Storage Technology Solutions Review

Compellent's Storage Center 5.4 Optimises Scale for Enterprises and Cloud Computing

2010-11-22T10:42:00.000-08:00

Compellent Technologies released a new version of Storage Center. The new Storage Center 5.4 features state-of-the-art storage hardware, tight integration with leading server virtualisation technologies and flexible software that allows IT to automatically shift storage resources on-demand, non-disruptively to avoid downtime and maintain real-time availability. Enterprise customers can scale up capacity and functionality with a new controller platform that supports a wide range of emerging technologies from FCoE to 10Gb iSCSI and from 6Gb/s SAS drives to a 2.5-inch 24-bay enclosure. New Live Volume software delivers scale out capabilities and business continuity through the simple, flexible, fluid movement of storage volumes between Compellent arrays.

Live Volume allows enterprises to architect a grid of shared storage that can be managed and optimised as one, providing storage agility and high availability while eliminating the islands of storage typical with rapidly growing IT infrastructures. Live Volume acts as a storage hypervisor, actively presenting storage to two Compellent arrays at the same time, allowing organisations to shift volumes between systems to provide continuous data availability. This solves multiple data mobility issues facing IT today, including moving storage for application changes, maintenance, planned outages, load balancing and disaster avoidance.

Kove Sets Record for Sustained Storage Speed with Xpress Disk Gen2

2010-11-19T14:01:00.000-08:00

Kove announced the world’s first Terabyte Memory Disk in conjunction with Mellanox® Technologies and R Systems. The Kove Xpress Disk (XPD), in combination with Mellanox’s ConnectX®-240Gb/s InfiniBand, has achieved more than 20 GigaBytes per second of sustained data bandwidth for random reads and writes. The Kove XPD is the world’s fastest storage device in a 4U chassis, providing continuous, sustained I/O for any duration of time. The record-setting performance will not degrade under load or over time, and allows organizations to drastically reduce I/O loads and remove storage bottlenecks.These results were achieved using a single Kove XPD Gen2 storage appliance equipped with six Mellanox ConnectX-2 40Gb/s InfiniBand ports, serving SRP (SCSI RDMA Protocol) storage via an InfiniBand fabric to an 11-node cluster. The equipment used during the testing process was provided by R Systems.

“The next generation Kove Xpress Memory Disk is a continuation of our leadership in high performance storage. The XPD Gen2 provides uncompressed performance for any type of I/O with no loss of performance over time,” states John Overton, Kove CEO. “We are pleased to support Kove in building a world-leading InfiniBand-based storage solution,” said Gilad Shainer, senior director, HPC and Technical Computing, at Mellanox Technologies. “By taking advantage of InfiniBand's inherent efficiencies and Mellanox's advanced offloading and RDMA technology, Kove is able to demonstrate storage throughput capabilities that can help eliminate I/O bottlenecks for next-generation HPC and enterprise data centers.”

FalconStor Enables Virtualized Server and Storage Infrastructure with HA for VMware Environments

2010-11-17T16:03:00.000-08:00

FalconStor Software announced that companies that are deploying virtualization infrastructures based on VMware are implementing FalconStor’s data protection solutions for high availability and disaster recovery (DR) of business-critical applications. With FalconStor solutions, new customers like Rug Doctor, 3t Systems, Alea North America Insurance Company, Illinois Math & Science Academy and Domino North America can enable fully virtualized server and storage infrastructures with high availability while saving money on VMware deployments.

Achieving “five-nines” availability of VMware infrastructure deployments with continuous data protectionServer virtualization has become the latest technology that allows IT to efficiently use resources; however, it has created challenges and opportunities for data backup and disaster recovery. FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) and FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) help reduce VMware management costs, enhance virtual machine mobility and protect data to ensure availability and rapid recovery. Through the use of continuous data protection and storage virtualization, companies are able to focus on their business objectives without worrying about downtime. The FalconStor NSS solution helps reduce VMware management and supporting infrastructure costs and enhances virtual machine mobility. Additionally, FalconStor CDP software is essential for companies seeking continuous availability of mission-critical applications and quick file and service recovery.

