| SAN news |
Multiple Vendors Announce
Support for FCoE
ditor:- April 11, 2008 - this week Emulex and Intel
launched 10Gb/s Fibre
Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) adapters.
Emulex explained the
thinking behind this. With FCoE, customers may now leverage the ubiquity of
Ethernet to converge both storage and networking traffic, improve overall
efficiency and simplify the infrastructure. Designed to natively transport Fibre
Channel traffic over the Ethernet network, FCoE will take advantage of lossless
Ethernet in the data center. A lossless Ethernet fabric provides the level of
performance and reliable delivery of data required for enterprise storage
environments.
Intel's PCIe dual port FCoE adapter will be in volume production in
May and will be priced at $799. The entire Intel 10GbE family will have FCoE
support on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by July and on Windows later this year.
FCoE will be a new standard with support from leading storage and
switch oems. The first mention on these news pages was in
October 2007 -
when QLogic unveiled its products.
In theory FCoE may help customers
with an installed base of legacy FC applications reduce costs by moving them
onto Ethernet environments. In practise, as we saw with the long drawn out
birth pangs of the iSCSI
market - tidying up all the loose ends could take many years.
STEC Ships 4Gbps ZeusIOPS Flash SSDs
ORLANDO, FL - April 7, 2008 - STEC,
Inc. announced the volume availability of its first 4Gbps Fibre Cannel
compatible ZeusIOPS flash SSDs - which are being shown this week at Storage
Networking World.
The
Zeus-IOPS range of
2.5" and
3.5"
flash SSDs are
available in capacities from 18GB up to 512GB. ...STEC profile,
SAN
Editor's
comments:- it's 2 years since the first shipments of
4Gbps
FC storage products. Originally conceived as an interface for hard disk
arrays - this kind of throughput (and more) will soon be needed to get the most
performance out of the fastest 3.5" SSDs.
I expect flash SSD
throughput and IOPs to more than double every year in the period from 2007 to
2012. Consistent with that view (which is based on looking at what happens when
new architectures are combined with process improvements)
gigabyte per
second 3.5" SSDs are only 2-3 years away.
Brocade Acquires Storage Services Company
SAN JOSE, Calif - March 4, 2008
Brocade today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to
acquire Strategic Business Systems.
Founded in 2000, and
headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, SBS provides data center-focused
professional services.
"The data center is evolving at
unprecedented rates and customers are asking us to provide more services that
solve real-world business challenges. SBS's team of skilled professionals and
comprehensive portfolio of service methodologies will enable us to offer an
expanded line of services that address the challenges of our customers..."
said Michael Klayko, Brocade CEO.
...Brocade profile,
Storage Services,
storage acquisitions
SSD from TMS Sets New Storage IOPS
Records
Houston,
Texas - January 28, 2008 - Texas Memory Systems, Inc. today announced
that it has broken the world data storage performance record and
price-performance record again.
The new records were achieved
using standard server and storage network hardware and the TMS
RamSan-400
solid state disk. Based on audited results submitted to the vendor-neutral
Storage Performance Council
the RamSan-400 SSD delivered a record 291,208.58 SPC-1 IOPS with a record
average response time of just 0.86 milliseconds. It also set a new SPC-1
Price-Performance record by delivering that performance at just $0.67 per SPC-1
IOPS.
...Texas Memory
Systems profile
ATTO Ships New FastStream RAID
Macworld Expo, San Francisco, CA -
January 14, 2008 - ATTO Technology, Inc. today announced the general
availability of its new line of FastStream storage controller appliances.
These deliver up to 1,200 Megabytes per second access to data with
parity
RAID protection and are
suited for applications in DVA and IT infrastructures including 4K and 2K
digital film production, high-definition video post-production, digital
prepress, disk-to-disk backup,
audio production and transaction-based environments.
The FastStream SC
7500 uses a 4Gbps Fibre
Channel interface for the host connection and a
SAS interface for
drive connectivity. The FastStream SC 7700 uses Fibre Channel for both the
host and drive connections. ...ATTO
profile
QLogic Supports Solaris SAN Targets
ALISO
VIEJO, Calif - December 12, 2007 - QLogic Corp. today announced the
availability of its first Fibre Channel host bus adapters with target mode
capabilities for OpenSolaris.
