped to meet the requirements of enterprise data centers. Evaluating virtual tape technology based on a few key considerations will help narrow the field and minimize buyer’s remorse.

Best Practices for HP Servers and HP Enterprise Virtual Array in Microsoft Exchange Server

The Customer Focused Teating (CFT) team at HP previously published the Best practices for HP servers and HP StorageWorks EVA8000 in a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 environment paper, which presented the results of testing a user environment of 5,000 users with both 100-MB and 1-GB mailboxes. This paper builds upon those results by demonstrating the actual effects of a larger enterprise environment of 20,000 users with 1-GB mailboxes.

High Availability for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Utilizing CCR with HP StorageWorks

This paper provides technical best practices that enable customers to streamline their CCR planning and deployment process in order to build infrastructures that perform predictably.

Backup and Recovery Best Practices for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with HP Servers and HP Storage

This paper provides users in enterprise environments the data to effectively understand the options as well as the limitations of implementing online streaming backups into their infrastructure.

Backup and Recovery Best Practices for SQL Server 2005

With databases regarded as mission critical in most companies, the ability to back up Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data when required and within the specified backup window is vital. To help you choose from the available configuration options and backup and recovery procedures, HP has conducted extensive laboratory tests to determine best practices.

High Availability for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Using Array-Based Replication

This solution provides the information needed to select the replication, mirroring, and/or high availability method(s) suitable for your environment; and the best practices for optimal configuration of the SQL database, HP ProLiant blade servers, HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA)storage, and software. Both array-based replication with HP StorageWorks Continuous Access EVA and host-based copying with SQL Server database mirroring are discussed, along with strategies for synchronous and asynchronous replication of SQL databases between primary and remote HP EVA disk arrays.

HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices for Storage Deployment

This white paper provides IT professionals with best practices related to implementing HP PolyServe Software for Microsoft SQL Server, version 3.6. These documents assist solution architects, SQL database administrators, storage administrators, service administrators, and IT technical management personnel as they develop their consolidation/virtualization platform standard, architecture blueprint, and deployment strategy for Microsoft SQL Server.

Configuration Best Practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with HP EVA4000 and HP Blade Servers

Configuration best practices for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array 4000 and HP blade servers is a best practices paper that leverages HP servers, storage, and management software by providing the recommended best practices for configuration of an HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) storage subsystem deployed into a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 environment with HP servers.

BlueArc's Titan Architecture: Architecting a Better Storage Solution

BlueArc’s Titan Architecture creates a revolutionary step in file servers by creating a hardware-based file system that can scale throughput, IOPS and capacity well beyond conventional software-based file servers. With its ability to virtualize a massive storage pool of up to 4 petabytes of usable, tiered storage, Titan can scale with growing data requirements and provide a competitive advantage for business processes by consolidating applications while ensuring optimal performance.

EMC NetWorker Design Best Practices with Data Domain

Data Domain deduplication storage integrates with standard NetWorker architectural and operational environments and provides a highly cost-efficient nearline storage solution for enterprises of all sizes. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of how Domain deduplication storage offers new storage architecture options for EMC NetWorker customers.

Disk Assisted Back-Up White Paper: Backup to Disk and How to Implement It with HP Data Protector

Advancements in technology and price reductions have recently made it possible to use disk together with tape to improve data protection. This white paper discusses the benefits of this technology.

Maximizing Performance with HP Data Protector 6.0 Advanced Backup to Disk

This white paper discusses performance tests results for HP Data Protector 6.0 software and the Advanced Backup to Disk feature in a Windows 2003 environment.

HP Data Protector Advanced Backup to Disk Integration with Virtual Tape Libraries

This white paper provides an in-depth understanding of the integration of HP Data Protector with Virtual Tape Libraries by utilizing the Advanced Backup to Disk functionality available with the HP Data Protector software.

SARCOM Simplifies Storage

Learn how SARCOM, a leading IT services provider, used a virtualized HP-based SAN infrastructure linked to server blades, with point-in-time replication (full data set snapclones) and backup to tape libraries to improve storage performance, flexibility, and reliability while reducing costs and protecting data.

IDC Vendor Spotlight: Maintaining Business Continuity with Disk-Based Backup and Recovery Solutions

Describes the growing need for data backup and recovery solutions, the advantages of disk-based systems, and the software required to manage these systems. The paper also looks at the role of Hewlett Packard's Data Protector software in this strategically important market.