EMC to Acquire Scale-out NAS Vendor Isilon

2010-11-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

EMC will acquire Isilon Systems, a fast-growing “Scale-out NAS” (network attached storage) systems company, based in Seattle, Washington. Under terms of the agreement, EMC will pay $33.85 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Isilon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.25 billion, net of Isilon’s existing cash balance. Isilon is known as the leader and momentum player in the fast-growing “Scale-out NAS” segment, which IDC projects will grow on average approximately 36% annually reaching an estimated $6 billion dollars in 2014(1). Together, EMC’s Atmos and Isilon’s solutions will offer customers a highly scalable, low-cost storage infrastructure for managing “Big Data.” Big Data is a term used to describe the massive amount of data produced by a new generation of applications in markets such as life sciences (e.g. gene sequencing), media and entertainment (e.g. online streaming), and oil and gas (e.g. seismic interpretation) to name a few.

Isilon’s scale-out NAS systems are designed to begin small and scale quickly and non-disruptively up to 10 petabytes in size, with extremely high levels of performance and availability. EMC Atmos object storage provides the perfect complement to Isilon for massive globally distributed environments and object access to data for usages like Web 2.0 applications. Together, Isilon and EMC Atmos provide customers a complete storage infrastructure solution for managing “Big Data” in private or public cloud environments. EMC expects the combined revenue of these two highly complementary storage offerings to reach a $1 billion run-rate during the second half of 2012.

StorSimple is First Cloud Storage Solution to be Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2

2010-11-09T12:39:00.000-08:00

StorSimple announced that it is the first cloud storage solution to pass Windows Hardware Quality Labs testing. StorSimple passed the most stringent Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 level. This means that Windows Servers can now connect and store data and content in the cloud, in a Microsoft certified way, for the first time.

“StorSimple exemplifies the new breed of exciting enterprise cloud companies,” said Matthew Clark, senior director, Startup Engagement for the Strategic and Emerging Business Team at Microsoft. “As a member of BizSpark One, Microsoft’s invite-only program for the highest potential emerging businesses on the Microsoft platform, we think StorSimple is going to make a big impact in the market. Application compatibility is a key factor in the experience customers enjoy on Windows Server 2008 R2. To ensure customers are receiving the best experience, Microsoft offers two levels of Application Certification: Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2, and Works with Windows Server 2008 R2. Designed for line-of-business and mission-critical applications, the Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 logo demonstrates that StorSimple meets Microsoft's highest technical bar for stability, security, reliability, availability, Windows fundamentals, and platform compatibility.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies to Commence Preparation for an IPO

2010-11-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hitachi, Ltd. and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, its wholly owned subsidiary, today announced that Hitachi GST has commenced preparation to make its initial public offering with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange or National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (Nasdaq) in cooperation with Hitachi. Hitachi GST expects to use the proceeds of the initial public offering for, among other things, ongoing operating and capital expenditures, research and development, strategic activities and general corporate purposes. Hitachi and Hitachi GST will monitor economic and capital market conditions relative to the timing of the proposed initial public offering.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives and innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world's most valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, Hitachi GST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. Hitachi GST was established in 2003 and maintains its U.S. headquarters in San Jose, CA.

IEEE Defines Energy Storage Systems for Smart Grid with Launch of IEEE P2030.2TM Working Group

2010-10-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

IEEE has launched the IEEE P2030.2^TMWorking Group (WG). Tasked with facilitating wide-scale, consistent implementation of energy storage systems, the P2030.2 WG will deliver guidelines for discrete and hybrid energy storage systems that are integrated into the electric power infrastructure.

P2030.2 will build on overall Smart Grid interoperability topics being covered in IEEE Standard P2030^TM, the industry’s first cross-discipline guideline for smart grid interoperability for the power engineering, communications and information technology industries. The P2030.2 WG will develop a guideline for discrete and hybrid energy storage systems that are integrated with the electric power infrastructure, including end-use applications and loads. The “Guide for the Interoperability of Energy Storage Systems Integrated with the Electric Power Infrastructure” will help users achieve greater understanding of energy storage systems by defining technical characteristics. It will also illustrate how discrete and hybrid systems may be successfully integrated with and used compatibly as part of the electric power infrastructure.“Energy storage is a top-level priority for the Smart Grid, given increasing energy demand and the value storage adds to the functioning of the electric grid and to renewable electric power resources,” said Mark Siira, IEEE P2030.2 WG Chair, Manager, Applied Technology, Kohler Company. “With the coming growth and expansion in energy storage technologies and applications, the work of the P2030.2 WG to establish an effective strategy for integration into the Smart Grid will be critical.

