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storage history - 2003, May week 1 |
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| ... | the Fastest SSDs the SSD Buyers Guide What's a Solid State Disk? After SSDs... What Next? flash SSD Jargon Explained the Top 10 SSD Companies Data Recovery for flash SSDs Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps? |
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| Adaptec Debuts TCP/IP Offload Architecture | ||||||||||||||||||||
| MILPITAS,
Calif. - May 7, 2003 - Adaptec, Inc. today teamed with Microsoft
at WinHEC 2003 for a technology demonstration of Adaptec's TCP/IP offload
network interface card working with Microsoft's new TCP/IP Offload Architecture.
"Microsoft is working closely with Adaptec to demonstrate the ability of TCP/IP Offload Engines to significantly reduce host CPU demands associated with multi-gigabit networking," said Jawad Khaki, corporate vice president, Windows Networking & Communications Group at Microsoft. "Adaptec's efforts in this area have been very helpful in enabling us to prove the capability and value of this technology." Adaptec and Microsoft demonstrated Adaptec's TCP/IP offload-enabled NIC running on Microsoft's Chimney Offload Architecture, highlighting the offload engine's ability to maximize the performance of network-intensive applications such as file serving, backup, and network attached storage. Adaptec's TOE technology offloads TCP/IP processing from the host to the accelerator card to reduce CPU utilization and make additional processing power available for networked applications. ...Adaptec profile Intel Issues Spec for Smartening Up Serial ATA SANTA CLARA, Calif. - May 7, 2003 - Broad adoption of the advanced features of Serial ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) was given a boost today with Intel Corporation's release of the Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) v0.95 specification.
AHCI is developed by an industry group chaired by Intel. The AHCI Contributor Group, also announced today, consists of AMD, Dell, Marvell, Maxtor, Microsoft Corp., Red Hat, Seagate and StorageGear in addition to Intel. AHCI provides a standard interface to system driver/OS software for discovering and implementing such advanced SATA features as command queuing, hot plug and power management. AHCI-based platforms improve the performance of the storage sub-system significantly and advances adoption of AHCI-based host bus adaptors and software in the PC platform. "The development of AHCI has strong industry momentum," said Thomas Loza, Intel technology initiatives manager. "We believe this is a significant step in enabling the enhanced benefits of the SATA extensions." ...Intel profile QLogic Gains Fibre Channel Market Share ALISO VIEJO, Calif. - May 7, 2003 - QLogic Corp. today announced that it increased its share of revenues and units in the Fibre Channel component market and gained ground toward the #1 host bus adapter supplier position according to new research published by Gartner Dataquest entitled "Storage Network Infrastructure: FC SAN Component Market Share, 2002."
Exabyte Announces Ageement with IBM BOULDER, CO - May 6, 2003 - Exabyte Corporation announced today that IBM will offer Exabyte's next-generation VXA-2 tape drive as an optional internal storage component for its IBM eServer xSeries line of Intel processor-based servers.
VXA-2 will be available in xSeries servers beginning May 9. With a price point similar to DDS-4, VXA-2 provides users with more than twice the data rate and four times the storage capacity of DDS-4. "This agreement represents an exciting opportunity for Exabyte to dramatically increase its sales volume," said Tom Ward, president and CEO of Exabyte. "IBM's xSeries servers are top-sellers in Intel processor-based servers, and this agreement makes it easy for IBM's customers to select our VXA-2 tape drives when they buy servers." ...Exabyte profile Brocade and VERITAS Spin New Fabrics LAS VEGAS - May 6, 2003 - Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. and VERITAS Software Corporation today announced a joint development agreement in which VERITAS will develop volume management and storage resource management software technology for the Brocade SilkWorm® Fabric Application Platform. VERITAS will use the Brocade XPath API, the application-programming interface to the SilkWorm Fabric AP development environment, to port storage management software intelligence to the switch. Both companies are assigning engineering resources to the project and are demonstrating a prototype joint Brocade-VERITAS solution at VERITAS VISION, the annual VERITAS users conference, in Las Vegas this week. ...Brocade profile, ...VERITAS Software profile Imperial Releases Tuning Software for Optimizing I/O Throughput EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - May 6, 2003 - Imperial Technology today announced Serv2Stor, a new software product that enables IT organizations to optimize and tune I/O throughput between servers and storage.
