| iSCSI
news |
New Directory for AoE
Storage
Editor:- January 15, 2010 - StorageSearch.com today published
a new directory for AoE
(ATA-over-Ethernet NAS Storage).
Although this
NAS mode first hit our news
pages in 2003 -
support for it has been miniscule and compatible products are only available
from a handful of vendors. Will 2010 be the year that it all changes? Maybe.
SSDs could play a part -
because less latency is wasted in this low level network storage interface.
2010 - 1st Fizz in the SSD Market Bubble
Editor:-
January 12, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
2010 - 1st Fizz in the
SSD Bubble.
I think
SSD analysts will
look back on 2010 as - "Year 1 of the SSD Market Bubble." Greed
will play as big a part as technology in shaping the
SSD year ahead. Wonder
why? ...read the
article
BlueArc Versus NetApp Benchmark
Editor:- November
10, 2009 - BlueArc
today announced that its
Mercury
100 storage system achieved
SPEC
sfs benchmark results that were 18% higher NetApp's FAS6080
(FCAL Disks) dual controller configuration, while using fewer disk drives for
greater spindle efficiency.
See also:- Debunking
"Tier Zero Storage",
Calling for an
End to Unrealistic SSD vs HDD IOPS Comparisons
Accusys Announces New iSCSI RAID
Editor:- October
12, 2009 - Accusys
today announced a
new range of
rackmount IP SAN products.
Accusys iSCSI ExaRAID family
includes 2U-12 bay, 3U-16 bay and 4U-24 bay
RAID systems designed
with active-active redundant controller support for high reliability and
availability, link aggregation and jumbo frame support for maximizing bandwidth
and performance over the Ethernet. |
|
| Dedupe
Makes NAS 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."
Pillar's CEO Has Strong Views About SSDs
Editor:-
September 29, 2009 - a lot of raw (and sometimes emotional) SSD soundbites
emanating from DISKCON
are quoted in an article written by Stephen Lawson and published
yesterday in Techworld.
These
colorful phrases are not the kind of toned down polite things which appear in a
typical press release. There is real passion here.
My take is - when
companies haven't braced themselves for a new market they are more likely to
be disturbed by the waves which hit them. Human nature hasn't changed in the 97
years since that
unsinkable ship
went down - so why should hard diskophiles (lovers of hard disks - a new word
I invented - so no need to look it up) be any different?
NetApp's Revenue Dips, Names New CEO
Editor:- August
19, 2009 - Network
Appliance today
named
a new CEO.
Tom Georgens is the company's new president and CEO,
succeeding Dan Warmenhoven, who led the company as CEO for the past 15 years.
The transition in leadership, which is effective immediately, is the result of a
management succession process. Georgens, 49, joined NetApp in October 2005 as
executive vp and general manager of Enterprise Storage Systems.
NetApp also
reported
that revenue for the quarter ended July 31, 2009 declined 4% compared
to a year ago.
Editor's comments:- 2 years ago NetApp was one
of the world's fastest
growing storage companies and you might have expected that its leading
position in the analyst
reported fast growing storage
iSCSI market (at that
time) would have protected its revenue growth - even in the adverse market
which followed. But the company has become a laggardly follower rather than a
leader in the critical iSCSI SSD
market. That's clear to potential buyers - even if they aren't buying too many
of those products right now.
Naming a new CEO now - at a low dip in
the company's fortunes - means the new guy will look good when growth comes
back. (If it does.)
Increasing the Usefulness of Cheap SSDs with Virtual SAN
Software
Editor:- June 24, 2009 -
Seanodes
disclosed
results
of tests using entry level SSDs
with its
Exanodes
virtual SAN software.
In an ESX environment of 8 servers with 1
SSD drive per server, IOmeter benchmark results showed 36,000 IOPS (random read
4K) for a system with an overall cost under $20K (including the cost of SSDs and
Exanodes VM Edition).
"'Traditional arrays have been designed to work efficiently with
spinning disks and can't give the promise of SSDs in terms of performance and
scalability for example," said Frank Gana, Business Development Director at
Seanodes. "This limits the usage and markets and as a consequence most
people use them as Direct Attached Storage with all the usual known problems
that come with DAS. Thanks to Exanodes and its innovative design we can
aggregate and use SSDs efficiently, opening new markets and applications to this
technology".
