Server hardware
Servers are the workhorse of every IT infrastructure, and new developments are constantly delivering greater processor power, higher performance, more storage capacity and better energy efficiency. From mainframes to blade servers, we analyse the trends and technologies that matter in server hardware.
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News
02 Jul 2024
Interview: Nvidia on AI workloads and their impacts on data storage
We talk to Charlie Boyle of Nvidia about data challenges in artificial intelligence, key practical tips for AI projects, and demands on storage of training, inferencing, RAG and checkpointing Continue Reading
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News
27 Jun 2024
Gulf Edge to operate Google Distributed Cloud in Thailand
The Gulf Energy subsidiary will offer Google’s sovereign cloud service in Thailand with a focus on air-gapped configurations Continue Reading
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Feature
08 Nov 2019
What is QLC flash and what workloads it is good for?
QLC flash offers low per-gigabyte costs and lots of capacity, but can be limited by endurance and I/O performance. It can be a good disk replacement for several workloads, however Continue Reading
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News
08 Nov 2019
Security pros urged to get ahead of incoming BlueKeep exploits
The BlueKeep RDP vulnerability is beginning to be exploited in the wild, and security teams have no excuse for not trying to get in front of it, says Microsoft Continue Reading
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Feature
05 Nov 2019
Is NVMe flash the right choice for you?
NVMe flash storage boosts performance for I/O-hungry operations, but how does it work, where can organisations best deploy it, and what are the key uses cases where it can make a difference? Continue Reading
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News
29 Oct 2019
NordVPN enlists ethical hackers, launches bug bounty programme
Breached consumer VPN supplier details steps it is taking to shore up its cyber security posture after an unknown actor gained access to one of its servers Continue Reading
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News
24 Oct 2019
Total saves £95,000 a year with Nutanix hyper-converged
Gas and electricity supplier struggled with ageing traditional infrastructure, but moved to hyper-converged for projects that include containers and DevOps deployments Continue Reading
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News
22 Oct 2019
NordVPN blames datacentre provider for server breach
VPN provider insists no user data was compromised in a March 2018 server breach, and says its datacentre provider failed to inform it of the issue Continue Reading
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News
22 Oct 2019
APAC spending on AI systems to hit $6.2bn in 2019
Led by China and organisations in the banking industry, APAC spending on artificial intelligence is set to grow by almost 64% this year, according to IDC Continue Reading
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News
21 Oct 2019
Virtual Instruments is now Virtana and aims at cloud, containers
Searches for “Virtual Instruments” returned too many synthesizers, so storage monitoring pioneer went through a blue sky ordeal. It has new plans for cloud and container capability, too Continue Reading
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News
01 Oct 2019
Intel previews Optane persistent memory, QLC SSD and even PLC
Intel sets out roadmap for second-generation Optane persistent memory – between SSD and DRAM – as well as QLC SSD, with talk of PLC (penta-level cell) after that Continue Reading
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News
30 Sep 2019
HPE refurbishes legacy IT assets to make money for users
HPE Financial Services is giving old IT assets a new lease of life at its tech renewal site in Erskine, near Glasgow, as part of a promotion of the circular economy Continue Reading
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News
27 Sep 2019
How Graphcore is putting AI on steroids
UK chipmaker Graphcore’s intelligence processing unit may just hold the key to unlocking the full potential of artificial intelligence Continue Reading
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News
23 Sep 2019
The perfect storm for silicon photonics
By packaging optics with silicon chips, silicon photonics will enable datacentres to keep up with the exponential growth in demand for bandwidth Continue Reading
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Podcast
17 Sep 2019
Podcast: The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload – Episode 30
The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast team returns from its brief summer hiatus to discuss HPE’s hardware refresh processes, the financial services industry’s changing relationship with cloud and a charity that is helping people with chronic illnesses find work in tech Continue Reading
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News
09 Sep 2019
Commvault buys Hedvig in push for global storage player status
Backup player Commvault aims to bring together datacentre and multi-cloud operations with software-defined storage that can unify access to almost any storage medium, anywhere Continue Reading
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News
03 Sep 2019
At least 47,000 servers vulnerable to remote attack
