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Snap Server
Changes Ownership Again
MILPITAS,
Calif - June 30, 2008 - Adaptec Inc. today announced that it has sold
its Snap Server NAS business, including the brand and all assets to
Overland Storage Inc. for a net consideration of $3.6 million.
Under the terms of the agreement, Adaptec will retain ownership of all
iSCSI-based hardware and
software products and assets, which will be rebranded and managed by Adaptec.
Overland Storage will take over control of all existing Snap Server
networked and desktop storage appliance assets including licenses, patents,
existing product inventory and fixed assets and assume customer support
obligations. Approximately 50 Adaptec employees will receive offers to join
Overland Storage effective June 30, 2008. ...Adaptec profile,
...Overland Storage
profile
Editor's comments:- spun off from
Quantum in
October 2002 -
Snap Appliance was
acquired by Adaptec in
July 2004. So in 6 years it's bounced from a
tape backup owner, to a
RAID HBA owner and now
back to a tape / d2d
company again.
ET Mission Pics - 3PAR's Utility Storage
FREMONT, CA - June 30, 2008 -
NASA Ames Research Center has chosen 3PAR's SAN storage for a mission
that will send the Kepler Space Telescope into orbit around the Sun to find
planets in solar systems outside our own.
Set to launch in
February of 2009, the mission will use 3PAR Utility Storage to store digital
images taken with the powerful telescope and its camera. NASA Ames chose the
resilient 3PAR storage system to meet its strict cost and performance
requirements while maintaining massive scalability and avoiding the need for a
full-time, dedicated storage expert.
During the Kepler mission, the telescope will orbit the Sun while
capturing images of approximately 100,000 solar systems in 30-minute intervals.
Scientists will then use these images to analyze the orbital patterns of planets
in these other solar systems. The aim of this research is to identify planets
with the potential to sustain life, based on their sizes and distances from
their respective suns.
Over the course of the Kepler mission, NASA Ames anticipates
requiring between 30 and 90 terabytes of capacity to allow storage and analysis
of images captured by the telescope.
...3PAR profile
the Biggest Storage Companies in 2012
Editor:- June 27, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com
published a new article which asks the question - "who will be the
10 Biggest Storage Companies in 2012?"
This carries on a
popular series of annual articles first published in 2001 - which made
remarkably accurate long range (3 years ahead) predictions in the storage
market. But for reasons explained in the new article, it may be the last one in
the series. ...read
the article
QLogic's Fibre Channel Adapters are Virtually as Fast
ALISO
VIEJO, Calif - June 26, 2008 - QLogic Corp. and Microsoft
today announced near-native transaction performance in a virtualized SAN
environment.
The companies tested
SAN attached, Windows
Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machines and achieved I/O performance that closely
matches the 200,000 IOs per second performance native with QLogic 8Gb adapters
and Windows Server 2008. ...QLogic
profile, Fibre-channel
adapters
Seagate Launches NAS for the Home
SCOTTS VALLEY,
Calif - June 25, 2008 - Seagate today announced a new network storage
drive for the home.
Maxtor Central Axis network drive (suggested
retail price of $329.99) allows for each computer in the home to be
automatically backed up. It also supports file sharing. As the storage device
is connected to the router and not formatted for an individual computer, files
can be accessed and stored from both Mac OS X and Windows operated PCs. ...Seagate profile,
NAS,
Disk to disk backup
Preparing for the Next Phase in the SSD Market Revolution
Editor:- June 25, 2008 -STORAGEsearch.com
today called for new papers on the theme - "Understanding Data
Failure Modes in Large Solid State Storage Arrays".
Multi-terabyte
solid state storage arrays are seeping into the server environment in the same
way that RAID systems did
back in the early 1990s.
But just as those RAID pioneers learned that
there was a lot more to making a reliable disk array than stuffing a bunch of PC
hard disks into a
box with a fan and a
power supply - so too will multi-terabyte
SSD users discover that
problems which are undetectable or do no harm in small SSDs can lead to
serious data corruption risks when those same SSDs are scaled up without the
right architecture and sometimes with it in place too.
I know from
the emails I get that many readers think that once they've looked at the
single issue of flash
endurance - they've covered covered the bases for enterprise SSDs.
That's
why storagesearch.com is planning to publish a collection of definitive
technology articles to help guide the industry through this risky transition
process.
The new articles will provide users with the theoretical
justifications they need when they are faced with the difficult economic choices
that come from deploying different types of SSDs (with different cost models)
in diverse applications within their organizations. ...read the article
EcoRAM - DIMM Compatible NOR Flash Memory Slims Server Watts
SUNNYVALE,
Calif - June 24, 2008 - Spansion Inc. today unveiled plans for a new
class of memory, called EcoRAM, designed to solve the growing energy consumption
crisis in data centers.
When combined with
Virident Systems'
new GreenGateway technology announced today, Spansion EcoRAM can help slash
energy consumption by up to 75% in Internet data center servers, and
offer 4x the memory capacity of traditional DRAM-only servers for the
same energy consumption.
