Virtualisation software

Virtualisation has been one of the hottest IT topics in recent years, with many IT managers seeing the benefits of reducing cost and improving systems management in their storage, server and desktop environments. Virtualisation is also an important step towards making the most of the opportunities offered by cloud computing. We examine the latest trends in virtualisation software and technology.

Feature 14 Jun 2024
The sustainable office in the age of hybrid work hotelification

For many, the phrase ‘hotelification’ may raise some hackles, yet in the context of the office, the concept has continued apace since the pandemic struck. The move towards creating a more sustainable workspace, however, remains rather more muted Continue Reading
News 14 May 2024
NetApp upgrades AFF all-flash as it targets AI storage

New AFF arrays offer performance boost for artificial intelligence, while NetApp trumpets its advantages as a provider of sustainable and intelligent infrastructure for all kinds of workloads Continue Reading

News 14 May 2024

NetApp upgrades AFF all-flash as it targets AI storage

New AFF arrays offer performance boost for artificial intelligence, while NetApp trumpets its advantages as a provider of sustainable and intelligent infrastructure for all kinds of workloads Continue Reading
Feature 22 Mar 2024

What is the metaverse? An explanation and in-depth guide

The metaverse reached the peak of hype and has been left for dead, but make no mistake, the technologies that will power this 3D internet are firing on all cylinders. Continue Reading
News 12 Mar 2024

March Patch Tuesday throws up two critical Hyper-V flaws

Two critical vulnerabilities in Windows Hyper-V stand out on an otherwise unremarkable Patch Tuesday Continue Reading
Feature 27 Feb 2024

Virtualising urban environments and smart cities with digital twins

As cities increasingly try to integrate smart features and applications into their operations, digital twins will become powerful enablers in designing and developing smart cities Continue Reading
Feature 02 Feb 2024

What is beauty tech? 10 trends shaping the cosmetics industry

Explore how beauty tech trends are reshaping the beauty industry. Explore new trends and the latest CES innovations, from virtual try-ons and 3D-printed makeup to AI skincare. Continue Reading
Definition 26 Jan 2024

Docker Swarm

Docker Swarm is a container orchestration tool for clustering and scheduling Docker containers. Continue Reading
Definition 22 Jan 2024

3D mesh

): A 3D mesh is the structural build of a three-dimensional model consisting of polygons. 3D meshes use reference points in X, Y and Z axes to define shapes with height, width and depth. Continue Reading
News 24 Aug 2023

NHS SBS to launch £1.5bn digital workplace solutions framework

NHS Shared Business Services is planning on a second iteration of its digital workplace solutions framework before the current one expires in August 2024 Continue Reading
Feature 05 Jul 2023

Immersive technologies advance training and design

Building on a similar discussion on the emerging metaverse at the iconic cultural event a year ago, this year’s SXSW saw a select group of experts discuss how immersive technologies could be a driver for future societies Continue Reading
News 05 Jul 2023

Dassault Systèmes, Cranfield collaborate on 3DExperience centre of excellence

Partnership between tech firm and university aims to provide centre for experiential, lifelong learning with connected 3D engineering platform to accelerate digital and sustainable transformation of aerospace and defence industry Continue Reading
Definition 31 May 2023

Parallels

Parallels is a software company best-known for its software that allows users to run Microsoft Windows systems on Apple Macintosh computers. Continue Reading
Definition 12 Apr 2023

Microsoft App-V (Microsoft Application Virtualization)

Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) is an application virtualization client that makes an application available to end users without installing it on a personal computer (PC). Continue Reading
News 20 Feb 2023

Veeam bundles backup products into Veeam Data Platform

Backup and data protection specialist Veeam upgrades and rebrands, with a focus on the challenges of ransomware and rapid recovery, and a claimed 500 new functions Continue Reading
News 20 Dec 2022

Top 10 emerging storage trends stories of 2022

There’s a seismic shift to the cloud. In its wake, object storage, unstructured data, analytics, unified file and object, and consumption models of procurement have all been boosted Continue Reading
News 22 Nov 2022

