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2007, October week 2, Storage news

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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


October 10, 2007 - The U.S. International Trade Commission has voted to institute an investigation of certain hard disk drives. The products at issue in this investigation are hard disk drives made using dissipative ceramic bonding tips, components of such drives, and products containing such drives. The investigation is based on a complaint filed by Steven F. Reiber and Mary L. Reiber of Lincoln, CA, on September 10, 2007.

The complaint alleges violations of section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 in the importation into the US of certain hard disk drives, components thereof, and products containing the same that infringe patents owned by the complainants.

The ITC has identified the following as respondents in this investigation:- Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba, HP and Dell. The ITC has not yet made any decision on the merits of the case.

Editor's comments:- stories about storage patents are a yawn for most readers. The difference in this case is that - depending which way the ITC decides - one possible outcome could be a ban on hard drive imports - until a satisfactory licensing deal was done.


Chestnut Ridge, NY - October 10, 2007 - LeCroy Corp announces the launch of a new 13 GHz Test Solution for next generation serial data standards. With a bandwidth of 13GHz, a sample rate of 40GS/s, and 100Mpts/ch memory; LeCroy's SDA13000 troubleshoots challenging physical layer problems during developmentand compliance testing of next generation serial data standards such as FB-DIMM, Fibre Channel, SAS, SATA, InfiniBand and PCI-Express. ...LeCroy profile, Storage Analyzers


FREMONT, CA - October 9, 2007 - Panasas, Inc. announced the Panasas Tiered Parity Architecture which the company claims is the most significant extension to disk array data reliability since Panasas CTO Garth Gibson's pioneering RAID research at UC-Berkeley in 1988. With the release of the ActiveScale 3.2 operating environment, Panasas will offer an innovative end-to-end Tiered-Parity architecture that addresses the primary causes of storage reliability problems and provides the industry's first end-to-end data integrity checking capability.

Traditional RAID implementations protect against disk failures by calculating and storing parity data along with the original data.

In the past 10 years, individual disk drives have become approximately 10x more reliable and over 250x denser than those protected by the first generation RAID designs in the late 1980s. Unfortunately, the number of disk media failures expected during each read over the surface of a disk grows proportionately with the massive increase in density and has now become the most common failure mode for RAID. A RAID disk failure can cause loss of all the data in a volume which may be tens of terabytes or more. Recovery of the lost data from tape (assuming that is all backed up) can take days or even weeks.

Other storage system vendors recognize this same issue and apply RAID 6, often called double parity RAID, to address this problem. Double parity schemes only treat the symptom of the failure, not the cause, and they carry substantial cost and performance penalties, which will only get worse as disk drive densities continue to increase.

Panasas Tiered Parity architecture directly addresses the root cause of the problem, not the symptom. Solving the storage reliability problem caused by these new 1TB and larger disks allows Panasas to build larger and more reliable storage that allows users to get more value from their data and are less expensive for IT to support.

"The challenges with storage system reliability today have little to do with overall disk reliability, which is what RAID was designed to address in 1988. The issues that we see today are directly related to disk density and require new approaches. Most secondary disk failures today are the result of media errors, which have become 250x more likely to occur during a RAID failed-disk rebuild over the last 10 years," said Garth Gibson, CTO of Panasas. "Tiered Parity allows us to tackle media errors with an architecture that can counter the effects of increasing disk density. It also solves data path reliability challenges beyond those addressed by traditional RAID and extends parity checking out to the client or server node. Tiered Parity provides the only end-to-end data integrity checking capability in the industry." ...Panasas profile

Editor's comments:-
the problem of data corruption in large data sets because of obsolete technology assumptions built into hard disks, interface and RAID products has been looming for several years. You can see articles and research about this on the storage reliability page.

Is the solution more reliable hard drives? better interfaces? or a smarter storage OS? Users can't wait another 5 years for ideal solutions because the symptoms are there today when you look. The Panasas solution sounds like a pragmatic tactical approach for some customers - but the industry is a long way from a better storage reliability mousetrap.


SAN JOSE, Calif - October 9, 2007 - Quantum Corp today announced the Quantum Encryption Key Manager. Available for use with Quantum's Scalar tape libraries Q-EKM simply and cost-effectively centralizes key management for backup, restore and disaster recovery processes.

