| NAS news |
WhipTail un-races to the
datacenter
Editor:- August 25, 2010 - in an effort to improve its
prospects in the datacenter market - WhipTail Technologies
today
announced
a new name for its NAS
SSDs - Datacenter XLR8r instead of Racerunner - and also unveiled HA
options which involve dual failover systems.
The little lizardy
creatures are still on WhipTail 's site. Serious SSD buyers aren't scared by
animal brands.
HP and Dell battle over unavailable 3PAR
Editor:-
August 23, 2010 - 3PAR
has become part of a billion dollar acquisition tussle between Dell and
HP.
But would you buy software from a company whose home page
showed this message today? - "Site
Temporarily Unavailable Thank you for visiting www.3PAR.com. This site is
currently undergoing maintenance and is temporarily unavailable. We apologize
for the inconvenience."
Nimbus improves features in NAS SSD
Editor:- July 19,
2010 - Nimbus Data
Systems today announced
higher
density in its 10 GbE rackmount SSD systems - 10TB (enterprise MLC)
in 2U - implemented as 24 x 400GB hot-swappable
SAS flash blades.
The
company also announced improved connectivity - upto 120Gbps - from its internal
12 port FlexConnect 'virtual switch' which makes all storage available to all
ports without the need to create and assign volumes to specific ports.
Every port can run all supported protocols –
iSCSI, CIFS and NFS –
simultaneously, enabling unified block and file storage and converged
networking. Pricing for a 10TB system with FlexConnect is just under $110k.
New NAS systems will scale to 100Gbps
Editor:- July
12, 2010 - designing quad port 100Gbps ethernet will be made easier by a new
interface (PHY) from NetLogic
Microsystems .
The device supports 10Gbps SFI-to-XFI, 40Gbps
XLPPI-to-XLAUI and 100Gbps CPPI-to-CAUI modes to enable a seamless migration of
data centers from 10 Gigabit to 100 Gigabit throughputs. See also:-
storage chips.
5 storage trends at eWEEK
Editor:- July 2, 2010 - an
article
in eWEEK.com lists - 5 key data storage trends at mid-year.
The
3 magic letters "SSD" don't appear (in that order) - but may be
implied in a brief note about tiering. See also:-
Why I Tire of "Tier
Zero Storage"
Brocade out IOPS other iSCSI adapters
Editor:-
June 29, 2010 - Brocade
today published a
report
(pdf) which compares the IOPS performance of its 10GbE adapter cards
compared to competitors in FCoE and
iSCSI environments.
"The
test demonstrated without a doubt that Brocade CNAs outperform competing
products from Emulex, Intel and QLogic in terms of performance, throughput and
ease of migration to converged networks," said Frank Berry, CEO at
IT Brand Pulse - who conducted the
testing.
NetApp's Jay Kidd joins board at ProStor
Editor:-
June 29, 2010 - ProStor
Systems announced today the appointment of Jay Kidd to its Board
of Directors.
Mr. Kidd's accomplishments span over 30 years in key leadership roles
at many high profile multi-national storage, networking, and computing companies
with a strong emphasis in product strategy and development, marketing, and
business operations. Mr. Kidd is currently serving as senior VP, Storage
Solutions Group and Product Strategy and Development at
Network Appliance.
Violin selects a high gear for NAS SSD acceleration
Editor:-
June 16, 2010 - Violin
Memory today
announced
it has acquired the technology assets of of Gear6.
"Gear6's
installed base of (over 30 customers) is highly synergistic with our current
go-to-market strategy," said Violin Memory COO Dixon Doll, Jr. "Gear6
was founded to accelerate data center applications and solve the I/O bottleneck
which matches well with Violin's 'silicon data center' vision."
"Gear6's proven high speed NFS caching combined with the Violin
3000 10 Terabyte Memory Array will allow us to front end NFS installations
solving the performance issues of today's
NAS devices," said
Violin Memory CEO Don Basile.
Editor's comments:- in the search volume based ranking of SSD
companies which I get to see internally (we only publish the
top 10 or so)
Gear6's rank was lower than that of
Platypus Technology -
a company which has been out of business for 6 years - so I'm not really
surprised Gear6 fizzled out - as a reader said to me "after they burned
$24 millions and
didn't have much to show for it."
the new dedupe? - Permabit inside
Editor:- June 7,
2010 - Permabit
today announced that its high performance data deduplication software
has achieved multiple design wins with leading OEMs who will embed it in
storage solutions coming to market by the end of 2010.
Permabit says
its
Albireo dedupe
architecture scales to petabytes of network storage (FC, iSCSI, NFS, or
CIFS), has application aware tuning and can deliver upto 800MB/s ingest on dual
quad core processors with an extremely small memory footprint.
ever wondered - why a NAS from Avere Systems will solve your
problems?
Editor:- June 1, 2010 - Avere Systems today
published an opinion piece article called -
5 Things to Consider
Before Upgrading Your NAS.
