| SAN news |
91% of Compellent's
Customers Want to Evaluate SSDs
Editor:- June 17 , 2009 Compellent today
announced results generated through attendee polling conducted at its annual
customer conference.
91%
of business partners and 78% of customers responded important, very
important or critical when asked, “What is your level of interest in
evaluating SSDs in your
environment?”
2 New Storage Interface Standards
Editor:- June 11,
2009 - this month there have been 2 developments on the
storage standards front.
Version 2.0 of ExpressCard
- will be 10x faster than the previous version. This will mainly benefit
ExpressCard SSDs.
FCoE is now a
draft standard -
...read the
(unreadable) T11 document (pdf). If, like me, you ever wondered what the
difference was between this and the much older FCIP - this
2007
InfoWorld article explains.
Texas Memory Systems Teams with IBM to Boost Storage Performance
Editor:-
June 2, 2009 - Texas
Memory Systems
today
announced its RamSan-500
rackmount SSD system has been certified interoperable with
IBM's
System Storage SVC.
"IBM SVC customers have been looking for
ways to improve the performance of their applications using RamSan SSD,"
said Woody Hutsell,
President of Texas Memory Systems. "Texas Memory Systems and IBM
consistently top Storage
Performance Council performance benchmark audits, and both companies
deliver broad interoperability for heterogeneous IT environments. So we think
customers will welcome the news that the compatibility of the RamSan-500 and the
SVC has been thoroughly tested and certified interoperable."
FalconStor Claims Fastest Deduped Disk Backup
Editor:-
June 1, 2009 - FalconStor
Software today
claimed that
it now delivers the fastest backup
and deduplication
time in the industry.
Using a 100TB test bed connected to a single cluster of 2
FalconStor VTL nodes the total time to backup and deduplicate data was under 14
hours, yielding an average of 2GB/s per second.
Physical tape production can
be achieved directly through 4Gbps
Fibre Channel links by
exporting tapes from FalconStor VTL to the physical
tape library without using
a separate media server. All hardware components used for the performance test
are commonly available standard parts, including standard
Linux-based servers and
low-cost SATA-based
storage subsystems.
Editor's comments:-
Record Breaking
claims are often hostage to editor research. We've certainly run stories about
faster backup and restores before (10TB/hour in 2003 for example) but that
didn't include dedupe. Let's see if this one passes the test of reader
scrutiny.
FCIA Reports on 2nd FCoE Plugfest
Editor:- May 20,
2009 - the Fibre Channel
Industry Association today
announced that
it successfully completed its 2nd FCoE Plugfest the week of May 12th at the
University of New Hampshire Interoperability Lab.
"This year's FCoE Plugfest was timed appropriately given tough
economic times we are facing today – IT decision-makers are looking for
savings in numerous areas such as power, space and cooling management while
preserving their existing Fibre Channel investments" says Skip Jones,
chairman FCIA and director Technology and Planning at
QLogic. "Last
week's FCoE Plugfest proved that this new technology is ready for prime time and
ready to deliver the cost-savings that customers are looking for and underscores
the arrival of a new efficient data center."
Storage Events,
Storage ORGs
New Book on Enterprise Storage
Editor:- May 7, 2009
- EMC has
published a new book (480 pages $60) -
"Information Storage and
Management".
The book's 40 contributing writers cover the
evolution of storage technology, including traditional deployment, consolidated
storage networking and storage virtualization, while also addressing the most
prevalent storage technologies, including direct attached storage (DAS),
networked attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN), content addressed
storage (CAS), and IP SAN.
Here's a quote from the
intro...
"Not long ago, information storage was seen as only a bunch of disks or
tapes attached to the back of the computer to store data..."
Yes -
I remember those bad
old days
(pre 1998) before people thought of storage as a single market. It sounds like
an interesting book.
