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ATTO Ships
Fastest SAS/SATA HBAs
Amherst, NY -
November 13, 2008 - ATTO Technology, Inc. announces shipment of its
first 6Gbps SAS/SATA host adapters, to select OEMs and partners.
Leveraging
PCIe 2.0 and 6-Gb SAS speeds, ATTO says the
H608 (8 internal
ports) and H680 (8
external ports) deliver the fastest available connection to
SAS/SATA storage (up to
8GB/sec. full-duplex).
...ATTO Technology profile,
Record Breaking
Storage
Virtual Instruments Offers Clearer Views for SAN Traffic Analysis
Scotts
Valley, Calif. - November 11, 2008 - Virtual Instruments today
announced availability of its SAN Traffic Analysis Point module.
An
add-on component for its NetWisdom solution, TAP (which costs $300 per
port) enables real-time Fibre
Channel network transaction monitoring, analysis and diagnosis. Unlike
Mirror or SPAN ports, TAP devices show complete visibility of network traffic
and mirror the data flowing between two network points.
Virtual
Instruments' CEO, Mark Urdahl said - "IT administrators can find
themselves in serious and expensive situations when the storage network
experiences a problem or down time with limited visibility into the root-cause
of the problem. Having Virtual Instruments' TAP device is like having a window
into your SAN traffic. It
provides unprecedented access to SAN transactions so that performance and
troubleshooting issues can be proactively identified and resolved, allowing our
customers to realize tremendous cost savings."
...Virtual
Instruments profile, Storage
Testers & Analyzers
SiliconSystems Ships New 1.8" SiliconDrive
Aliso
Viejo, Calif. - November 11, 2008 - SiliconSystems, Inc. announced
shipments of its new 1.8" PATA SSDs with 34MB/s R/W speed and
capacities up to 32GB.
SiliconDrive II 1.8-inch PATA SSDs
feature SiliconSystems' patented PowerArmor, SiSMART and SiSecure integrated
advanced storage technologies that address critical OEM design considerations,
including the elimination of drive corruption due to power anomalies, the
ability to forecast SiliconDrive useable life and the protection of application
data and software IP.
...SiliconSystems
profile, 1.8" storage
drives
Aleratec Snips Cost of DVD Shredder
Chatsworth, CA - November 11,
2008 - Aleratec Inc. is now shipping the 2nd generation of its award
winning compact DVD/CD Shredder with estimated retail price of $44.99.
"Sensitive
data stored on CDs or DVDs can change frequently and disposing of old discs is a
growing problem. With identity theft and corporate espionage increasing almost
exponentially, just tossing them in the trash is more than dangerous,"
states Perry Solomon, Aleratec President and CEO. "An Aleratec DVD/CD
Shredder makes destroying unwanted discs very easy. This light weight desktop
unit shreds DVDs and CDs in seconds. With its auto start/stop feature all a
customer needs to do is insert a disc and the shredder does the rest."
...Aleratec profile,
Disk Sanitizers
Arkeia Partners with Nirvanix
San Diego, CA
- November 11, 2008 - Nirvanix and Arkeia Software have
partnered to deliver an integrated backup protection solution.
The
joint solution combines
Arkeia
Network Backup with Nirvanix's
CloudNAS (online storage) to provide
a claimed 80-90% cost saving over traditional backup storage solutions.
...Arkeia profile,
...Nirvanix profile,
Backup Software |
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| Violin
Advances flash SSD Architecture for Enterprise Acceleration |
Iselin,
New Jersey - November 10, 2008 - Violin Memory, Inc. today reached out
to markets beyond those accessible to its RAM based storage appliance line
by announcing the availability of a fast 2U 4TB SLC flash SSD.
Designed
for enterprise server acceleration - Violin's flash technology enables over 100K
sustained random Write IOPS (4K block) and write throughput is upto 400MB/s.
Latency is 70-300 microseconds and the internal architecture eliminates the
multi-millisecond variability seen in most current SSD arrays.
Endurance
can be an issue with some fast flash SSDs. But you don't have to do the
calculations because the Violin 1010 with 4TB SLC Flash can sustain its top
speed 100K Write IOPS for a 100% duty cycle over its projected 10 year life.
Price is competitive - at a system cost less than $50 per GByte.
System capacities range from 320GB to 4 TBytes within a single appliance.
Fibre Channel and
Ethernet network
attachments are supported via a network head and direct attachment through a low
latency PCIe
connection. Supported OS's include:- major Linux releases, Windows and
OpenSolaris. Violin Memory will be demonstrating the new product next week at
SC08. ...Violin Memory profile
Editor's
comments:- although I had been expecting Violin to announce a flash SSD
product since last year - I got some real surprises in the detail of the new
model announced today.
You'd expect a product which contains over
500 internal flash interfaces and a lot of hardware controller technology to
be fast compared to a RAID array built from
COTS flash SSDs,
but due to some clever tricks and design choices (which Violin pointed out are
patent pending IP) the overall product achieves an edge over potential
competitors in a number of key areas. You'll have to ask the company for more
details - but are some key points.
- It starts fast - and stays fast. Violin says the sustained performance does
not drop off in the same dramatic way as in most other flash SSDs.