Pure aims at near bare metal I/O with Portworx PX-Fast

PX-Fast is driven by customer need for scale and high performance in containerised environments and sees reworking of Portworx data architecture to slash storage access time Continue Reading
News 03 Oct 2022

BT Group sees network gains through AI Accelerator

Telco announces new platform to orchestrate, accelerate and monitor artificial intelligence model deployments developed by its data community and to drive efficiencies Continue Reading
News 07 Sep 2022

VMware’s vSAN 8 gets a rebuild for the solid-state storage era

At VMware Explore 2022, we interview VMware’s John Gilmartin about the new, faster vSAN, plans to use DPUs, the vSAN+ cloud offering, and VMware Ransomware Recovery Continue Reading
Definition 19 Jul 2022

purple screen of death (PSOD)

A purple screen of death (PSOD) is a diagnostic screen with white type on a purple background that's displayed when the VMkernel of a VMware ESXi host experiences a critical error, becomes inoperative and terminates any virtual machines (VMs) that are running. Continue Reading
News 11 Jul 2022

NetApp Ontap to be sole vSAN storage alternative in the cloud

NetApp Ontap storage will provide file access capacity to extend VMware data stores in AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google clouds as a cheaper alternative to VMware vSAN Continue Reading
Feature 30 Jun 2022

Legislation and certification of XR applications: challenges to adoption and diffusion

Virtual and augmented reality may be changing the game, but such cutting-edge applications run ahead of many regulatory issues. How can the metaverse avoid uncertainties that could slow the adoption of XR and related enabling technologies? Continue Reading
Podcast 31 May 2022

Podcast: How to get truly portable Kubernetes storage

We talk to NetApp CTO Grant Caley about what is needed from storage to really deliver in a world of Kubernetes containerisation and microservices portability in hybrid cloud working Continue Reading
Definition 31 May 2022

virtual networking

Virtual networking is the abstraction of network resources from the underlying physical network infrastructure. Continue Reading
News 09 May 2022

Ctera opens up its storage to third-party analytics via APIs

File system software builds pools of NAS-like storage accessible from anywhere, with APIs to third-party tools to interrogate data for business processes, anomaly detection and more Continue Reading
Blog Post 12 Apr 2022

Citrix and Microsoft: who’s really leading the transformation agenda?

Citrix loves Microsoft and Microsoft loves Citrix - OK, maybe I’m exaggerating to make a point, but that’s the gist of the official lines you get from both companies. But looking in from the ... Continue Reading
Definition 16 Feb 2022

virtual appliance

Considered a software equivalent of a hardware device, a virtual appliance (VA) is a preconfigured software solution. Continue Reading
News 01 Feb 2022

Dutch software engineers join campaign for research funding

Software researchers from all over Europe are sounding the alarm: to maintain a strong international competitive position, more financial resources must be committed to software research Continue Reading
News 31 Jan 2022

Nebulon SmartInfrastructure brings cloud-defined storage to datacentre

Cloud-defined storage allows customers to build private clouds on-site, with pools of storage built from commodity hardware, Nebulon PCIe cards and its browser-based console Continue Reading
Feature 06 Jul 2021

The beneficial (and frightening) implications of virtualising reality

The mingling of virtual and physical worlds promises many beneficial and entertaining applications, but there are also some truly worrisome implications of augmented reality Continue Reading
News 18 Jun 2021

Vast Data will offer containerised storage software, but not yet

Vast Data sticking to its plan to provide no-tier “universal storage” via QLC flash and a 3D Xpoint read/write buffer that uses a containerised control plane Continue Reading
News 25 May 2021

Valence brings storage virtualisation for the cloud era

Startup 22dot6 launches Valence, software-defined storage that throws a virtualisation layer over any backend storage via multiple nodes that split metadata and storage services Continue Reading
News 25 May 2021

Oil and gas firm halves backup licence cost with Hycu move

Summit E&P made a strategic move to Nutanix hyper-converged and away from NetApp and VMware and wanted backup that could handle virtual machines and physical servers Continue Reading
Feature 25 May 2021

