Category: Symantec

The gap between fantasy and reality is still pretty wide in terms of what enterprises hope to achieve with Big Data analytics. Bridging this gap requires that organizations follow some best practices when implementing Big Data analytics tools and take into account some of the shortcomings of Hadoop. Using Symantec’s forthcoming Veritas Cluster File System Connector for Hadoop, they may implement Hadoop and the Big Data analytics benefits it provides coupled with the stability and reliability that the Veritas Cluster File System provides.

People who are on the outside looking in at a data center often assume that it runs like clockwork with everyone knowing exactly what hardware is located where, what applications are running on the hardware and that the hardware is properly utilized. Yet as anyone who actually works in a data center knows, making that perception a reality requires the right software, a lot of hard work and more than a little bit of luck. The release of Veritas Operations Manager Advanced 5.0 from Symantec gives enterprises the software platform they need to make this perception a reality while serving to take some of the hard work and chance out of the management equation.

Most enterprises are confident that they are going to virtualize much of their infrastructure so as to create a private cloud. However they are probably just as confident that once they have this private cloud in place they will have little or no insight into how well the resources in their private cloud are being used, if the resources could be better utilized and where the bottlenecks reside. Giving companies increased visibility and better control over their private clouds is what Symantec Veritas Operations Manager 5.0 provides.

As the volume of unstructured data such as files in File Shares or documents in Microsoft SharePoint continues to grow, organizations are faced with managing increased data security and information governance risks. One of the more potentially dangerous risks for organizations in the Microsoft Windows world are open shares or folders that are accessible by poorly defined and managed default global access groups like “Everyone,””Domain Users” and “Authenticated Users.” To shut down these potential security and compliance risks, organizations may use Symantec Data Insight in five specific ways to manage the inherent ownership, usage and permissions risks present in today’s unstructured data and SharePoint environments.

A decade ago, the thought of running business applications on any form of Linux was a concept that few enterprises took seriously. Fast forward to today and not only do we see applications running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), we see organizations actively seeking to move more of their business-critical applications from other platforms such as UNIX to RHEL. It is to help accelerate that process that Symantec and Red Hat today announced a number of jointly supported solutions make that transition as seamless as possible and then properly support it once it is in place

Just about a month ago Symantec released the global findings of its 2012 Disaster Preparedness Survey which, as expected, generated a good amount of attention in terms of its results. But what always piques my interest in these reports is the nuggets of information that I find when I dig deeper into them. This report did not disappoint as it provided some key insights into other key trends going on within data protection. In particular, it revealed how most companies are now using one team to manage the protection and recovery of their data.

Controlling storage costs as unstructured data (files) grows remains a key concern for IT but unmanaged data growth has other implications for the organization such as compliance burden, security risk and operational costs. Further, as regulations become more defined and numerous, the holes associated with relying solely on looking at their file metadata to determine which data to retain and for how long to keep it become more pronounced. This is why more organizations are turning to Symantec’s Data Insight to keep their storage costs under control while ensuring their data meets this complex set of regulatory requirements.

It is what almost every Windows IT admin envisions someday implementing in his or her environment: “The ability to recover any or all of their applications in the cloud by having the flexibility to quickly move them to the cloud and bring them up as needed.” The trick is how to realize that dream without breaking the budget. This week that dream moved closer to becoming a reality with Symantec and Microsoft stepping up to the plate and announcing a strategic relationship to extend Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows to the Microsoft Windows Azure cloud platform.

When Symantec shipped its first backup appliances in late 2010, it could arguably be said the primary intention of these appliances was to simplify the deployment of Backup Exec and NetBackup at customer sites by shipping both hardware and software as a single SKU. While that still holds true, these appliances also opened the door for them to offer specific features and assume their own unique identities. The new NetBackup 5220 begins to deliver on that promise as it now offers specific software and features that make it much more than just a “server with NetBackup software pre-installed on it.”

The move from NAS to Microsoft SharePoint is in full swing in many organizations as they look to leverage SharePoint to better track and manage their various documents. Yet what they are discovering is that the same fundamental questions that they had regarding file ownership and usage in NAS environments persist even after SharePoint is implemented. This is prompting organizations to once again turn to Symantec Data Insight to understand data usage and ownership in their SharePoint environments.