Q-EKM is a Java software program that generates, protects, stores and manages encryption keys. By generating encryption keys out of the data path or "out of band," Q-EKM does not impact backup performance and is application agnostic, ensuring easier and faster decryption of data from LTO-4 media.

In contrast, solutions that utilize an application-based key manager may transmit "in band," using backup resources, or may require the same system that wrote the data to be used in the event of a restore. As a result, these solutions can be especially problematic in distributed enterprise environments running multiple backup applications and tape libraries. ...Quantum profile


Cambridge, Mass - October 9, 2007 - According to a recent market survey conducted by Dataupia Corp and the Business Intelligence Network, when it comes to data warehouse platforms, today's enterprises favor incremental augmentation over rip and replace solutions. 75% of those polled said it would take more than a year to revamp their infrastructure and implement a new data warehouse solution. Approximately half (53%) estimated it could take 1 to 3 years to gain budget approval for such a project. While nearly half (46%) reported that the cost would fall between $1 and $3 million.

The thought of revamping a data warehouse infrastructure was so daunting to enterprises that when asked the likelihood of their organization approving a new platform, respondents reported that only 20% would be likely to do so even if a good business case could be made. ...Dataupia profile


Diamond Bar, Calif - October 8, 2007 - Advanced Media, Inc. announces its new 32GB SATA flash solid state disk drive. The new Ridata brand SSD offers performance that is almost twice as fast a conventional hard disk and uses half as much power. A 64GB version of this 2.5" SATA drive is promised in late November. The data transfer rates are 60MB/s for maximum sequential read and 48MB/s for maximum sequential write. MTBF is quoted as more than 4,000,000 hours and write endurance is more than 2,000,000 cycles. ...Advanced Media profile

Editor's comments:-
there are 27 manufacturers of 2.5" SSDs and this new product, which is aimed at the notebook market, is unremarkable in capacity or performance. "Me-too" products like this have to compete on price and availability - which is good news for oems and their customers.


TAIPEI, TAIWAN - October 8, 2007 - Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. and Insyde Software Corp. today announced the joint development of FlashMate technology - a new access mode for notebook PCs. FlashMate uses a fully integrated hardware, firmware and software architecture to provide alternative hybrid-drive functionality to notebooks and total access to hard disk drive content even while the CPU is off.

By managing the peripherals, FlashMate enables a wide range of new applications while the main system is either in pre-boot, standby, hibernate or completely shut down. FlashMate enhances the functionality of Microsoft Windows Vista SideShow and other 3rd party applications by giving notebook users access to hard-disk data and various applications via the notebook's USB interface without having to engage the CPU.

"Current hybrid-drive products available on the market, either as nonvolatile cache embedded in the hard disk drive or integrated on the motherboard, have enhanced some of the capabilities of notebook computers, but these solutions only scratch the surface of what is possible," said Bing Yeh, president and CEO, SST. "Our FlashMate technology expands beyond hybrid-drive functionality by enabling notebook users to conveniently perform tasks without having to turn on the computer, such as transferring files from an external memory, getting contact information from an Outlook address book, listening to MP3 music or checking flight arrival times. FlashMate marks a new and exciting market opportunity for SST..." ...SST profile


Mountain View, Calif., and Armonk, N.Y. - October 8, 2007 - Google and IBM today announced an initiative to promote new software development methods which will help students and researchers address the challenges of internet-scale applications in the future. For this project, the 2 companies have dedicated a large cluster of several hundred computers (a combination of Google machines and IBM BladeCenter and System x servers) that is planned to grow to more than 1,600 processors. Students will access the cluster via the Internet to test their parallel programming course projects. The University of Washington was the first to join the initiative. ...Google profile, ...IBM profile


SANTA CLARA, Calif - October 8, 2007 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the formation of the Sun Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group to bring together global leaders in government, broadcasting, education, and library services to share best practices for digital archiving. PASIG will help provide support for organizations challenged with preserving and archiving important research and cultural heritage materials. Founding members include The Alberta Library, The British Library, Johns Hopkins University, University of Oxford, Stanford University, The Texas Digital Library, and other leading global libraries and universities. ...Sun Microsystems profile, ...PASIG , Storage ORGS, article:- PR Strategies: Remember, the web has no memory!, The Internet Archive.
Google Launches New Search Appliance