Holographic Data Storage Book Outlines Path From Theory to Practical Systems

2010-10-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Research and Markets has announced the addition of John Wiley and Sons Ltd's new book "Holographic Data Storage: From Theory to Practical Systems" to their offering. Holographic Data Storage: From Theory to Practical Systems is a primer on the design and building of a holographic data storage system covering the physics, Servo, Data Channel, Recording Materials, and optics behind holographic storage, the requirements of a functioning system, and its integration into "real-life" systems. Later chapters highlight recent developments in holographic storage which have enabled readiness for commercial implementation and discuss the general outlook for the technology, including the transition from professional to consumer markets and the possibilities for mass reproduction

Stockbridge Capital Group Deploys DataCore Storage Virtualization Software with Microsoft Hyper-V

2010-10-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

DataCore Software announced that Stockbridge Capital Group, LLC (“Stockbridge”) has deployed and realized significant IT operations and business benefits from implementing Microsoft Hyper-V Server and DataCore for server and storage virtualization.

BayNODE, an Information Technology consulting firm based in the San Francisco Bay Area, worked with Stockbridge on the design, implementation and on-going management of the overall virtualized IT infrastructure. BayNODE was already in the process of virtualizing a number of different servers at Stockbridge into Microsoft Hyper-V Cluster environments. Also, an IBM fibre channel SAN solution was already in place to handle some of the SAN-related tasks. However, the company was in dire need of a highly available SAN solution – ideally an iSCSI solution – that could get the job done. With a limited IT budget, BayNODE started looking around for all possible options. It was also imperative that any solution could also leverage the hardware investments that were already in place. It was soon after their research started that BayNODE found DataCore.“The thing we have found about DataCore’ storage virtualization solution is that it offers all of the high-end features, including enterprise-class high availability, but at an affordable price,” states Stephen Pilch, COO, Stockbridge. “We are a midsize company, with enterprise needs. We have offices all around the country and we need to be running non-stop 24 by 7. DataCore’s software lets us easily leverage our investment in existing and new technologies and empower our virtual servers to meet non-stop business needs while fitting our budget. It is a perfect match for us.”

IDC Expects Focus on Cost-Efficient Storage

2010-10-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

In a follow up to the analysis of the costs to power and cool enterprise storage worldwide, International Data Corporation (IDC) has found that these costs are likely to level off in the 2013-2014 timeframe. The temporary plateau in storage power and cooling costs will be brought about by several key trends: the migration to smaller (2.5in.), more energy efficient enterprise-class hard disk drives (HDDs); greater utilization of existing storage capacity; and the continued adoption of solid state drives (SSDs) and various other storage efficiency technologies (e.g., data deduplication, compression, and thin provisioning).

Enterprise storage remained a key area of investment for CIOs and IT managers throughout the economic downturn, driven by the continuous pressure to store more and more data. Annual capacity shipments within enterprise storage (external) increased 38% year-over-year in 2009, while shipments of HDDs into external enterprise storage increased by 10% year over year. But interest in storage efficiency technologies grew throughout the period as IT budgets turned flat or declined. While storage efficiency technologies can bring about one-time efficiency gains and savings within the datacenter, migrating to components that consume less power, and hence generate less heat, offers important energy savings over the long term."There is no doubt that the economic straits of 2008 and 2009 modified the attitudes and behaviors of IT managers and system OEMs, greatly accelerating interest in and the adoption of more cost-efficient storage strategies," said David Reinsel, group vice president forStorage Systems at IDC. "While the direction of these efforts is good, and the inflection point toward lower costs is notable, it's not likely the trend will be sustainable. Once the migration to cost-efficient hardware and strategies is complete, the steady expansion in capacity will result in renewed growth in energy costs."

EdgeCast Announces Cloud Storage Solution

2010-10-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

EdgeCast Networks announced its cloud storage solution, a highly scalable online storage offering built on the company’s distributed storage platform. The company also said it is waiving storage and transfer fees throughout the beta period.

“Building a CDN business has given us many years of experience deploying, managing, and optimizing online storage,” said James Segil, co-founder and president of EdgeCast Networks. “For us, a logical next step was to open the storage platform to our customers in an easy-to-use, flexible way that saves them money and hassle.”The service enables customers to easily store, retrieve, secure, and serve (whether publicly or privately) data on a no-commitment, pay-as-you-go basis. It allows customers to serve their stored content using their own URLs (or EdgeCast URLs), offers many options for ingest (such as FTP and HTTP), and provides a robust security layer for private content. The service can be accessed via a user-friendly, web-based control panel.