Editor's comments:- Seanodes says it's trying to
fix the problem of aggregating and sharing multiple low capacity, low cost
SSDs between servers without requiring special tuning skills. But I have to
say the quoted IOPS don't sound impressive to me compared to the
fastest SSDs. So
why wouldn't you use less servers and a better SSD instead?
With so
many other competing solutions in the
rackmount SSD and
PCIe SSD market - I
suspect that Seanode's solution may only provide an economic price point for a
tiny fragment of possible applications - or none at all. There isn't enough
data in the press release to be sure.
Emulex says "No" to a future "Connecting everything®"
Editor:- May 4, 2009 - Emulex announced today
it has
rejected
an unsolicited acquisition offer from Broadcom.
...Later:-
May 5, 2009 - Broadcom
extended
the deadline for their offer and published a press release saying what a
great deal it would be for shareholders. "Broadcom's all-cash offer is not
subject to a financing condition. Broadcom intends to fund the offer with its
existing cash holdings."
Emulex, in its rejection letter, had
pointed to the potential value in recent design wins. Broadcom rubbished this
assertion with this pithy analysis.
"... while Emulex has touted
its "design wins" in its response to Broadcom and in other
communications with the financial community, it has failed to demonstrate an
ability to convert design wins into either revenue growth or market share.
Over the last several years, including this most recent quarter, Emulex has
continued to lose share to its larger competitor (QLogic)."
Editor's
comments:- the FC,
10GbE and
InfiniBand adapter
markets used to be pivotal enabling tools for fast
SANs in the enterprise
server computing market. However, in recent times these network technologies
have become commodities - and their prospects
have waned..
As I've said before, the future of fast storage interconnects will be dominated
by the requirements of the SSD
market instead of the HDD
market. Redeploying the intellectual property of these storage connections
into closer proximity with solid state storage is something which the
traditional HBA business model cannot achieve - or which takes too long.
Broadcom's
mission statement "Connecting everything®" is more in line with
the future vision of the computer market than the old-style duopoly of Emulex
(and QLogic) which dominate a market that's going to become irrelevant.
Dell Joins iSCSI Compatible SSD Market
Editor:-
March 25, 2009 - Dell
announced
SSD
options for its iSCSI
compatible EqualLogic PS6000 storage arrays.
Pricing starts at
$25,000. This brings the number of
rackmount SSD oems
to 34. That number is expected to reach 300 in 2010.
StorMagic Launches Virtual iSCSI SAN Manager
Bristol, UK - February 18,
2009 - StorMagic today announced SvSAN - which helps small to
mid-size organisations build a cost-effective virtual iSCSI SAN in just a few
minutes.
The StorMagic SvSAN is designed to enable the deployment
of a high-availability shared storage solution for VMware ESX environments for
less than $2,000 allowing users to take advantage of enhanced server
virtualisation functions without the need to purchase expensive shared storage.
SvSAN supports upto 1,024 simultaneous sessions and 256 targets per appliance.
For a limited time end-users can obtain a promo key for a free copy of SvSAN,
with no expiration date. ...StorMagic profile
Nimbus Offers Drive Agnostic iSCSI
San Francisco, CA -
February 9, 2009 - Nimbus Data Systems today announced the H-class
RH100 quad port 10GbE unified storage system.
It offers up to 60x
hot-swappable SATA (terabyte HDDs supported), SAS (450GB HDDs), or SSD drives
(7.7TB capacity if populated by supported 128GB SSDs). Drives can be mixed
within the same enclosure. The RH100 includes no-additional-charge snapshot,
cloning, and replication software, built-in
iSCSI SAN and
NAS capabilities. The
RH100 has a 4GB cache and 60Gbps internal bandwidth. Nimbus says it can be up
and running in just 20 minutes. ...Nimbus profile,
rackmount SSDs
a New Way to Instantly Rollback and Resume 24/7 Windows Apps
Santa Clara, Calif. -
January 20, 2009 - Asempra Technologies today introduced its Business
Continuity Appliance.
