Sun Responds to User Needs
for More SSD Capacity
Editor:- May 27, 2009 - Sun Microsystems announced
today it has
improved
its hybrid rackmount storage systems to support an additional 600GB of
flash SSD cache (compared to the current 64GB internal limit) for enhanced
application performance.
The Sun Storage
7310
is available today and starts at a price of $40,165.
Editor's
comments:- terabyte SSDs become commercially available in
2002 - so
Sun's initial product offering last November - which supported a mere 36GB per
4U rack - was a sure sign that the company either didn't know what it was doing
- or was being overly cautious.
There are plenty of
rackmount SSD
vendors in the market - and soon there will be hundreds more. There's wide
diversity in product architectures (open versus proprietary) and applications
experience in this part of the SSD market (ranging from months in the case of
Sun - to more than a decade for companies like
Solid Data Systems and
Texas Memory Systems).
If
you are thinking of buying an SSD from Sun - timing the purchase is a something
to think about. In recent years Sun used to steeply discount towards the end of
its quarter. I'm not sure how being part of
Oracle will
affect that. See also:-
Hybrid Storage
Drives
Nimbus Unveils New High End NAS
San Francisco, CA -
January 22, 2009 - Nimbus Data Systems today announced the H-class DH200
4 port 10GbE iSCSI NAS.
Starting with a 2U rackmount base unit -
the DH200 is expandable upto 84TB using SATA hard drives or 10TB using flash
SSDs. Its proprietary
HALO storage OS
provides data protection and easy to use virtualization. Nimbus says its
cache management (upto 24GB of cache) and support for
hybrid
storage dramatically increases performance at a competitive price point.
...Nimbus Data Systems
profile, rackmount
SSDs |
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| Sonnet
Storage Starred in All-Starr Summer Tour |
IrvineCalif.
- November 4 , 2008 - Sonnet Technologies today announced thatRingo
Starr and his 10th All-Starr band used two Fusion R400Q rackmount storage
systems to capture concert audio for their 31-date summer tour, which concluded
Aug. 2 at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.
The
Fusion R400Q
systems provided 2TB of mirrored storage for the 64 tracks of audio recorded to
a Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel during each All-Starr concert and enabled sound engineers
to use Digidesign Virtual Soundcheck workflow to refine live performance console
settings by using a multitrack Pro Tools session rather than actual band
members. Audio recorded to the Fusion R400Qs will be preserved for archival
purposes and also serve as a resource for CDs, DVDs, and Web releases.
"The R400Q lived up to its reputation as a solid storage solution
well-suited to the rigors of tour recording and travel," said Brian Bavido,
Front of House engineer for the All-Starr
tour.
"We covered a lot of ground in the United States and
Canada and made our way over many bad roads, and not once did I need to reseat a
drive or cable. The system was very transparent on tour, performing without a
hitch throughout each show, and its 1U design proved convenient in use while
occupying very little rack and transportation space."
...Sonnet profile,
Rackmount Storage,
Audio
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
Axstor Launches 2U 8 Port iSCSI Storage
Coventry, UK - September 9,
2008 - Axstor, announces the Ai-Pro 5108 - a 2U, 12 bay fast iSCSI
storage system.
With 8x 1Gb
iSCSI ports, the Ai-Pro
5108 can deliver more than 80,000 IOPs from a single controller, and a data
transfer rate of more than 800MB/s. It's fully dual-ported to ensure that there
is no single point of failure. Initially supporting up to 60 drives and 90TB
capacity, the system can be expanded to support 128 drives with the planned
release of new firmware in January 2009. ,,,Axstor profile
Are RAM SSDs Threatened by Enterprise flash SSDs?
Editor:- August 26,
2008 - in a new update to the discussion article - RAM SSDs versus Flash SSDs -
which is Best? - Jim Handy, founder of Objective Analysis
shares his thoughts about this subject.
Comparing the application
roles for the 2 main SSD technologies in a way that elegantly avoids heaps of
IOPS data Jim Handy says - "If a flash SSD can be likened to using
dynamite, then a DRAM SSD can be compared to a nuclear bomb." ...read the article
Texas Memory Systems Launches Fastest RAM SSD
Houston, Texas -
July 22, 2008 - Texas Memory Systems today launched the world's
fastest SSD - the RamSan-440,
The
RamSan-440 is a 4U
rackmount fibre-channel
connected RAM SSD with upto 512GB of storage capacity. It can sustain up to
600,000 random IOPS and over 4GB/second of random read or write bandwidth,
with latency of less than 15 microseconds.
It's the first
RAM SSD to use RAIDed
flash memory
modules for data backup (instead of
hard disk) and the
first system to incorporate Texas Memory Systems' patented IO2 (Instant-On
Input-Output) technology.
...Texas Memory
Systems profile
Editor's comments:- I spoke to Woody Hutsell
at TMS at some length about the new RamSan-440.
Click here to read the
interview.
Dell Launches High Density 2U JBOD
Round
Rock, TX - June 16, 2008 - Dell announced immediate availability of a
2U SAS disk expansion chassis for upto 24 2.5" drives - the PowerVault
MD1120.