It talks about
HDDs versus
SSDs (a
long
running theme with our readers) and suggests that buying a
NAS compatible
SSD ASAP - like the
one they design and sell - is a really good idea.
I just use this
example to illustrate why you don't see many vendor written articles here on
StorageSearch.com. Even if some
of the sentiments appear reasonable - the overall quality of the "analysis"
in vendor originated articles is often patchy. The sweeping market assertions
are often incorrect. And the remedies to user "problems" are
suspiciously unique. ...read
the article
Accusys wins award for PCIe SAN
Editor:- May 26, 2010
- Accusys today
announced
that its ExaSAN has won the prestigious "Best Choice" of Computex Award in the category
of Data Storage Products.
Judges selected ExaSAN from a pool of more
than 400 products from 170 oems based on the criteria of innovation,
technical merit, and marketability.
ExaSAN connects 2x
RAID systems (upto 96
SAS/SATA disks) through a
PCIe switch to form a SAN-like
system with upto 80Gb/s bandwidth. Optimized features for the video market
include "Equalization Mode" which the company says ensures smoother
consecutive I/Os to prevent real-time frame dropping in editing applications.
See also:- PCIe
SSDs.
Nexenta streams online tv
Editor:- May 20, 2010 -
Nexenta Systems
announced
that its products (which include
SSD ASAP features)
are being used by the Dutch Public
Broadcasting Agency NPO for storing and delivering online tv in a
configuration which includes 192TB of
hard disk drives and a
1.9TB SSD read cache.
The
broadcaster's website has approximately 80TB of video available to online
users who want to watch previously broadcasted television programs. During an
average evening, between 10 and 20,000 people stream data, adding up to 25GB in
capacity. The customer (who evaluated multiple vendors ) says that important
selection criteria were:- performance, price, support and power
consumption.
Solid Access launches very fast NAS SLC SSD
Editor:-
May 20, 2010 -Solid
Access Technologies today
launched the
UNAS
100 a very fast 2U
rackmount
NAS SLC
fat flash SSD
- with 2.4TB capacity, 96GB DRAM Cache, 2x 10GbE ports, 300,000
IOPS,
1,000MB/s bandwidth and under 10 microseconds access time.
Editor's
comments:- this is the 1st
flash SSD system
from Solid Access - which has been in the
RAM SSD market for 8
years and has often appeared in our directory of
the fastest SSDs.
As you'd expect - the new system includes enterprise
SSD reliability
features - and the flash modules are hot swappable and can be mirrored.
...Later:-
June 4, 2010 - I was curious to learn more about the flash SSD modules inside
the UNAS 100 - so I asked Tomas Havrda, Managing Partner at Solid
Access Technologies for more info. He confirmed that the internal interface in
the rackmount SSD is SAS
- an interface with which they are very familiar - having shipped the world's
1st SAS RAM SSD in 2005.
"After
a search of almost 2 years, we partnered with a Flash SSD vendor that provided
the type of sustained, predictable performance Solid Access required to bring an
entry to market. This has always been one of the major attributes of our DRAM
SSD appliances and we needed to find Flash technology that reasonably
approximates this capability to continue to project Solid Access's image as a
high performance storage appliance vendor offering products that will perform
next month or next year the same way as today.
"We were also equally concerned about
performance drop off
from Burst to Steady State mode and our selected vendor has the least
performance loss of the vendors we tested or have been able to obtain results
for."
5 Cloud Storage Tips from Nasuni
Editor:- May 13,
2010 - Nasuni
recently published a guide to the top 5 issues you should consider when looking
at
cloud storage.
This
is a very hype-laden market - which has taken 10 years to get nowhere
substantial very fast - but I suppose others might (wrongly) say something
similar about the
35 years
it's taken for the SSD market
to get seriously started.
Because I have grown suspicious about all
new storage software
companies - I let this one sit in my inbox for a few days before looking at it
in more detail.. But the points made seem quite sensible. ...read
the article
DCIG publishes buyers guide - midrange storage array market
Editor:-
May 11, 2010 - DCIG
has published the
DCIG Midrange Array
Buyer's Guide (100+ pages) which contains product information on over 70
different midrange arrays from 20 storage providers.
DCIG says the
guide is intended to narrow down the playing field to develop a list of
competitive products that have comparable features to meet specific application
or business needs. Developed to be the go-to resource for IT professionals, the
guide provides direct comparisons of storage systems classified as midrange
arrays and delivers insight into the range of offerings available on the market.
New for 2010, the DCIG Midrange Array Buyer's Guide provides product
comparisons among the widest range of storage array options and identifies the
winners and losers across five categories, including FC/iSCSI,
FC only,
iSCSI only, hardware and
software.
Pricing ranges from $5,000 for 1 print copy - upto $20,000 which
includes:- internal distribution, 1 hour of analyst debriefing and marketing
citation rights.
StorSimple fills "missing link" in cloud storage DNA
Editor:- May 4, 2010 - StorSimple has
exited stealth mode - announcing a bunch of collaborative customer supply
agreements - and disclosing info about its Armada storage appliance - which is
designed to reduce the cost and simplify the integration of
cloud storage within
datacenter applications and infrastructure.