Serv2Stor effectively illuminates server and storage device interaction. If an I/O throughput issue exists, Serv2Stor not only identifies if it's a result of a server or a storage issue, but details what the problem is, where the problem is, and provides information to allow an administrator to remedy the situation. Unlike simplistic and cumbersome modeling tools that rely upon averages, Serv2Stor uses actual real-time instrumented data to illuminate I/O flow and identify bottlenecks, imbalances, and misaligned parameters for prompt resolution. Serv2Stor for Solaris is available immediately with support for other operating environments planned for a future date. ...Imperial Technology profile See also:- testing and benchmarking SSDs, auto-caching SSD software and appliances Qualstar Appoints Business Development Manager in the UK SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - May 6, 2003 - Qualstar Corporation today announced that Martin Medhurst has joined the company as its Business Development Manager in Europe. Mr. Medhurst, who most recently served as Alliances Manager for Fujitsu Siemens Computers, will be responsible for expanding Qualstar's European Reseller Partner relationships. He will report to Mark Gilmore, Qualstar vice president of sales. Mr. Medhurst has previously held managerial and marketing positions with EMC, StorageTek and Hitachi Data Systems. In all cases, he has played a key role in successfully introducing new products into the European market. "Qualstar's reputation for designing and manufacturing top-quality products was a key factor in my decision to join the company," said Medhurst. "There is significant growth potential for tape-based data storage within the European market. It's my job to help Qualstar achieve a sizeable share of that market." Qualstar's European office is based in Chertsey in the UK. Phone 01932 895 380. ...Qualstar profile StorageTek's iSCSI based EchoView Eliminates Downtime LOUISVILLE, Colo. and SWC - May 6, 2003 - StorageTek has launched EchoView™, a data protection iSCSI appliance that revolutionizes data protection and availability.
"Disk-to-disk backup and mirroring are becoming critical components in companies' data protection and business continuity efforts," said Richard Villars, vice president, Storage Systems at IDC. "The addition of EchoView to StorageTek's existing portfolio of data protection solutions is a confirmation of disk-based backup systems improving cost effectiveness and interoperability with existing tape-based backup hardware and software solutions." Aims Community College, in Greeley Colo., has been testing an early copy of EchoView since January. In February, the college experienced a real data corruption event and lost its help desk database. According to David Urano, Aims Data Center operations manager, "Our team was able to restore the database to minutes before the corruption took place. In this real-world experience, EchoView met and exceeded our expectations. We are very pleased with the product." EchoView protects data at the block level by saving it to cost-effective secondary disk. It backs up views of the data rather than live data, allowing users to completely eliminate the backup window. Using patent-pending technology, EchoView timestamps and journals each update, giving it the ability to present virtual views of each protected volume as that data appeared at any point in time. This gives users the ability to recover at disk-to-disk speeds to a point in time just before a data loss occurred. EchoView is open and flexible. It protects data stored on any vendors' disk and has been successfully tested with several leading vendors' backup and restore software. EchoView differs from failover technology like mirroring in that it protects data against hardware and software failure, environmental disasters, malicious viruses and end-user faults such as deletions and overwrites. EchoView is currently at several customer sites and is expected to ship in limited availability later this month. The first product in the EchoView family, the EchoView E400 for Windows 2000 and Solaris clients protects approximately 400GB of customer data and will cost approximately $50,000. ...StorageTek profile FIA Targets Midrange Market with NAS Appliance Anaheim, Calif. - May 6, 2003 - At Storage World Conference today, FIA, Inc. introduced the POPnetserver 8000, a family of NAS appliances optimized for superior performance, high availability, and simplified data management across multiple operating environments. The rack-optimized, 2U NAS appliance is designed for mid-sized firms, enterprise departments and workgroups, and vertical markets with a critical need to store, retrieve, and move data files fast. FIA's new NAS appliance can store up to 2 terabytes of data and features eight front-load hot-swappable disk drives - each with a dedicated ATA 133MHz controller for faster access – enabling network administrators to add or