Where to run containers? Bare metal vs virtual machines

We look at the key differences between running containers in virtualised environments and on bare metal servers and focus in on the main trade-offs and decision points Continue Reading
Feature 17 May 2021

Container-native storage: A definition, and what to ask suppliers

We look at container-native storage – aka cloud-native storage – what defines it, and its benefits as a way of bringing persistent Kubernetes storage to containerised applications Continue Reading
News 13 May 2021

Portworx gets container-native array management for Pure hardware

Container storage player Portworx builds in container-native functionality to allow discovery, provisioning and management from inside Kubernetes cluster, but only on Pure arrays so far Continue Reading
Feature 22 Apr 2021

Five reasons to look at hyper-converged infrastructure

HCI promises easy setup, purchasing flexibility, low procurement and operation costs, reliability and all in one box – but there are challenges too Continue Reading
News 12 Apr 2021

Ctera KubeFiler to bring Kubernetes storage to its cloud gateways

KubeFiler uses the container storage interface to allow Kubernetes to access persistent storage as if it were from a local NAS device, and while keeping existing access profiles Continue Reading
Feature 12 Mar 2021

Ski firm dumps ‘motley’ storage for DataCore software-defined

Eurogroup cuts power usage by 70% and rackspace from 84U to 7U as it consolidates multiple physical servers and storage protocols onto SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading
News 11 Mar 2021

Scottish farm subsidy body slashes dev time with Pure all-flash

Rural directorate ditched hybrid flash EMC SAN for Pure all-flash storage and cut developer time in half, while beta testing Cloud Block Store and planning container project Continue Reading
News 01 Feb 2021

Netbackup 9 adds flexibility with hyper-converged backup options

Veritas’s enterprise backup flagship is available in hyper-converged infrastructure and has embraced containerisation, for better hardware and application scalability Continue Reading
Feature 28 Jan 2021

Five key questions about Kubernetes backup answered

We look at when to back up containers, what to protect, the main methods of backup for Kubernetes and the main Kubernetes backup products available in the market Continue Reading
News 14 Jan 2021

VVOLs and Pure win VM storage beauty parade for French chain

VMware Virtual Volumes and a move from NetApp to Pure Storage saw cosmetics retailer Beauty Success make performance gains and eliminate bottlenecks in ordering and logistics Continue Reading
Feature 07 Jan 2021

Robin.io aims its Kubernetes storage at databases and big data

Cloud-native storage runs in Kubernetes and pools storage media to present it to application persistent storage needs, including snapshots and backup on top Continue Reading
News 21 Dec 2020

Top 10 container storage stories of 2020

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 container storage stories for 2020, when providing persistent Kubernetes storage, backup and disaster recovery became a key challenge for many organisations Continue Reading
Feature 14 Dec 2020

Five hyper-converged infrastructure use cases to watch

We look at workloads ripe for hyper-converged infrastructure deployment. These include virtual servers and desktops, SMEs/remote offices, Kubernetes, and analytics and machine learning Continue Reading
News 10 Dec 2020

Cato boosts network management with SASE cloud API

GraphQL-based API designed to extract security and networking information globally with a single request allows enterprises to automate provisioning and management of SASE deployments from third-party platforms Continue Reading
News 12 Nov 2020

Winners of female-only data hackathon announced

Several firms banded together to run a virtual female-only hackathon to encourage data analysts to use Covid-19 data to solve pandemic-related problems Continue Reading
Feature 10 Nov 2020

Intel Optane Persistent Memory aims to fill the gap DRAM can’t

We look at Optane and its PMem product that Intel believes will fill a big gap between memory and storage that DRAM technology just cannot deal with Continue Reading
News 05 Oct 2020

Veeam buys Kasten to get a boost in Kubernetes backup

Virtual machine backup pioneer sees $150m purchase of Kasten and the addition of Kubernetes backup to its portfolio as key to becoming a ‘$2bn company’ Continue Reading
News 29 Sep 2020

Red Hat rivals VMware and Nutanix with hyper-converged OCS 4.5

Red Hat’s OpenShift 4.5 extended container orchestration to virtual machines. The arrival of OCS 4.5 moves the solution into the realm of hyper-converged systems Continue Reading
News 16 Sep 2020

