In the StorageReview Enterprise Lab we use a variety of power management tools and battery backups. If a data center is not generating their own power or has sufficient backup generators, an interruption in power supply is inevitable (in the cases above, interruptions are still a possibility). For our testing environments we use Eaton gear

Lowering power usage is a hot-button topic for anyone operating a lab or datacenter these days. Utility costs are always increasing, servers and storage keep growing and there are few signs that "the cloud" is going to do much to help. Regardless of the size of operation, power costs make up a huge portion of an OPEX budget (#4 at

The KDLINKS X1 is an affordable, yet high-quality, vehicle dashboard camcorder that features full-HD 1920×1080 video at 30fps as well as a fairly wide lens angle of 165°. While this device is primarily designed as a safe-guard against insurance fraud by recording your commute, for our purposes, we are using it for video creation when testing things like memory cards

The Dell Venue 11 Pro 7000 series is designed to adapt to a wide variety of different work styles and use cases, as it provides consumers with a multi-purpose functionality including the added option of a desktop experience. Users can attach the mobile keyboard, take advantage of the desktop docking station with dual monitors, or

The Seek thermal camera is an ultra-portable thermal imaging camera attached to, and managed by, newer generation Android and iOS mobile devices and is an ideal alternative for consumers or small-to-medium sized businesses that do not want to spend thousands of dollars on professional cameras. Working in both complete darkness and daylight, the Seek thermal detects the

Axis is a leader in the video surveillance market, distributing a wide variety of cameras for use cases as broad as there are buildings and people to protect. In the StorageReview Lab we use several models of Axis cameras paired with a Synology NAS and Surveillance Station 7 to provide visualization of our space both while we’re on

Building the ideal Microsoft SQL Server 2012 production server can be a daunting task, with variables such as storage, RAM, or processor selection stumping even seasoned IT administrators. We last posted an analysis around selecting the best Intel Xeon E5-2600 v2 CPU for running SQL Server 2012 in non-virtualized environments. Aside from CPU, RAM is another key component

The StorageReview NAS Test Lab is a purpose built virtualized testing infrastructure to benchmark the growing number of 1GbE and 10Gbase-T shared storage products hitting the market. We've paired up with Tripp Lite for infrastructure products including the 42U SmartRack series rack, SmartPro 3kVA 2250W Line Interactive Sine Wave UPS, as well as their Single-Phase

One of the little known or little explored secrets with servers running VMware ESXi 5.x is they can be booted off of USB or SD flash media. In such a scenario, enterprises could dump HBAs or RAID cards and the hard drives or SSDs that are used to boot the servers. Going this route yields a CAPEX benefit