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| "leading the way to the
new storage frontier" |
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by Zsolt Kerekes,
editor - StorageSearch.com
This
page (originally a directory of storage box manufacturers) was popular with
readers a long time ago (1990s upto around 2005). And I had forgotten about
it. When I rediscovered it my first thought was to simply place a redirect on it
as I'm more interested noways in what goes in a
semiconductor memory cell
- and how to get useful
products out of jail fulls of unreliable trapped charges and also
nowadays (magnetic / resistive parameters too). But where would I redirect
readers to? Home page? Maybe something more relevant. Here goes.
- rackmount storage boxes - you can get
efficiencies at the
array level (high population of thousands of memory chips) which are impossible
to achieve at the drive level. So the
rackmount SSD is
the make or break level for enterprise SSD businesses. That's why so many
companies (including semiconductor companies) have been entering the rackmount
market in recent years.
- M.2 has become an
interesting form factor to watch for SSD integrators - because it provides a
pipeline of low cost raw SSDs which can easily be repackaged in arrays for
other purposes.
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Nibble:- re Storage Boxes -
(an earlier introduction to this directory page)
During
the 1980's and most of the 1990's you would have been forgiven for thinking that
most computer systems looked pretty much the same. A PC from Compaq looked
similar to a PC from IBM, and you would have to look really close at most
portables to determine the brand. Most office computers and servers were
aesthetically challenged. Then Apple, Sony and Sun Microsystems started to
design computers to look pretty, and storage boxes followed suit.
But
meanwhile another revolution was brewing...
For decades, industrial
users, the military, and telcos had realised that the cost of housing and
looking after large numbers of computers was significant. If you're managing
hundreds, or even thousands of systems, then using standard rackmount modules is
the only way to minimise floor space, speed repair and replacement, and manage
thermal and safety issues. As millions of companies became wired to the
internet during the 1990's they ran into the same problems encountered by
earlier generations of IT managers who had bought mainframes during the 1960's
and 70's...
...Servers take up a lot of space.
The difference
was that unlike the computer rooms built as temples to IBM in earlier
generations, the modern economic paradigm was less tolerant of wasted floor
space. So rackmount became the "in thing" and is now the fastest
growing segment in the server market.
Today the range of storage
enclosures available to the computer buyer starts from portable gadgets which
you can take to the beach, and scales upto fault tolerant systems where the disk
drives and power supplies can be replaced while everything is powered up and
online. In the home, the storage box for the digital entertainment center, will
soon become as ubiquitous as hi-fi's and VCR's were in the 90's. Brushed
aluminium, matt black, bright colors, or woodgrain finish will become more
important product parameters to consumer RAID buyers than storage capacity and
network speed.
They'll all hold 200 movies, and 500 record albums,
connect to your TV, camera, and be backward compatible with your old DVD's, CD's
etc... so who cares about what's inside?
Style, ergonomics and
engineering excellence also have their part to play as corporate storage
systems become physically bigger and more expensive than the computers which
they connect to, the choice of enclosure and the options inherent in that choice
will become even more significant than before.
PS - for pretty
looking storage boxes see:-
Storage News
in Pictures (2005 to 2010) | |
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