All organisations using Supermicro servers are being urged to update firmware to block remote attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in baseboard management controllers Continue Reading
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News
22 Aug 2019
Tech firms join forces to boost cloud security
Top tech firms are to collaborate on open source technologies, tools, frameworks and standards that accelerate the adoption of confidential computing to boost security in cloud and edge computing Continue Reading
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Feature
16 Aug 2019
How to deploy NVMe flash storage for artificial intelligence
We run the rule over NVMe flash as a storage choice for AI applications and the key decision points in form factor and hardware specification Continue Reading
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Opinion
13 Aug 2019
Storage: How ‘tail latency’ impacts customer-facing applications
Henry He of Virtual Instruments looks at tail latency, the small percentage of storage I/O that could be causing big and costly problems for business applications Continue Reading
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News
07 Aug 2019
Industry collaborates to patch SwapGS CPU vulnerability
Newly disclosed SwapGS vulnerability in modern processors has been patched in Windows, Linux and ChromeOS, underlining the importance of keeping systems up to date Continue Reading
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News
31 Jul 2019
Cisco pays $8.6m after whistleblower discloses security flaws in video surveillance system
James Glenn, a video surveillance expert working for a Cisco reseller in Denmark, alerted Cisco to security faults and stands to gain a share of a multimillion-dollar settlement with the US government Continue Reading
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News
30 Jul 2019
Australia to upgrade supercomputer in HPC boost
The Gadi supercomputer at the Australian National University will run 10 times faster than its predecessor, giving researchers access to high performance computing resources to solve the toughest research problems Continue Reading
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Podcast
24 Jul 2019
Podcast: The Computer Weekly Downtime Upload – Episode 25
In this week’s episode of the Computer Weekly Downtime Upload podcast, Brian McKenna, and Clare McDonald are joined by Cliff Saran to discuss the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, including the technology involved, and how it compares with today’s technology Continue Reading
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Feature
23 Jul 2019
The pitfalls of hyper-converged infrastructure and how to avoid them
Hyper-converged infrastructure can be an easy win when it comes to datacentre infrastructure upgrades, but there are pitfalls. We discuss how best you can sidestep them Continue Reading
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News
17 Jul 2019
Vulnerable firmware in enterprise server supply chain
Researchers are warning of vulnerabilities in firmware from a third-party supplier that put some servers from Lenovo, Gigabyte and six other manufacturers at risk Continue Reading
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News
15 Jul 2019
Smartodds bets on Rubrik backup appliance with cloud archive
Betting intelligence analytics firm Smartodds replaced its old tape backup infrastructure with Rubrik appliances to cut management time and database restores from hours to minutes Continue Reading
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Tip
12 Jul 2019
3 ways to deploy hyper-converged infrastructure
An HCI deployment can be done in one of three ways -- full replacement, side-by-side or per application -- each with pluses and minus, depending on requirements and resources. Continue Reading
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Feature
01 Jul 2019
French baby store modernises backup as Veeam handles 150TB a night
France-based maternity, baby and children’s store Orchestra needed to share IT resources between 700 points of sale across multiple time zones, and backup for 100 applications Continue Reading
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News
24 Jun 2019
Steel firm adds steel to resilience with Scale hyper-converged
Carrs Tool Steels had to move on from legacy servers and found hyper-converged infrastructure from Scale Computing the ideal fit for a small business that couldn’t afford downtime Continue Reading
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News
20 Jun 2019
How APAC CIOs are driving AI projects
IT leaders at a Computer Weekly roundtable say they are grappling with compute bottlenecks and explainable artificial intelligence even as chatbots and other AI projects are being rolled out in full swing Continue Reading
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News
11 Jun 2019
Scale targets edge workloads with HE500 hyper-converged nodes
Scale Computing adds hyper-converged infrastructure nodes to provide edge compute and storage that is fully compatible with its datacentre-scale HCI appliances Continue Reading
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Feature
05 Jun 2019
Enterprise HPC: Why HPE is buying Cray
HPE’s decision to acquire supercomputing pioneer Cray for $1.3bn serves to highlight the growing importance of high-performance computing (HPC) deployments in the enterprise market Continue Reading
