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storage history - 2007, February week 4 |
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| SSD jargon the Fastest SSDs the Top 10 SSD Companies Is the SSD Market Recession-Proof? Enterprise flash - the Survive and Thrive Guide Exiting the Astrological Age of Enterprise SSD Pricing | ||||||
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| iSCSI HBA Support Inside the Linux Kernel .............................. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| ALISO
VIEJO, Calif - February 28, 2007 - QLogic Corp today announced the
availability of the industry's first iSCSI HBA functionality to be accepted into
the "upstream" Linux kernel. For the first time Linux system administrators can easily deploy fully tested and supported iSCSI networks right out of the box. QLogic worked with the Linux community to enhance the iSCSI transport (user as well as kernel mode) to incorporate iSCSI offload HBA support into the Linux kernel within the open iSCSI model. This includes definition of how iSCSI offload HBAs appear, target discovery, creation and management of offloaded iSCSI sessions, and provisions for coherent use of open iSCSI and HBA-specific device management. These changes benefit not only QLogic customers, but other iSCSI HBA vendors and users of software initiators who can now seamlessly manage iSCSI via the new framework. ...QLogic profile Hard Disk MTBF Specs Incredible - Say User Reports Editor:- February 28, 2007 - an article published today in Channel Insider - "Hard Disk MTBF: Flap or Farce? - casts serious doubt on the inflated MTBF claims made by all hard disk manufacturers. Reviewing a number of recently published reliability studies from end users - the author David Morgenstern says "...there's a gap between the reliability expectations of manufacturers and customers. The current MTBF model isn't accounting accurately for how drives are handled in the field and how they function inside systems." ...read the article, storage reliability Good News about SSDs Attracts Another Pilgrim Editor:- February 27, 2007 - Texas Memory Systems has published a case study showing how European fashion jewelry company Pilgrim got a 20x speedup throughout its enterprise applications using a RamSan-400 solid state disk. PILGRIM's configuration was a two-tiered SQL server run by Axapta. They were able to eliminate the network from the investigation after discovering their SAN had bandwidth to spare. Eventually the culprit was discovered – the storage subsystem, currently an IBM DS4300. While the system was designed to be fast, it was unable to keep up with the intense, random IO of burst periods. Pilgrim's SysAdmin Anders Schack Petersen first considered expanding the lagging storage subsystem. Fortunately he was also closely following the development of online massive multiplayer game EVE-Online. Its developers, CCP Games, had used a RamSan SSD to eliminate performance bottleneck associated with up to 30,000 concurrent users on a SQL Server database. Petersen said "Their excitement with the RamSan led us to contact them about their experiences, which in turn led us to try a demo version..." ...read the article, ...Texas Memory Systems profile, ...Pilgrim Free Tool Helps You Assess Benefits of SRM Tampa, FL - February 27, 2007 - NORTHERN today announces the release of a free storage analysis tool that gives organizations a fast and simple way of assessing capacity utilization and determining their need for Storage Resource Management. Nearly all organizations are experiencing massive data growth, creating a need to manage that data. But not all these organizations recognize the need for a dedicated SRM tool. Northern's free storage analysis tool gives managers all they information they to begin the process of deciding whether to implement an SRM solution. Users simply point the tool to a given path and within minutes they'll receive an easy-to-read report on available space, files types stored (i.e., media files), who your top "users" are as well as "age" information on the files that are candidates for archiving/deletion/migration. ...Northern profile Small Business Technology Magazine Honors Big Seagate SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif - February 27, 2007 - Seagate Technology today announced that its Mirra Sync and Share Personal Server was a 2006 Product of the Year Finalist for the second year in a row in Small Business Technology Magazine. Seagate's product provides automatic, continuous backup to a central location on a small office or home network. It also includes a free online service for remotely accessing files and a 3 year data guarantee. If a user is unable to recover lost data Seagate will help restore it and spend up to $1,000 for forensic data recovery services to do so. ...Seagate profile HP Acquires PolyServe PALO ALTO, Calif. - February 26, 2007 - HP today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire PolyServe, Inc. HP says the acquisition provides an entry point into the enterprise NAS market and allows the company to extend NAS technology to blades. ...HP profile, ...PolyServe profile Marvell Promises Aggressive Innovation in SAS Chips Santa Clara, California - February 26, 2007 - Marvell today announced its entrance into the Serial Attached SCSI controller market by offering host and RAID controller silicon and software solutions for workstations, servers, and external storage systems. Marvell's new SAS controllers will complement the Company's strong market presence in the SATA host controller market, and will offer high performance coupled with a significant reduction in both power consumption and footprint versus other solutions. Marvell will be the only silicon provider to offer a true end-to-end solution for both SAS and SATA host controllers and hard disk drive electronics. "Marvell's solutions will raise the bar for performance, power consumption, footprint, and cost-effectiveness in a silicon market that has been devoid of aggressive innovation," says Dr. Alan Armstrong, VP of Marketing for Marvell's Storage Business Group. "We can capitalize on this market of too few viable competitors by leveraging our strong enterprise storage expertise to offer performance and cost advantages to our customers." ...Marvell profile, storage chips, RAID controllers Nexsan Launches Searchable Archive Appliance WOODLAND HILLS, Calif - February 26, 2007 - Nexsan Technologies today announced its Assureon SA Searchable Archive Appliance. It's a disk-based archiving solution with