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New Models from Solid Access Technologies

Newburyport, Mass - May 6, 2008 - Solid Access Technologies today announced higher capacity models in its 2U rackmount line of RAM SSDs.

The 128GB model (price $75,000) is shipping now. The 256GB models will ship next month. Both models are part of the USSD 200 product line - which dramatically increases server efficiency by recovering CPU cycles formally lost in I/O wait cycles. They deliver random read/write performance of 95,000 IOPS using a single Fibre Channel link and over 70,000 IOPS using SAS. Access time is under 10 microseconds

"For applications facing critical performance demands that can't be serviced by decades old spindle-based storage, ultra-fast SSD is emerging as a weapon of choice to improve lagging storage speed," said Solid Access Managing Partner, Tomas Havrda. ...Solid Access Technologies profile


Multiple Vendors Announce Support for FCoE

Editor:- April 11, 2008 - this week Emulex and Intel launched 10Gb/s Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters.

Emulex explained the thinking behind this. With FCoE, customers may now leverage the ubiquity of Ethernet to converge both storage and networking traffic, improve overall efficiency and simplify the infrastructure. Designed to natively transport Fibre Channel traffic over the Ethernet network, FCoE will take advantage of lossless Ethernet in the data center. A lossless Ethernet fabric provides the level of performance and reliable delivery of data required for enterprise storage environments.

Intel's PCIe dual port FCoE adapter will be in volume production in May and will be priced at $799. The entire Intel 10GbE family will have FCoE support on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by July and on Windows later this year.

FCoE will be a new standard with support from leading storage and switch oems. The first mention on these news pages was in October 2007 - when QLogic unveiled its products.

In theory FCoE may help customers with an installed base of legacy FC applications reduce costs by moving them onto Ethernet environments. In practise, as we saw with the long drawn out birth pangs of the iSCSI market - tidying up all the loose ends could take many years.


Book Digitization Project Selects Isilon Storage

SEATTLE, WA - April 8, 2008 - the University of Michigan has selected Isilon Systems' IQ clustered storage system as the primary repository for its Michigan Digitization Project.

In partnership with Google, the University is digitizing more than 7.5 million books.

Each digitized book is approximately 55MB in size, downloading at a rate of 3MB/second, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the entire 6 year duration of the project. ...Isilon Systems profile


Buffalo Compresses Size of NAS Boxes

AUSTIN, Texas - April 8, 2008 - Buffalo Technology today launched the dual drive LinkStation Mini - a consumer NAS product with 2 integral 2.5" hard drives.

The product measures only 1.57 x 3.22 x 5.31 inches and weighs 1.1 pounds. ESP for a 1TB units is $699. ...Buffalo Technology profile


AMD Announces Design Kit for Storage Bridge 2.0

ORLANDO, FL - April 7, 2008 - At the Storage Networking World conference AMD announced availability of the first Reference Design Kit for the SBB 2.0 specification based on the AMD Athlon processor.

AMD expects this will help storage vendors deliver low power, high performance, entry-level networked storage systems while helping reduce time-to-market. AMD also today announced 3 new, low power AMD Athlon dual-core processors for embedded system designs. ...AMD profile


STORAGEsearch.com Reports NAS on the Rise

Editor:- April 1, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today updated its monthly list of the top subjects viewed by storage searchers in March.

The top 5 subjects were:-

(1) - Disk to disk backup - no change
(2) - Solid state disks - up 1 place
(3) - NAS - up 4 places
(4) - Hard drives - down 2 places
(5) - 2.5 inch SSDs - down 1 place

Overall pageviews grew 10% compared to the year ago period. For marketers who are interested in SEO - the top incoming search word "SSD" occurred 4x more often than in the year ago period. More info about the top 20 subjects and articles can be viewed on the market research page


Index Engines Names New VP of Sales

Holmdel, NJ - April 1, 2008 - Index Engines today announced the appointment of Tony Fusarelli as VP of Sales.

Fusarelli is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of experiencey.

Recently, Fusarelli served as VP of sales for Tacit Networks, which was purchased by Packeteer as a result of its success. Prior to Tacit Networks Fusarelli was VP of Sales at Lumeta where he was responsible for tripling the company's revenue in less than 2 years. Fusarelli has also held executive sales positions at Visara International, General Signal Networks and INRANGE Technologies. ...Index Engines profile, Storage People


PivotStor Launches Email Appliances

SAN DIEGO - March 11, 2008 - PivotStor today introduced its new EP-Series email management appliance.

