Tag: Storage

As Containers Catch On, So Do Concerns

As Containers Catch On, So Do Concerns

Persistent storage requirements have overtaken security as the top barrier to adoption of application containers in production, according to a new adoption survey.

The container market adoption survey released Thursday (June 16) by data management software vendor ClusterHQ

“The biggest challenges to container deployment include persistent storage, networking, security and data management”

Full Story from Enterprise Tech

Ten Things Storage Managers Need to Know About Docker

Ten Things Storage Managers Need to Know About Docker

A good read for Storage Admins new to Docker.  In a nutshell, Docker / containers simplifies and makes life easier for IT storage administrators.

“Here are ten things storage managers need to know about Docker and other container technologies.”

  1. Why has Docker/containerization has garnered so many advocates? Makes life easy…
  2. Why is VM storage so different from container storage? Persistence…
  3. ….

Full Article by Drew Robb

Datamation’s take on AWS vs. Azure

Datamation’s take on AWS vs. Azure

Another summary of AWS vs Azure based on Gartner’s analysis…

There are pluses and minuses to both cloud vendors. Azure is great if you are all-in for Microsoft. But Gartner says AWS has 10 times the compute capacity of its next 14 competitors, and that includes Azure. These kinds of contrasts are seen up and down the comparison list for the two firms, as you will see.

Full article from Datamation: Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure Buying Guide

Azure Storage Explorer for Mac

Azure Storage Explorer for Mac

The Azure Storage Explorer (Preview) for Windows and Mac is available today from storageexplorer.com

New features include:

  • Mac OS X and Windows versions
  • Sign in to view your Storage Accounts – use your Org Account, Microsoft Account, 2FA, etc
  • Add Storage Accounts by account name and key
  • Create, search and delete blobs, queues, or tables
  • Explore the contents of blob containers
  • View and navigate through directories
  • Drag ‘n drop files to upload or download

 

Microsoft’s comprehensive Availability on Demand (AoD) solution ASR goes live

Microsoft’s comprehensive Availability on Demand (AoD) solution ASR goes live

Migration capabilities are available for a range of workloads including Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL Server:

  • Move applications with near-zero downtime: Move a single application or an entire datacenter to the cloud with minimal impact to production users
  • No-impact migration testing: Replicate production workloads into Azure, execute tests to ensure readiness, then onboard users into the cloud for no-impact migration
  • Replicate data once, for migration or recovery: With ASR and AoD, you replicate application data only once, and can then use that data to perform disaster recovery, migrate workloads, or create DevTest environments in Azure

Azure Site Recovery GA: Move VMware, AWS, Hyper-V and Physical Servers to Azure | Microsoft Azure Blog.

Top 3 Reasons to use the new Azure Premium Storage

Top 3 Reasons to use the new Azure Premium Storage

Microsoft moved Premium storage out of beta and into production yesterday. There’s 3 compelling reasons why you should take a look:

  1. Solid states drives (SSDs) are lightning fast! It won’t be long before disk drives become floppy drives.  For those of you under 30 wondering what a floppy drive is, click on the link for the Wikipedia article
  2. Works with Page Blogs (lots of reads/writes – think Virtual Machines) and Block Blobs (few read / writes – think photo and movie files).
  3. Combine Premium Storage with the Azure New D and G series virtual machines (that use SSD for their OS and temp drives) and you have a beast of a server that can handle some impressive workloads.

For more details, read Mark Russinovich’s blog

Premium Storage Release Leads List of New Azure Enhancements

Premium Storage Release Leads List of New Azure Enhancements

December 2014 enhancements to Microsoft Azure:

  • Premium Storage: New Premium high-performance Storage for Azure Virtual Machine workloads
  • RemoteApp: General Availability of Azure RemoteApp service
  • SQL Database: Enhancements to Azure SQL Databases
  • Media Services: General Availability of Live Channels for Media Streaming
  • Azure Search: Enhanced management experience, multi-language support and more
  • DocumentDB: Support for Bulk Add Documents and Query Syntax Highlighting
  • Site Recovery: General Availability of disaster recovery to Azure for branch offices and SMB customers
  • Azure Active Directory: General Availability of Azure Active Directory application proxy and password write back support

via ScottGu’s Blog – Azure: Premium Storage, RemoteApp, SQL Database Update, Live Media Streaming, Search and More.

How to Move Your Data/Files to Microsoft Azure

Once you get started with Microsoft Azure, it won’t be long before you’ll want to start copying files from your computer/server.  Unfortunately, there isn’t any convenient desktop tools like OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Cloud Drive etc. that let you just copy and synch from (Windows explorer / Mac finder).  Most of the tools are “old school” command line tools.  Today you have a choice of AzCopy, Azure PowerShell, Azure Storage Client Library for .NET or through explorer  tools. Here’s a short list as of August 2014:

My guess is that Microsoft will upgrade / create a comprehensive tool in the near future that’s as easy as the ubiquitous desktop synch tools used by millions of consumers today.

sychtools