Entries categorized under “Microsoft Exchange”

When it comes to hosting Microsoft Exchange 2010, small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) have many if not all of the same performance requirements of a storage system that hosts Exchange that large enterprises have. What these smaller companies do not possess are the deep pockets that enterprises have and which are typically needed to acquire such a storage system. Using the latest midrange HP 3PAR StoreServ 7400 storage system, these organizations can get the storage performance attributes that they need while staying within their budget constraints. (read more)

As the last business day of 2012 it is time for DCIG to unveil its most read blog entries of 2012. While a few long time reader favorites remain in this year's Top 5, a couple of newcomers also made first time appearances on this year's list driven by what is likely growing user interest/concern in managing Big Data and doing eDiscovery across their unstructured data stores. (read more)

I have disclosed the blog entries that have earned an honorable mention on DCIG's website for the number of page views they received in 2012. I have also already revealed the Top 5 blog entries written in 2012 that were the most frequently read in 2012. So it is time today to begin to reveal the Top 10 most frequently viewed blog entries on DCIG's website in 2012 regardless of what year they were published, starting with numbers 6 - 10. (read more)

One of the unique aspects about running a blog site that primarily does analysis as opposed to commenting and covering today's news is that the most read blog entries on DCIG's site each year are rarely from the current year. This year was no exception as only one of the Top 5 blog entries written in 2012 made it into the Top 10 of DCIG's most read blog entries of 2012 that I will start to reveal in tomorrow's blog entry. (read more)

The purpose of archiving is becoming more than simply facilitating smaller email stores, faster response times or better use of expensive storage capacity. The growing driver behind archiving is to enable organizations to implement information governance. In this second blog entry in my interview series with C2C System's CTO Ken Hughes, Ken explains eDiscovery and retention management are becoming the new driving forces behind archiving and why C2C's ArchiveOne is so well positioned to respond to that trend. (read more)

Archiving is emerging as one of the hot new trends of the next decade with organizations looking for better ways to manage their Big Data stores. Perhaps nowhere is data growth more rampant - and the need for better ways to manage it - more evident than with corporate email stores. In this blog entry, I begin an interview series with C2C System's CTO Ken Hughes in which we initially discuss C2C's focus on Microsoft Exchange and which size environments C2C's products are best positioned to handle. (read more)

More enterprises than ever are ready to take the next step in their virtualization journey by virtualizing mission critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010. Yet taking Exchange 2010 virtual in enterprise environments involves much more than simply hosting Exchange on a powerful server and then hoping that the underlying storage is up to the challenge. (read more)

Reading through a 30+ page Microsoft Exchange 2010 Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP) report is, at best, time consuming. Trying to objectively compare it against the results of multiple other ESRP reports so one may implement the right storage solution for their Exchange 2010 deployment is, in a word, daunting. So key to properly evaluating these ESRP reports is to know which of the metrics provide insight into how a storage system may perform in a real world Exchange 2010 deployment. (read more)

DCIG expects to unveil its DCIG 2012 Early Case Assessment (ECA) Buyer's Guide in Q2CY12. As prior Buyer's Guides have done, it puts at the fingertips of organizations a Buyer's Guide that provides them with a comprehensive list of ECA software that can assist them in this all-important buying decision while removing much of the mystery around how ECA are configured and which ones are suitable for which purposes. (read more)

It is rare to find is a storage configuration that improves the efficiency and manageability of large Exchange deployments even as it improves speed and performance. So it is notable that HP's recently released Exchange Solution Review Program (ESRP) results for Microsoft Exchange 2010 meet both existing and new enterprise requirements while tripling Exchange's database performance over that of competitive storage systems. (read more)

Virtualizing business critical applications such as Microsoft Exchange 2010 is the next frontier in server virtualization. But as organizations move down this path, sizing the underlying hardware that will host these applications becomes much more complex. This explains why we are seeing the emergence of reference configurations such as what HP has introduced for Microsoft Exchange 2010. (read more)

Email is the quintessential business-critical application, with every organization relying on it as a vital communications tool. It can pose real challenges for IT, however, as capacity gets swallowed up over time from emails accumulating in client mailboxes. Also, its 24/7availability demands and configuring it to support different server and storage platforms pile up the challenges that IT has to address in support of the application. (read more)

The introduction of Database Availability Groups (DAGs) into Microsoft Exchange 2010 has been a godsend for small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) with less than 1000 employees as it gives them the same Exchange availability and reliability features once reserved primarily for large enterprises. But for enterprises with more than 1000 users, Exchange 2010 DAGs creates new storage challenges in SAN environments unless these three techniques for optimizing SAN storage utilization and performance are followed. (read more)