At a starting price of less than $1,300 the EP-Series of disk based NAS appliances enables companies to grow and fully protect and manage their email while ensuring compliance with a full range of regulations. Configurations range from 50 to 2,500 mailboxes (and upto 3 billion email messages a year). Form factors include:- desktop, 1U and 2U rackmount. ...PivotStor profile


Iomega Says No to EMC

SAN DIEGO - March 10, 2008 - Iomega Corp announced today the receipt of an unsolicited non-binding indication of interest from EMC Corp, in which EMC indicated that it is prepared to offer to acquire the outstanding common stock of Iomega.

Iomega's board of directors met on March 9, 2008, and unanimously determined that the proposal from EMC would not reasonably constitute a superior proposal. ...Iomega profile, ...EMC profile

Editor's comments:-
a few years ago I predicted that the long term threat to EMC, NetApp etc comes from NAS becoming a predominantly consumer / SMB market. Acquiring Iomega would have been a cheap way for EMC to dip its toes into unfamiliar water - where budgets and vendor ties are more shallow.

The best hope for the biggest storage box vendors like EMC, IBM etc is to stay in the controlled climate of the datacenter - and siphon off some of the torrents of cash that will be spent on solid state disk accelerators.


iSCSI Grew 4x Faster than NAS Market

FRAMINGHAM, Mass - March 6, 2008 - Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues grew 9.8% year-over-year in Q407 totaling $5.3 billion, according to IDC.

Capacity shipped grew 56.3%. Network disk storage grew 16% but the hot spot was iSCSI with 70% revenue growth.

For the full year, EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 22% revenue share, followed by IBM and HP. Dell, Hitachi, and Network Appliance ended the year in a statistical tie to round out the top 5. In this group Network Appliance and Dell posted the strongest year-over-year revenue growth during 2007, with 19% and 17% growth, respectively. ...IDC profile, Market research

Editor's comments:-
for most of us (whose bonuses aren't linked to these numbers) there's been no significant change in overall revenue growth in this part of the storage market for many quarters. So you might say - what's new?

One thing I'd say - is note the growing gap between the hard disk market which is growing nearly twice as fast as the "external disk systems market". That's due to a black hole in consumer products which is sucking in disks as fast as anyone can make them. And maybe due to lower margins in the enterprise storage market due to competition from what IDC lumps together as "others" - who have been trimming some of the fat off the top 5's oligopoly.

Another thing, which IDC comments on is that the doom and gloom from the worldwide financial markets doesn't seem to have slowed down this market.


SeaChange Eliminates Spinning Disks in the On-air Chain

March 3, 2008 – SeaChange International today introduced its Broadcast Flash Memory Library FML200, a flash memory-based ingest and play-to-air solution that sets a new benchmark in reliability and economy.

With no moving parts, the breakthrough server is 100x more reliable and consumes 10x less power than spinning disk-based counterparts, greatly mitigating failures, rebuilds, replacements and other disk-related threats. The system can eliminate spinning disks in the on-air chain and is immediately available for television operators worldwide. SeaChange will demonstrate the FML200 at NAB2008 in April. ...SeaChange International profile


Adaptec Launches 28 Port RAID Adapters

HANOVER, Germany - March 3, 2008 - Adaptec Inc. today unveiled the first RAID adapter family offering up to 28-ports.

With 24 internal and 4 externalports Adaptec's 52445 PCIe RAID controllers ($1,595 MSRP) enable up to 256 SATA or SAS drives to be seamlessly connected to a single system. ...Adaptec profile


PowerFile's Archive Facilitator Picks Jukebox Hits

SANTA CLARA, Calif - February 26, 2008 - PowerFile Inc. today introduced the Archive Facilitator which automatically discovers, classifies and moves fixed content to the company's (optical) Active Archive Appliance.

Typically unstructured data represents 70% of the information being stored on expensive primary storage and up to 80% of that data has not been accessed or modified in more than a year. As a result some organizations are turning to active archiving to better align data with storage based on business value. PowerFile's Archive Facilitator is scalable and and manages tens of terabytes per appliance and hundreds of terabytes per enterprise deployment. ...PowerFile profile, Optical Libraries



HyperIP Acceleration Software Scales to Wire Speeds

MINNEAPOLIS, MN - January 28, 2008 - NetEx today announced a new faster version of its HyperIP software technology that deliver near-native wire speed performance of 800Mb/s on a COTS Intel appliance.

NetEx customers can purchase the HyperIP data acceleration solution on an industry standard platform at 1.5 Mb/s and then add performance as needed up to 800Mb/s all in the same appliance with no hardware upgrades required. ...NetEx profile


StorageMaster Offers Real-time Content Delivery

ATLANTA, GA - January 24, 2008 - Concurrent Computer announced today the launch of its new StorageMaster product line.