You can never learn too much about storage. The 9
year old classic Storage
Architecture Guide is still a popular article today. See also:- Storage Training
Emulex says "No" to a future "Connecting everything®"
Editor:- May 4, 2009 - Emulex announced today
it has
rejected
an unsolicited acquisition offer from Broadcom.
...Later:-
May 5, 2009 - Broadcom
extended
the deadline for their offer and published a press release saying what a
great deal it would be for shareholders. "Broadcom's all-cash offer is not
subject to a financing condition. Broadcom intends to fund the offer with its
existing cash holdings."
Emulex, in its rejection letter, had
pointed to the potential value in recent design wins. Broadcom rubbished this
assertion with this pithy analysis.
"... while Emulex has touted
its "design wins" in its response to Broadcom and in other
communications with the financial community, it has failed to demonstrate an
ability to convert design wins into either revenue growth or market share.
Over the last several years, including this most recent quarter, Emulex has
continued to lose share to its larger competitor (QLogic)."
Editor's
comments:- the FC,
10GbE and
InfiniBand adapter
markets used to be pivotal enabling tools for fast
SANs in the enterprise
server computing market. However, in recent times these network technologies
have become commodities - and their prospects
have waned..
As I've said before, the future of fast storage interconnects will be dominated
by the requirements of the SSD
market instead of the HDD
market. Redeploying the intellectual property of these storage connections
into closer proximity with solid state storage is something which the
traditional HBA business model cannot achieve - or which takes too long.
Broadcom's
mission statement "Connecting everything®" is more in line with
the future vision of the computer market than the old-style duopoly of Emulex
(and QLogic) which dominate a market that's going to become irrelevant.
SAN Solutions will Unveil Media Verification Engine at NAB
Editor:-
April 13, 2009 - SAN
Solutions announced that it will showcase the company's new Crawler
media verification engine next week at The
NAB Show.
In scanning file systems and indexing and verifying
media across a
SAN or
NAS based architecture, the
Crawler confirms the ongoing utility and value of stored media, and also enables
the content owner to federate storage archives and use a central database to
search all of its media assets.
New Real-Time Design / Debug Tool for FC / NAS OEMs
Editor:-
March 25, 2009 - Absolute Analysis
has
announced
enhancements to its range of
serial data test tools
- such as...
- ability to check system behavior in the presence of latency (failure and
recovery) for Fibre Channel and Ethernet protocols, including
FCoE,
AFDX,
iSCSI, IP, IPv6, TCP
- ability to corrupt one or more network events in real-time and simulate
data loss, data corruption, protocol errors and data errors, and check device
under test error recovery procedures.
"Absolute Analysis is proud to offer engineers a much-needed
single solution featuring the integration of sophisticated tools for use in data
communications, telecommunications, and military communications, to capture,
analyze, delay, modify, and verify data at full line rate," stated Dennis
Murphy, President of Absolute Analysis. "This release... enables
in-line, real-time impairment testing coupled with a powerful error injector and
analysis that far exceed existing industry offerings." Storage Testers & Analyzers
Compellent Inches Slowly Closer to SAN Acceleration Market
Editor:-
March 23, 2009 - Compellent
today
announced
it would demonstrate its tiered SSD technology at a user event in May 2009.
The physical layer is based on
STEC's ZeusIOPS SSDs.
The soft part - something which Compellent calls -
policy
driven Data Progression apparently " minimizes the number of SSDs
required while providing the highest levels of performance for mission-critical
applications."
Editor's comments:- Compellent has been
slowly drip feeding press releases and blogs about its SSD plans since last
October. Unlike pure
rackmount SSDs
which aim at ultimate performance apps - Compellent's solution looks like it's
pitched at a less ambitious (but maybe larger market) of users who would be
happy with the kind of performance tweak which comes from replacing 2
hard disk slots with 2
flash SSDs. See
also:- Fibre-Channel
SSDs
Pliant Technology Kicks off - the SSD Industry Bookmarks
Editor:-
March 5, 2009 - Pliant
Technology's VP of Marketing, Greg Goelz shares his SSD
Bookmarks in the 1st episode of a classic new series starting today on the
home page of StorageSearch.com.
