Storage News

Big data storage: Apache Cassandra 0.7 released

vink — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 19:42:17 +0000

The Apache Cassandra project released version 0.7 of their distributed database server earlier today. Cassandra aims to provide a fully distributed, high-available, scalable database that can store huge amounts of data and process them fast. The project was open sourced by Facebook in 2008, and Cassandra is currently used by some of the largest [...]

Light Peak around the corner – without the Light

vink — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 19:59:24 +0000

Intel has been talking to several news outlets about their Light Peak technology at CES. While we all knew Intel was going to push this standard in favor of USB 3.0, this is the first time they have mentioned actual finished implementations. Previous estimates said the technology was likely to be ready sometime during [...]

2011: the year of the 4TB drives?

vink — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:48:55 +0000

Seagate has started talking up their next generation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In a recent analyst briefing they announced their sixth generation of this technology, which promises the next round of storage density increases. The Register has done the math, and reckons we should be seeing 4TB drives this year.

While this [...]

Battle over ZFS heats up

vink — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:36:29 +0000

NetApp has asked one of their competitors, Coraid, to halt the sales of their EtherDrive Z-Series NAS appliances. The reason? Coraid is using the ZFS file system. Coraid has sent a letter to their customers announcing a temporary sales stop. The Z-Series NAS was announced in May, so NetApp didn’t waste any time in [...]

EMC reminds us not to rely too much on cloud services yet

vink — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:25:12 +0000

Cloud storage might be a good idea for some use cases, but that doesn’t mean any service provider is a good choice. EMC announced last week that its Atmos Online service was no longer offering any SLA’s and is no longer supported for production usage:

We will no longer be offering paid subscription or [...]

Seagate debuts 3TB external drive, 4TB to follow soon?

vink — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:59:51 +0000

Seagate is the first vendor to offer 3TB hard drives. This first drive is only available as an external USB 2.0 drive for now; for $249.99 you can buy a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex Desk External Drive (try saying that a couple of times in a row!). The drive is currently on back order, but [...]

Nirvanix adds local storage to their cloud product

vink — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:05:35 +0000

When I first read this I thought it was a joke, but after reading their press release it looks like this is the real deal: Nirvanix, one of the leading providers of cloud storage services, is getting into the local storage business. Their hNode product offers companies a local storage node that starts at [...]

OCZ adds PCIe SSD to consumer lineup

vink — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 19:23:17 +0000

While several companies are already offering internal Solid State Drives for use in servers, OCZ has just announced a solution that targets the consumer segment. The RevoDrive uses a PCIe connection to enable higher speeds than possible with a traditional SATA interface, but OCZ manages to keep the price for the drive relatively low.

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Hot-swap SATA to USB 3.0 dock from ThermalTake

vink — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 21:31:28 +0000

I’ve seen a couple of UB 3.0 drive docks announced over the last couple of months, but this new model from ThermalTake stood out in my mailbox. The BlacX 5G supports both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch SATA drives; instead of traditional external drive enclosures where you have to open a case to insert [...]

Standard for faster SD cards announced

vink — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:22:15 +0000

The SD Association has announced a faster interface specification for the ever-popular SD card format. The new UHS (Ultra High Speed) bus can achieve speeds of up to 104 MB/s; that’s four times the speed of the previous maximum. Cards and readers conforming to the new spec are backwards-compatible with previous generations, and can [...]

40 and 100 GBps ethernet now official standards

vink — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:44:51 +0000

It’s been over a year since the first 40 and 100Gbps ethernet products saw the light of day; but there was no official standard yet. All that changed this week, with the official publication of the IEEE 802.3ba standard. Most vendors will be quick to update their products to conform to the official standard; [...]

Toshiba and University of Tokio improve SSD write speeds

vink — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:22:53 +0000

Toshiba and the University of Tokio have presented an interesting technique for improving the write speed of Solid State Drives at last weeks VLSI symposium. The technique is targeted at three-dimensional NAND flash stacks; a method of stacking more NAND flash chips on top of each other to improve storage density and bring down [...]

LSI presents new storage building blocks

vink — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:58:01 +0000

LSI, known mostly for their I/O controller chips and storage adapters, is expanding their line of customizable storage systems. The new CTS2600 family offers their channel partners the ability to buy complete storage systems, with custom branding options for both the hardware and software.