change drives without taking the system offline. An integrated SCSI Ultra 160 controller supports an external tape backup, with additional support available for dual Ethernet controllers and fiber gigabit networking. The POPnetserver 8000 uses a high-bandwidth I/O system architecture that supports a dedicated triple-peer PCI-X/PCI (64-bit/32-bit) data path and integrates dual quad disk controllers, which combine to provide a bandwidth of up to 533 megabytes per second. The unit is pre-configured for RAID 5 and can also be configured with RAID 0, 1 or 5 plus hot spare, which provides automatic fail-over protection. The new NAS system includes FIA's powerful POPfiler OS software, which ensures easy management from anywhere on the network and enables seamless sharing of information among network clients. It supports heterogeneous network environments – including Windows, Linux, UNIX, Apple, and Netware – and for system compatibility supports Microsoft's Active Directory Services, access control lists, UNIX Network Information Services, SNMP, group quotas, and environment-monitoring tools. High-reliability features such as server-to-server replication and snapshot backup provide disaster recovery, and for further data protection, the POPnetserver 8000 supports VERITAS Backup Exec, CA BrightStor, and other leading third-party backup software. Dual-redundant hot-plug power supplies and cooling fans connected to independent power sources provide additional protection. The POPnetserver 8000 is available now worldwide at suggested retail prices starting at $7,999 (960 gigabytes), $11,999 (1.44 terabytes), and $15,999 (2 terabytes). ...FIA Storage Systems profile GlassHouse Wins Deal with Washington State Digital Archives Project Framingham, MA and Olympia, WA - May 6 2003 - GlassHouse Technologies, Inc today announced that it has won a contract and is providing consulting services to the Washington State Digital Archives Project, the first state digital archives in the United States. The scope of the consulting engagement includes a feasibility analysis of three key components of the Digital Archives project: SANs, Converting from Legacy Software and Data, and Data Archiving. GlassHouse consultants are assessing the feasibility of a variety of storage, data conversion and archiving technologies for the project, as well as making recommendations, providing preliminary design parameters, documenting recommendations and best practices, and providing proof-of-concept testing via GlassHouse's Storage Interoperability Lab Services. "While many states in America are talking about digitally archiving their records, Washington State has taken the lead with a bold, visionary plan to make the state's vast legal and historical records - everything from homesteading records to the history of state law and historical records about state lands, parks and natural resources - available to citizens through a central digital repository," said Richard Scannell, GlassHouse Vice President of Strategy. "We are pleased that Washington State chose us for this challenging project." The Washington State Digital Archives project is an unprecedented effort to capture and digitize state and local government electronic records, preserving a comprehensive record of the state's history. Spearheaded by the Office of the Secretary of State, Archives and Records Management Division, the project has as its goal the transfer of the recorded history of the State into a single, widely-available digital repository. Washington State broke ground on the building which will house the Digital Archives April 7, 2003. Ultimately, the digital archives will hold 800 terabytes of information. The new Digital Archives building, currently being constructed on the campus of Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA, is scheduled to open its doors in 2004. ...GlassHouse Technologies profile Robust Digital Solutions Moves to Larger Facility Rancho Santa Margarita, CA - May 6, 2003 - Robust Digital Solutions announces their move to a larger facility is complete. Because of the growing response to the more cost effective RAID product lines, Robust Digital Solutions has moved to a larger facility in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. The move to the new location is now complete and business operations are back to normal. "Now that Apple is helping to educate the smaller sized businesses about RAID solutions, Robust Digital Solutions' activity has increased significantly", says Ken Vitto, Sales Director of Robust Digital Solutions, "our solutions that are priced below Apple's RAID are getting a lot of attention." ...Robust Digital Solutions profile Toigo Launches Institute for Storage Training SWC, Anaheim, CA - May 6, 2003 - Jon William Toigo today announced the creation of the Data Management Institute, a membership organization to establish a professional identity for those who administer, manage and design data storage infrastructure