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storage news - June 1-7, 2007

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flash SSD Jargon Explained
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Megabyte's selection of storage news
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There are hundreds of SSD articles on StorageSearch.com
Here are some examples.
  • RAM Cache Ratios in flash SSDs - it's important to know the underlying RAM cache architecture - even if you're happy with the R/W and IOPS performance.
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top news stories in recent months

May 2007

week 1 - MOSAID Promises 800MBps Flash SSDs
week 2 - STEC has $100 million SSD War Chest
week 3 - Catalyst Introduces 6Gb/s SAS Emulators
week 4 - A New $4 billion Non-Volatile Storage Company is Born

April 2007

week 1 - First 8Gbps Fibre Channel Protocol Analyzer
week 2 - Seagate Launches DIY Data Recovery Software
week 3 - Mellanox Demos 40Gb/s Over Copper
week 4 - CebaTech Launches iSCSI Chips

March 2007

week 1 - 60nm DRAM in Production
week 2 - Intel Enters the SSD Market
week 3 - Maxell Launches World's 1st iVDR Hard Drive
week 4 - Silicon Image Ships New Storage Processors

February 2007

week 1 - Mellanox Announces IPO Details
week 2 - SimpleTech Divests RAM Business Focuses on SSDs
week 3 - Aleratec Super Tower Duplicates 120 DVDs / Hour
week 4 - Hard Disk MTBF Specs Incredible
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Squeak! - 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 (160G in 2.5") 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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Idealstor Qualifies Terabyte Removable Disk Backup
GAITHERSBURG, MD - June 7, 2007 - Idealstor announced today that they have certified the new Hitachi 1TB disks for use with the Teralyte Removable disk backup system.

The successful testing and certification of the 1TB disks lets Idealstor offer all current and future customers the largest removable disk backup capacity on the market. The Idealstor Teralyte (staring price $1,995) is designed to offer the small to medium sized business a fast, affordable and reliable alternative to tape backup. ...Idealstor profile, ...Hitachi profile, Disk to disk backup, Hard disk drives


Music Publisher Chooses SANmelody

READING, UK - June 7, 2007 - The world's largest classical music publisher Boosey & Hawkes is using DataCore's SANmelody.

With 2 SANmelody disk servers, the system provides virtualisation, synchronous mirroring and auto failover for path and data, resulting in high availability. Paul Vernon, Head of IT, commented "We recognised that direct attached storage had distinct limitations. Constantly resizing and reallocating disk space and purchasing additional disk was becoming an ongoing challenge. We also knew that we needed to engage a more effective business continuity solution, to allow us to meet compliance and service agreements and allow 24x7 data exchange across the globe." ...DataCore profile, ...Boosey & Hawkes profile, SAN software


SiliconSystems Founder Named Entrepreneur Award Finalist

ALISO VIEJO, Calif - June 6, 2007 - SiliconSystems, Inc. today announced that its co-founder and CEO, Michael Hajeck, has been selected as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2007 Award.

Ernst & Young recognizes outstanding entrepreneurs on a regional, national and global level who are building and leading dynamic, growing businesses. Winners will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held on June 19. Under Hajeck's leadership, SiliconSystems has achieved exponential revenue growth since its founding in 2002. ...award finalists, ...SiliconSystems profile, industrial SSDs


FileTek Acquires the Trusted Edge

Rockville, MD - June 5, 2007 - FileTek, Inc. today announced that it has purchased substantially all of the assets, including the intellectual property, of Trusted Edge, Inc.

The Trusted Edge Desktop Data Management Suite classifies desktop-generated information and data assets according to their business value, enabling organizations to consistently enforce retention, disposal, and hold policies across all desktops within the enterprise. ...FileTek profile, Backup Software, Acquired storage companies

Editor's comments:- while we're on the subject of mergers and acquisitions I noticed a FileTek case study which shows how their StorHouse product helped to combine the 50 terabytes of data in the MCI-WorldCom merger a decade ago.



Data Compression Wiz Storewiz Secures $9 million Funding

SAN JOSE, Calif - June 5, 2007 - Storewiz Inc. today announced that it has closed a $9 million round of funding with leading venture capital firm Sequoia Capital.

The investment by Sequoia enables Storewiz to aggressively expand its sales and marketing teams to meet soaring demand for its realtime, transparent data compression appliances. The company has applied for 18 worldwide patents, which are pending for its NAS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel applications.

"Our investment strategy is to search out those companies that we believe will have the greatest impact in the industry in which they perform," said Shmil Levy, Sequoia Partner. "We believe Storewiz to be that market disrupter and feel that their leadership in the data compression industry is something that will not soon be overcome." ...Storewiz profile, Storage Software, VCs in Storage


Data Robotics Simplifies Consumer Storage Expansion

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - June 5, 2007 - Data Robotics introduces Drobo a fully automated storage robot designed for the small business and consumer market.

Drobo is a small desktop system that connects via USB. Inside are 4 bays that can accept any standard 3.5" SATA internal hard drives which just slide in without requiring any tools or carriers. Drobo acts as one large drive, making it easier to find what you've stored on it. When lights are green, your data is safe. When lights are yellow, your Drobo is 85% full, so just add or replace a drive. With red lights, replace or add a drive immediately. No software or configuration consoles are needed.