over 10T of raw storage with a base price of $65,000. Users can search for documents by date; special fields such as title, location, size and author; and keywords and/or phrases. Document-level security ensures that users will not see documents for which they do not have access permission. Assureon SA is a second-generation CAS appliance that allows simple integration for archiving, e-discovery, email and more. Its secure storage architecture delivers a comprehensive array of intelligent features including constant monitoring of file integrity, Lifecycle Management, file authentication, missing file alerts, and support for remote replication. Data integrity and security is assured with RAID 6 protection, which prevents the risk of data loss even if two drives fail, and WORM disk functionality that provides non-erasable, non-rewritable functionality. ...Nexsan Technologies profile Editor's note:- when Nexsan launched its first Assureon system in August 2005 the cost was "approximately $4,500 per terabyte". Adding search seems to have increased the price by about 40%. Search seems to be a good value added feature. SMART Launches 2.5" SATA SSDs FREMONT, Calif - February 26, 2007 - SMART Modular Technologies Inc. has launched a new line of 2.5" solid state drives. SMART's 20GB XceedUltra U100 has a SATA interface and achieves achieves sustained read speeds of 100MB/s and write speeds of 60MB/s. Compared to a traditional 7,200 RPM SATA hard drive, the XceedUltra U100 demonstrates a 5X speed improvement in sequential write speeds and a 2X speed improvement in sequential read speeds. A 40GB version is scheduled for release in spring 2007. "Solid state drives are accelerating their presence across enterprise, military, medical, and industrial markets. With the lower price points for NAND flash, SSD suppliers are seeing more opportunities for the application of their products and are now targeting emerging and highly data-intensive applications traditionally reserved for hard disk drives," observed Walker Blount, SSD and Mobile HDD analyst at Web-Feet Research. ...SMART Modular Technologies profile Editor's comments:- the full text of this press release misleadingly suggests the XceedUltra is the fastest 2.5" SATA flash SSD. But a quick storage search reveals that Mtron's 2.5" products have a write speed which is 33% faster. If speed is your thing then RAM based SSDs still have an edge over flash. Curtis has a 3.5" fibre-channel SSD which sustains 190MB/s and in rackmount form factor Texas Memory Systems exceeds 3,000 MB/s. What's really interesting is that the capacity gap between HDDs and SSDs is closing in the smaller form factors like 1.8" and 2.5". And in a few years SSDs may offer more capacity in these smaller packages - making them more attractive for high density blade server applications. Overland's New RAID Box Now Available SAN DIEGO - February 26, 2007 - Overland Storage, Inc. today announced the ULTAMUS RAID 1200 storage array now is available. With 4Gbps Fibre Channel host connectivity it houses up to 12 SATA II or SAS drives and up to 9T of storage capacity in each compact 2U rack-mountable enclosure. The extensible system can scale up to 60 drives and accommodates upto 45 TB of data. MSRP of $18,325 starts from $18,325. ...Overland Storage profile, RAID systems Vista Loves WD Hard Drives (Says WD) LAKE FOREST, Calif - February 26, 2007 - hard drives from Western Digital Corp. earned the highest score possible when tested with the Windows Experience Index utility, a new feature in Windows Vista. The results indicate that the new Vista OS will run optimally when installed on WD Caviar SE16 7,200 RPM 500G and WD Raptor 10,000 RPM 150G SATA hard drives. The Windows Experience Index measures performance capabilities of PCs and their components and calculates a score telling users how well the OS will run using those components. WD tested the drives in its performance lab in Lake Forest, Calif. ...Western Digital profile, Hard disk drives Will Killing RAID - "Do No Harm" Editor:- February 23, 2007 - the death of RAID in the enterprise can be inferred from an article published in Techworld which discusses Google's distributed file system. Google, best known for its web search engine, also makes storage appliances and this week launched a software suite called Google Apps to compete with Microsoft's Office. Google Apps also includes 10 GBs of online storage per user and costs just $50 per year. That must be enough to send shivers down the spines of many in the online storage business. How long will it be before Google sets its sights on the storage infrastructure market? Their company overview says "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." That places RAID, backup, virtualization and everything else in the frame. Although it might take a few years - if successful - Google could become one of the top 20 storage companies in the world. The only self limiting factor might be that they are a pure Linux company. So until operating systems become obsolete - there might be a breathing space for heterogeneous storage vendors. ...read the article, ...Google profile, article:- The Google File System (pdf) Samsung Shipped 0.1 billion OneNAND Flash Chips in 2006 Seoul, Korea – February 22, 2007 - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced that it produced 117 million units of its 512Mb OneNAND Flash fusion memory in 2006, a 130% increase in volume from 2005. The popular device is the first fusion memory chip, a device that fuses a single-level-cell NAND core with SRAM and logic elements to emulate a NOR Flash interface. First targeted at the handset market, OneNAND has also been used in a wide range of products including digital still cameras, hybrid hard drives and set-top boxes for HDTV. ...Samsung profile the Burning Issue of Data Recovery Editor:- February 22, 2007 - if you want to see a disk drive burning - Disklabs has recently put a tv news clip on YouTube. Disklabs recovered data from a bunch of hard drives and saved the jobs of 100 people in a UK aircraft logistics company. ...view the video clip, ...Disklabs profile, Data Recovery New Storage Thinking Tank Editor:- February 22, 2007 - a new (to me) storage publication is Wikibon. It's tagline is "The Storage Thinking Tank". It includes articles, opinions and comments about a range of storage issues. It also has a bee in its logo and so I've added it to my article:- Animal Brands and Metaphors in the Storage Market. ...Wikibon, Storage publications |
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