for their organizations. The Data Management Institute will provide a location for end users to share their problems and solutions in day-to-day storage operations and compare experiences with specific storage products implemented in their shops. The institute will also offer a training and certification program designed to educate and empower IT workers who specialize in data management and storage administration. Toigo will serve as acting Chairman until the organization becomes self-sustaining, at which time it will be a membership driven, end user organization. The Data Management Institute is the second of two companies launched by Toigo today, with the other being Toigo Partners International LLC, a new IT research and analysis firm that adopts a "demand-side" rather than a "supply-side" perspective on technologies such as storage. ...Data Management Institute profile IQ Biometrix Acquires Network Storage Solutions FREMONT, Calif. & CHANTILLY, Va - May 5, 2003 - IQ Biometrix Inc. announced today that it has entered into a letter of intent for the acquisition of Network Storage Solutions. The transaction, which is expected to close this quarter, is subject to required approvals and other closing conditions. "This acquisition is expected to expand the company's geographic presence and leverage its technology into new markets," said Bill Scigliano, CEO and President of IQ Biometrix. "In addition, it combines the strength of the Network Storage Solutions brand, the breadth of our product line and our global reach with NSS's technical excellence, outstanding products and time-to-market." IQB will issue 12.5 million shares of its common stock to NSS and options for 3.5 million shares of IQB common stock vesting over 3 years to NSS management and staff. "The acquisition of NSS should provide several key elements to help IQ Biometrix achieve continued development and succeed as a major provider of facial composite, recognition and tracking systems," said Scigliano. "First, NSS is a fast-growing company with a high-quality customer base of leading global companies and several government agencies, which meets our goal of achieving geographic diversity. Second, they offer a wide range of competitive products with state-of-the-art, full-functioned technology that meets the needs of our customer's storage requirements. The NSS software, SPANStor, is the foundation to support SRM and additional emerging requirements for the storage marketplace." ...IQ Biometrix, ...Network Storage Solutions profile CNT Completes Acquisition of Inrange MINNEAPOLIS - May 5, 2003 - CNT announced today the completion of the acquisition of Inrange Technologies Corporation. This powerful and industry unique combination will provide all customer segments - from mid-range to enterprise - a complete suite of storage networking products and services for local, metro and remote environments. In addition, with this expanded base of products and services, the resulting company will be better positioned to meet customer needs and provide a broader, more comprehensive line of complete end-to-end storage networking solutions. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, CNT has acquired all outstanding shares of Inrange in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $190 million, or $2.31 per Inrange share. CNT will record a one-time charge associated with the acquisition in the second quarter of fiscal 2003. CNT believes it will now realize a global leadership positions in Fibre Channel and wide area network switching, and operations worldwide with combined fiscal 2002 pro-forma annual revenues of approximately $435 million. CNT will continue to provide a full range of storage networking products, solutions and services for local, metropolitan and wide are network, including an integrated product line of Fibre Channel Directors, Storage Directors and Storage Routers. Thomas G. Hudson, chairman, president and CEO of CNT, said, "The completion of this acquisition is great news for the customers, partners, shareholders and employees of CNT and Inrange. Not only are we strengthening CNT's portfolio of storage networking products and solutions, we are also expanding our expertise and solutions worldwide. We are in a better position than ever to delivery business continuity solutions to our customers that drive business efficiencies in their organizations and strong return on investment." ...CNT profile, ...INRANGE Technologies profile iStor's New iSCSI IRVINE, Calif. - May 5, 2003 - iStor Networks, Inc. today announced a patent-pending technology for IP storage that aggregates the capacity of as many as 8 independent IP storage systems into a single system by using inexpensive iSCSI links. The groundbreaking technology expands the number of serial ATA (SATA) disk drives in the same storage domain from 16 to 128; this will enable IP storage systems to scale from entry- to enterprise-level – with more than 30 terabytes of data storage – while spreading out the cost of controllers for a better cost/capacity ratio and a much lower total cost of ownership. "The new iStor technology delivers an essential expansion capability at an affordable price," said Michael Karp, senior storage analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, a Boulder, Colo.