IBM Tiered Storage Management Helps Reduce Costs and Complexity

Not all data is created equal, however, and deriving business value from information dispersed over many different sources means integrating, analyzing and optimizing heterogeneous types and sources of information throughout its lifecycle. Find out how, when deployed together in the same environment, IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager deliver the core technologies need to help customers tier their storage based on classes of service.

HP StorageWorks Virtualization

Storage virtualization has been around for several decades. While technologies have advanced and capabilities have become more sophisticated over time, the motivations for virtualizing resources and the anticipated benefits have remained relatively stable. Storage virtualization continues to be an important topic because it addresses a number of significant challenges.

HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA4400) Performance

The HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) product family offers midsize to enterprise size customers leading performance, high capacity, and high-availability storage solutions for reducing IT costs and complexity. The EVA provides virtualized storage enabling capacity pooling, simplified management, automatic performance load balancing, dynamic configuration, and re-configuration.

The EVA 4400 Challenge

In a first time, head-to-head comparison, see why 5 technology professionals found the new HP StorageWorks EVA4400 easier to operate and a greater time saver than the EMC/CLARiiON CX3-10.

HP StorageWorks EVA4400 & VMWare

VMware describes their partnership with HP storage and how the HP StorageWorks EVA4400 is a great fit for many small and medium businesses that want the advantages of virtualization.

HP StorageWorks EVA4400 & Microsoft

The HP StorageWorks EVA4400 & Microsoft applications have been tested together for real performance & reliability gains & Dynamic Capacity Manager takes advantage of more Windows features.

HP StorageWorks EVA4400 & Oracle

Hear from Oracle how the new the HP StorageWorks EVA4400 has been fully tested to be ready for full production loads, and how it is tuned to take particular advantage of Oracle VM.

Centralized Data Backup and Your WAN

Is your organization prepared to tackle the massive challenge of protecting your data in a cost effective and timely manner? With a growing number of branch offices, an increasing number of servers, and a high priority on reducing cost, backup is getting even harder to manage. Download this paper and learn about a proven strategy for combining WAN-based backup with wide-area data services (WDS) solutions.

Why You Need Email Active Archiving Now

An effective email management solution is essential for organizations in today's litigious environment. Learn more from Gartner research about the market and top vendors providing active archive solutions today. Download this research study to learn more.

Using Storage to Maximize the Business Benefits of Virtualization

Companies of all sizes are rapidly embracing server virtualization to reduce management of server sprawl, cut administrative chores, and save money. Used in conjunction with new high-performance servers, particularly those based on multi-core processors, virtualization allows dozens of applications to run as virtual machines on a single physical server, thus making much more efficient use of computing resources.

The IBM System Storage DS Family Offers Flexible, Scalable Storage Options

Storage infrastructure simplification is an important step a business can take toward meeting the needs of an on-demand business environment. The IBM System Storage DS Family can support business continuity and improve information lifecycle management with competitively priced storage options. Learn more about all the features and products in the IBM System Storage DS Family lineup.

IBM System Storage DS: Reliable Data Storage for Financial Institutions

Storage infrastructure simplification is an important step a financial institution can take toward meeting the needs of an on-demand business environment. The IBM System Storage DS Family can support business continuity and improve information lifecycle management with competitively priced storage options.

IBM System Storage DS: Reliable Data Storage for the Telecom Industry

Storage infrastructure simplification is an important step a telecommunications business can take toward meeting the needs of an on-demand business environment. The IBM System Storage DS Family can support business continuity and improve information lifecycle management with competitively priced storage options. Learn how the IBM Systems Storage DS Family is an ideal partner for businesses in the telecom industry looking for secure and resilient data storage

IBM System Storage DS: Reliable Data Storage for the Electronics Industry

Storage infrastructure simplification is an important step an electronics business can take toward meeting the needs of an on-demand business environment. The IBM System Storage DS Family can support business continuity and improve information lifecycle management with competitively priced storage options. Learn how the IBM Systems Storage DS Family is an ideal partner for businesses in the electronics industry looking for secure and resilient data storage.

