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| Editor's
pick of D2d and VTL companies |
If I listed all
the companies with a claim to being in the disk backup market - then you'd get
a long list of over 500 vendors - and that would be simply from data mining the
backup software ISVs,
hard disk makers and
disk array oems already
listed on other pages here on storagesearch.com
That wouldn't be very
useful.
So, instead, I've looked back at the last 6 years of news
stories which actually made it to this D2d page (out of the
many thousands
of storage news stories we published (and that was distilled down from over
100,000 storage news stories in my email or which I saw on the web.)
Out of all that brew I've chosen less than 20 companies which seemed to say
something worthwhile or consistent about this subject and they appear below as a
useful starting point for your continuing storage search. |
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| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
Backing up your data to a
solid state
disk (or SSD RAID
Array) may sound like a crazy idea today...
...but no more so
than the idea - 10
years ago - that disk to disk backup would one day replace
tape.
I've been
backing up my data to flash storage (in rotation with hard disk storage) for
about 5 years. There have been less failures in the flash backup media than
the hard drives - which translates to a lower TCO. But I'll keep using more
than one type of media - because I'm
paranoid about losing
data.
SSDs
cost more per gigabyte than
hard drives, but that
cost gap is closing fast.
New generations of MLC SSDs offer
2x the capacity at the same silicon price, and some companies are
talking about 4x devices - with 8x maybe just a year or so
away.
Most
SSD oems claim that
flash SSDs have
much better MTBF than hard drives. While that may be true - the uncorrectable
data corruption rates in some types of SSD may be orders of magnitude worse
than SLC SSDs, and worse than HDDs.
And the theoretical operating life
of SSDs varies by 100 to 1 between different brands and technologies of SSD.
Storage reliability is
more than the longevity of the storage media. It's about survival of the data.
This
article shows the technical reasons why multi level cell flash SSDs may work
OK in notebooks and PDAs - but may not work satisfactorily in a rackmount
datacenter environment. ...read the article | |
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| Is Deduplication of Data
Safe? - and More Deduplication FAQs |
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One of the problems
with disk backup is
scalability.
For small and medium sized companies the speed and
convenience of disk backup outweighs any other considerations - and in most
cases is cheaper than the alternatives. But if you're backing up data associated
with tens of thousands of internal users - then eventually the cost of the disk
media (compared to traditional tape - even with
tape's intrinsic
lumbering speed, high service costs and unreliability) may start to become an
important feasibility issue. |
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In theory that's where
deduplication comes in - because (moving beyond that other must-have D2d
technology - compression) it offers the promise of saving more unique data to
less disks.
But is dedupe scalable? Is it safe? And what about
performance?
The ultimate dedupe faqs is a good starting point to
learning more. ...read
the article | |
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"I'm
impressed by your new hotSTOR disk to disk backup"
said Megabyte. "Does
it make coffee too?"
"The more you drink, the faster it goes."
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Caringo Offers Free 4TB
Cloud Storage Evaluation
Editor:- June 23, 2009 - Caringo today
announced
it's offering a free way to evaluate the benefits of its cloud storage -
with the release of a Windows compatible CloudFolder linked to 4TB storage.
The
company says users can drag and drop individual files or whole directories to
CloudFolder for remote storage and can also make it a shared folder. Retrieving
files is as easy as double clicking on a file or folder.
Mark Goros,
CEO at Caringo says "We believe CloudFolder will inspire users to test and
deploy private cloud storage within an organization or throughout a network of
managed service customers."
Cleveland Indians Fix Baseball Backup Headaches
Editor:-
June 23, 2009 -
CommVault Systems
today published a
case study which describes how the
Cleveland Indians migrated to
their backup software due to problems with Symantec.
The
Cleveland Indians were among one of the first teams in Major League Baseball to
develop a state-of-the-art video system to capture nearly 2,600 games
played by all teams throughout the season for use in training and advanced
scouting. According to the team it now takes less than 5 minutes to restore a
video clip that once took more than an hour to locate and retrieve. And admin
overhead has been cut from 45 minutes a day to less than 30 minutes a week.