-based technology analyst firm. "It will help bring serial ATA into prime time – and IP storage along with it." The iStor technology effectively overcomes a critical SATA limitation that has been a major roadblock to the scaling of IP storage. Although there are still only 16 SATA drives per controller, this new technology, which aggregates multiple Gigabit Ethernet iSCSI ports, allows for relatively inexpensive "expansion" controllers to be connected to robust, fully redundant "command" controllers using standard Ethernet switches. As a result, all drives are logically connected and can be managed as a single entity. With this technology, OEMs of target IP storage networking products can offer cost-effective entry-level solutions by limiting the number of front-end iSCSI ports and back-end SATA connections, as well as much higher-end solutions by utilizing all eight 1-GbE iSCSI front ends. "Our OEM customers will be able to provide a wider range of iSCSI solutions for primary storage, fixed content storage, content addressable storage, disk-to-disk backup, and other IP-based storage applications," said Peter Cmaylo, iStor's vice president of business development. "At the same time, they will greatly reduce the need for additional engineering development that would directly impact product cost." According to Cmaylo, iStor will soon deploy its new iSCSI Expansion Technology in scalable iSCSI command and expansion network storage server blades. ...iStor Networks profile Spectra Logic Compares iSCSI to Fibre Channel BOULDER, Colo. - May 5, 2003 - Recently, Spectra Logic conducted benchmark tests establishing that iSCSI backup performance is essentially equal to Fibre Channel for Microsoft Exchange database backups. These results validate expectations that iSCSI presents an important new opportunity for IT organizations to implement storage consolidation at a fraction of the cost of Fibre Channel. Spectra Logic engineers simulated a realistic customer environment by performing a hot backup operation of a Microsoft Exchange 2000 database. The database was backed up first over a Gigabit Ethernet network using iSCSI and then repeated over a 1Gigabit Fibre Channel SAN. The results were surprising. At 33 MB/sec for iSCSI and only 35 MB/sec for Fibre Channel there was effectively no difference in performance. This data confirms that in a Microsoft Exchange environment it is the software and server hardware configuration that determines backup performance, not the storage network. Given equal performance, with an 88% cost advantage iSCSI should quickly become the backup consolidation network of choice for Microsoft Exchange environments. "If the e-mail server cannot stream data fast enough to fill a Fibre Channel pipe, why pay for one?" said Sharon Isaacson, senior product manager, Spectra Logic. "With much lower acquisition and management costs, iSCSI-based storage networking performance is a much better match to the performance capabilities of the typical Exchange application environment." ...Spectra Logic profile IEI Enhances its Popular 1U NAS Taipei, Taiwan - May 5, 2003 - IEI today announced the launch of two successors to its popular NAS-4100 unit the NAS-4120. Users will now have the choice of different configurations depending on the level of requirements needed. These two new products the NAS-4120A and the NAS-4120B are based on the same 1U 19" rack-mountable chassis as the NAS-4100, but are additionally equipped with dual Gigabit-Ethernet LAN ports, offering load balancing and network fail-over, increasing the dependability and performance of the units. "What we're effectively doing is taking a great product and making it even better," said Roy Chuang, Head of IEI's NAS Division. "We're making the unit more powerful, and adding more features that end-users look for in a high-end storage unit." Four hot-swappable IDE drives offer a capacity up to 1TB, and the units are supported with RAID 0, 1 and 5 data protection. The NAS-4120A is powered by a 1.2 GHz Intel Celeron CPU and supported by 256 MB RAM, with the NAS-4120B being equipped with a 1.26GHz Intel Tualatin CPU, with 512 MB RAM, aimed at more demanding high-power enterprise users. Additionally the NAS-4120B comes with 512KB of Layer 2 Cache, increasing the speed and performance of the unit. As well as the hardware changes, IEI has also added advanced features in to the in-house developed firmware, and the NAS-4120 series is now available with journaling file system, snapshot, remote replication and on-line virus scanning, ensuring the security of users data at all times. Whether the network is using Windows, MAC