Replace Your Rack Server with the IBM BladeCenter JS12 Express Blade

IBM BladeCenter JS12 Express blade brings the power of mainframes to blades. Coupled with the IBM BladeCenter S chassis, it is ideal for small database and application serving. This complete solution is compact, reliable and extremely energy efficient. Find out how to simplify your traditional UNIX, IBM i and Linux rack-mount and tower setup with the IBM BladeCenter JS12 Express blade and BladeCenter S chassis.

IBM System Storage Products Help You Save, Grow and Innovate for the Future

End-to-end storage means that your data is well-managed, protected, and available when you and your customers need it most. IBM System Storage products simplify your infrastructure with servers and storage in one, allowing you to grow, and lowering the total cost of ownership through advanced energy management. Discover the IBM System Storage family of products, services and solutions, and see how they can bring value to your bottom line.

Comparing Deduplication Approaches: Technology Considerations for Enterprise Environments

Deduplication is becoming an essential tool to help data center managers control exponential data growth in the backup environment. The methods used to accomplish deduplication vary widely as do the levels of capacity optimization they can provide. Some techniques are well suited to small-to-medium sized backup environments, while others are optimized for larger enterprises. This report describes the various techniques used today to deduplicate data and highlights unique deduplication considerations for enterprise environments.

ESG Brief: Case Studies on Backing Up VMware

This report is a must-read for companies struggling to back up their newly virtualized server environments. Read this brief to get real-world case studies on how Sterling Testing and Kindred Healthcare have overcome the challenges of protecting VMware environments by implementing high performance virtual tape libraries (VTLs).

Enterprise-Class Storage Virtualization for Mission-Critical IT: HP XP24000

ESG Lab tested the HP XP24000 storage system to validate the business impact of the new capabilities of the XP24000, including HP Thin Provisioning Software, creating large logical pools of capacity and the enhanced performance of the XP24000 as a core component of HP's extensive portfolio of IT solutions and services.

HP Continues High-End Storage Innovation

HP is increasingly demonstrating that its vision includes positioning itself as an innovator at the high end especially with respect to managing heterogeneous storage assets. HP appears to be a leading proponent of avoiding dreams of owning the entire data center storage infrastructure. Rather its aim appears to add customer value by recognizing and accommodating the diversity of installed storage assets at customer sites.

How to Plan, Configure, and Maintain a HP StorageWorks 3 Data Center Replication Solution

To stay competitive in today's business climate, organizations must find ways to meet their business needs while controlling IT costs. IT departments face flat budgets and, at the same time, find that their organizations have become increasingly dependent on uninterrupted access to business-critical data. In today's world, prudent IT administrators prepare to recover from two types of disasters as part of a complete Business Continuity and Availability (BC and A) plan.

Best Practices for Remote Replication for Oracle 10g Using XP Continuous Access

This paper provides a comprehensive set of test-proven best practices for properly configuring, deploying, and operating an Oracle 10g database on an HP StorageWorks XP12000 Disk Array (XP12000) in an HP-UX environment using HP StorageWorks XP Continuous Access Software as the remote copy infrastructure.

Superior Enterprise-Class Storage with HP StorageWorks XP Disk Array Mainframe Solutions

HP StorageWorks XP Disk Arrays are enterprise-class storage systems that deliver dependable performance for environments where downtime is not an option. Complete redundancy throughout the architecture provides non-disruptive online upgrades and no single point of failure so you can count on your data being available.

Mitigate Business Risk with Disaster-Proof HP StorageWorks XP24000 Disk Array

In this video, at a high-tech ballistics center managed by National Technical Systems in Camden, Arkansas, HP simulated a gas leak using real explosives to blow up a data center. Every system failed-over after the explosion in less than two minutes—including data on an HP StorageWorks XP12000 Disk Array which failed over flawlessly to an HP StorageWorks XP24000 Disk Array.

VMware Data Backup and Recovery Design Best Practices with Data Domain

When using Data Domain storage with well-understood best practices for backup and taking snapshots in VMware, a deployment can simplify management of consistent images. Once stored, the images are ready to restore, locally or, with optimized deduplicated replication, at a remote DR site. This paper describes best practices for managing these synergistic technologies together.

Backup and Recovery for Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices with Data Domain

Protecting Exchange information is critical and backup is still the primary method used. Combining traditional backup with other methods such as clustering, replication and continuous data protection provide for a robust Exchange protection strategy. This paper focuses on the traditional backup and recovery practices for Exchange along with solutions from Data Domain.

