"Yeah, we do that." That's the response many software providers of storage virtualization give when asked if they can offer a specific storage function. But that "Can do" attitude reveals the heart of the problem of these providers: they end up acquiring a "jack of all trades, master of none" reputation. Today FalconStor Software still answers, "Yeah, we do that," but now provides a more well articulated service-oriented data protection story to complement its storage solutions. (read more)
Ask any organization if they want a disaster recovery (DR) solution and the answer is almost always a "Yes." But then rephrase the question and ask, "Are they willing to invest a lot of time and money to test, implement and continually verify that a DR solution works as intended?" Put that way, it is not unusual for that organization to hem and haw before finally responding with a "No." (read more)
Sometimes it is difficult to put a price tag on "peace of mind" especially as it relates to having the confidence that application data can be recovered regardless of the scope of the disaster. But today more IT administrators are finding that elusive peace of mind. One such individual is Bill Ellis, the IT Infrastructure Manager for the Rug Doctor, Inc., whose confidence in his ability to recover data got a huge boost after testing and implementing the FalconStor Continuous Data Protector (CDP) solution. (read more)
The confidence that mid-sized companies exhibit in their ability to successfully recover from disasters is remarkable in light of the lack of evidence that there is to support it. Recent surveys have uncovered that this confidence is often misplaced and may even be setting them up for some nasty surprises down the road. (read more)
Over the years storage virtualization solutions have frequently been adapted (CDP, NAS, VTL, etc.) to function in specific ways but until now it really has not been viewed as the perfect fit for any specific application. But now thanks to the rapidly growing adoption of desktop virtualization technologies such as VMware View in organizations, storage virtualization may have finally found its perfect match. (read more)
Call them what you will - private storage clouds; distributed, shared file systems; or file system platforms - the bottom line is that these deliver what many companies now want more than ever: cost-effective, easy to manage and easy to deploy storage solutions for their burgeoning data stores. But this is where the similarities can end as the differences between them can be significant, especially when it comes to the abilities of these storage systems to perform and scale. It is these specific concerns that the new HyperFS™ file system from FalconStor is intended to address. (read more)
No one disputes that solid state drives (SSD) are poised to play a larger role in networked storage environments. But with the price per terabyte (TB) of SSDs still running a factor of 10-15x greater than high performance FC and SAS drives, the ROI for SSD has to be pretty clear for an organization to justify its deployment. Providing that justification for SSDs should now get a little easier thanks to a new solution announced today from FalconStor Software and Violin Memory. (read more)
Right now deduplication and replication are the two main features seen as critical to delivering on the promise of disk-based backup. But as organizations store more of their backup data to disk, they are quickly realizing that other features are required to successfully execute on the redesign of their backup infrastructures. Specifically, companies with numerous remote offices are finding that systems availability and data management cannot be overlooked in their disk-based backup redesigns and is what today's release of FalconStor's File-interface Deduplication System (FDS) 2.0 is intended to address. (read more)
Deduplication is now widely recognized as a prerequisite technology for next generation data protection. While this is a correct view, to classify it as the only new technology that organizations need to consider in order to successfully redesign their backup infrastructure does not paint a complete picture. More specifically, the recent and rapid maturation of continuous data protection (CDP) has put organizations in a position where they need some criteria to make an informed decision as to how to proceed with these two technologies. (read more)
It is no longer a question of if organizations are going to use disk as a backup target but a matter of what form of disk-based backup are they going to use. File servers (NAS) and virtual tape libraries (VTLs) are two common forms of disk-based solutions that organizations deploy but these approaches fail to take full advantage of the robust recovery capabilities that disk can provide. It is for this reason that more organizations are leveraging continuous data protection (CDP) to fast track their application recoveries. (read more)