Pure flashes the cash, paying $370m for Portworx

Flash storage pioneer believes container storage is the next frontier and pays big money for container persistent storage software provider Portworx in deal set to close this month Continue Reading
News 07 Sep 2020

Dutch bank set to save €5m via Veeam backup upgrade

Rabobank ditched legacy backup where patching took months and restores took hours. Those times are now cut down massively and the bank has a readily available test environment Continue Reading
Blog Post 18 Aug 2020

Quantum Machines in super position on superposition programming

Quantum computing is complex. So complex in fact that we spend a lot of time understanding the concept of quantum theory, the existence of qubits and the use of superposition to get us to a state ... Continue Reading
News 11 Aug 2020

Nutanix launches Clusters in AWS for hybrid cloud hyper-converged infrastructure

HCI pioneers launches Nutanix Clusters, which will provide hyper-converged deployments across customer datacentres and the Amazon cloud, but only in Acropolis and on AWS for now Continue Reading
News 15 Jul 2020

University graduates to Nutanix Files hyper-converged NAS

The University of Reading had already deployed Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure so it made sense to add Nutanix Files when its ageing NAS boxes bit the dust Continue Reading
News 03 Jun 2020

Worldwide user spending on cloud-based web conferencing technology will grow by nearly 25% in 2020

Global workplace restrictions will drive expansion of cloud conferencing user base throughout 2020, but growth will taper off next year Continue Reading
News 29 May 2020

Mobile industry makes ‘rapid’ progress towards 5G despite Covid-19

BPI Network Survey suggests operators are rethinking security in the light of 5G network traffic, and shows “dramatic” increase in connected devices and new mission-critical use cases Continue Reading
News 29 May 2020

Kaminario offers cut-price virtual SAN in the cloud

Flash pioneer Kaminario builds its VisionOS out to the cloud and says its cloud block storage is much cheaper than what is available from the native cloud services of the big three providers Continue Reading
News 19 May 2020

Portworx to add application profiles to persistent container storage

Kubernetes persistent container storage that runs from inside the cluster will add application storage profiles for applications such as Apache Kafka, Elasticsearch and Postgres Continue Reading
News 04 May 2020

StorageOS v2 puts ‘mini brains’ in Kubernetes storage volumes

StorageOS persistent software-defined storage for Kubernetes distributes control plane decisions to volumes in a cluster and takes away the impact on centralised scheduler Continue Reading
Feature 16 Mar 2020

Container storage 101: What is CSI and how does it work?

We look at the container storage interface, which provides an interface to persistent storage in the products of storage array makers, and how it relates to Kubernetes Continue Reading
Feature 02 Mar 2020

Rook 101: Building software-defined containerised storage in Kubernetes

Rook – think castles, not birds – uses the principles of containerisation and the methods used in Kubernetes to build storage that’s abstracted from the hardware it lives on Continue Reading
Feature 21 Feb 2020

Kubernetes storage 101: Container storage basics

We look at the basics of creating storage and specifying it for applications in container storage using Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims Continue Reading
News 05 Feb 2020

Veeam pushes subscription licensing in cloud-centric ‘Act II’

Backup specialist wants to “win the cloud” as it pushes towards a cloud-focused vision that includes pay-for-what-you-use and multicloud after its acquisition last month Continue Reading
Feature 04 Feb 2020

Caribbean island hospital rebuilds after hurricane with DataCore

Hurricane Irma tore the roof off a server room and flooded IT hardware, but that was an opportunity to rebuild redundant IT using DataCore’s SANsymphony software-defined storage Continue Reading
Feature 22 Jan 2020

Spread of Kubernetes spurs backup and disaster recovery products

Growth of containerised applications brings with it the need to back up and provide disaster recovery. But what do you need to protect, and who provides the products? Continue Reading
News 13 Jan 2020

$5bn buy-out set to make backup giant Veeam a US company

Veeam’s founders are out as investment fund gets its hands on a pioneer of virtual machine backup. Now it will be a US company and eligible to target US government customers Continue Reading
Feature 08 Jan 2020