DOJ Investigates EMC
Editor:-
March 3, 2009 - an article today in BostonHerald.com discusses EMC's
disclosure that it is being investigated by the DOJ.
These
matters were disclosed in an
SEC
filing yesterday. ...EMC
profile
Nimbus Offers Drive Agnostic iSCSI
San Francisco, CA -
February 9, 2009 - Nimbus Data Systems today announced the H-class
RH100 quad port 10GbE unified storage system.
It offers up to 60x
hot-swappable SATA (terabyte HDDs supported), SAS (450GB HDDs), or SSD drives
(7.7TB capacity if populated by supported 128GB SSDs). Drives can be mixed
within the same enclosure. The RH100 includes no-additional-charge snapshot,
cloning, and replication software, built-in
iSCSI SAN and
NAS capabilities. The
RH100 has a 4GB cache and 60Gbps internal bandwidth. Nimbus says it can be up
and running in just 20 minutes. ...Nimbus profile,
rackmount SSDs
RAID Inc Launches 1U Rackmount SSD
Methuen, MA - January 27, 2009 -
RAID Inc. announced the availability of its new 1U SSD RAID.
The Razor SSD
is a 12 bay 4 port fibre-channel
system using COTS 2.5"
SAS SSDs in a
RAID protected array. The
Razor comes with RAID's patent pending
StorageWatch service -
which proactively monitors storage conditions in real-time. ...RAID Inc profile,
rackmount SSDs
a New Way to Instantly Rollback and Resume 24/7 Windows Apps
Santa Clara, Calif. -
January 20, 2009 - Asempra Technologies today introduced its Business
Continuity Appliance.
Designed for Microsoft environments the
2U rackmount iSCSI /
FC SAN
appliance
(price $30,000) provides a Terabyte of storage which can be rolled back to any
recovery point (with second by second resolution) and deliver data to
applications within 30 seconds of a rollback being initiated, instead of hours
or days with traditional D2d
or tape backup systems.
And unlike clustered servers or HA storage (which merely provide data
continuity) Asempra's BCS can instantly restart from your chosen "good"
data set - before a virus or software corruption occurred. ...Asempra Technologies
profile
Editor's comments:- $30,000 seemed like a steep price
for a disk backup / recovery system - so I asked more about it.
One of
the problems with this product is terminology. It sounds like a lot of other
storage solutions - but is actually a different class of storage. The technical
stuff on Asempra's site is clear and you will quickly recognize if it's the
right product for your type of application. Like
RAM SSDs - it's not for
everybody.
Brocade Enhances SAN Monitoring
SAN
JOSE, Calif. - December 2, 2008 - Brocade announced today
enhancements to its Network Monitoring Service.
Brocade
NMS now provides 24×7 expert
end-to-end monitoring about the health and status of data center fabrics to help
maximize network efficiency, availability, and uptime. Moreover, Brocade NMS
provides organizations with valuable information and rules-based business
intelligence to maximize application availability and optimize data center
resources. ...Brocade
profile, storage
services, storage
reliability |
|
| 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
Condre Markets APPLE Video Optimized RAID
Minneapolis, MN -
November 5 , 2008 - Condre Storage, Inc. is selling a new APPLE
optimized AV RAID - the Bullet.
Built on proven technology with a
4Gb Fibre Channel front
end and SAS/SATA drives. The Bullet AV RAID scales up to 64TB capacity and is
capable of up to 3 streams of (10 bit), 1080, Uncompressed HD video. MSRP is
$11,999 for 12TB of Fibre Channel to SATA storage which includes 1 year next
business day on site support.
