Logan G. Harbaugh

VDI might cost less than buying new PCs, but the biggest savings come from managing a single image for a host of workstationsrn

Compliance requirements, multimedia-rich applications and a proliferation of databases are pushing IT departments to increase the size and complexity of storage networks across the enterprise.

With the advent of inexpensive disk-to-disk backup systems that offer faster, easier, and more reliable backups and restores than most tape systems, many administrators would like to abandon tape altogether. However, a standard schedule of one full backup per week plus nightly incremental backups uses up a lot of storage space, the kind of space that only tape traditionally offers at a reasonable per-gigabyte cost.

With the advent of inexpensive disk-to-disk backup systems that offer faster, easier and more reliable backups and restores than most tape systems, many administrators would like to abandon tape altogether. However, a standard schedule of one full backup per week plus nightly incremental backups uses up a lot of storage space, the kind of space that only tape traditionally offers at a reasonable per-gigabyte cost.

Depending on which study you believe, the average company has anywhere from a dozen to hundreds of applications that require user log-ins.SSO (single sign-on)...

Just as Ethernet networking devices have evolved from straightforward hubs to layer 2 switches to layer 7 application-aware switches, so are SAN switches evolving.

When NAS appliances first came out, analysts said they would commoditize the file server market. Instead, they've become file servers, many of which are based on specialized versions of Windows Server, Linux, or NetWare. Three types of NAS solutions dominate the market -- ATA-based, SCSI-based, and FC (Fibre-Channel) based -- and these appliances come in varying shapes and sizes, from those tailored to small businesses and remote offices on up to the enterprise.

As SANs grow over time, with switches and servers added haphazardly to the array, they can become quite difficult to track and manage. McData Corp.'s SANavigator 3.5.1 brings order to complexity and enables the SAN administrator to monitor and manage large numbers of devices.