Most publications mistakenly attribute the performance droop in flash
SSDs to "fragmentation" - but that's not correct. The effect is due to
what Violin calls "garbage collection".
That includes a
bunch of stuff like... Can the internal controller maintain its house-keeping,
supply of erased blocks, wear leveling, and virtual mapping at the fastest
speed? Or is there an inbuilt halo effect - which means the product looks good
in benchmarks - but degrades over time? I already discussed these in my
article Can you trustyour
flash SSD's specs? Violin's got a good story on this - which goes into a lot
more detail.
- Violin's specific implementation of "RAID like protection"
solves 2 problems at the same time.
1st - it uses less flash chips
than would be needed in a traditional RAID built from COTS SSDs to achieve the
same level of fault tolerance. The lower chip count also reduces electrical
power, increases MTBF and helps make the box more competitive.
I asked
"Are you seriously hoping to compete with boxes stuffed with commodity
SSDs?" - The answer - it's going to a big market - and being competitive
due to intrinsic design is a much better option than (in my words) simply
lowering margins (which is where the consumer SSD market is today - and where
the enterprise SSD market could be tomorrow.)
2nd - it enables the
internal controller to perform a write erase simultaneously to a virtual block
which is being read. This is what Violin calls "Non-blocking erase".
It's a feature (which when added to everything else) enables the product to
offer an industry leading envelope of R/W IOPS and reliability for an
enterprise acceleration flash SSD.
Sun Launches Hybrid Rackmount Storage
SANTA
CLARA, Calif. - November 10, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. today
announced the availability of its new 7000 family of rackmount storage systems
- which includes hybrid HDD / flash SSD arrays.
Sun says its
Solaris ZFS can use SSDs intelligently as a cache for both application and file
system metadata, placing latency-critical data structures appropriately on flash
media and using algorithms to optimize data placement. In addition, Solaris ZFS
provides acceleration of both read and write operations, and lets administrators
configure the system to match workload demands. ...Sun Microsystems profile,
Hybrid Storage
Drives, rackmount
SSDs
STEC Reports 43% Revenue Growth
SANTA
ANA, Calif. - November 10, 2008 - STEC, Inc. today reported 42.5%
year on year revenue growth for the 3rd quarter ended September 30, 2008.
Revenue was $63.7 million which was also an increase of 13%
compared to the 2nd quarter of 2008.
STEC's Chairman and CEO,
Manouch Moshayedi, said "During the 3rd quarter of 2008 we again achieved
an increase in revenue from our ZeusIOPS line of SSDs to $13.7 million. We are
forecasting sales of ZeusIOPS of more than $17 million during the 4th quarter of
2008 and therefore expect to achieve our long-stated goal for ZeusIOPS revenue
in 2008 of $50 million, a target we had set for ourselves more than a year ago.
We would also like to re-emphasize our belief in the potential of SSD to be a
disruptive technology, even with a
less than optimal
macro-economic backdrop for adoption."
"We began
shipping production units of our SSD products to a major Notebook OEM customer
for their entrance into the Ultra-Mobile PC market in the 3rd quarter of 2008.
While (notebooks) are not the primary target markets for our SSD products, we
believe that our selection as this customer's SSD vendor in a key launch for
them showcases our ability to design best-of-class solutions across a full range
of SSD applications.... We believe that the current environment of falling NAND
Flash prices will help to further reduce the price of SSDs to the end-customer
and stimulate demand..."
...STEC profile
Xytron Joins IPDRA
Editor:- November 10, 2008 -
Xytron has joined the
International Professional Data Recovery
Association.
Founded in August 2008 by
Disklabs, the IPDRA
vets prospective members for
Data Recovery
experience and publishes a code of conduct for members. In an industry where
anybody can set up a web site to attract your broken hard disks / tapes / flash
storage - IPDRA aims to be a major leap forward helping clients decide
who they will send their critical or precious data to. |
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| Looking for
2009 Storage Plan Inputs? |
Editor:- traditionally this is
the time of year when storage
marketers realize it would be good
to include some plausible projections, trends, quotes or even hard facts
inside their otherwise "wishful thinking" based business plans for
next year.
If you're in that predicament the
market research page
lists nearly 70 analyst organizations which cover the storage market.
And
if you're looking at SSDs
you're in luck - because there's an
SSD analysts
directory devoted exclusively to that very subject. But be warned. It's a very
complicated market which will segment into many application strands during the
coming years as the market gets bigger.
For many vendors - the
outlook next year is dimmed under the shadow of recession. But excellent
products and services which solve real customer needs conveniently or
economically can actually do better in budget constrained circumstances.
Users
too face problems. Because the Old Regime's expensive solutions are no longer
affordable - users are forced to look at alternative suppliers and
technologies. And although it's hard work and uncomfortable researching new
ways of doing things - and thinking in new ways - it can lead to greater
efficiency. |
 |
Many parts of the storage
market will emerge bigger and stronger after several years of recession - while
others (which were already past their use-by- date anyway) will shrink and
disappear. We've been here many times before - see what happened last time in -
Storage Winners and Losers
from the 2000-2003 IT Recession | | |
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