"Condre Storage is excited by this unique offering for the
APPLE video market. The
Bullet is an incredibly fast RAID,
and with 2 boxes striped together we've done over 8 streams of 10 bit, 1080/HD
video", according to Condre Storage President Denny Maetzold. "Condre
is proud to have a new and outstanding RAID product to complement our existing
RAID product offerings. It allows our customers to offer their end users a
complete video storage solution."
...Condre Storage
profile, Storage VARs,
Video
- editor mentions on StorageSearch.com
OnPATH Unveils Industry's Largest SAN Switch
Marlton,
NJ - October 21, 2008 - OnPATH Technologies today introduced its first
8Gbps Fibre Channel switch module.
The new module supports up to 12 multi-rate Fibre-Channel ports and
can be scaled up to 1,536 8Gb FC ports in one non-blocking switch. ...OnPATH Technologies
profile, SAN
switches
New Article - FC SAN SSDs
Editor:- September 13, 2008 -
Storagesearch.com today published a new article and directory on the
subject of - "Fibre-Channel SSDs."
"I've tracked
the SAN storage market
since the first commercially launched products in
1994" said editor
Zsolt Kerekes. "As the number of market-active
SSD oems listed on
Storagesearch approaches 90
companies I thought I should make it easier for readers to disentagle the info
related to this important market segment - which was getting lost in tables
deep in our SSD
Buyers Guide. The new SAN SSD page lists all current vendors and also
explains how this market fits into a historic context." ...read the article |
| Storage History
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| Z's Laws - Predicting
Future Flash SSD Performance |
A reader asked me a
very good question.
"Is there an industry roadmap for future
flash SSD
performance?"
That prompted other questions like...
- How fast are flash SSDs going to be in 2009?, 2010? or 2012?
- What are the technology factors which relate to flash SSD throughput and
IOPS?
- How close will flash SSDs get to
RAM SSD performance?
There wasn't a simple answer I could give at the time. Clues lay
scattered all across this web site
and in my many one on one discussions with readers about the market... |
 |
But I agreed there should be
a single place on the web where these answers could be found.
Forget
Moore's
Law. That gives you the wrong answer, and this article explains why. ...read the article | | |
| . |
| Are MLC SSDs Safe
in Enterprise Apps? |
This is a follow up
article to the popular
SSD Myths and
Legends which, a year earlier demolished the myth that flash memory
wear-out (a comfort blanket beloved by many
RAM SSD makers)
precluded the use of flash in heavy duty datacenters.
This new
article looks at the risks posed by MLC Nand Flash SSDs which have recently
hatched from their breeeding ground as chip modules in cellphones and morphed
into
hard disk form
factors. |
 |
It starts down a familiar
lane but an unexpected technology twist (which arrived in my email while
writing this article) takes you to a startling new world of possibilities.
...read the
article | | |
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the Fastest Solid State
Disks
Speed isn't everything, and it comes at a price. |
But if
you do need the6speediest
SSD then wading through the web sites of over 90 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
 | |
| I've
done the research for you to save you time. And this page is updated daily from
storage news and direct
inputs from oems. ...read
the article, | |
| . |
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NAS,
DAS or SAN? - Choosing the Right Storage Technology for Your Organization -
article by Xtore
It's 8 years since we published the
Storage Architecture
Guide a classic reference written by the world's first network storage
company Auspex. The new overview article from Xtore places the main storage
connection strategies in a current context. Here's an extract.
"Another
important consideration for a medium sized business or large enterprise is
heterogeneous data sharing. With DAS, each server is running its own operating
platform, so there is no common storage in an environment that may include a mix
of Windows, Mac and Linux workstations. NAS systems can integrate into any
environment and serve files across all operating platforms. On the network, a
NAS system appears like a native file server to each of its different clients.
That means that files are saved on the NAS system, as well as retrieved from the
NAS system, in their native file formats. NAS is also based on industry standard
network protocols such as TCP/IP, FC and CIFS. " ... read the article,
...Xtore profile | |
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More articles about SANs
Here are some more articles we
published on STORAGEsearch related to storage area networks.
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