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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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The SSD Backup Roadmap -
new article coming soon
Editor:- February 1, 2010 - in the next 7
days StorageSearch.com will
publish a new article which describes the roadmap for the barely nascent
SSD Backup Market to replace the enterprise
hard disk backup market by
the close of this decade.
There will be many technology and
marketing challenges along the way. It will require entirely new types
of SSD products and new ways of thinking about what the purpose of
backup really is. You
may be thinking - "SSD backup... This can't be serious! Is it April 1st
already? " You too will be serious - and may add it to your own roadmap -
after you read the new article.
$10 million Funding for AoE Pioneer
Editor:- January
25, 2010 - Coraid
today
announced
that it has closed a $10 million Series-A
financing round with
Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners to accelerate the development and
adoption of its AoE
compatible storage.
New Image for Cloud Storage
Editor:- January 13, 2010
- a new article on
PCWorld.com
discusses on-low cost and no-cost cloud storage offerings from Google.
The
author David Coursey (and his commenting readers) make some interesting
comparisons with Microsoft 's SkyDrive.
Personally
I loathe the term "Cloud Storage". But I have to admit we're stuck
with it. So today I changed the graphic on the
online backup and storage
page.
The old one - with the tag about "Spellerbyte was
cooking up a new business plan which involved online web backup" - was
appropriate when it was first published 10 years ago - but no longer fits this
market's image today. I resisted the temptation to use an image compatible with
the business metaphor of "sad losers" or "big black hole for
VC investors."
ioSafe Launches Disaster Proof Backup SSD
Editor:-
January 5, 2010 - ioSafe
launched the
ioSafe Solo SSD - an ultra rugged
USB /
eSATA
external
flash SSD with
upto 256GB capacity ($1,250) designed to provide data protection against
disasters such as fire, flood, and building collapse.
ioSafe offers
a "no questions asked"
Data Recovery policy
to help customers recover from any data disaster including accidental deletion,
virus or physical disaster.
"The new ioSafe Solo SSD is the world's most rugged and versatile
desktop external hard drive. It can be used alone or in conjunction with any
offsite or online backup
strategy to add real time, zero data loss, synchronous disaster protection to
any data that sits vulnerable," said ioSafe CEO, Robb Moore.
NC chooses NearPoint to archive 1 million daily emails
Editor:-
December 16, 2009 - Mimosa
Systems
today
announced that the State of North Carolina has selected Mimosa
NearPoint
to archive emails for 41,000 state employees.
Mimosa was selected as
the archiving vendor of choice from a pool of 29 other archiving vendors who
responded to an open state bid.
$9 million Funding Round for flash SSD Enabled SAN Backup
Editor:-
November 18, 2009 - Axxana
announced it has
secured $9 million Series B
investment led by Carmel Ventures.
Axxana's existing investors, Gemini
Israel Funds and the serial entrepreneur
Moshe Yanai,
also participated in the round.
The funds will be used to accelerate
the adoption of The Phoenix System - the first "Black Box" Enterprise
Data Recorder which was demonstrated at EMC
World in May 2009.
"Axxana's EDR brings a disruptive solution that is well poised
to transform the entire storage replication market and create a whole new
category within it," said Ronen Nir, Partner at Carmel Ventures. "We
are impressed with Axxana's strong founding team and their achievements so far,
including impressive endorsement by leading storage vendors worldwide."
Editor's comments:- Axxana's solution is a lossless data
recovery system which sits on the
SAN and records data into a
rugged flash
SSD-enabled, locally situated, data survival box. Although Axxana talks
about it "complementing" other types of data protection - such as
offsite / online backup
my gut feel is that if the product shows itself to be usable and
reliable in a wide
range of environments - it will set a new standard for
backup which will
supercede anything possible with rotating
disk backup systems or
tape.
The
clearest explanation is in
Axxana's datasheet
(pf).
Storage Market Outlook 2010 to 2015
Editor:- November
9, 2009 - this is a time of year when many readers are thinking about their
storage marketing plans for 2010.
This planning process takes place
against a background of long range assumptions which are more confusing than
at any time since September 11, 2001.
I've collected together a few ideas which you might find helpful -
even if you don't entirely agree with them - on the home page of
StorageSearch.com
WD Ships 2.5" 10K SAS HDDs
Editor:- November
3, 2009 -
Western Digital
announced volume shipments of its 1st
2.5" 10K
RPM SAS hard drive.
The WD S25 provides up to 300 GB of
high-performance storage suitable for both mission-critical enterprise server
and enterprise storage applications, such as high-I/O-driven applications and
configurations, as well as data centers and large data arrays.
Editor's comments:- 15K RPM hard drives are obsolete for new
designs - because if you want acceleration - you get more server bang per buck
using 2.5" SSDs.
But in the 10K area HDDs can still deliver high capacity with tolerable
performance and lower cost than SSDs.
In order to optimize overall economy,
reliability and
performance - the well architected enterprise storage systems of the near term
future will lean towards using more 10K RPM (and slower)
hard drives - for bulk
content - and towards using various levels of SSDs for performance. In the long
term it will all be solid state - but that's still 10 years away.
