Containers have emerged over the past several years to provide an efficient method of storing and delivering applications reliably across different computing environments. By containerizing an application platform and its dependencies, differences in OS distributions and underlying infrastructures are abstracted away. 

Networking has emerged as a critical element within the container ecosystem, providing connectivity between containers running on the same host as well as on different hosts, says Michael Letourneau, an IT architect at Liberty Mutual Insurance. "Putting an application into a container automatically drives the need for network connectivity for that container," says Letourneau, whose primary focus is on building and operating Liberty Mutual's container platform. 

To read this article in full, please click here

For decades, storage technology progress was measured primarily in terms of capacity and speed. No longer. In recent times, those steadfast benchmarks have been augmented, and even superseded, by sophisticated new technologies and methodologies that make storage smarter, more flexible and easier to manage.

Next year promises to bring even greater disruption to the formerly staid storage market, as IT leaders seek more efficient ways of coping with the data tsunami generated by AI, IoT devices and numerous other sources. Here's a look at the five storage technologies that will create the greatest disruption in 2020, as enterprise adoption gains ground.

To read this article in full, please click here

In today's data-driven world, high performance computing (HPC) is emerging as the go-to platform for enterprises looking to gain deep insights into areas as diverse as genomics, computational chemistry, financial risk modeling and seismic imaging. Initially embraced by research scientists who needed to perform complex mathematical calculations, HPC is now gaining the attention of a wider number of enterprises spanning an array of fields.

"Environments that thrive on the collection, analysis and distribution of data – and depend on reliable systems to support streamlined workflow with immense computational power – need HPC," says Dale Brantly, director of systems engineering at Panasas, an HPC data-storage-systems provider.

To read this article in full, please click here

Once a niche technology, primarily attractive to organizations with specific needs, such as streamlining operations at branch offices, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) is rapidly finding a wide customer base.

HCI is an IT framework that combines storage, computing and networking into a single system; hyperconverged platforms include a hypervisor for virtualized computing, software-defined storage, and virtualized networking.

Enterprises planning an HCI adoption can select from two main approaches: hardware or software. HCI hardware typically comes in the form of an integrated appliance, a hardware/software package created and delivered by a single vendor. Appliance vendors include Dell EMC, Nutanix and HPE/SimpliVity. A software-only offering allows customers to deploy HCI on a bring-your-own-technology basis. HCI software vendors include Maxta and VMware (vSAN).

To read this article in full, please click here