While EdgeCast has set its initial cloud storage prices very low - the median rate is 7.5 cents per gigabyte per month - it is also waiving storage and transfer fees throughout the public beta. The service aims to provide customers with a solution to rapidly increasing storage needs without the need to purchase, manage, or maintain drives and other devices. It is also extensible with the company’s developer-friendly REST API, enabling easy integration to other applications and workflows.

NetApp Data ONTAP 8 Enabling Customers’ Transition to a Shared IT Infrastructure

2010-10-21T14:46:00.000-07:00

NetApp architected its Data ONTAP® 8 to address customers’ needs to scale up and scale out as customers move to flexible, efficient shared IT infrastructures that drive business impact. Customers now think differently and use new criteria to evaluate alternatives and remain competitive. More customers are migrating to Data ONTAP 8 to build flexible, scalable, and efficient shared storage environments that address today’s business challenges and the future requirements of their business. With thousands of systems deployed, Data ONTAP 8 can deliver flexible, integrated dual modes of operation and a unified, scalable platform that supports multiple workloads and drives IT consolidation.

NetApp introduced the industry’s first unified storage architecture and continues to deliver a single, unified architecture powered by Data ONTAP 8. While competitors have attempted unified approaches, NetApp has been innovating to provide a unified storage platform that is currently unmatched in the industry and ideal for customers making the transition to a shared IT infrastructure. As more customers move to shared IT environments, the technology leadership and direction NetApp established nearly a decade ago is proving optimal for customers in meeting current and future requirements for architecting scalable, efficient, and flexible infrastructures. Dual Operation Modes: Data ONTAP 8 is architected to allow customers to choose the system mode that supports their changing needs and make the transition to shared IT infrastructures. Data ONTAP 8, 7-Mode combines the new 64-bit scalable architecture with the functionality, features, and unified architecture that NetApp customers have come to rely on. Data ONTAP 8 Cluster-Mode offers traditional clustered deployments a path forward and provides unique capabilities necessary to simplify data management, support nonstop operations, and make the transition to shared IT infrastructures.

Emulex Introduces Next Generation InSpeed Embedded Storage Switch

2010-10-21T13:45:00.000-07:00

Emulex Corporation launched its next generation InSpeed® Switch on Chip (SOC) 442 Embedded Storage Switch, which has already been adopted by industry-leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The InSpeed SOC 442 further extends Emulex’s broad portfolio of system-level products for the storage system and server blade markets. Emulex has shipped more than 58 million InSpeed embedded switch ports, making it one of the most highly deployed technologies in the storage industry.

The fifth generation InSpeed SOC 442 has already been deployed and is in design at key tier-one storage system OEMs and will be used in root switch, server blade pass-through module, and most importantly, new enclosure controller module (ECM) applications, connecting drives to RAID controllers in storage system backends.“Going forward, technology advancements for enterprise performance class Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and Solid State Drive (SSD) drives will be focused on the Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface protocol, creating drives that continue to increase capacity and performance in smaller and more power efficient packages,” said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of business development, Emulex. “The InSpeed SOC 442 uniquely allows storage system providers to deploy these new drive advancements into existing field-proven system architectures and investments for highly competitive products for years to come.” The InSpeed SOC 442 is Emulex’s solution for SAS drive connectivity at the enclosure controller module level and is the only embedded storage switch available today that natively connects 2.5” small form factor drives in Fibre Channel-based storage systems. This capability uniquely allows storage system providers to leverage existing, field-proven technologies and does not require the deployment of completely new end-to-end SAS-based systems.

Permabit Albireo Breaks 77 GB/sec Performance Barrier for Primary Storage Deduplication

2010-10-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

Permabit Technology Corporation, the leader in the development and delivery of Data Optimized Storage, today announced the next generation version of Albireo with new GX technology providing breakthrough performance and scalability for the industry’s first and only OEM embedded data optimization solution delivering real-time primary data deduplication. In a test environment, Permabit Albireo sustained dedupe throughput at an industry leading rate of 77 GB/second (based on 64 KB chunk size and using hardware SHA-256 hashing) in a grid configuration. Albireo, with GX technology, incorporates patented indexing and memory resource utilization software. Albireo’s high performance scales linearly up to 10.2 PB without the performance drop off common with other data deduplication solutions. Albireo was created for hardware and software storage OEMs seeking to improve their competitive position and improve margins with next generation data optimization. Permabit enables its partners to deploy sub-file deduplication technology with no impact to storage performance while ensuring data integrity. Albireo does not alter data and operates completely out of the data read path; a combination which is unique in the storage industry. Announced partners currently include NAS and block storage companies, such as BlueArc and Xiotech Corporation.