This is accomplished by leveraging the
standard memory DIMM form factor while requiring little platform modification.
The complete solution will empower IT Internet data center managers to break
from the constraints of DRAM-only servers. ...Spansion profile,
Green Storage -
Trends and Predictions ,
memory channel
SSDs
IDC Publishes New SSD Market Report
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -
June 24, 2008 - IDC has published a 42 page market report - "Worldwide
SSD 2007-2012 Forecast and Analysis" (price $4,500).
IDC says
the SSD market generated
nearly $400 million in revenues in 2007 and will grow at a 70% CAGR
until 2012. ...IDC profile
Editor's
comments:- when storagesearch.com
started publishing the first regular reports on the SSD market 10 years ago
storage analysts
covering this market were as common as cats flying space-ships.
Now
that the market's bigger there are lots of analysts who provide useful info for
actual and potential SSD oems. Some analysts publish public reports, while
others do custom research to answer specific questions. Examples of
flash SSD focused
analysts include:-
Objective
Analysis, Web-Feet
Research, iSuppli,
TrendFocus,
Westwood
Marketing and IDC.
Silicon Motion Enables New Type of Hybrid Flash SSD
TAIPEI, Taiwan - June
23, 2008 - Silicon Motion Technology Corp today announced the launch
of 3 new SSD controllers.
"We are already a market leader in the SSD controller market,
especially in the low cost notebook PC segment. We shipped almost 1 million
units of SSD controllers in 1Q'08, which is more than any other company in
the world" said Wallace Kou, CEO of Silicon Motion.
The new
controllers can support hybrid SSDs that use a combination of SLC and
MLC NAND flash to minimize device cost and maximize endurance. SM2240, for
example, can manage a 64GB SSD using 8GB of SLC and 56GB of MLC flash. Through
sophisticated and innovative algorithms, the controller is able to analyze the
incoming files from the host and intelligently move frequently accessed data to
SLC NAND and non-frequently accessed data to MLC NAND. With this hybrid
architecture, the SSD system cost is significantly reduced to a level comparable
to a pure MLC-based SSD, while endurance is significantly enhanced and
comparable to a pure SLC-based SSD. ...Silicon Motion
profile
Editor's comments:- this new class of hybrid SSDs is
one way to fix the endurance problem faced in cost conscious server apps that
are only viable with MLC type budgets. Another solution is
EasyCo's MFT - which
inherently reduces writes while increasing write IOPS through a host resident
driver. But some of the other risks revealed in my article
Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? haven't gone away.
New Article - Hybrid Storage Drives
Editor:- June 23,
2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article and directory today
called - "Hybrid Storage Drives".
It looks at winners,
losers and maybes in the 3 types of hybrid disk drives now available in the
market, and includes a directory, analyst round-up and a rare apology from me
for not publishing it sooner. ...read the article
Parascale Secures $11 million in Funding
CUPERTINO, Calif - June 23,
2008 - Parascale today announced it has closed a $11.4 million Series
A financing round led by venture capital firms Charles River Ventures and Menlo
Ventures.
Parascale has developed solutions designed to support
content-intensive applications, including video-on-demand, digital document
archiving, scientific data analysis, video surveillance and medical image remote
diagnosis among others. ...Parascale profile,
Storage Software,
Storage VCs |
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recent popular articles
the Fastest SSDs
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Recession-Proof?
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Future Flash SSD Performance
Flash vs DRAM
Price Projections - for SSD Buyers |
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| Green is the Color of My
AutoMAID's Hair |
Editor:- June 25, 2008 - I just noticed
Nexsan's "Green Storage Blog" today.
Nexsan was
an
early evangelist of
disk to disk backup and I
wondered what had become of them (because everybody's doing it now - just as
everyone will soon be selling
SSDs.)
Their blog
about AutoMAID
brought back memories - because I couldn't remember what "AutoMAID"
stood for. (And I can't be bothered to look it up in my
storage glossary
either.) But the concept sounded quite familiar.
Nexsan's Gary Watson
says "It's the idea that when a drive is not in use, it is gradually spun
down (the heads are unloaded first which reduces air resistance in the HDA, then
after a further period of inactivity the drives are reduced to half their
nominal RPM, and then if it remains idle we put it to sleep). AutoMAID takes
advantage of the fact that typical Fibre Channel command timeouts are in the
realm of 60 to 120 seconds, which is plenty of time to pop the drives back into
full speed mode if an I/O request comes down the wire."
To me this
shows that it's easy for marketers to create buzzwords which obscure meaning
rather than help it. I've listed RAID's many other aliases in an article on the
RAID page if you want to
collect the full set of RAIN, RAIGE raggerty verbiage.
In case you're
wondering about my headline I should explain. I'm color blind. So my AutoMAID's
hair could be green - just as her eyes are red - and mine is turning a paler
shade of gray. |
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And when I saw
Procol Harem live in the mid 1970s
they only had 2 good songs in the whole set - and no, like you - I can't
remember the other one. | | |
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