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Storage news - 2008, October week 1

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Dell Launches Ready to Run D2d

Round Rock, TX - October 7, 2008 - Dell announced it will ship a new disk-to-disk based backup system this month.

The DL2000 offers up to 144TB of usable disk space in a 5U box with a choice of pre-installed backup software packages and support for Windows, Linux, and Unix environments. Speed of installation appears to be Dell's main selling point for the new D2d. ...Dell profile, History of Enterprise Disk to Disk Backup , Disk to disk backup


Adaptec sharpens BladeCenter S RAID

Milpitas, Calif. - October 7, 2008 - Adaptec, Inc. today announced that its RAID Storage Processor technology has been integrated in IBM's BladeCenter S, creating the industry's 1st redundant, shared blade storage system.

The RAID technology being deployed by IBM is part of the technology portfolio that Adaptec acquired from Aristos Logic earlier this year.

"IBM has been a valued customer and Adaptec is extremely proud to contribute to IBM's development of such a game-changing product," said S. "Sundi" Sundaresh, Adaptec's president and CEO. "With the deployment of Adaptec's RAID technology in IBM's BladeCenter family, we have taken a significant step in strengthening our OEM business." ...Adaptec profile

Editor's comments:- IBM has been using Adaptec controllers for over 8 years. The earliest mention in our news archive is October 23, 2000 . The 2 companies formalized a RAID adapter agreement in 2002 and have renewed this relationship every couple of years.


RoboRacer Flips a Disk

London, UK - October 7, 2008 - Aleratec Inc. announced today its 1st DVD/CD publisher that automatically copies data, flips the disc over and LightScribe labels each disc.

The Aleratec DVD/CD RoboRacer LS Duplex automatically records data and LightScribe labels up to 100 discs completely unattended at a low ESP of $1,049.

"Since the introduction of LightScribe, publishing complete discs meant that the discs had to be manually flipped over after burning data or LightScribe labeling. Cost effectively making the disc flipping process truly automatic was the technological challenge," stated Perry Solomon, Aleratec President and CEO. "With the DVD/CD RoboRacer LS Duplex, Aleratec innovation completes the disc loading, unloading, and flipping process automatically with only 6 moving parts completely enclosed in a low cost and attractive desktop unit. Now true unattended LightScribe publishing is affordable..." ...Aleratec profile, optical disk duplicators


iStor Unlocks High Availability Features in Installed iSCSI ASICs

IRVINE, Calif. - October 7, 2008 - iStor Networks, Inc. has begun shipping a new version of its software, v2.5, as a no-cost upgrade for all its iSCSI storage solutions.

This software will provide dual-controller iS512 systems with the ability to automatically detect malfunctions in the operational controller and to switch to the redundant controller without loss of data, function or performance.

"This new software capitalized on the patented capabilities of iStor's ASIC technology enabling HA capability with no impact upon system performance before, during or after a controller failure." said Jim Wayda, iStor's VP of Software Development. "iStor designed its controllers from the very beginning to deliver advanced functionality such as HA and we are very proud that we have been able to demonstrate the investment protection inherent in iStor's approach of implementation..." ...iStor profile, iSCSI, storage reliability


New Edition - the Top 10 SSD OEMs

Editor:- October 6, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today published the 6th quarterly edition of - "the Top 10 SSD OEMs."

It includes rankings for the quarter ended September 30, 2008. If you're looking to partner with an SSD company - either as a buyer - or as a vendor - this is the "must see" series of articles based on the world's biggest and highest quality SSD focus group. ...read the article


Fusion-io Promises Consumers PCIe SSD Acceleration

Los Angeles, CA - October 3, 2008 - Fusion-io unveiled the ioXtreme - an 80GB PCIe flash SSD aimed at the PC market.

It will be priced at under $1,000 and will be available in Q1, 2009.

"Imagine working on complex 3-D graphics, unzipping and manipulating massive files even installing a new application—all at the same time," said David Flynn, CTO of Fusion-io. "Suddenly, with the ioXtreme, tasks that would have brought your system to its knees are no longer limited by the disks spinning loudly inside your box." ...Fusion-io profile

Editor's comments:-
PCIe flash SSDs can offer read access times which are are only about 5x slower than traditional fibre-channel RAM SSDs costing 50x more. This type of product could enable a new class of heavyweight desktop applications to come to market - which would have been too slow using hard disks.


HP Acquires Sinister iSCSI Appendage

PALO ALTO, Calif. - October 1, 2008 - HP today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks Inc. for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers. HP says the acquisition will strengthen its midrange iSCSI product line. ...LeftHand Networks profile

Editor's comments:- LeftHand Networks joins my list of 471 gone away storage companies nestling alphabetically between LapiStor and Legato Systems.