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Feature
30 May 2019
SAN vs NAS vs hyper-converged for virtual machine storage
The pros and cons of file and block access storage arrays vs the new breed of all-in-one server/storage architecture for storage of virtual machine systems and data Continue Reading
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News
28 May 2019
Excelero and BeeGFS offer next-gen HPC based on NVMe flash
Super-fast solid-state storage in commodity servers ties up with recently-developed parallel file system BeeGFS to target high-performance computing use cases Continue Reading
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News
29 Apr 2019
LightBits Super SSD brings NVMe on vanilla Ethernet
Israeli startup LightBits offers super-fast NVMe flash storage over plain Ethernet networks in a move that some think will bring “iSCSI for the NVMe generation” Continue Reading
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News
26 Apr 2019
NVMe is ‘ready’, say Dell EMC, Virtual Instruments and Cisco
Storage and networks big guns say super-fast NVMe flash is ready for enterprise users, with performance 10x over existing Fibre Channel and ecosystem in place Continue Reading
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Feature
17 Apr 2019
Hyper-converged infrastructure vs NAS and SAN shared storage
Can compute, storage and networks in one box be a better option than shared storage? And which organisations can most benefit from it, and for what scale of deployment? Continue Reading
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News
10 Apr 2019
JetStream DR cloud replication aims to make backup redundant
JetStream’s IO Filter allows for continuous replication to the cloud of VMware virtual machines and virtual disks instead of scheduled snapshots or backups, and with a near-zero RPO Continue Reading
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News
09 Apr 2019
HPE and Nutanix go after hybrid cloud service opportunity
Enterprises are taking a hybrid approach to cloud computing. A new deal with Nutanix is HPE's latest attempt at simplifying hardware as a service Continue Reading
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News
03 Apr 2019
Datrium makes European push as it targets storage ‘big guys’
NVMe pioneer turned hybrid cloud and “data platform” provider makes a push for the enterprise and wants to take scalps from those selling “1990s SAN technology” Continue Reading
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News
02 Apr 2019
Cranfield gets Rubrik backup plus Nutanix in drive to the cloud
Research-led university goes hyper-converged across the board with Rubrik backup appliances and Nutanix in a move to rationalise on-site physical needs and drive to the cloud Continue Reading
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News
01 Apr 2019
Azure Stack HCI: Hyper-converged, but not as Azure as you’d think
Microsoft has re-branded Windows Server Software Defined to put hyper-converged to the fore, but Azure Stack HCI isn’t totally in sync with the Azure Stack on-premise cloud platform Continue Reading
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News
20 Mar 2019
Pivot3 to target Azure, Google clouds and enhance AI/ML
Hyper-converged infrastructure maker Pivot3 plans to extend backup for its appliance clusters to additional public clouds and optimise service levels across storage tiers and cache Continue Reading
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News
18 Mar 2019
Component prices skew server market
Global server revenues jump as increased cost of components is passed on Continue Reading
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News
12 Mar 2019
Singapore invests S$200m to upgrade supercomputing capabilities
The investment will shore up Singapore’s supercomputing prowess to facilitate research collaboration, as well as address national and business challenges Continue Reading
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News
04 Mar 2019
IT Priorities 2019: APAC keeping pace with digital transformation
Digital transformation is well underway among APAC enterprises which are looking to spend more on refreshing their IT infrastructure and technologies that improve employee productivity Continue Reading
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News
20 Feb 2019
MWC 2019: Huawei claims massive lead on 5G readiness
At a pre-Mobile World Congress event in London, Huawei’s Ryan Ding shared details of the firm’s rapidly expanding 5G mobile portfolio, and laid into his competitors Continue Reading
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News
13 Feb 2019
Lenovo offers enterprises access to on-premise datacentre kit on cloud-like pay-as-you-go terms
Chinese PC maker Lenovo wants to make it easier for enterprises to access on-premise datacentre resources without needing to invest huge sums of money in purchasing it Continue Reading
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Feature
13 Feb 2019
NVMe startups’ different routes to flash performance gains
NVMe offers huge flash performance benefits, but no one is quite sure how to overcome the challenges that brings and startups are trying several different approaches Continue Reading
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News
10 Feb 2019
Australia’s defence department keeps old PCs out of landfills
Department has securely wiped data from used devices and kept 1,300 tonnes of e-waste out of landfills Continue Reading
