With most SaaS services used in businesses, backup and recovery is a rare addition. In this Gestalt IT Tech Talk recorded at the recent Storage Field Day event, Stephen Foskett, and W Curtis Preston, aka, Mr. Backup, explore the state of data protection in the SaaS world. SaaS applications like Office 360, G Suite and similar ones, offer a scant level of recoverability which is at core of frequent user data loss. The rapid rise of ransomware attacks lends an extra urgency to mitigate this. Listen to the conversation to know how companies can avert potential crisis by adopting an alternate path.

In this Edge Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses the intricacies of navigating data through the edge and how important edge security is. Edge computing is a trailblazer technology that will play an outsize role in boosting the Internet economy, and democratizing technology. But in the past, we have all seen good techs gone bad, and ways criminals can abuse a perfectly good solution. The edge maybe smart, and an empowering tool, but it still lacks social guardrails and security safeguards. It is on the vendors to recognize the best practices and applications so that users can harness this technology comfortably, without compromising on data security.

In this exclusive article, Sulagna Saha discusses StorPool’s plan to tighten data protection with the StorPool v21 update to their platform. Per-volume policy management allows data to be protected by volume as opposed to per-drive or per-node. Cross-node data protection ensures that data across servers is safe and accessible through failure of up to two nodes. StorPool offers incremental mesh encoding and recovery wherein it only recovers what is lost as opposed to all of the data in the node. “If a storage node dies and you bring it back, it will recover only the differences. And with mesh recovery, if a node dies and it’s never coming back, we can recover on the remaining storage nodes,” said Boyan Krosnov. The v21 offers an always-on operational model by letting up to two nodes to be taken offline for maintenance, without disrupting the rest of system or data accessibility. “Conversion between different schemes, expansions, software updates, drive failures – everything is online,” he highlights.

In this Edge Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discussed Solidigm’s hyper-dense SSDs for edge challenges and how their compact form helps them fit anywhere. At the edge, space is not nearly as abundant as in the datacenters. Adjustments need to be made to reduce the footprint of the stack without impacting usability. These, added with the steep sustainability and TCO requirements demand a breed of hyper-dense SSDs that are smaller, lighter, and ready to integrate with a less elegant infrastructure. Solidigm’s SSDs’ distinguishing feature is not just tremendous speed and capacity, but form factors that can be likened to a pack of gum. Solidigm’s ability to pack so capacity within their minuscule forms can be truly transformative for storing massive amounts of data generated by myriad devices, gadgets and communication at the edge.

In this exclusive article, Sulagna Saha discusses how Micas Networks is helping businesses transition to Open Networking. In the past, protectionist mentality has cost companies mindshare, a fact that is driving so many to test out new ideas with their core audiences. The open networking movement is a part of that. But teams can quickly feel inundated making the transition exhaustive and messy. To end up with a network that is ultimately resilient and supportive of new technologies, one needs to understand the needs and what options work best. In that regard, Micas Networks’ efforts are well-directed. Their support service will help a lot of companies overcome the early skepticism they may face before heading down that path. Additionally, their choice of white box hardware will make open networking worth the trouble and a success.

3D printing, in the recent years, has played a major role in meeting demands for individualized products in IT. In this Gestalt IT Tech Talk with Erik Ableson, we talk about 3D printing and its many uses. 3D printing has boosted industries and individuals with DIY manufacturing of countless products at home. The barrier to entry is surprisingly low, and the possibilities, endless. As a result, it offers an onramp to many looking to make their own products quickly and affordably. Watch the Tech Talk to learn about the diverse applications of 3D printing in data centers and at home.

In this Edge Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses how NodeWeaver is creating hands-off management at the edge. For all its promises, the edge is still in a rough shape. It will take years before it can rise to the status of a cloud replacement. A clever way to harness its potential today would be to embrace a technology like NodeWeaver that irons out the kinks, reduces administrative overheads, and presents an edge fabric that is just another cloud service – fully outfitted with a suite of automation services that only hyperscalers are known to offer.

In this Edge Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discussed StorMagic’s future-ready micro-datacenters at the edge with SvSAN. In an economy where vendors typically aim to serve big companies with large setups, and do not go far to support the smaller outfits, StorMagic bridges that divide. It understands that SMBs’ needs are often overlooked, and it’s time to devise a solution that fuels their competitiveness. At a small footprint, SvSAN brings a fast and powerful highly specialized edge environment within the reach of these companies. SvSAN guarantees the resilience and uptime every application must deliver to its users.

In this exclusive article, Sulagna Saha discusses vFunction’s Observability Platform and how it measures and manages Technical Debt. It goes without saying that technical debt must be tamed before it snowballs into a vortex of challenges and hurt business outcomes. vFunction’s Architectural Observability Manager is a compelling tool to eliminate the obscurity around technical debt.  Using it, companies can quantify the ways it hurts businesses, and find what specific components need attention. With its AI-powered analytics and inference, architects can not only see problems as they are born, but also measure and manage the symptoms before they scale.

In this Storage Field Day article, Sulagna Saha discusses the topic of sustainability which was discussed in the Delegate Roundtable discussion. The digital explosion has brought the IT industry to a point where on the average, companies cater to a quaint million user base at once. This requires outsize datacenters, industrial servers, and thousands of kilowatts of power. Sustainability goals are sharply at odds with these. It will take years of close examination to check wasteful manners, figure out how to run datacenters at maximum capacity and minimum environmental footprints, and to consciously pull away from nonrenewable power to achieve the desired level of greenness. But if a habit is made to continuously test emission levels and evaluate the sustainability goals, big milestones can be achieved down the road.