The target market includes broadcasters who need very high-speed storage and retrieval, critical data I/O capability and advanced data prioritization. The StorageMaster regional file server allows service providers to centrally house and rapidly transport specific content (faster than real-time) to remote locations, even down to the node level.

"Concurrent's on-demand platforms must store and stream thousands of hours of video content for hundreds of thousands of end-users, but, in the end, you are still dealing with digital data," explains Bob Chism, Concurrent's CTO. ...Concurrent profile


QNAP Includes Enterprise Features in Entry Level NAS

Taipei, Taiwan - January 21, 2008 - QNAP Systems, Inc. today unveiled its 4-bay TS-409 Pro Turbo NAS for business users.

The TS-409 is a hot-swappable HDD design with RAID 0/ 1/ 5/ 6/ 5+spare disk redundancy and remote replication functions.

According to QNAP's VP Shawn Shu, "The hot swap design and the advanced RAID are the dominant features of TS-409 Pro that are rarely provided by other entry-level NAS suppliers. The RAID 5 and RAID 6 support, Online RAID Level Migration and Capacity Expansion features are an important breakthrough in NAS for business and SOHO users." ...QNAP Systems profile



Seanodes Gets Funding for Shared Internal Storage

Boston, Mass - November 6, 2007 - Seanodes today announced the closure of a $6.5 million funding round that will propel the company's expansion of its Shared Internal Storage concept to customers worldwide.

Seanodes software allows customers to reclaim unused internal disk space within existing application servers and make that capacity available as a high performance virtualized storage pool, eliminating the need for costly and complex conventional SAN and NAS products. ...Seanodes profile, Squeak! - Venture Capital Funds in Storage


Intel Launches Cool NAS Server for the Home

SANTA CLARA, Calif - November 6, 2007 - Intel Corp today announced a new NAS storage platform for the home.

The SS4200x supports upto 4x 3.5" hard disk drives in a "customizable and consumer-friendly shell design" and is available with or without software. For example the fully loaded Intel SS4200-E includes software from EMC to create a flexible NAS appliance. It is also an ideal platform for Windows Home Server. The new products will be available in December, starting at $500. ..Intel profile

Editor's comments:- in the 1990s Sun Microsystems introduced the world to pizza box servers and storage. You'll recognise what inspired Intel's new box design next time you save left over chile in your freezer.


Google Launches New Search Appliance

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif - October 10, 2007 - Google Inc. today announced a new version of its search appliance hardware.

Search results and security haven been improved. More than 10,000 companies now rely on Google enterprise search appliances.

"When we launched the first Google Search Appliance 5 years ago, we had a vision to make search inside of business as simple and effective as searching on Google.com," said Dave Girouard, VP and general manager of Google Enterprise. "By combining Google's deep knowledge in search with more understanding and control for environments behind the firewall, we are helping businesses keep pace with the velocity of information." ...Google profile


Coraid's AoE Wins InfoWorld Award

SAN CLEMENTE, CALIF - September 27, 2007 - InfoWorld has named Coraid's AoE Tools as a winner in its 2007 BOSSIE Award for Best of Open Source in Storage.

"Open Source Software has moved into the mainstream," said Steve Fox, Editor in Chief at InfoWorld. "InfoWorld's inaugural Bossie Award winners represent mature, flexible, and reliable solutions that increasingly define the segment."

AoE has become a de facto standard in Ethernet storage area networking, offering a simple alternative to iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN. AoE has over 1,000 active users with very large storage systems ...Coraid profile
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NAS History? - see this page back in time - 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006
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Megabyte's 5 Year Prediction for the NAS Market

A
s the market for networked consumer storage in 2011 will be bigger than that for NAS in the enterprise consumer storage companies and products (with much lower price points and cost of sales) will take over what is now regarded as the low and medium levels of the market which are (in 2006) occupied by Network Appliance, HP and EMC.

The consumerization of network storage may be a more aggressive and dramatic process than the consumerization of the PC was for the computer industry in the 1980s and 90s.

If international markets remain open then most, if not all, the world's leading NAS manufacturers by 2011 will be based in China, Taiwan or Korea. The lowest cost place to manufacture NAS will be in proximity to, or in the same factory as, the lowest cost place to manufacture the drives. The ground breaking investments for those super storage plants of the future have already begun.

Standardization will mean there will be much less opportunity for US NAS manufacturers to supply services or higher pricing based on brand strength. Although new markets will be created for very high performance storage systems to deliver the backbone functionality that will be required by the demands of the online digital tv market - it is possible that those needs will be met by server farms of single board computers with onboard embedded solid state disks, and that for most organizations the notion of the "big storage box" may be as irrelevant as the concept of the mainframe is today - for large internet companies like Google.