When attached to Dell's PowerEdge RAID Controller, the
PowerVault MD1120 can scale to 6 enclosures and house up to 144 drives.
...Dell profile,
SAS,
JBODs
New Directory - PCIe SSDs
Editor:-
April 21, 2008 - STORAGEsearch.com published a new article and
directory of PCIe SSDs.
It lists all oems who make these products,
includes related news and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of bus
connected SSDs. ...read
the article
Enhance Technology Claims Lower Cost 2U
iSCSI Storage
Santa Fe Springs,
CA - March 19, 2008 - Enhance Technology today announced the R6 IP
series, a 2U 6-disk RAID 5 rackmount with dual GbE iSCSI ports and up to
100MB/s throughput.
Flexible RAID slicing allows administrators
to partition RAID sets
into smaller segments allowing storage to be distributed on up to 16 servers,
and adding more hard drives
is a simple task with no downtime required.
Aaron Eskridge, Enhance's
Director of Channel Sales said "With prices starting at just $2,695 (1TB
model), we're offering an incredible storage solution at just a fraction of the
cost of Sun,
HP,
Dell or
EMC."
...Enhance
Technology profile
Data Domain's 1U Deduper and D2d Aims at
Remote Offices
SANTA CLARA, Calif.
- February 19, 2008 - Data Domain today announced it is shipping the
DD120 - a scaled down full-function deduplication and disk backup system
for remote offices.
The $12,500 list price unit provides up to
150GB/hour of inline deduplicated storage throughput and up to 18TB of logical
capacity in a 1U chassis. ...Data Domain profile
see
also:- Is
Deduplication of Data Safe? - and More Deduplication FAQs |
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Serial Attached SCSI: New
Interface, New Storage Rack? - article by Terabytes Server Storage Tech
Users
will need more than just host bus adapters and
disk drives to deploy
the new
Serial Attached SCSI
technology. But the traditional way of designing the backplanes in storage
racks could lead to high cost and not use the expansion and high availability
aspects of SAS to best advantage. In this article one of the world's leading
suppliers of computer chassis describes their award winning new backplane
concept which gets the best out of the new SAS technology while reducing costs.
. ...read the article,
...TST profile,
Storage Boxes | |
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Nibble:- Rackmount Storage
- from Obscurity to Popularity
Rackmount storage is one of the most
popular and fastest growing segments in the storage industry today, but it was
not always so.
Rackmount computer systems started to appear in the
mid 1970's powered by the 8 bit microprocessor revolution which was quietly
reshaping the computer landscape. My first job in 1977 was building a real-time
training simulator which used a proprietary rackmount computer from a long
forgotten (Signetics) processor. In the mark 2 version we improved things by
putting in a 2nd (Intel) processor. There were no operating systems in those
days. To get the real usable speed out of 8 bit micros, you wrote everything in
assembler and changed tasks by interrupts. By the late 1970's you could get "standard"
rackmount computers from Intel using Multibus, and a real operating system
called RMX.
In the 1980's VMEbus became the new standard for high performance
rackmount systems, in which you could get every type of processor upto and
including SPARC and SunOS. The high end systems I worked on for military and
other research applications typically had multiple processors running different
operating systems in the same backplane, which for a techie - was great fun. For
low end systems the company I worked for sold rackmount PCs with passive
backplanes from companies like Qualogy. Industrial PCs became popular because
they replaced proprietary computers running SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data
Acquisition) which oversaw networks of programmable controllers in car
factories, bottling plants and wire manufacture. SCADA was also used to control
process controllers in industries like chemicals, oil and brewing.
But
outside the industrial, communications, or military markets or a computer R&D
environment the average user was unlikely to encounter a rackmount computer
in an "hands on" way right upto the mid 1990s. Then the internet, and
particularly the web changed everything.
As editor of the Sun
Microsystems buyers guide, called the
SPARC Product Directory, I
noted that rackmount
SPARC servers had moved from relative obscurity to the #1 most popular
product slot visited by readers in 1999. That's because it was more economic to
implement ecommerce transactions using server farms built from networked
rackmount systems than using single monolithic Sun mainframes which cost
several times more.
The same phenomenom was happening in the Wintel
world. Research company IDC reported that throughout the US IT recession in 2000
and 2001, shipments of rack optimised servers continued high double digit growth
rates. This was also commented on in Dell's own financial reports. It wasn't
long before storage vendors started noticing that their rackmount tape drives,
RAID systems etc were growing at a much faster rate than anything else they were
selling.
I expect that rackmount servers and storage will become the
dominant form factor for enterprise installations. Rackmount takes up less floor
space. It's physically more secure than isolated boxes, and it's cheaper to
maintain. In fact on this web site, STORAGEsearch.com,
most of the systems images featured in ads and in news stories have been
rackmount for the last couple of years.
The products featured on this
page are only a small proportion of the thousands of rackmount products from
hundreds of manufacturers that you can find on this site. Rackmount Storage is
the way of the present and the form factor of the future. | |
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