FalconStor Claims Fastest DD2D (Deduped Disk to Disk Backup)
Editor:-
June 1, 2009 - FalconStor
Software today
claimed that
it now delivers the fastest
backup and
deduplication
time in the industry.
Using a 100TB test bed connected to a single cluster of 2
FalconStor VTL nodes the total time to backup and deduplicate data was under 14
hours, yielding an average of 2GB/s per second.
Physical tape production can
be achieved directly through 4Gbps
Fibre Channel links by
exporting tapes from FalconStor VTL to the physical
tape library without using
a separate media server. All hardware components used for the performance test
are commonly available standard parts, including standard
Linux-based servers and
low-cost SATA-based
storage subsystems.
Editor's comments:-
Record Breaking
claims are often hostage to editor research. We've certainly run stories about
faster backup and restores before - but they didn't include dedupe. Let's see
if this one passes the test of reader scrutiny.
Vembu Aims at US Online Backup Market
Editor:- May
28, 2009 - Vembu
Technologies today announced the appointment of Randy J. Whitehead
as VP of Strategic Business Development.
Reporting to Vembu's
President,
Lakshmanan Narayan, Randy will
primarily be responsible for growing Vembu's business in the US and Canada,
with a focus on channel partnerships.
"Our StoreGrid software
solution powers the
online backup services
business of more than 1,250 service providers worldwide, and more than 850 of
these service providers are based in North America," said Sekar Vembu, CEO
of Vembu Technologies. "Randy's deep experience in operations and sales,
coupled with his years of experience in the online backup market, will help to
further catalyze our rapid growth in the service provider market."
Prior to Vembu, Randy was co-founder and COO of
Arsenal Digital Solutions.
Randy has more than 20 years experience in outsourcing solutions and operations,
system integration and business development. He was also at
StorageTek, where he
was responsible for the industry's first implementation of a storage utility
solution and the structuring of large outsourcing/utility deals, as well as the
operation and delivery of managed storage services. He has also held senior
positions with IBM, BT, Data General and AT&T. Storage People
Microsoft and Double-Take Collaborate to Avert Data Loss in
Virtual Servers
Editor:- May 11, 2009 - Double-Take Software and
Microsoft
have
collaborated
on a disaster recovery solution for virtual workloads.
"Tough
economic times are prompting IT organizations to reduce costs through smart
virtualization solutions," said Dai Vu at Microsoft Corp. "The remote
site recovery solution from Double-Take Software and Microsoft is a smart
virtualization solution because it eliminates
SAN complexity and cost
making it easier to deliver
high availability
and disaster recovery for virtualized environments."
Tandberg's Tape Bust
Editor:- April 27, 2009 - Tandberg Data has
filed for bankruptcy and today announced details of its
restructuring
plan.
There's no surprise here. The current recession has merely
brought forward an inevitable event. Although Tandberg had acquired and
licensed various disk backup
technologies it remained culturally wedded to
tape.
I've
chronicled the transition of the backup market
from tape to hard disk
and in some ways it's
similar to
what's been happening in the hard disk market versus flash SSD space. But the
SSD market is more complicated - because whereas
slow cheap SSDs replace
hard drives, fast
expensive SSDs replace server CPUs.
As with
hard drives, the
highest capacity tape
libraries will remain spinning the longest. Nothing stays the same in the
storage market for
long.
Looking ahead at the next 10 years SSDs will replace hard drives in enterprise
backup systems too.
But let's get back to today's news from Tandberg
Data, whose CEO, Pat Clarke, said - "The operations of the Tandberg Data
subsidiaries will continue to operate in this new structure, with a much reduced
debt burden. The difficult steps we are taking now will enable us to build a
company that can be successful in providing data protection solutions and
support to our valued customers, suppliers, and business partners for a long
time to come"
Trawling back through
gone-away / bust
storage companies list (where the score now stands at 490 BTW) a search
for "Tandberg" reveals it had previously acquired these companies:-
LAND-5,
InoStor,
Exabyte and
Computer Design Group.
WD Ships New 2TB Enterprise Hard Drive
Editor:- April
20, 2009 - Western
Digital - announced details of a new 2TB 3.5"
SATA
hard drive - the
WD RE4-GP.
Features include time-limited error recovery for use in
RAID systems, and lower
power consumption than older hard drives. MSRP is $329.