LSI CTS2600, 24x2.5" model

LSI has two 2U [...]

Nasuni announces $5000 cloud security challenge

vink — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:27:17 +0000

Nasuni, the company offering a cloud storage gateway that I wrote about earlier this year, has announced a challenge: if you can reveal the contents of a file stored via a Nasuni Filer, you can win $5,000. The contest runs for 30 days, so if you’d like to take part you better hurry.

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Samsung touts low-power 512GB SSD

vink — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:20:49 +0000

Samsung has announced a new member for their Solid State Drive family. The drive uses 32 gigabit Samsung chips that entered production last year; new about the drive is a “toggle-mode DDR structure”. According to Samsung, this leads to a significant performance increase:

The new 512GB SSD makes use of a 30 nanometer-class 32 [...]

OCZ keeps the new products coming

vink — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:46:47 +0000

OCZ sure knows how to keep everyone’s attention. Why launch all your new products at once when you can spread the press releases out over the course of a week? The latest is the announcement of a 1.8″ version of their Vertex 2 model.

OCZ Vertex 2 1.8" SSD

This latest Solid [...]

Toshiba doubles NAND flash module size to 128GB

vink — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:17:04 +0000

Less than a year after announcing their 64GB NAND flash modules, Toshiba has already provided a shipping date for even bigger 128GB chips. They have done so by switching from 32 to 64 Gbit NAND chips, built on their 32nm process.

The new 128GB device integrated 16 64Gbit NAND chips and a controller [...]

Macronix presents new 3D NAND Flash developments

vink — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:57:47 +0000

Macronix International has been doing research on new ways of stacking NAND flach memory in more efficient manners than currently possible, by using a 3D structure instead of the current practice of just stacking flash chips on top of each other (2D stacking).

Their most recent findings have been presented in two technical [...]

Yet another SSD breakthrough?

vink — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:18:08 +0000

It was hard to miss the news about Anobit today. They announced the first drive using their Memory Signal Processing technology; with their proprietary technology they hope to make Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash drives as reliable as the more expensive SLC models.

Anobit Genesis SSD

The MLC-based Genesis drive offers about 50.000 write/erase [...]

Verizon Business adds cloud storage

vink — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 18:40:36 +0000

Verizon’s business services arm is branching out into new territory: cloud storage. This new service, launching in the beginning of July, will complement other services already offered such as Computing as a Service and Online Backup.

The service will have to compete against a number of similar offerings from the likes of Amazon (S3), [...]

OCZ launches new Deneva SSDs

vink — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 20:13:17 +0000

OCZ just launched a new product as part of their Enterprise label: the Deneva series of SSD’s. These appear to be aimed at OEMs; OCZ offers these in a variety of interface options (SATA, SAS, FC and PCI-express) and all sorts of form factors.

OCZ Deneva 2

One relatively new thing is [...]

100 Gbps networks getting closer

vink — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:26:49 +0000

Alcatel-Lucent and T-Systems, the corporate customer arm of Deutsche Telecom, have succesfully connected two university networks using a 100 Gbps link, running over a distance of 60 km.

The link was achieved using just a single wavelength, which is an industry first. Previously links of over 100 Gbps have required trunking multiple connections, [...]

Trend Micro makes cloud/online backup acquisition

vink — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 10:21:37 +0000

Anti-virus (or, as they refer to themselves, “global leader in Internet content security”) company Trend Micro has entered into an agreement with Humyo. Humyo is, apparently, a “leading online storage provider”; I must have somehow missed reading anything about them. The company is based in the UK, and offers automatic data synchronisation to a [...]

OCZ announces new enterprise SSD drives

vink — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 09:58:55 +0000

OCZ technology is offering two new Solid State drives for the enterprise market: the Vertex 2 Pro and Vertex 2 EX:

“OCZ is committed to enabling our enterprise clients with the latest solid state drive technology in a variety of interfaces,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “With our new Vertex [...]

Cisco teams up with QNAP to provide low-end storage hardware

vink — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:46:34 +0000

Cisco is expanding into new territory with their NSS 300 series: a new family of small-scale storage servers for small businesses. Models include a 2-, 4- and 6-bay version. These products are aimed at small shops on a tight budget; the smallest unit starts at just $913.

Cisco NSS 300 series Smart Storage

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