This makes it possible for
developers to build SAN-based
storage systems based on Solaris.
...QLogic profile
Editor's
comments:- in the late 1990s
many Sun compatible
oems got burned by getting too close to
Sun. But nowadays the "OpenSolaris"
initiative provides an insulating layer for most vendors.
CommVault Slashes 90% Off Backup Time for
Crutchfield Corp
OCEANPORT, N.J. -
November 29, 2007 - CommVault today announced that it has slashed the
time it takes to do full backups and restores for Crutchfield Corp.
from 48 hours to 5 hours compared to a previous solution from Symantec.
Selling electronics directly to consumers technology plays a major role at
Crutchfield where a 14-person IT
infrastructure team oversees 120 Microsoft servers running Windows 2003, SQL
Server 2005, Exchange 2003 and SharePoint Portal Server 2007. The company also
supports a growing storage environment comprising
EMC
SANs and 8 terabytes of
storage that's increasing each year.
After a storage growth spurt overtaxed the company's existing
backup and recovery foundation, Crutchfield decided to deploy best-of-class
disk-to-disk-to-tape hardware and more robust data protection software.
The
evaluation of competing software alternatives coincided with a deployment of
Microsoft SharePoint, which added item-level recovery of SharePoint files to its
top selection criteria. As one of the first vendors to support this level of
granular backup and recovery for SharePoint, CommVault was selected over
Symantec Veritas NetBackup and EMC Networker, both of which would have required
Crutchfield to rebuild an entire SharePoint system offline from
tape for restores. In
contrast, CommVault's first SharePoint recovery took less than an hour.
Crutchfield also leverages CommVault's on-the-fly tape encryption to
ensure complete compliance with Payment Card Industry regulations while its "set
it and forget it" operation and system-state backup feature have virtually
eliminated administrative overhead.
...CommVault Systems
profile
Bridgeworks Spans SAS to SAN
Christchurch,
UK - September 25, 2007 - Bridgeworks launched the Tamar FSAS4400
Fibre Channel to SAS Bridge.
The Tamar FSAS4400 enables users to
connect SAS enabled
devices such as Disk Arrays,
Tape Drives and
Tape Libraries to
FC SANs using the
fibre channel protocol.
- 2 x 4Gb Fibre Channel Ports
- Ethernet Management Port
- GUI + Command Line
- 4 SAS ports (3Gb) Mini SAS
- Supports all SAS devices
- 16,000 LUNs
- 19" rackmount form factor (cPCI and other formats
available)
Bridgeworks' CEO David
Trossell said - "(Our) approach to connectivity allows vendors to use one
core tape or optical technology but easily provide different SAN interfaces
within the same internal interconnect structure." ...Bridgeworks profile,
SCSI converters
Editor's
comments:- Bridgeworks
product naming
convention refers to rivers. For example they've got
Potomac
and
Tamar.
Fortunately there aren't too many commercially viable storage interface choices
for a SAS bridge. So there's not much risk of using up all the good names - and
having to use those with negative connotations - such as
Bridge on the River
Kwai,
Tay
Bridge (Disaster) or
Bear River
(Massacre). That could be
a Bridge too Far.
Bus-Tech Announces SAN Support for
Mainframe Data Library
Burlington,
MA - August 13, 2007 - today, Bus-Tech, Inc. announced upcoming support
for clustered SAN support in its Mainframe Data Library; the tape-on-disk
controller for IBM and compatible mainframes.
This enhancement to the
MDL allows
fibre channel attached
disks to be shared
across multiple MDL Emulation Nodes. A
SAN attached MDL now has
all the redundancy and high-availability characteristics previously available
only for IP-attached storage implementations. The MDL provides multiple
independently operating Emulation Nodes to insure the highest availability. Each
Emulation Node provides a minimum of 2 FICON or ESCON channel interfaces and a
fully populated MDL emulates up to 1,024 mainframe
tape drives. The MDL
supports in-line data encryption and IDRC compression.
...Bus-Tech profile,
Disk to disk backup
QLogic Samples 8Gbs Fibre Channel
ALISO
VIEJO, Calif - August 8, 2007 - QLogic Corp. today revealed that it
has begun sampling its portfolio of 8Gbs Fibre Channel switches and
host bus adapters to major OEMs.