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Feature
07 Feb 2019
Cloud the rising star of storage: Eight years of text analysis
Tracking word frequency in nearly a decade’s worth of storage content shows how cloud has come of age, flash has gone mainstream and how we don’t talk about virtualisation any more Continue Reading
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News
05 Feb 2019
Payday lender cuts troubleshooting by 30% with Virtual Instruments
Curo Financial thought storage was slowing down its websites, but found virtual machine and network issues were to blame. To fix this, it’s going proactive on storage performance issues Continue Reading
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News
31 Jan 2019
Hyper-converged infrastructure gains acceptance in APAC
A top Nutanix executive claims that migrations to hyper-converged infrastructure in the region are under way, fuelled by growing interest in hybrid cloud Continue Reading
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News
28 Jan 2019
Government to pump £70m into ‘designing out’ cyber threats
Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund cash to be used for designing and developing more secure hardware in a bid to eradicate cyber threats Continue Reading
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Feature
10 Jan 2019
Storage 101: Structured data and its storage needs
Structured data is declining as a proportion of all data but its importance to business applications and its organised nature make its storage requirements very specific Continue Reading
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News
10 Jan 2019
20TB hard drives expected in 2019 as Seagate HAMR is tested by NetApp
Heat-assisted method of writing to disk looks likely to push HDD capacities to 20TB this year, with 40TB possible by 2023, for media suited to colder data Continue Reading
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News
07 Jan 2019
Huawei debuts Arm-based chip, eyes broader server market
Huawei’s Kunpeng 920 processor is geared towards big data and infrastructure applications, marking its foray into Arm-based servers that are set to change the dynamics of the datacentre market Continue Reading
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20 Dec 2018
Taking stock of Dell EMC’s growth in Asia
Tech supplier Dell EMC is riding on growing demand for servers and hyper-converged infrastructure, and investing in more technical resources to support enterprises in digital transformation efforts. Continue Reading
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News
12 Dec 2018
Interview: Dheeraj Pandey, CEO, Nutanix
It may be known for hyper-converged infrastructure, but Nutanix now has its head in the clouds Continue Reading
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Feature
07 Dec 2018
NVMe is fast flash storage, but big five suppliers take it slowly
NVMe flash offers blistering performance gains but so far the big five storage array makers have tended to opt for gradual implementations rather than radical new architectures Continue Reading
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Feature
04 Dec 2018
What is storage-class memory and what is it used for?
HPE has announced the availability of storage-class memory in its products and other array makers are expect to follow. So what does SCM do for analytics-centred workloads? Continue Reading
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E-Zine
04 Dec 2018
Tackling legacy systems by making IT evergreen
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we assess strategies for continuous IT improvement to help evergreen IT replace the difficulties caused by legacy tech. Our new buyer’s guide examines next-generation networking technologies such as SD-WAN. And we hear about digital transformation in the charity sector in an interview with the IT leader at Parkinson’s UK. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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News
29 Nov 2018
Virtual Instruments aims to be “the brain of the datacentre”
Virtual Instruments hopes artificial intelligence and machine learning functionality that helps IT staff spot connections between application and storage performance could put an end to the “war room” Continue Reading
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News
28 Nov 2018
HPE shows off first fruits of $4bn edge computing investment
Tech supplier has beefed up its Edgeline portfolio with new hardware and software offerings to make it easier to manage edge devices, applications and data Continue Reading
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News
26 Nov 2018
China leapfrogs US in supercomputer deployments
China has more than twice the number of supercomputers than the US, and it is finding a ready market for its Lenovo supercomputers among US tech companies in Ireland, the latest top 500 supercomputer list reveals Continue Reading
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News
20 Nov 2018
Sixth form college rebuilds after fire with Scale hyper-converged
Xaverian College suffered a server room fire but took the opportunity to build a hyper-converged infrastructure with Scale Computing that did away with costly VMware licence fees Continue Reading
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News
31 Oct 2018
Triumph Motorcycles kick-starts changes with high-tech HR