ITC Investigates Hard Drive Patents

LeCroy's 13GHz Tester Aims at Next-generation Storage Interfaces

Panasas Solution Targets RAID Unreliability

Quantum Announces Encryption Key Manager for Tape Libraries

Data Warehouse Survey - Resprays More Popular than Rebuilds

Ridata Launches Me-too 2.5" Flash SSD

FlashMate Enables USB Data Access while CPU is Off

IBM and Google Create Play Pen for Next Generation Hackers

Sun Founds Library Archiving Group

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What Lies Beneath the Storage News?
Editor:- October 11, 2007 - You'll often see storage news on other sites which you don't see here on STORAGEsearch.com. When the news item sounds significant, you may be wondering why?

Is the editor asleep? Or is there a more Machiavellian reason for the news drop out?

For example is the editor suppressing news from some companies - because they compete with an advertiser?

Not guilty! That kind of publication wouldn't last more than a few months for 2 reasons.

1 - most new advertisers become advertisers because they've already had a lot of inquiries coming from editorial. The pressure from that direction would be to run and hype all press releases (which is the opposite to excluding them).

2 - the most important asset that a publisher has is readers. Advertisers may come and go - but without high quality readers who really care about the subject and work hard to find out what they need, and are people who make a difference to the market by what they do - a publication is just fodder for search-engine robots - and has no value whatsoever.

Sadly a common reason for a news story not appearing is that the core statements in the press release are simply not true.

Every week I get press releases from vendors making bold claims such as:-
  • first company to launch this type of product
  • fastest product (in its class)
  • lowest cost storage product (in its class)
  • biggest customer installation for this technology
  • highest market share in market segment
Unlike a robot, or software news aggregator, I actually read all the press releases which come into this publication.

I've probably read more than 100,000 press releases related to the storage market in my 16 years as editor, and I've seen thousands of web sites in this industry. But because I care a lot about the progress of this industry and because readers are the most important resource for any publisher, I always check the facts before running this type of news story.

The simplest way is for me to search our archived storage news pages. But I can also search email going back 10 years and if that doesn't give me a good confidence level - I'll search the web for previous examples of similar claims.

When I don't run a story for this reason - I always reply to the sender of the press release saying why. That often starts a dialog which pins down the root cause as being the writer didn't know about the earlier published example.

Back in 2000 I wrote an article to help news contributors understand how to interface better with editors. I called it Why I won't publish your press release? - Press Release Errors I see every day. Then 5 years later - I added some more notes to that.

One thing I never thought I'd have to say explicitly in that PR guide is that I will never run a news tory which I know in advance is untrue.

Human nature being what it is - most of us aren't so interested in news stories about the 2nd or 3rd fastest/newest products - even though that's what usually sells in the most volume. I guess the reason may be because we like to know where the boundaries are. If something shifts the boundaries - such as a 10 terabyte 3.5" hard drive - then we're more interested to read about it than the 3rd or 4th terabyte drive.

When the incorrect claim stories come in - I always try to find if there is anything else interesting in the story that I can run with - while leaving the suspect claim itself out.

As a general rule I remove adjectives like "fast" or "leading" (company) unless they are supported by figures or hard market data in the text. So if you see those words in this publication - their value has not been diluted.

A more common reason for not running a news story is that "it's not newsworthy" or it has already been mentioned here before - and not much has changed since. Or it's the latest in a long line of me-too announcements.

Another reason for not running a news story is that the idea behind it is just complete nonsense. In this category are many product comparisons, benchmarks and badly designed surveys which are as useful as measuring the speed of a Porsche 911 driving across a freshly plowed field.

I get a lot of queries from PR writers about why I didn't run something. If I really did miss it - and if it's significant enough - I'll go back and look again.

What's important is that you should be able to rely on the information you see in these pages. And that when you see a claim about some record breaking product - someone has actually done some simple checks before making the words appear on your screen
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