RDX QuikStor Now 640GB
Editor:- October 27, 2009 -
Tandberg Data
now offers a 640GB model in its
RDX
QuikStor cartridge "10 year data life"
removable disk archive
product line.
This is 28% more than the previous maximum 500GB
capacity model. Tandberg Data has shipped more than 150,000 RDX QuikStor drives
and more than 450,000 compatible cartridges worldwide. disk to disk backup
Editor's
comments:- You may not be impressed by the capacity - but
reliability is more
important than density for backup
applications.
Originally launched in
November 2005 - "RDX
uses a patent-pending error correcting format, which makes the data 1,000x
more recoverable than in a standard
hard drive. This means
that RDX-stored data will be readable even after the cartridge has been archived
and non-operating more than a decade."
In comparison - if you use
standard hard drives for removable disk archiving my own experience is that
50% are unreadable after 4 years and 80% are unusable after 6 years.
40 Years of Data Archiving
Editor:- October 13, 2009
- KOM Networks
today celebrated
40
years of secure archiving.
"We may not be a household name"
said Kamel Shaath, CTO of KOM Networks "but our customers are, and they
rely on us to protect, preserve, secure, store and retrieve their most critical
data."
KOM Networks is credited for the creation of the first software to
manage optical disks in 1983, the first optical storage management software for
Windows NT in 1995, and the first virtual file system with electronic file
lifecycle management in 2001.
storage
history
Editor's comments:- if KOM Networks makes 50 -
they'll be supporting SSD archiving too. It will offer 20x faster
recovery time than HDD or optical archiving. A few
issues to sort out
first though.
Dedupe Makes SSD Affordable - says WhipTail's CTO
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 -
WhipTail Technologies
became the 1st SSD appliance company to market integrated in-line
deduplication.
At
SNW WhipTail
announced
it will ship its newly renamed Racerunner (6TB) NAS SSDs with
Exar's Hifn
BitWackr
deduplication and compression solution in Q4 2009. Racerunner has demonstrated
deduplication performance in excess of 1Gbps.
James Candelaria, CTO of
WhipTail Technologies said "Once again, we're proving
Tier 0 storage
doesn't have to be expensive. By providing in-line de-duplication, customers can
save money by investing only in the storage they need."
BakBone Wakes Up to Disk Backup
Editor:- September
16, 2009 -
BakBone Software
today announced
it will change its focus from traditional
tape-based data protection
solutions to disk-based
technology with new products to be launched soon.
Editor's
comments:- BakBone is already
years behind the curve
in its reaction to the market's shift to disk backup. It's really surprising
therefore that the company has unwisely erected the information block of a
sign-up web form
ahead of saying anything useful about what it plans to do.
What can we
learn from this? Don't employ any marketers who have had anything to do with
this product launch. (Check for "Open Data Protection platform" on the
CV.)
OEMs Qualifying Virtual RAID Adapter Software
Editor:-
September 15, 2009 -
Dot Hill today
announced
that several tier #1 OEMs are evaluating its virtual RAID adapter
software.
VRA-based
solutions enable server OEMs to offer built-in, high-end
RAID functionality in
multi-core Intel compatible servers without the expense of a dedicated
RAID-on-chip acceleration device.
HDS will Remarket InMage's Appshot
Editor:- September
1, 2009 - Hitachi Data
Systems will co-brand and resell InMage's
Appshot
replication technology the 2 companies
announced
today.
InMage supports rapid, reliable recovery for various key
enterprise applications including Microsoft Exchange, SQL and SharePoint as well
as Oracle, MySQL, BlackBerry Server, SAP, and any Windows, Linux or UNIX file
system.
Hitachi Ships "Enterprise class" 2TB HDD
Editor:-
August 11, 2009 - Hitachi
started shipping the
Ultrastar
A7K2000 - a 3.5", 2TB, 7,200 RPM,
SATA
hard drive for
applications such as data warehousing,
disk-to-disk backup, cloud
computing and massive scale-out storage.
TB/hr NAS Indexing
Editor:- August 11, 2009 - Ever
wondered how long it would take to index your corporate data to make it easily
searchable?
Index Engines
today published a
useful
benchmark answering that question.
They sustained 1 Terabyte
per hour on a NAS system
from BlueArc. Base
price for the software is $85,000, and they say you should allow 4% to 8% of
the target storage as an indexing overhead.
I thought it would be
interesting to see how this compares to
Google's hardware
search appliance .
Google has published lots of
case studies
here - but I couldn't find a single magic number in the brief time before my
attention span moved on to the next thing ambushing my to-do list.
New Disk Backup Article
Editor:- July 14, 2009 - a
new article is published today on StorageSearch.com
called -
"Aspects of
Disk Backup".
Written by Andrew Brewerton -
Technical Director (Europe) - BakBone Software - the
new article comprehensively reviews the why? how? and where?
of today's modern enterprise disk backup techniques.
StorageSearch.com has had a decade
long affinity with enterprise
disk backup - tracking changes in the market since the concept 1st began.
This overview article brings that coverage right up to date - from the
perspective of a leading company in the
backup software market.
...read the
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