Five ways that backup has changed since the days of tape

Back in the day, all this was tape, but times have changed, with cloud-to-cloud backup, cloud storage, virtual and physical backup appliances and myriad endpoint hardware Continue Reading
News 07 Jan 2020

Scale’s HE150 the first of a big push to small edge HCI hardware

Scale Computing aims to scale to micro-sized hyper-converged with a lightweight operating system it claims its competitors can’t match for edge and remote location deployments Continue Reading
News 19 Dec 2019

Top 10 storage stories of 2019

Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 storage stories for 2019, with the latest trends in enterprise storage arrays, hyper-converged, object storage, scale-out NAS, and more Continue Reading
Feature 09 Dec 2019

How to buy hyper-converged infrastructure

Simplicity, high availability, scalability and reduced cost are among the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure. We survey the benefits, pitfalls and the key suppliers Continue Reading
News 06 Dec 2019

Qualcomm claims world first for 5G mixed reality

5G-supported extended reality platform is claimed to offer more immersive, intelligent and connected experiences Continue Reading
Feature 22 Nov 2019

Figeac Aero manages growth with DataCore software-defined storage

Global roll-out sees DataCore software-defined storage deployed on Huawei hardware to HQ and 14 worldwide sites as aero parts maker copes with acquisition and expansion Continue Reading
News 20 Nov 2019

Datrium boosts VMware protection but won’t add more hypervisors

NVMe flash pioneer turned DR-as-a-service-focused data platform provider Datrium says VMware and Kubernetes have “won the market” and it won’t extend support beyond those two Continue Reading
News 24 Oct 2019

Total saves £95,000 a year with Nutanix hyper-converged

Gas and electricity supplier struggled with ageing traditional infrastructure, but moved to hyper-converged for projects that include containers and DevOps deployments Continue Reading
Feature 23 Jul 2019

The pitfalls of hyper-converged infrastructure and how to avoid them

Hyper-converged infrastructure can be an easy win when it comes to datacentre infrastructure upgrades, but there are pitfalls. We discuss how best you can sidestep them Continue Reading
News 15 Jul 2019

Smartodds bets on Rubrik backup appliance with cloud archive

Betting intelligence analytics firm Smartodds replaced its old tape backup infrastructure with Rubrik appliances to cut management time and database restores from hours to minutes Continue Reading
News 11 Jun 2019

Scale targets edge workloads with HE500 hyper-converged nodes

Scale Computing adds hyper-converged infrastructure nodes to provide edge compute and storage that is fully compatible with its datacentre-scale HCI appliances Continue Reading
Feature 30 May 2019

SAN vs NAS vs hyper-converged for virtual machine storage

The pros and cons of file and block access storage arrays vs the new breed of all-in-one server/storage architecture for storage of virtual machine systems and data Continue Reading
Feature 21 May 2019

Software-defined storage vs NAS/SAN: What are the options?

We look at the pros and cons of software-defined storage and weigh up when it’s a better option than buying NAS and SAN pre-built hardware shared storage arrays Continue Reading
News 05 Apr 2019

European firms see value in ‘known good’ approach to security

European data protection regulations are driving enterprise interest in an approach to security being championed by virtualisation software maker VMware, says the company’s security lead Continue Reading
News 17 Sep 2018

Red Hat to throw its hat in with Container Storage Interface

Software maker will add Container Storage Interface support to its existing OpenShift Container Platform and GlusterFS-based scale-out file system container storage Continue Reading
News 04 Sep 2018

DDN to make enterprise push with Tintri’s VM-aware storage

DDN set to add Tintri’s portfolio of all-flash and hybrid flash arrays to its product offering following the purchase of the VM-aware storage pioneer after it filed for bankruptcy in June Continue Reading
News 02 Aug 2018

NetApp AI storage packages OnTap all-flash FAS A800, Nvidia

NetApp follows Pure Storage's lead, adds Nvidia GPUs to its all-flash arrays to build a storage product designed for data scientists and others dabbling in artificial intelligence. Continue Reading
Feature 16 Jul 2018