Some of these have more interesting stories attached to them than others. Sometimes it's the technology that goes wrong (or never gets started). But usually acquisitions result from a weakness in marketing. My view is that most VC funded storage software companies - never had a viable standalone business plan in the first place - and getting acquired was always part of the thinking. I can only judge by what I've seen.

A few weeks ago StorageMojo - Robin Harris - published an informative blog about the demise of YottaYotta. It can be interesting to read about storage people and be inspired by their success or learn from their mistakes.

Phil Soran, president and CEO of Compellent came up with a sharp comment about HP acquiring LeftHand. "HP's intent to acquire LeftHand Networks, similar to Dell's purchase of EqualLogic last November, demonstrates legacy vendors' approach to meeting the needs of the mid-sized enterprise market: buy someone else's technology and try to fit it into an existing product portfolio, which leads customers to a rip-and-replace strategy as they grow. While this may be easier for the vendors than developing their own scalable infrastructure, it is certainly not better for customers."

Finally - going back to my headline for this story... "sinister" is ye olde English - meaning the left hand side of a knight's body armor.


STORAGEsearch.com Reports Top Searches

Editor:- October 1, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com today updated its monthly list of the top articles and subjects viewed by storage searchers in September.
The top 5 subjects were:-
  1. Disk to disk backup
  2. Solid state disks
  3. 2.5 inch SSDs
  4. Hard drives
  5. RAM based SSDs
The top 5 articles were:-
  1. the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
  2. War of the Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash SSDs
  3. SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
  4. the Fastest SSDs
  5. the Top 10 SSD OEMs
Overall site readership was 22% higher than the year ago period. Pageviews for the top 5 most popular articles grew 68%.

earlier storage news

Megabyte's selection of storage news
10 years editing the storage news on
storagesearch.com hadn't aged
Megabyte one little bit.

DDRdrive click for more info
DDRdrive is now shipping the DDRdrive X1,
a PCI Express solid-state storage accelerator
with over 300K random IOPS performance.

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1" and smaller storage drives
1.0" SSDs on storagesearch.com
"He's probably just as scared of us"
said Megabyte, not very convincingly.
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is Recession - the New Green?
Editor:- with banks failing or merging on a daily basis - I thought it might be time to look again at my article- "Is the SSD Market Recession-Proof?"

That got me thinking... What about the rest of the storage market?

You may think that - like death and taxes - the need to buy ever more storage is inevitable. And surprisingly we haven't seen a downturn yet in the rotating disk storage market. An IDC report published earlier this month said that the external disk storage market grew 17% year-over-year in the 2nd quarter of 2008. But - as with stock markets - heed my warning. The past doesn't predict the future.

The storage market is not imune.

Due to mergers in the financial markets there will soon be a flood of "nearly new" enterprise storage systems and servers flowing into the broker / recycling market - just as when the dotcom bubble bust. The impact may not hit new storage sales immediately - but users don't need to buy factory fresh rotating disk arrays if they can pick up identical products at a quarter of the price in an auction.

I have no doubt that we'll read a lot more about "recession-proof " products, strategies and trends in the next few months.
Green storage article "Recession" will become the new "Green" for PR writers. It won't be possible to see a news story or article which doesn't include a liberal sprinkling of the R word.
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SSD news
the Fastest SSDs
the SSD Buyers Guide
What's a Solid State Disk?
the Top 10 SSD Companies
Increasing Flash SSD Reliability
Data Recovery from Flash SSDs?
How Solid is Hard Disk's Future?
Can you trust your flash SSD specs?
Is the SSD Market Recession-Proof?
Are MLC SSDs Safe in Enterprise Apps?
SSD Myths and Legends - "write endurance"
RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs - which is Best?
Flash Memory vs. Hard Disks - Which Will Win?
Using SSDs to Boost Legacy RAID Performance
3.5" Terabyte SSDs with Gigabyte / S Performance
Please End Unrealistic SSD vs HDD Comparisons
War of the Disks: Hard Disk Drives vs. Flash SSDs
Z's Laws - Predicting Future Flash SSD Performance
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DDRdrive X1 PCIe SSD - click for more info
300K random IOPS
PCIe RAM SSD
from DDRdrive
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Flashbacks from Storage History

6 months ago - IBM Previews Racetrack Solid State Storage

1 year ago - Seagate Pays for Shrinking the Kilobyte

2 years ago - Dell Says No - to More Tape Libraries

4 years ago - BiTMICRO Ships 1st Ultra320 SCSI Flash SSD

7 years ago - Alacritech Ships Industry's 1st GbE Accelerator
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storage history (1949 till last week) STORAGEsearch SPARC Product Directory ACSL - the publisher