Email Archiving: A Proactive Approach to e-Discovery

Email and other electronically stored documents are now routinely presented as evidence in courts of law. To ensure litigation readiness, both legal and IT departments must address the management of electronic communication in their organization. As more companies are hit with the high costs of an e-discovery request, the benefits of an alternative, proactive approach become clear. Without the right tools in place, collecting, processing, and reviewing electronic data for e-discovery can be time-consuming, expensive, and expose a business to significant legal risks.

SMB: The Ideal Environment for a Blade Infrastructure

Small and medium sized organizations have similar issues to large companies when it comes to the processing and storage of information and data, yet often have little capability to attract, retain and maintain the skills for managing their data assets compared to large organizations. Blade systems offer an effective way to address the specific challenges faced by smaller organizations in managing their IT assets, and allows then to gain greater value from them.

Storage Security: Managing Vulnerabilities in the Datacenter Webcast

Connect to this special web event to hear from Forrester Research and HP on how to address key vulnerabilities in the storage network, receive tips and recommendations on selecting and implementing data storage encryption solutions and details on how to achieve centralized key management and data encryption where it matters most.

Email Archiving Technical Overview

This whitepaper is a technical overview describing key functions and capabilities of Email Archiving Software-as-a-Service. Find out how easy it is to deploy a Managed Archiving Service with no hardware or software and minimise storage costs.

The Workplace Recovery: The Human Side of Business Continuity

Natural and manmade disasters have costly, far-reaching impacts on businesses. And organizations of all types are making business continuity plans that protect their data, networks, core business applications and facilities. But it’s important to build resiliency into your business operations as well your human capital. This Web seminar on Workplace Recovery will take you through the risks related to human capital resiliency and provide a framework for addressing them.

Virtualization in Action: Stories of Real Businesses That Have Deployed Virtualization

In this session, HP and ESG Storage Virtualization experts will share real HP customer case studies who have deployed virtualization in their environments and realized significant business benefits as a result.

Email Archiving in United Kingdom: The Key Laws That Affect Your Business

Today, more than ever before, legal and compliance issues are driving the case for email archiving. Email archiving legislation is complex and varies greatly from country to country. Unless companies are well versed in compliance law, the various regulations affecting email can be a minefield.

The Business Case for Email Archiving

For businesses around the world, email has become the primary means of communication with people inside and outside of the organization. Business transactions kick off in the form of an email, most customers use e-mail to negotiate contracts and agreements and exchange invoices and payment information. Email is also heavily used by marketing departments to issue mailshots to customers announcing new offers and special deals and so on.

DB2 9 for z/OS Access Paths

This is Self-Guided Resource Guide to help you understand the importance of and the ease of establishing DB2 9 for z/OS Access Paths. Preview this animated tool now.

Automized Storage for z/OS

The CA Automated Storage Optimization Mainframe Suite provides a best-practices-based and intelligent approach to SRM, delivering the tools to identify and classify your storage assets. Access this Technology Brief to understand how to maximize use of existing storage resources and ensures protection of business-critical applications and information.

Best Practices for Tape Encryption

Increased regulatory scrutiny on the protection levels afforded sensitive information by those that transact and process it is causing enterprises to improve mainframe security strategies. This entails proactively investigating exposures and implementing appropriate policies, processes and technologies, including those for data z/OS tape encryption. Read this Technology Brief created by CA to learn how to identify exposure points and through the use of Tape Encryption.

Virtual Servers Need Virtual Storage

Virtualization is a sea change from the days of one image per physical machine. And the benefits are clear, from better hardware utilization to lower costs to easier management. But while the resulting server consolidation is a good thing, it only solves half the problem. You still need to ensure that best-practice storage management is available to both your physical and virtual servers.

Finding Business Value In Systems & Data Storage

Large corporations can weather sudden changes in today's volatile markets, but change is a greater challenge for mid-sized companies. However, you can grow even in disruptive and emerging markets if your business systems and data storage can adapt. This IBM white paper includes case studies that show you how systems can spur growth in times of change.

Fixing the 'Everyone' Problem

With all of the expertise and technology safeguards in place, how is it possible that a major risk to unstructured data on shared file systems cannot be easily reversed? Well it goes something like this: As an administrator, you or maybe your predecessor set up a couple of file systems or shared drives. Some of the folders on those file shares were left wide open, and you relied on data owners to define the access permissions.