Editor's
comments:- this kind of drive is optimized to provide high capacity at low
cost, rather than high performance. Typical applications include
disk to disk backup and
video or other massive
content storage.
RAISE joins RAID, MAID lexicon
Editor:- April 15,
2009 - this week SandForce
has added a new word to the rich
RAID lexicon with their
new word - RAISE (which stands for - Redundant Array of Independent
Silicon Elements).
RAISE is the label for the RAID-like protection
scheme which their
SSD controller uses
inside 1.8"
and 2.5" flash
SSDs.
Although the word is new, the concept is not.
Manufacturers
such as Texas Memory
Systems, Violin Memory
and Fusion-io have
used similar schemes inside their
rackmount SSDs
and PCIe SSDs for some
time.
ExaGrid Revenue Grows 120%
Editor:- April 7, 2009 -
ExaGrid
announced
today
that revenue in Q109 was up 120% compared to the same quarter last
year.
If you're not familiar with the company - you might think from
the numbers - it's another SSD vendor.
But you'd be wrong.
ExaGrid
makes old fashioned rotating disk-based
backup systems adorned with stylish trendy
data deduplication.
One thing it does have in common with SSDs, however, is it's
green. Its
compression and dedupe technologies reduces the disk space required for
backup by upto 50
to 1. ExaGrid has published
100
customer quotes to persuade dedupe skeptics. I haven't actually counted
them But it looks like a lot.
Storage Guardian Offers VARs White-Labeled Online Backup
Toronto,
Canada - March 17, 2009 -
Storage Guardian
has just launched a
VAR/MSP
program so that resellers can offer its enterprise-grade online data backup
service to small and midsized businesses.
While there's no shortage of
online backup solutions
available, many of them are designed for modest amounts of data and do not offer
bare-metal
restores, backup lifecycle management, and handle >80GB data.
Storage
Guardian's solution is
compatible
with server-based services/apps such as Exchange, Small Business Server,
SharePoint Server, and Active Directory. A 30-day no-charge trial is available,
and itcan also be white-labeled and sold as a branded solution by resellers.
Editor's comments:- If banks can fail - then why should you
trust ANY online backup provider with your data? - I discuss that in a new
article published today - Looking
back at the online backup and storage market
After SSDs? - Predicting the Storage Market's Next Obsession
Editor:-
March 12, 2009 -StorageSearch.com
has published a new article -
After SSDs... What
Next?
It looks beyond the next 3 years of hoopla in the
SSD market and predicts
what will be the next "big thing" in storage after that. ...read the article,
SSD market research &
analysts
Spectra Launches Highest Density Tape Library
FOSE
2009, Washington D.C. - March 10, 2009 - Spectra Logic today announced
the T680 - the first tape library which stores a full petabyte of data in a
single rack .
It supports 12 full-height tape drives and 680 tape
cartridges. Interface connections include -
FC,
SCSI or
iSCSI. Throughput is
10.4TB/Hour (compressed ) with LTO-4 drives and media. Pricing for a 50-slot
T680 with 4x LTO-4 drives, BlueScale Encryption with key management and a 1 year
standard warranty begins at $67,780.
...Spectra Logic
profile, Tape Libraries,
Record Breaking
Storage
AFN Manages Video Content with Front Porch Digital
LOUISVILLE, Colo. - March
2, 2009 - Front Porch Digital today announced that the American
Forces Network broadcast center has implemented the company's systems to
support management, retrieval, and long-term preservation of video content.
From its Riverside, Calif., facility,
AFN provides radio and television
programming to approximately 900,000 U.S. service men and women, Department of
Defense civilians, and families stationed outside the United States. By means of
12 full-time television channels, AFN offers entertainment and information to
personnel located in 177 countries and on Navy ships at sea.
"AFN's
mandate is to provide 'a taste of home' to U.S. personnel and dependents the
world over," said Mike Knaisch, president of Front Porch Digital. "Front
Porch Digital's content storage management solutions constitute a flexible,
scalable, and cost-effective way to manage video programming content in support
of that important mission."
...Front Porch Digital
profile, Storage
Services, Military &
Rugged Storage | |
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