Designed for Microsoft environments the
2U rackmount iSCSI /
FC SAN
appliance
(price $30,000) provides a Terabyte of storage which can be rolled back to any
recovery point (with second by second resolution) and deliver data to
applications within 30 seconds of a rollback being initiated, instead of hours
or days with traditional D2d
or tape backup systems.
And unlike clustered servers or HA storage (which merely provide data
continuity) Asempra's BCS can instantly restart from your chosen "good"
data set - before a virus or software corruption occurred. ...Asempra Technologies
profile
Editor's comments:- $30,000 seemed like a steep price
for a disk backup / recovery system - so I asked more about it.
One of
the problems with this product is terminology. It sounds like a lot of other
storage solutions - but is actually a different class of storage. The technical
stuff on Asempra's site is clear and you will quickly recognize if it's the
right product for your type of application. Like
RAM SSDs - it's not for
everybody.
StoneFly Lowers Cost of SAS IP SANs
Hayward,
Calif. - December 10, 2008 - StoneFly, Inc. is now offering
high-capacity SAS expansion for its S-Class model IP SANs.
This
lowers the cost of expansion significantly: from $1.00 per GB previously, to
$.80 per GB currently. In addition, customers can now increase expansion to up
to 72 additional disks on some S-Class models. Another change announced today
for the ISC line is that it now comes standard with 6 Gigabit Ethernet ports, or
can be upgraded to support dual 10GbE connections. ...StoneFly profile
Sun Launches iSCSI Hybrid HDD / SSD Rackmount Storage
SANTA
CLARA, Calif. - November 10, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today
announced the availability of its new 7000 family of rackmount storage systems
- which includes hybrid HDD / flash SSD arrays.
Sun says its
Solaris ZFS can use SSDs intelligently as a cache for both application and file
system metadata, placing latency-critical data structures appropriately on flash
media and using algorithms to optimize data placement. In addition, Solaris ZFS
provides acceleration of both read and write operations, and lets administrators
configure the system to match workload demands.
Among the products
launched today the
Sun
Storage 7210 is a 4U 4 port GbE iSCSI compatible storage system which can
be configured with 44TB of 7,200 RPM hard drives working alongside 36GB
internal flash SSD and 64GB RAM. MSRP for this configuration is $117,995.
...Sun Microsystems profile,
Hybrid Storage
Drives, rackmount
SSDs
MicroNet Ships Low Cost Unified SMB Storage
Torrance, CA - October 27,
2008 - MicroNet Technology today introduced its first unified NAS/iSCSI
ipSAN-ready storage solution for the desktop SMB market with 5 hot swappable 3.5"
drives.
Features include:- 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports with load
balancing and failover, selective
iSCSI target mode,
RAID 0/1/5/6/10/JBOD/SPAN,
3 USB expansion ports and 1x eSATA port for storage and printer sharing. The
MaxNAS is available immediately with an MSRP of $1,349 for a 2.5TB
configuration, $1,699 for the 5TB model and $2,499 for the 7.5TB appliance.
...MicroNet profile,
NAS
iSCSI vs FCoE Article in The Register
Editor:-
October 15, 2008 - The Register has published a new article called -"iSCSI:
Game Over?"
In it author
Chris Mellor
discusses how emerging vendor support for FCoE (the first adapters were shipped
exactly a year ago)
might ultimately affect the iSCSI
market. Even if you're already heavily commited to
fibre-channel
SANs or the various flavors
of NAS and have no plans to
change soon - the article makes interesting reading.
iStor Unlocks High Availability Features in Installed iSCSI ASICs
IRVINE, Calif. - October 7, 2008 -
iStor Networks, Inc. has begun shipping a new version of its
software, v2.5, as a no-cost upgrade for all its iSCSI storage solutions.
This software will provide dual-controller
iS512 systems with the
ability to automatically detect malfunctions in the operational controller and
to switch to the redundant controller without loss of data, function or
performance.
"This new software capitalized on the patented
capabilities of iStor's ASIC technology enabling HA capability with no
impact upon system performance before, during or after a controller failure."
said Jim Wayda, iStor's VP of Software Development. "iStor designed its
controllers from the very beginning to deliver advanced functionality such as HA
and we are very proud that we have been able to demonstrate the investment
protection inherent in iStor's approach of implementation..."
...iStor profile,
iSCSI,
storage reliability | |