Drobo automatically configures itself for data protection. No choosing RAID levels or manually shuffling data between multiple external hard drives. When starting with more than one drive, if a drive fails, your data is safe and Drobo immediately moves unprotected data to any available protected space on remaining disks. ...Data Robotics profile


MicroNet Offers Instant RAID for SMBs

TORRANCE, CA - June 5, 2007 - MicroNet Technology today introduced the Platinum RAID Pro.

With upto 5 terabytes (price $4,499) it combines the highest capacity of any eSATA disk array on the market and requires no drivers to be installed.
The unit is factory-configured for RAID 5 so users can simply plug it in and immediately enjoy the benefits of parity RAID data protection.

The capacity breakthrough achieved by MicroNet is the result of design innovations in the host bus adapter and RAID controller to eliminate the 2 terabyte volume size limitation that restricts the available capacity of alternative eSATA-based disk arrays.
news image MicroNet - click for profile
To take advantage of this host computers must be running a modern operating system, including Windows Server 2003 and above, Windows Vista, recent Linux releases and Mac OS X, that is not burdened with older ATA address limitations. ...MicroNet profile, RAID systems


SanDisk Announces 64GB Notebook SSDs

MILPITAS, CALIF - June 4, 2007 - SanDisk Corp today expanded its line of solid state drives with the introduction of 64GB 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch products. SanDisk SSDs offer a sustained read rate of 67 megabytes per second and a random read rate of 7,000 IOPS. As a result, notebooks equipped with a 2.5-inch SanDisk SSD can boot Vista Enterprise 18 seconds faster than when using hard drives. ...SanDisk profile


Flash SSDs are Fastest Climber on STORAGEsearch.com

Editor:- June 4, 2007 - STORAGEsearch.com has updated its monthly list of the top subjects viewed by storage searchers in May. The top 5 subjects were:-

(1) - Disk to disk backup (no change)
(2) - Solid state disks (no change)
(3) - Hard drives (no change)
(4) - NAS (no change)
(5) - Flash - based Solid State Disks - new to top 20

Readership was 11% higher than the year ago period.


Solid Data Systems Sees 2007 as a Turning Point for SSDs

SANTA CLARA, Calif - June 4, 2007 - Solid Data Systems, Inc. announced today a market-driven shift in its corporate strategy.

With present day on-line and telecommunications databases struggling to keep up with ever increasing transaction rates, CEO Wade Tuma of Solid Data Systems is seeing renewed interest in Solid-State Disks as an alternative to traditional disks and farms of servers full of memory. "Customers with high-transaction rate database environments are no longer viewing Solid Data's SSD products as 'nice to have,' but as truly necessary components of their infrastructure."

During the last 5 years, the use of server main memory to cache highly used data or to keep all data in server memory has allowed most database managers to maintain acceptable throughput and services to their end users. However, as database requirements have evolved beyond the memory capacity of a single server, these solutions have become impractical and costly.

"As the cost of memory has continued to come down, we are seeing a natural evolution towards memory-based storage, but servers full of memory are not the answer," said Wade Tuma. "Now is the time to start considering the cost and simplicity of SSDs compared to a passel of servers full of memory. As an example, SSDs in 2007 provide 10x the capacity at the same price as SSDs sold in 2002 and eliminate the need to segment databases over multiple servers."

"In addition to the traditional problems of running large transaction databases, the epidemic growth of servers full of memory creates a challenge with regard to manageability, power consumption, space, and low MTBF" said Mark Hayashida, Director of Systems Architecture at Solid Data Systems. "Our customers benefit from using our trusted solid-state storage systems by reducing complexity, maintenance, and licensing costs."

Solid Data (who has key partnerships with HP, IBM, and Sun) intends to keep growing its markets in the telecommunications, trading and government markets. Solid Data was the first vendor to offer NEBS-certified SSD products and its exclusive Permarack feature means that every active component is modularized and can be serviced in minutes without de-racking. ...Solid Data Systems profile


Iterative Decoding will Increase Hard Disk Capacity

MILPITAS, Calif - June 4, 2007 - LSI Corp today announced that it is sampling new hard drive read channel chip.

The LSI TrueStore RC2500 for notebook and RC8800 for desktop applications are the industry's first available 65nm read channels to use iterative decoding. Iterative decoding is the next generation of recording channel architecture that enables significant improvements in signal-to-noise ratio for next generation of hard drives using perpendicular recording technology. This gain in SNR increases the amount of data that an HDD can store. LSI expects disk drive makers to begin shipping the new read channels in volume during the second half of 2008.

"Hard disk drive OEMs are hungry to increase the capacity per-platter of disk drives, but they have little appetite for power consumption," according to John Rydning, IDC's research manager for hard disk drives. ...LSI profile, storage chips

See also:- article:- Iterative Decoding and Equalization for 2-D Recording Channels (pdf)



Cenatek Launches ExpressCard SSD

Redding, CA - June 1, 2007 - Cenatek, Inc. announced today the availability of its new ExpressCard flash solid state disk.

The Rocket Drive Micro is a removable SSD that delivers a high-performance (30MB/s sequential reads, 21MB/s sequential writes) low-cost way to enhance system performance by up to 60%. The Rocket Drive Micro is an ExpressCard form-factor, high speed solid state disk designed for use with any ExpressCard equipped laptop or desktop. Rocket Drive Micro can be used with the ReadyBoost feature in Microsoft Vista to automatically store small file segments that are very slow to transfer via mechanical disks. ...Cenatek profile, Removable Storage
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