Reading Time-approximately: 4 minutesA host bus adapter (HBA) is a circuit board or integrated circuit adapter that connects a host system, such as a server, to a storage or network device. By Robert Sheldon and Carol Sliwa An HBA also provides input/output (I/O) processing to reduce the load on the host’s microprocessor when storing and retrieving data, helping to improve the host’s overall performance. An HBA and its associated disk subsystems are sometimes
Reading Time-approximately: 8 minutesThe main types of network cables are coax, fiber optics, and shielded and unshielded twisted pair. As enterprises deploy new technologies, it’s critical to select the right cables. ByChris Partsenidis and David Jacobs Selecting cables is a crucial part of network design. Required data rate, cost and distance all dictate the range of choices for each connection. Some connections require
Reading Time-approximately: 4 minutesSome of the different types of network switches include managed, modular, unmanaged and stackable. Find out how different network switches dovetail and differ. By Andrew Froehlich These days, a switch is a switch, right? Well, not necessarily. While all network switches move data from point A to point B, many enterprise-grade switches have significant hardware and software differences that factor
Reading Time-approximately: 3 minutesNVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a communications interface and driver that takes advantage of the increased bandwidth PCIe has to offer. By Enterprise Technical Support The benefits of NVMe NVMe technology provides superior storage, superior speed and superior compatibility. Since NVMe utilises PCIe sockets, it transfers 25x more data than the SATA equivalent. Along with more data, NVMe’s commands are
Reading Time-approximately: 8 minutesA data center — also known as a datacenter or data centre — is a facility composed of networked computers, storage systems and computing infrastructure that businesses and other organizations use to organize, process, store and disseminate large amounts of data. By Peter Loshin and Ben Lutkevich A business typically relies heavily upon the applications, services and data contained within a data center, making
Reading Time-approximately: 4 minutesIDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) is an electronic interface standard that defines the connection between a bus on a computer’s motherboard and the computer’s disk storage devices. By Robert Sheldon and Sonia Lelii The IDE interface was originally based on the IBM PC Industry Standard Architecture 16-bit bus standard, but it has since been implemented in computers that use other bus standards. In November 1990, the American National Standards
Reading Time-approximately: 5 minutesWhen it comes to small business and home lab IT decisions, sometimes thinking outside the box helps to create cost-effective and high-performance solutions. By StorageReview Enterprise Lab Crucial just released the new 4TB capacity of the long-standing MX500 SATA SSD, which may just be a perfect price and performance mix for a low-cost all-flash storage setup. We installed eight of these SSDs
Reading Time-approximately: 9 minutesZoning can be set up according to server, storage and SAN switch. Discover what type of zoning to use, how zone sets extend SAN segmentation and the various zoning schemas. By Robert Sheldon, Simon Gordon and Garry Kranz SAN zoning gains importance once your SAN includes more than a couple dozen devices. During the early days of SAN, there was
Reading Time-approximately: 4 minutesA key fob is a small, programmable device that provides access to a physical object. Also known as a hardware token, a key fob provides on-device, one-factor authentication to facilitate access to a system or device, such as a car, computer system, restricted area or room, mobile device, network service or other kind of keyless entry system. By Rahul Awati and Diana Hwang
Reading Time-approximately: 7 minutesTiered storage is a method for assigning different categories of data to various types of storage media to reduce overall storage costs and improve the performance and availability of mission-critical applications. By Robert Sheldon, Garry Kranz and Dave Raffo A tiered storage architecture categorizes data hierarchically based on its business value, with data ranked by how often it’s accessed by users and applications. The data
What is COVID-19?
On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan City, China. ‘Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2’ (SARS-CoV-2) was confirmed as the causative agent of what we now know as ‘Coronavirus Disease 2019’ (COVID-19). Since then, the virus has spread to more than 100 countries, including South Africa.
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