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The days of tape data backup may not be on their way out just yet but they’re certainly changing, heralded by the arrival—not to mention the growing popularity and increased availability—of VTLs. VTL is short for Virtual Tape Library, a technology that gives IT administrators the ability to move information stored on backup tape to a “virtual” platform that mimics the performance and characteristics of tape, but with superior speed.

If you can walk into Best Buy and pick up a 1 TB drive for under $100, why do enterprise storage costs far exceed that? When sizing your enterprise storage systems, you aren't just paying for raw GBs or TBs. You need the performance and reliability that the value of your data necessitates. You certainly need RAID. You want remote mirroring. You want super-fast performance. And, you want reliability and redundancy.

The reduction of high operational costs – in addition to the scaling back of the vast complexity of data center infrastructure – is a chief concern among corporations that utilize supercomputer technology. One of the most invaluable methods of accomplishing this complicated task is made possible through the use of the InfiniBand protocol, a communications link that allows interconnectivity between numerous individual computers to create an aggregate supercomputer environment. Lately, the discussion around InfiniBand has turned to its possible use in facilitating the rapid transfer of enterprise data from servers to storage systems – and it should only be a matter of time before the use of InfiniBand as a data transfer protocol becomes standard practice.

Led by Ms. Cindy Chiu, director of Medical Information Department of Ta-Tung Hospital, the team members have created a reliable and secure information framework for the hospital in only three months. In April 2010, the various clinical operations were launched.

Data deduplication is a method of scouring digital content for chunks of repeated data (like text, image, and video content that occur repeatedly) and consolidating them down to a single storage instance. Instead of having 100 copies of the same document, deduplicating storage systems essentially eliminate all but one copy. It then replaces any repeated references to that document with a pointer that drives the user to its location in the storage database.

Sometimes, even the most experienced data administrator will come across a few confusing terminologies with respect to network data backup. Three terms that have been known to crinkle a few brows in their time are: full backup, incremental backup, and differential backup.

Any company dealing with massive sets of data immediately understands the importance of secure, scalable and high-performance data storage. The problem is, as your organization upgrades computing systems and methods of storing data, a lot of data becomes outdated and dormant. This is where a solid long-term data archiving strategy comes into play.

When purchasing enterprise networking solutions, it is important to consider network security and access control to prevent user data from ever being exposed. While cost, performance, and capacity are important aspects of any enterprise network systems, imporving system security is also imperative. Be sure to understand what security features a system offers and consider a full-fledged encryption appliance to reduce the risk of data exposure.