The Leicestershire-based motorcycle company is deploying IT systems to give customers and its own staff a ‘premium brand experience’ Continue Reading
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News
30 Oct 2018
Excelero adds NVMe flash via Ethernet and Fibre Channel
NVMesh2 will allow NVMe flash connectivity, so customers can use existing network hardware between servers. Erasure coding for data protection is also added Continue Reading
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News
24 Sep 2018
Alibaba Cloud and Intel team up on IoT
The Joint Edge Computing Platform lets enterprises train AI models at the edge of a network to support real-time decision-making Continue Reading
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News
21 Sep 2018
Foreshadow mitigation obscures licensing impact
Performance of virtual machines could be severely affected by the workaround for Intel’s latest processor flaw. To compensate, more processors will be needed Continue Reading
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News
14 Sep 2018
Lenovo cements deal with NetApp to strengthen datacentre foundation
Lenovo wants to become more customer-centric. A tie-up with NetApp takes its datacentre strategy to the next phase. We investigate Continue Reading
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News
10 Sep 2018
Enterprise demand drives hike in storage sales, says IDC
Healthy jump in all-flash and SAN/NAS sales is being driven by enterprise storage modernisation, but also by component price rises. Dell EMC and NetApp top the supplier sales charts Continue Reading
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News
29 Aug 2018
HPE pins hopes on intelligent edge as hybrid strategy flattens
HPE sees hybrid as the future of enterprise IT, but revenue has been affected by currency fluctuations and its intelligent edge business is growing quickly Continue Reading
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News
28 Aug 2018
Taking stock of Dell EMC’s growth in Asia
Tech supplier Dell EMC is riding on growing demand for servers and hyper-converged infrastructure, and investing in more technical resources to support enterprises in digital transformation efforts Continue Reading
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News
22 Aug 2018
Newisys bare metal NVMe box targets performance market
Former OEM supplier come out of stealth with dual-server box that can mount 56 NVMe drives for hyperscale datacentres or build-your-own NVMe shared storage hardware Continue Reading
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News
17 Jul 2018
JWT slashes server estate in move to Ctera cloud appliances
Marketing agency deploys Ctera cloud-attached NAS for 10,000 employees to simplify IT infrastructure, cutting server count and slashing software and hardware costs Continue Reading
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News
12 Jul 2018
Hedvig teams up with Veeam to support scale-out backup appliances
Scale-out software-defined storage supplier reaches agreement with Veeam for backup software to build clusters of nodes with flash, cloud and block, file and object storage access Continue Reading
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News
09 Jul 2018
Casino group bets on Pivot3 hyper-converged infrastructure for surveillance
Caesars’ ageing digital video recording equipment risked running foul of court and police requirements, and cost tens of thousands annually, so it switched to Pivot3 hyper-converged infrastructure Continue Reading
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News
04 Jul 2018
Dell/VMware and Nutanix dominate a growing hyper-converged market
As hyper-converged system revenues get set to overtake those of converged systems, Dell/VMware and Nutanix are dominating the market for combined server and storage nodes Continue Reading
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News
28 Jun 2018
University of Melbourne claims quantum computing breakthrough
Australian scientists have simulated the power of quantum computing on classical computers to solve a mathematical problem, paving the way for future breakthroughs in the nascent field Continue Reading
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26 Jun 2018
Software-defined storage: Startups bring innovation to SDS
We survey the startup suppliers pioneering new approaches to software-defined storage, including block, file and object, and VM and container-oriented approaches. Continue Reading
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News
20 Jun 2018
San Francisco 49ers add pace to the team with NVMe flash from Datrium
US NFL football team plans high-performance NVMe flash to power in-game statistics and video decision-making, plus access for scouts to player databases during draft Continue Reading
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News
19 Jun 2018
NHS trust dumps creaking EMC SAN for Nutanix hyper-converged
Derbyshire-based NHS trust had reached end-of-life with Dell servers and EMC SAN, so it took the plunge with Nutanix hyper-converged to reap space, power and reliability gains Continue Reading
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Feature
18 Jun 2018
NVMe over Fabrics brings benefits of NVMe to shared storage
NVMe over Fabrics – with NVMe carried over Fibre Channel, Ethernet, Infiniband and other protocols – could revolutionise shared storage. We look at how the market is shaping up Continue Reading
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News
