In days of yore, disaster recovery (DR) meant offsite backup tapes. But when it came time to restore that data, some companies found it could take days, weeks or even an eternity to recover the systems - in the common event that tape backups proved incomplete or faulty.

Enter a wide range of snapshot, replication, mirroring and disk-based backup technologies to speed the time required for recovery as expressed in what is known as recovery time objective (RTO) i.e. how long it would take to have systems back up and running.  read more »

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a way to identify goods, components and even people via smart tags that emit radio signals and that don't require direct scanning as in a bar code. A growing range of applications are being developed to harness this technology and tie it in to enterprise management systems in order to accelerate and streamline business processes.  read more »

Data center cooling used to be a simple affair. You put a couple of computer room AC (CRAC) units against the wall, hook them up to the building chiller system and blast cold air under the floor. By having the racks arranged in alternate hot aisles and cold aisles with perforated tiles on the cold aisle floor, the cool air is sent up to the front of the racks to keep them cool.  read more »

The old Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days had Phileas Fogg racing around the world in boats, trains, balloons and elephants through parts of Europe, India, and China to traverse the globe within a couple of months. In this article, you are being taken on a tour of the global world of IT outsourcing, in the space of a few minutes.  read more »

It’s not always easy to find the source of network slows. Maybe the network is the problem, or maybe it’s an application issue. In some cases, a major bandwidth overhaul is required and in others a local issue needs to be addressed. Much of the time, though, it’s hard to tell, and finger-pointing can be the result.  read more »