TecChannel Compact 02/2010

TecChannel Compact is a compendium for IT professionals. This edition focuses on the areas of servers, storage, and SAN: Servers - the new trends and technologies; Which server platform is the best?; Management software comparison; The fastest processors; Server buying guide; Storage technologies for 2010; Storage management; Virtualization and cloud; Fibre Channel, FCoE, and iSCSI, and much more. In addition to introductory and background articles, the Compact includes guides, tests, comparisons, and plenty of tips and tricks.

Choosing the right server is where it all begins. To assist you in your decision-making, this Compact edition offers buying advice as well as tests of current x86-based servers. Energy efficiency, virtualization, and cloud computing are the buzzwords of the server industry. However, with new blade form factors and cloud computing approaches, administrators will be able to adapt their server infrastructure even more flexibly to their needs in the future. Everything you need to know about this is covered in this Compact.

But servers alone do not make up an IT infrastructure. The attached storage landscape is becoming increasingly important. Every year, the amount of data produced and stored rises rapidly—much faster than the computing power required in the servers. Simply connecting one storage cabinet after another is not a solution. Costs quickly spiral out of control, and bandwidth is insufficient—let alone the challenges of efficient, flexible, and straightforward management of data and storage capacities. The right storage technology and suitable SAN infrastructure become essential prerequisites to manage the growing volumes of data. We provide decision-making aids for choosing the storage network and offer insights into whether, for example, cloud storage could be a solution for you.