Editor's comments:-
Just as application specific SSDs
are the future for the SSD
market - StorSimple's Armada system can be regarded as an application
specific SSD ASAP
which includes features such as real-time
dedupe and cloud
data encryption.
The simplest way to think about it is as "the
missing link" between the promise of cloud storage and its practicality.
The companies which have agreed to be named in StorSimple's company launch press
release (Amazon, AT&T, EMC, Iron Mountain, and Microsoft) seem to think it's
a noteworthy part of cloud storage DNA too.
WhipTail publishes SSD SAN acceleration paper
Editor:-
April 21, 2010 - WhipTail
Technologies recently published a
white paper which
discusses how SSD acceleration can economically close the scaling performance
gap which comes from virtual desktops and compares the SSD vs HDD array
costs for a 5,000 virtual user system.
Although there's nothing in this
article which introduces new
SSD
acceleration architectural concepts - the 13 page document is a clearly
written modern introduction to anyone interested in learning about how
SAN centric SSDs can
accelerate common applications.
...read the article (pdf)
GreenBytes unveils 1U dedupe ASAP
Editor:- March 29,
2010 - GreenBytes
today
unveiled
the GB-1000 (under $10,000)
a 1U 4TB SSD accelerated
dedupe appliance
which supports simultaneous SAN
and NAS deployments.
Ingest
and restore performance is stated as 0.54TB/hr.
Infortrend reduces NAS costs with SSDs
Editor:-
March 24, 2010 - Infortrend
today
announced
it has added an SSD
acceleration layer to its
EonNAS
product line.
The company says that by using a judicious combination
of SATA
HDDs and
SSDs the overall
ASAP has the same
performance as if it used 15K RPM SAS HDD arrays - but at 75% lower
cost per GB.
Coraid expands AoE rackmount catalog
Editor:- March
23, 2010 - Coraid
today
announced
new models in its AoE
compatible NAS line
including a 2U 24 drive (2.5") model - EtherDrive SRX3500 - with 6
10GbE ports.
The company says its
SRX-Series appliances
can deliver more than 500MB/s throughput in virtualization environments. OS
support includes Windows, Solaris, and Linux.
Digitiliti Launches Virtual Corporate Library
Editor:-
March 22, 2010 - Digitiliti
today
announced
availability of its
DigiLIBE
a multi-functional continuous VTL,
dedupe,
compression, ediscovery appliance which automatically captures and archives
new data from the time it is created and
sanitizes it at
the end of its policy mandated life.
Pricing starts at about $20,000
for a 3TB information director and $3 per GB archived after dedupe and
compression, plus $100 per client.
WhipTail signs European distributor for SSD dedupe accelerator
Editor:-
March 10, 2010 -
WhipTail Technologies
today announced a Europe wide distribution and support agreement with
Consolidate IT.
"Our
clients are seeing consolidation ratios of 200-300:1 thanks to our true inline
data deduplication,"
said James Candelaria, CTO of WhipTail Tech. "With our blazing read/write
speeds (over 150K
IOPS), we
can accept the overhead hit and still deliver data exponentially faster than a
hard-disk array. The focus
becomes more of cost-per-IOP than a cost-per-GB. We land at 37 cents while a
Tier 1 HDD array is around 8 dollars."
Avere Adds SLC SSD Options to 2U ASAPs
Editor:-
January 26, 2010 - Avere
Systems today
announced
it's shipping new
SLC
flash SSD options in its
FXT Series
10GbE NAS compatible
SSD ASAPs.
The
2U Avere FXT 2700 appliance (from $82,500) features 64GB of DRAM, 1GB of
NVRAM, and 512GB of SLC flash SSD. FXT clusters can scale to 25 appliances and
support millions of operations/sec and tens of GB/sec throughput.
$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 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. | |
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| SSD Pricing -
where does all the money go? |
SSDs are among the most
expensive computer hardware products you will ever buy.
Understanding
the factors which determine SSD costs is often a confusing and irritating
process... |
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...not made any easier when
market prices for identical capacity SSDs can vary more than 100x to 1!
Why is that? ...read
the article | | | |
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| What's the
best / cheapest - PC SSD? |
Editor:- I often get emails
from readers which ask the above question.
An article on
StorageSearch.com - called
What's the best
/ cheapest PC SSD? - is my attempt to create a simple FAQs page - which
answers the question... |
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...of why I can't answer
your question - and follows on to pose some probing questions which you
can ask yourself. ...read the article | | | |
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What's the
best way to design a flash SSD?
and other questions which split SSD
opinion |
| More than 10 key areas of
fundamental disagreement within the SSD industry are discussed in an article
here on StorageSearch.com called
the
the SSD Heresies. |
 |
... |
Why can't SSD's true believers agree upon
a single coherent vision for the future of solid state storage? ...read the article | | | |
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