Drew Robb

Backup has always been a key part of storage operations. In the early days, punch cards, printouts, punched paper strips and magnetic tapes running on refrigerator-sized drives duplicated everything that resided on mainframe drives. For the past several years, however, backup has taken a backseat in terms of media attention, overshadowed by stories of mushrooming […]

In a victory for proponents of file sharing, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson ruled this spring that two software companies — Grokster, which uses a branded version of the KaZaA Media Desktop, and Streamcast — had legitimate, legal uses and so were not liable for any copyright infringement done by their end users. While […]

When managing storage and other network elements, you can easily end up with far too much of a good thing. Servers, routers, switches, desktops, firewalls, intrusion detection systems — each produces a wealth of information detailing every aspect of its performance, as well as the performance of related network elements. The result is that you […]

Storage Area Networks (SANs) offer companies an excellent method for cutting storage costs while providing greater availability — provided you have an abundant supply of people possessing the knowledge and skills to manage them. And that’s the problem. The explosive growth in SAN deployment has led to a dearth of personnel who are proficient at […]

During the heyday of the Wild West, it was enough to post wanted posters in every sheriff’s office to keep the bad guys in check. But once the population swelled and civilization became more established, wanted posters were unable to cope with the volume and complexity of crime. How could you tell if someone had […]

You would think that broadband providers would have gotten it right by now, particularly with so many small and medium sized businesses (SMB) as well as the branch and remote offices of large enterprises adopting DSL and cable modem in high volume. Yet many of the same poor or no service situations that plagued the […]

According to legend, when bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks he replied “because that’s where the money is.” In his autobiography, Sutton denies ever having made that statement, but the quote nevertheless persists. Regardless of its truth, this story has important security implications for enterprise storage managers. Widely distributed storage such […]

Until relatively recently, corporate IT systems were often a hodgepodge of disparate devices and protocols that didn’t interoperate. Different vendors, operating systems, conflicting standards and varying approaches to implementation led to a landscape littered with IT islands and information silos. Thankfully, this has mostly been resolved with the exception of one key zone of operations […]

Until relatively recently, corporate IT systems were often a hodgepodge of disparate devices and protocols that didn’t interoperate. Different vendors, operating systems, conflicting standards and varying approaches to implementation led to a landscape littered with IT islands and information silos. Thankfully this has mostly been resolved today. Except for one key zone of operations — […]

Wireless LANs were a hot item at the recent Networld+Interop show in Las Vegas, meriting a large Wi-Fi Pavilion in the main hall. But unlike previous shows where gadgets and software prevailed, most wireless vendors focused on the many deployment challenges that organizations face with this fast maturing sector of technology. “Enterprises are often hesitant […]