NAS market shifts may lead to a scramble to acquire high end storage switch and router storage technology - which will become the central cores in enterprise storage environments.

One safe bolthole for the NAS industry will be long term archive storage. Because it's unlikely that the media used for online enterprise storage (which will overlap with consumer products) will comply with the needs of data regulators.

note:- the above article was first published here in December 2006
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click to read article by Xtore
NAS, DAS or SAN? - Choosing the Right Storage Technology for Your Organization - article by Xtore

It's 5 years since we published the Storage Architecture Guide a classic reference written by the world's first network storage company Auspex. The new overview article from Xtore places the main storage connection strategies in a current context. Here's an extract.

"Another important consideration for a medium sized business or large enterprise is heterogeneous data sharing. With DAS, each server is running its own operating platform, so there is no common storage in an environment that may include a mix of Windows, Mac and Linux workstations. NAS systems can integrate into any environment and serve files across all operating platforms. On the network, a NAS system appears like a native file server to each of its different clients. That means that files are saved on the NAS system, as well as retrieved from the NAS system, in their native file formats. NAS is also based on industry standard network protocols such as TCP/IP, FC and CIFS. " ... read the article, ...Xtore profile
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SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
Does the fatal gene of "write endurance" built into flash solid state disks prevent their deployment in intensive server acceleration applications - such as RAID systems?
It was certainly true as little as a few years ago.

What's the risk with today's devices?

This article looks at the current generation of products and calculates how much (or how little) you should be worried.
read the article - SSD Myths and Legends
RAM based SSDs have been used alongside RAID for years - but flash SSDs are physically smaller and have bigger capacity (upto 412G in 2.5", 512G in 3.5") and are lower cost than RAM-SSDs and could actually be configured in standard RAID boxes. F-SSDs aren't as fast as RAM based products but a single flash SSD can deliver 20,000 IOPs - which when scaled up in an array - starts to look interesting. ...read the article, storage reliability solid state disks
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a Short History of Disk to Disk Backup
STORAGEsearch.com has been reporting on the enterprise D2d market since the concept first began.
This article plots the main events in the market transition from the heady days when tape backup was at its height - through to the situation now where most corporate data is backed up using disk to disk backup. click to read the article - a Short History of  Disk to Disk Backup
In 2007- D2d was the #1 subject viewed by Storage Searchers. ...read the article, Hard disk drives, Backup Software
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click to read article click to read article

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) - Delivering Flexibility to the Data Center

"SAS gains a performance advantage through its support of multiple initiators, or the ability to support I/O requests from more than one controller at a time. With dual ports and multiple initiator support, SAS RAID arrays can implement dynamic load balancing, allowing I/O requests to be evenly spread across multiple controllers, leveraging the full processing power of all of them. Without this capability, the I/O requests can become skewed, and overload one controller, while the others may not be at full capacity. SATA technology does not support this capability."

...read the article, ...LSI Logic profile, ...Maxtor profile, Serial Attached SCSI

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article:-  Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - by Semico Research
Flash Memory vs. Hard Disk Drives - Which Will Win? - article by Semico Research

There's a confusing picture in many consumer products like phones, cameras and music players in which one day it seems that the storage function is done by flash and next day another company announces they're doing the same thing with miniature hard disks.

Is there any sense to this seemingly random choice?

This article uses pricing trends, technology trends and unique market analysis insights to show that users and oems may be able to reliably predict which storage devices will be most cost effective depending where you are on the future history curve. ...read the article, ...Semico Research profile, Hard disk drives, Flash Memory, Market research, Solid state disks
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click to read RAID article by Infortrend
10 Ten Tips for a Successful RAID Implementation - article by Infortrend

Editor:- In the 20 years since I first worked on RAID I've read and published countless articles about this subject.

So what can a new RAID article tell you?

Plenty of practical stuff - from a modern perspective. ...read the article , ...Infortrend profile
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read article by Plasmon the Impact of Compliance  on Archival Storage Strategies
the Impact of Compliance on Archival Storage Strategies - article by Plasmon

It's difficult enough protecting and archiving your data so that it's available to the right people at the right time (and cost). But now that's only part of the problem. With so many new rules and regulations which prescribe how you should destroy data records at the appropriate time - how do you guarantee that they stay deleted?

Archiving data on the wrong kind of media could mean you run the risk of breaking the law. Advances in the data recovery industry, and the future cohabitation of storage search-engines both mean that Compliance Officers have to pay much more attention to the ways in which data is dispersed and disposed of in different types of media.

This article summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of currently available market technologies. ... read the article, ...Plasmon profile, Optical Libraries

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