The introduction of Database Availability Groups (DAGs) into Microsoft Exchange 2010 is being hailed by many small and midsize businesses (SMBs) as a key technology to making high availability (HA) accessible and affordable since it enables the use of hard disk drives (HDDs) that are internal to a physical Exchange server. However the fact that SMBs can now use internal HDDs as part of Exchange HA solution does not necessarily mean they should. (read more)

Quite a few articles have already been written about the new Iomega StorCenter ix12-300r Network Storage Array with many of them focusing on the disruptive nature that this model is going to have on storage arrays intended for the midsized business space (250 users or less). But as I read many of these articles, they are overlooking some of the key reasons why it will be so disruptive. (read more)

There is a perception among enterprise organizations that in order to deploy continuous data protection (CDP) technology, they also need to use high performance disk in conjunction with it. But enterprises probably should re-assess that assumption. The emergence of new and better CDP architectures such as what InMage offers enables organizations to deliver high speed CDP while using slower performing SATA disk drives. (read more)

Anyone who has ever witnessed a disaster knows that one of two things can happen. Either the area affected by the disaster can be devastated, never to recover; or, new life can spring up in its place. In many respect, the economic disaster that hit the entire nation and world hit the data storage industry equally hard. However the data storage industry is picking itself back up and, based upon what I saw and heard this week at The BDEvent in Palo Alto, CA, it has brought an end to one era in data storage while the dawn of another is now upon us. (read more)

Last week's blog took a look at the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. This week I wanted to step even further back and reflect upon the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 regardless of when they were written as I find this insightful in two ways. It lets me know what information continues to hold the attention of readers on as well as what topics from the past might become new trends in 2010. So while there is definitely some overlap between the two, there are also some entries that appear on this list that knock some of the top 10 blogs from last week off the list. (read more)

Server virtualization was one of the hot technology trends in 2009 and there is every reason to believe it will remain that way in 2010. But as this trend broadens to include the virtualization of mission critical applications like Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server, new considerations come into play. Most notably, organizations must identify a data protection solution that can deliver application-consistent recovery points, bring applications quickly back online and do so without negatively impacting the performance of the physical host. (read more)

This is one of my favorite blogs of the year to write. Even though this is only the second time since DCIG launched its blogging site two years ago that I have had the opportunity to write a blog in this format, I have been looking forward to looking back all year. In case you have not yet figured it out, today I take a look back at the top 10 most read blogs in 2009 on the DCIG site. However this year I am doing a two part series with today's blog examining the 10 most read blogs in 2009 that were written in 2009. (read more)

Google. Yahoo! Bing. These are the search engines that people most often turn to research and find information on the Internet. But the problem with these search engines is that they make some assumptions that one cannot make when searching for data behind corporate fire walls. More specifically, when it comes to finding information within an organization, people do not even know what they need to search for so individuals almost need to be psychic when beginning their searches for this information. (read more)

This past spring a debate erupted on BackupCentral.com between a user complaining about not getting new features in his backup software as part of his annual maintenance contract and his backup software provider wanting to charge extra for it. The user was, in his words, 'faithfully paying his annual 20% fee for maintenance' and now wanted the backup software's new Advanced Recovery option as part of his support costs. (read more)

The recent launches of Microsoft Windows 7 and Windows Servers 2008 R2 have been greeted with a lot of fanfare. But what can sometimes get lost in the mix is that as organizations look to adopt the latest versions of these operating systems there is a need to update the software that runs on these platforms. In that respect, keeping one's backup software up to date should be at or near the top of one's priority list when deploying any of these new OSes. (read more)

Making backup software easy and simple to use is the mantra for almost all products today. Yet knowing whether or not users will perceive a product as "simple and easy to use" is almost impossible to quantify until it is widely deployed in the field and users get some hands on experience with it. Well, apparently Symantec received a lot of feedback on what would make its NetBackup PureDisk 6.5 simpler and easier to use and took it to heart. (read more)

The impact of virtualization on the IT Infrastructure has shaken IT at its core. Virtualization is changing the current model of assigning one physical server for each application by effectively consolidating multiple servers onto one piece of server hardware and then optimizing its resources. Despite these benefits, virtualization initiatives can prove challenging. For example, deploying certain components of the IT infrastructure with backup and recovery is one area where there can be unanticipated challenges in the support of virtual infrastructures. (read more)