Data protection for containers: Why and how to do Docker backup

Containers such as those from Docker are agile, lightweight and can be short-lived, but they and their data often need to be protected. We look at the key options available Continue Reading
Feature 03 Jul 2018

Containers and storage: Array suppliers’ container capabilities

We look at what the big five storage array makers – Dell EMC, Hitachi, HPE, IBM and NetApp – are doing to provide persistent storage for container-based deployments Continue Reading
News 25 Jun 2018

VM-aware storage pioneer Tintri on verge of bankruptcy

Recent first-quarter results by the VM-aware storage pioneer throw light on a fragile financial situation that needs new funds or a buyer to avoid bankruptcy by the end of June Continue Reading
News 08 Jun 2018

Medical firm puts vTax and SAN to sleep to save £30,000 with Scale

Penlon replaces HPE servers and storage and VMware virtualisation to escape the high costs of licensing, and deploys Scale Computing hyper-converged appliances at two UK datacentres Continue Reading
News 09 May 2018

Nutanix builds hooks to SDN and cloud with Flow, Era and Beam

Hyper-converged pioneer builds in functionality from acquisitions with Flow software-defined networking, Beam cloud monitoring and Era database provisioning and data protection Continue Reading
News 01 Mar 2018

It’s the year of the cloud, says backup giant Veeam

Veeam roadmap adds cloud to virtual and physical backup with acquisitions that bring cloud and hybrid functionality. Object archives, CDP and NAS backup are also planned Continue Reading
News 26 Feb 2018

Ideal Standard standardises in Emea with Nakivo virtual backup

Bathroom multinational strips out country-based systems to virtualise across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Nakivo beats Veeam on cost to provide VMware disk-based backup and slashes restore times Continue Reading
News 23 Jan 2018

Hyper-convergence and containers key storage-related deployments in 2018

Hyper-converged infrastructure and containers are key deployments planned by UK customers in 2018, with flash storage, virtual machine storage and disk backup also prominent Continue Reading
Feature 10 Jan 2018

Storage in containers: The answer to persistent storage needs?

With compute requirements often fragmented, short-lived and bursty, traditional storage architectures can struggle to cope – so is storage in containers the solution? Continue Reading
Feature 13 Dec 2017

Storage briefing: The evolution of software-defined storage

The evolution of software-defined storage, from simple software products to those that offer scale-out, hyper-converged, NVMe, public cloud and container functionality Continue Reading
Feature 17 Nov 2017

Key choices in Docker container storage deployment

Containers often need persistent storage, but how do you achieve that? We look at the key options, including Docker volumes versus bind mounts, and Docker Volume Plugins Continue Reading
News 08 Nov 2017

Red Hat Ceph Storage 3 brings file, iSCSI and container storage

Latest version of open source OpenStack-targeted software-defined storage adds CephFS, ISCSI and storage that can be deployed in containers to save hardware Continue Reading
News 18 Oct 2017

Commvault joins the hyper-converged backup wave with Hyperscale

Hyperscale Software and Hyperscale Appliance bring Commvault backup software in a reference architecture/software product or as a pre-configured server/storage box Continue Reading
News 12 Oct 2017

Syneto aims Hyperseries 2100 at hyper-converged for SMEs

European startup targets customers with two-node hyper-converged appliance, with built-in disaster recovery and capacity for up to 15 VMware virtual machines Continue Reading
Feature 03 Oct 2017

OpenStack vs hyper-converged: Open-source cloud in the datacentre

We look at how to deploy OpenStack on hyper-converged infrastructure and how HCI suppliers’ products can support deployment of the open-source cloud in the datacentre Continue Reading
Feature 31 Aug 2017

Hyper-converged choices: DIY HCI software deployments

What are the advantages of do-it-yourself hyper-converged infrastructure deployment and who are the key suppliers of HCI software? We run the rule over the DIY hyper-converged market Continue Reading
News 19 Jul 2017

Charity swaps SAN for Hypergrid hyper-converged to save £1m

Tearfund saves £950,000 by deploying Hypergrid hyper-converged in place of HP servers and SAN, cutting costs on space, power, staff and hardware, and avoiding VMware Continue Reading