8Gb Fibre Channel doubles the
performance of today's 4Gb Fibre Channel products while maintaining full
backward compatibility with the large installed base of 4Gb and 2Gb solutions.
...QLogic profile,
Record Breaking
Storage
Solid Data Launches Terabyte Fibre-Channel
SSD
SANTA CLARA,
Calif. - July 17, 2007 - Solid Data Systems, Inc. today StorageSPIRE
solid-state disk arrays providing up to a Terabyte of high-speed, non-volatile
storage.
StorageSPIRE
utilizes Solid Data's patented SSD technology, capitalizing on the company's 15
years experience in solid-state
disk solutions. With immediate response to read or write commands, SSDs
eliminate large server queues; thus, dramatically improving server stability and
response times during peak periods.
StorageSPIRE's advanced design provides persistent, non-volatile data
retention and easy configuration with no special device drivers required.
Designed with 4 Gigabit data paths and up to 12
Fibre Channel
connections, StorageSPIRE supports direct-connect, arbitrated loop and switched
fabric mode configurations with 500G to 1T of high-performance data capacity per
enclosure.
StorageSPIRE complements existing
SANs and
NAS by presenting a high
volume of LUNs to servers and serving data 10 to 50x faster than
mechanical disks, eliminating I/O bottlenecks. The StorageSPIRE solution deploys
transparently in the data center to preserve current infrastructure,
applications, file systems, and storage management software.
...Solid Data Systems
profile, RAM SSDs
Crossroads Grows with Grau Acquisition
AUSTIN,
Texas - July 3, 2007 - Crossroads Systems, Inc. today announced the
acquisition of Grau Data Storage's well-known FileMigrator Agent.
FileMigrator Agent launched a year ago, has generated more than
$750,000 in revenue and was acquired by Crossroads for less than $1 million in
cash. Through the acquisition, Crossroads gains Grau's significant OEM
agreement with HP along with
a solid sales presence in Europe.
...Crossroads
profile, ...GRAU Data
Storage profile, Acquisitions
Music Publisher Chooses SANmelody
READING,
UK - June 7, 2007 - The world's largest classical music publisher Boosey &
Hawkes is using
DataCore's SANmelody.
With 2
SANmelody
disk servers, the system provides virtualisation, synchronous mirroring and auto
failover for path and data, resulting in high availability.
Paul
Vernon, Head of IT, commented "We recognised that direct attached storage
had distinct limitations. Constantly resizing and reallocating disk space and
purchasing additional disk was becoming an ongoing challenge. We also knew that
we needed to engage a more effective business continuity solution, to allow us
to meet compliance and service agreements and allow 24x7 data exchange across
the globe." ...DataCore
profile,
...Boosey & Hawkes
profile, SAN
software
First 8Gb/s Fibre Channel Protocol
Analyzer
SUNNYVALE,
CA - April 2, 2007 - Finisar Corp today announced the industry's first
comprehensive 8Gb/s Fibre Channel test solution.
The powerful
Xgig storage test tool platform features full 8Gb/s line rate monitoring, yet is
backward compatible with legacy 4, 2, and 1 Gb/s rates. Additionally, the Xgig
platform is multi-function, supporting other important FC testing tools
including BERT (Bit Error Rate Tester), jammer, and data generation in a single
integrated solution. Finisar's multi-function architecture allows the identical
hardware to be leveraged across all stages of development resulting in
significant design time reductions and cost savings.
...Finisar profile,
Storage Testers,
SAN
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Squeak!
- the Fastest Solid State Disks
Speed isn't everything, and
it comes at a price. |
But if you do
need the speediest SSD
then wading through the web sites of over 55 current
SSD oems to find a suitable
candidate slows you down.
And the SSD search problem will get even
worse. |
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I predict
there will be over 100 SSD oems in 2008.
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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| Squeak!
- the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide |
This
is the 4th annual edition of this very popular report.
The earlier
edition of this article was the most popular
storage article viewed
by STORAGEsearch.com's readers in
the previous year. |
| |
| The
SSD Buyers Guide
lists all SSD products commercially available in the market by form factor,
interface type and memory technology. It also includes a summary of key
milestones in the SSD market in the past year.
...read the
article, solid state disks | |
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NAS, DAS
or SAN? - Choosing the Right Storage Technology for Your Organization -
article by Xtore
It's 5 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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