"The threshold Permabit has crossed for primary deduplication is unprecedented. With proven sustained performance of 77 GB/sec, ESG Lab has confirmed that Permabit’s grid-based embedded data deduplication architecture can be used to deliver storage solutions with virtually limitless deduplication performance scalability. ESG Lab has tested a number of other solutions in the market with impressive deduplication capabilities. The performance of those solutions often struggles to break the 1GB/sec performance barrier—especially when deployed within a primary storage solution with demanding performance requirements. The Albireo approach shatters that barrier with impressive performance that’s ideally suited to meet the needs of performance sensitive primary storage applications.” ~ Brian Garrett, Vice President ESG Lab, Enterprise Strategy Group

EMC's financial release bodes well for storage sector demand

2010-10-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

EMC reported record financial results for the company's third fiscal quarter of 2010. Strong execution and continued healthy customer demand for the company's storage, data protection, virtualization, and security products and services contributed to EMC achieving all-time record consolidated revenue and record third-quarter non-GAAP net income. For the third quarter, consolidated revenue was $4.21 billion, an increase of 20% compared with the year-ago quarter; GAAP net income attributable to EMC increased 58% year over year to $472.5 million; and GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.22, up 57% year over year. Non-GAAP1 net income attributable to EMC for the third quarter was $649.4 million, an increase of 35% compared with the year-ago quarter, and non-GAAP1 earnings per diluted share were $0.30, an increase of 30% year over year.

During the quarter, EMC expanded gross and operating margins substantially on a year-over-year basis. The company achieved all-time record year-to-date operating cash flow and free cash flow of $3.0 billion and $2.2 billion, which grew 31% and 22%, respectively, compared with the year-ago period. The company completed the quarter with $10.5 billion in cash and investments. Joe Tucci, EMC's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "Customers are embracing EMC in increasing numbers as a trusted partner for their cloud computing build-outs. To lead this transformational IT wave, EMC remains focused on — and is taking share in — markets that are growing considerably faster than IT as a whole. With our compelling technology and services portfolio, partner ecosystem, and strong product roadmap, we remain confident that we'll continue to produce double-digit growth rates over the long term."

In spite of a down day for the Dow and S&P indices EMC shares are trending higher in after hours trading: http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/emc

EMC's Iomega Bring External SSD Flash Drives to the Consumer and SMB Markets

2010-10-18T14:19:00.000-07:00

Iomega Corporation, an EMC company announced new host-powered Iomega® External USB 3.0 SSD Flash Drives, rugged solid state drives utilizing the blazing fast speed of the USB 3.0 interface and the security of built-in encryption – the perfect portable storage device for high-end users, creative professionals and others who demand the best in performance, security and portability. Leveraging EMC’s world class solid state expertise and implementation in enterprise network storage solutions, Iomega’s new pocket-sized 1.8-inch external USB 3.0 SSD Flash drives will be available in early November in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. Encased in a sleek metal enclosure that not only looks great but delivers added protection from drops up to 10 feet, Iomega’s new SSD Drives feature 256-bit hardware encryption for security, bundled anti-virus and backup software, a three-year warranty and the superior performance of solid state drives that users expect in state-of-the-art storage from Iomega.

“When time is money and you need the latest technology in portable storage, Iomega’s new high performance external solid state drives are the ideal solution,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega Corporation. “Iomega’s new external USB 3.0 SSD drives are compact, rugged portable storage devices that deliver data transfer speeds considerably faster than any standard rotating disk drives, as well as the confidence that comes with a solid industrial design, hardware encryption and the complete Iomega Protection Suite to protect users’ important files, all of which makes Iomega’s new SSD Drives the storage of choice for high-end users who demand the ultimate in performance and portability.”