13 Jun 2018
Australian university reaches for the stars after HPC boost
The University of Sydney has upgraded its supercomputing infrastructure to answer big questions on cosmology and keep pace with growing research needs Continue Reading
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Feature
11 Jun 2018
Intel Optane DIMM aims at persistent storage on the motherboard
Intel to make 3D Xpoint flash available to applications in a tier below RAM and above storage, with in-memory databases, analytics and high performance computing set to benefit Continue Reading
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Feature
31 May 2018
Storage 101: The final flash generation? QLC vs MLC, TLC, SLC
QLC flash products have arrived in the market, but with a limited performance profile, has NAND flash come up against the realities of the physics that make it possible? Continue Reading
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News
29 May 2018
Pure debuts new FlashArray //X arrays with NVMe across the range
Pure is set to replace //M series boxes with FlashArray //X arrays in which NVMe is standard with NVMe-over-fabrics connectivity to servers and expansion shelves Continue Reading
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News
22 May 2018
Security researchers find fourth CPU flaw
Security researchers have reported another flaw in common microprocessor chips related to the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities Continue Reading
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E-Zine
15 May 2018
Will government IT be ready for Brexit?
In this week’s Computer Weekly, as the UK government struggles to get new IT systems up and running before Brexit, we examine the challenges ahead and the departments with the biggest problems. We look at serverless computing and ask why this emerging cloud technology is so important for IT leaders. And we discuss the latest best practice in mobile strategy for SMEs. Read the issue now. Continue Reading
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Feature
10 May 2018
Software-defined storage: Startups bring innovation to SDS
We survey the startup suppliers pioneering new approaches to software-defined storage, including block, file and object, and VM and container-oriented approaches Continue Reading
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News
09 May 2018
Nutanix builds hooks to SDN and cloud with Flow, Era and Beam
Hyper-converged pioneer builds in functionality from acquisitions with Flow software-defined networking, Beam cloud monitoring and Era database provisioning and data protection Continue Reading
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News
30 Apr 2018
Australia government earmarks A$70m to refresh supercomputers
The investment will fund replacements for two supercomputers at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in an effort to bolster Australia’s research capabilities Continue Reading
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News
23 Apr 2018
Next generation of SCADA industrial controls will protect against cyber attack
Oil, energy and chemical companies are rethinking how to control big manufacturing plants, replacing expensive control technology with cheaper, more secure systems, taking their cue from biology Continue Reading
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News
23 Apr 2018
AI is renewing interest in high-performance computing
Growing adoption of artificial intelligence is spurring interest in high-performance computing beyond research institutions Continue Reading
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Feature
20 Apr 2018
Storage class memory set to upset hardware architectures
Storage class memory and persistent memory products are set to add a layer of superfast storage media between bulk drives and memory, pushing performance to five million IOPS Continue Reading
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News
18 Apr 2018
IBM admits poor storage results but promises to do better
IBM’s first-quarter 2018 results shows failings in its storage business, while cognitive computing via Watson remains its main growth engine Continue Reading
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News
29 Mar 2018
Western Digital adds StorReduce deduplication to object storage
US hardware giant Western Digital links up with StorReduce to provide data deduplication for object storage that combines WD ActiveScale scale-out appliances with the startup’s dedupe software Continue Reading
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Feature
22 Mar 2018
DR 101: The disaster recovery plan and disaster recovery strategy
We walk through the key steps and essential building blocks required to develop a disaster recovery strategy and how to write a disaster recovery plan Continue Reading
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News
21 Mar 2018
Train leasing firm demos mobile edge computing for smart trains
Rolling stock leasing company Angel Trains is demonstrating edge computing over a wireless mesh network to make life easier for its customers’ on-board staff Continue Reading
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Feature
06 Mar 2018
Disaggregated systems try to unlock the NVMe conundrum
NVMe can unlock the true potential of flash, but storage controllers put a bottleneck back in the I/O path. We look at how suppliers are trying to solve the problem Continue Reading