OS, Linux, Unix or Novell, or a combination thereof, IEI's NAS offers the ideal solution to ensure instant accessibility to all files and data stored. Available with immediate effect from its extensive network of distribution channels across the world, the compact 1U NAS-4120 series offers an incredible mix of performance and features at a very aggressively pitched price. ...IEI profile Sony's Roadmap for the Future of High Performance Tape Editor:- May 5, 2003 - a new white paper published today on STORAGEsearch describes "the Future of High Performance Tape Technology". Written by John Woelbern, director of OEM marketing & sales Sony Electronics' Tape Storage Solutions Div in San Jose Calif., the article looks directly at the threat from disk to disk backup, and doesn't blink. The omens have been negative recently for tape storage. Analyzing the company results of tape library vendors during the last year suggests that the segment as a whole has declined in revenue. Unless users have decided to stop doing backups on their increasing volumes of data, the most likely explanation is that we're seeing a real shift away from network tape backup. Vendors have been talking about it for years, but it's actually happening now. Another sign leading to this conclusion:- in April 2003 reader pageviews for disk to disk backup on STORAGEsearch overtook pageviews for tape backup for the first time. We're now at a watershed where users no longer have to choose tape just because their forebears did. This article by Sony explains why they believe that their SAIT tape technology has a viable long term future and why it will be better than disk backup for high end users even when the cost of disks drops below tape. I admit I was skeptical at first. But this major article makes interesting reading whichever side of the fence you're looking from. ...read the article, ...Sony profile PALO ALTO, Calif. - May 2, 2003 - HP today announced a staffing and operational realignment within its Enterprise Systems Group (ESG) intended to accelerate long-term growth and streamline operations across HP Services and ESG. Among other changes to ESG... Creation of one hardware business unit, now called Enterprise Storage and Servers (ESS), under Senior Vice President Scott Stallard. ESS consolidates the existing units of Business Critical Systems, Industry Standard Servers and Network Storage Solutions into one global business unit for streamlined hardware operations. Stallard, who continues to report to ESG Executive Vice President Peter Blackmore, currently runs HP's Business Critical Systems unit and has extensive background in industry standard servers, UNIX and networking. Four product line vice presidents will report to Stallard: Rich Marcello for Business Critical Systems; Brad Anderson for Industry Standard Servers; Bob Shultz for Network Storage Solutions; and Pauline Nist for NonStop Servers. ...HP profile "Tape is a thing of the past" - says Nexsan WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. - May 1, 2003 - Nexsan Technologies today announced its participation at the Storage World Conference 2003 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, Calif., in Booth 509, May 5-7. In addition to exhibiting its line of award-winning storage solutions, Diamond Lauffin, Senior Executive Vice President of Nexsan Technologies, will be a featured speaker on Track B's Roundtable No. 6, entitled "What are the Tradeoffs Between Disk and Tape Backup Solutions," May 6 at 3:30 p.m. Lauffin joins fellow storage network experts from Avamar, Imation, Quantum and Sony to discuss and examine the long-term role for disk and tape storage as a backup recovery solution. "Not to tip my hand on what side of the topic I'll be speaking but I've got to reiterate that tape is a thing of the past while disk-based storage solutions, like the ones we design and build here at Nexsan, are how intelligent businesses backup today and into the future," said Lauffin. "It is sometimes beneficial to get a history lesson in how it used to be with tape before learning the better way with disk. Attendees from businesses faced with increasing storage growth and a mandate to reduce expenses should really benefit from our discussion." ...Nexsan Technologies profile Editor's comments:- is tape backup really a thing of the past? I checked the website statistics for STORAGEsearch.com to see which way the wind is blowing regarding reader activity, and future buying trends. Surprisingly during the last 3 months Disk to disk backup and Tape systems were neck and neck within a fraction of a percent. So it's more accurate to use the future perfect tense and say "tape systems will have been a thing of the past - soon." But not quite yet. ...Later:- He was right after all - see History of Enterprise Disk to Disk Backup |
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| Marketing Views | STORAGEsearch | SPARC Product Directory | ACSL - the publisher |