Symantec launches new versions of Veritas Operations Manager and SFHA

2010-10-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

Symantec announced new releases of Veritas Operations Manager and its Veritas Storage Foundation High Availability (SFHA) product family to help customers work smarter by taking control of storage management and eliminating manual processes. New functionality in Veritas Operations Manager, the next generation management platform for Storage Foundation HA, bridges the gap between server, database and storage administrators to increase storage utilization, scale operations, maintain compliance and help ensure uptime and availability across Unix, Linux, Windows and VMware. Data growth, coupled with new technologies and business changes, has resulted in many disparate tools, manual processes and a lack of visibility to interdependencies in the data center. The results are limited operational scalability, wasted resources and increased risk for administrators who are under increasing pressure to ensure 24/7 availability of mission critical applications. Data is growing at a rate of 62 percent annually, yet storage utilization itself often remains at or below 50 percent. Veritas Operations Manager gives administrators visibility into storage allocation, utilization and consumption – providing insight into how storage is being used. According to Symantec’s 2009 Disaster Recovery Report, 40 percent of respondents reported that disaster recovery testing will impact their organization’s customers and nearly one third (27 percent) reported that such testing could impact their organization’s sales and revenue. Organizations see an increased need to instantly detect and recover failures as they occur, to proactively prevent downtime and to implement non-disruptive testing capabilities.

EMC Introduces Greenplum "Big Data" Computing System

2010-10-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

EMC has introduced the new EMC® Greenplum® Data Computing Appliance, an integrated data warehouse system using the breakthrough Greenplum massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture. It enables organizations to more efficiently make sense of the massive amounts of data they generate from various sources such as always-on networks, the Web, consumers, surveillance systems and sensors. With twice the data loading speed of its nearest competitor and the industry's best performance, the EMC Greenplum Data Computing Appliance enables more data to be analyzed faster and at lower costs.

The new system was developed and is shipping just 75 days following EMC’s acquisition of Greenplum and comes at a time when IDC predicts that the amount of data over the next decade will grow 44-fold. The disruptive data warehousing technology from Greenplum is a key enabler of “big data” clouds and self-service analytics, allowing organizations to store, manage and closely analyze terabytes of detailed data for faster business insight, conclusions and revelations. Greenplum is the foundation of EMC’s new Data Computing Products Division, which is developing the analytic tools to address the “big data” phenomenon.

SandForce SF-2000 SSD Processors and Toshiba 32nm Flash Elevate Solid State Storage

2010-10-11T12:56:00.000-07:00

SandForce® Inc. announced the demonstration of the company’s SF-2000 SSD Processors in 6 Gigabit (Gb) SATA SSDs incorporating Toshiba’s 32 nanometer (nm) eMLC Flash memory at the Storage Networking World conference in Dallas, TX, this week. Toshiba Enterprise MLC NAND Flash is being introduced into the marketplace and united with the world’s foremost SSD Processors from SandForce. This combination delivers never seen before IOPS (Input Output Operations per Second) storage performance which is redefining Total Cost of Ownership equations used to calculate the productivity of green IT infrastructure in Enterprises, Datacenters, and Small and Medium businesses around the world.

“Toshiba has a long standing history of technology leadership in MLC NAND Flash and we are committed to closely working with selected leaders of the industry such as SandForce to enable Enterprise SSDs leveraging our MLC NAND Flash,” said Jeff Ohshima, vice president of memory technology of Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. “Our 30nm class Toggle-Mode MLC NAND Flash enables high performance and endurance required for Enterprise SSDs while enabling lowering power consumption, which SandForce is embracing with its SF-2000 SSD Processor offering.” The recently announced SandForce SF-2000 SSD Processors feature a doubling of performance compared to the company’s first-generation SF-1000 SSD Processor Family. In addition, these SSD Processors integrate a 6Gb SATA host interface, optimized SAS integration support, and improved reliability, endurance, and security.

Samsung Now Producing High-Performance 100 and 200GB Solid State Drives for Enterprise Storage

2010-10-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Samsung Electronics is mass producing 100 and 200 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives (SSDs) for use as the primary storage in enterprise storage systems. The first recipient of the drive will be EMC. "EMC collaborated with Samsung to qualify Samsung's new enterprise-class SSDs for EMC's market-leading midrange storage portfolio," said Joel Schwartz, Sr. Vice President, Common Storage Platform Operations at EMC.“By being able to fully meet the rising demand for high-performance and eco-friendly server and storage platforms, SSDs will be able to penetrate the enterprise application market even more rapidly,” said Dong-Soo Jun, executive vice president, memory marketing, Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to deliver SSD solutions with outstanding performance and low power consumption to provide optimal value for data centers and other enterprise storage environments.”

Samsung started producing its 3.5 inch 100 and 200GB SSDs last month. Adopting SSDs as a main storage media in storage systems will minimize power consumption as well as enhance overall system performance, leading to a lowering of the total cost of ownership over time. By using 40-nanometer-class single-level-cell (SLC) NAND flash chips and a controller that fully utilizes a 3Gb/s (gigabits per second) SATA interface, the Samsung SSDs process random read commands at 47,000 input/outputs per second (IOPS) and random writes at 29,000 IOPS, compared to a 15K RPM HDD which has an IOPS rate of 350, a 130X and 80X gain respectively in random IOPS read and write performance.

EMC announced NetWorker® backup software integrated with Data Domain® Boost

2010-10-04T14:50:00.001-07:00

EMC announced the availability of new EMC® NetWorker® backup software integrated with EMC Data Domain® Boost software. The integration of these products dramatically increases backup speeds and simplifies configuration and management. The NetWorker Management Console now offers control for the full range of Data Domain system functionality, including Data Domain replication for scheduling and monitoring of backups at all sites. EMC also announced new productivity enhancements for NetWorker users, such as checkpoint restart, simplified cloning and new disk load balancing and space management capabilities.

IDATA specializes in the design, delivery and support of solutions to store, manage and protect data. With offices across New Zealand and Australia and customers worldwide, IDATA has specialised in EMC NetWorker services and support for over 17 years for customers across all industries and ranging in size up to the largest enterprise organizations. "Given our significant base of NetWorker users and the fact that we manage many customer environments ourselves, we were eager to participate in the NetWorker beta program," said Steve Brown, Technical Director of IDATA. "We have tested NetWorker extensively and found it to be both a very stable and trouble-free release as well as offering valuable additional functionality. We believe features like Scheduled Cloning and Check Point Restart are going to help us better support and grow our base of customers. EMC's additional investment in NetWorker is great news for users looking to decrease the amount of time they spend managing their backups by up to 20-30 percent, reduce costs and deploy more effective disaster recovery. Full management of Data Domain systems from within NetWorker is a major improvement. We have a large customer deployment pending that involves multiple Data Domain DD880 systems and, based on our beta experience, we will be implementing NetWorker as we are confident that we can deliver fantastic results."

Reasons Why Object Storage is the Best Choice for Cloud Storage Environments

2010-09-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

Cloud storage has changed the rules for deploying simpler, infinitely scalable and more affordable storage. So it makes little sense to burden a cloud storage platform with storage systems that are based on 20th century file systems that inhibit administration, scalability and cost. Selecting the correct underlying storage system can greatly impact the success or failure of implementing cloud storage. The characteristics of object storage are ideally aligned with a cloud storage infrastructure, delivering a superior cloud storage experience with better scalability, accessibility and affordability, according to Caringo Inc., the leading provider of Object storage software that enables high availability clustered storage for active and archived content.

A key to the cost efficiency delivered with cloud storage is to begin with an affordable storage system. The complexities and restrictions of outmoded file systems that power traditional NAS and SAN storage arrays can easily offset the potential cost savings of cloud storage by complicating storage administration, limiting scalability with artificial capacity caps and enforcing vendor lock-in with expensive, proprietary hardware. Object storage is a much better fit for cloud infrastructures. Instead of using a complex, difficult to manage and antiquated file system, object storage systems leverage a single flat address space that enables the automatic routing of data to the right storage systems, specifies the content lifecycle and keeps both active and archive data in a single tier with the appropriate protection levels. This allows object storage to provide better value by aligning the value of data and the cost of storing it without requiring oppressive management overhead to manually move data to the proper tier while providing infinite scalability to support the capacity-on-demand capability of cloud storage. Object storage is also designed to run at peak efficiency on commodity server hardware.

Dell Accelerates Cloud Computing Models with Virtual Integrated System Architecture

2010-09-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

Dell has introduced new capabilities and services for its Virtual Integrated System (VIS) architecture. Dell recognizes businesses have made significant technology purchases and its approach to converged architectures allows them to preserve and fully leverage their existing data center infrastructure without creating technology silos or undertaking a rip-and-replace strategy. The Dell VIS architecture and services help customers transition new and existing technologies to an open, cloud-like model that dynamically provisions application workloads and unifies heterogeneous compute, storage and networking assets into a common pool of resources. As a result, it’s now possible for customers to lower the costs associated with managing IT, improve the flexibility needed to respond to changing business needs, and more efficiently deploy and move application workloads across physical and virtual resources.“IT organizations are closely evaluating the cost, management, and agility benefits of IT infrastructure and cloud-based computing models,” said Matt Eastwood, GVP, Enterprise Platforms, IDC. “There are currently two general approaches to converged infrastructures: single-vendor solutions and open architecture solutions that focus on interoperability and extending legacy investments. Dell’s Virtual Integrated System architecture is consistent with its commitment to open technology architectures. IDC believes this approach will resonate with customers that are looking to preserve these legacy investments while reaping the benefits of cloud computing.”

Hitachi Data Systems Unveils the World’s First 3D Scaling Storage Platform

2010-09-27T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hitachi Data Systems introduced the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform, the industry’s first 3 dimensional scaling platform, enabling organizations to scale up, out and deep for unprecedented levels of agility and cost savings in their virtualized data centers. The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP), in combination with the new Hitachi Command Suite management software, offers best-in-class performance, capacity and open, multivendor storage virtualization for large businesses and enterprise organizations. Together, these solutions represent a major milestone in continued Hitachi Data Systems commitment to transform data centers into dynamic information centers where access to blocks, files and content is seamless and resides in a fluid and virtualized environment. (See related press release also issued today: “Hitachi Data Systems Announces Major Milestone on the Road to Enabling Data Center Transformation.”)

The Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform is the only storage architecture that scales 3 dimensionally to help customers adapt flexibly for performance, capacity and multivendor storage asset utilization. Its data migration capabilities greatly reduce outage windows. Page-level dynamic tiering automates the page-based movement of data to the most appropriate storage media to simplify and optimize tier costs and performance. With new 2.5-inch SAS hard disk drives, it is the highest density storage available today.“Hitachi has a long history of innovation and industry-leading technologies since first introducing heterogeneous storage virtualization within the storage system,” said Hu Yoshida, chief technology officer and vice president, Hitachi Data Systems. “Today, only the Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform and Hitachi Command Suite provide the scalability and integration that will transform the data center with new levels of agility, flexibility, performance and sustainability. With unique 3D scaling and management, customers can deliver capacity and computing resources as quickly as virtual servers are created. This platform was actually built for virtualized server environments.”

Intersect360 Research Site Census Report Storage - a Sample of HPC User Sites

2010-09-24T15:33:00.000-07:00

Research and Markets announced the addition of Intersect360 Research's new report "Intersect360 Research Site Census Report Storage" to their offering. This fourth report in our Site Census series provides an examination of the storage characteristics and capacities found at a sample of HPC user sites. We surveyed a broad range of users about their current computer system installations, storage systems, networks, middleware, and software supporting these computer installations. The initial three reports, HPC User Site Census: Systems, HPC User Site Census: Processors, and HPC User Site Census: Interconnects/Networks focused on server suppliers, server node characteristics, processors-related trends, and system interconnect and network utilization.

Key findings of the survey include the following: Approximately 47% of the total maximum available storage at respondents sites resides on compute servers. Storage available to each node (referred to as node-level storage) represents 7% of the capacity, and storage available to the server (referred to as system-level storage) accounts for 40% of the total available storage. The remaining 53% of storage is found at the site level, generally on NAS or SAN systems. On average, 450TB of storage resides at the site level on a storage system; about 75% of the 147 sites have at least one site-level storage system installed. No vendor dominates the storage system market for HPC sites. IBM has the largest share with 10.7% but is closely followed by EMC and Sun with 10.1% each. However, in-house and generic solutions combine to account for 10.7% of the storage systems installed. We see this last value as reflecting the commodity nature of storage components and the availability of open software for storage systems; NAS (Networked-Attached Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Network) had almost equal representation in the surveyed HPC sites, with 39% SAN and 34% NAS. Commercial sites are more likely to have a NAS storage system while academic sites are more likely to have a SAN storage system; the majority of NAS storage systems are connected using 1 Gigabit Ethernet. Only 8% of the systems were connected to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet network; most storage management software (38%) in use by these sites was provided by the storage system vendor. Very little penetration by add-on storage management suppliers was reported.