TMS Acquires SAN IP from
Incipient
Editor:- September 8, 2009 - Texas Memory Systems has expanded its
IP base with the acquisition
of data management patents and source code from Incipient.
"The
patents and software provide Texas Memory Systems with a new set of tools for
virtualisation and storage management that complement our solid state storage
systems,” said Woody
Hutsell, President at Texas Memory Systems. “The newly-acquired
technology will accelerate our development of new high-performance storage that
meets the demanding and complex needs of our enterprise customers.”
Texas Memory Systems has not acquired any interest in Incipient, Inc. Both
companies remain independent.
Increasing the Usefulness of Cheap SSDs with Virtual SAN
Software
Editor:- June 24, 2009 -
Seanodes
disclosed
results
of tests using entry level SSDs
with its
Exanodes
virtual SAN software.
In an ESX environment of 8 servers with 1
SSD drive per server, IOmeter benchmark results showed 36,000 IOPS (random read
4K) for a system with an overall cost under $20K (including the cost of SSDs and
Exanodes VM Edition).
"'Traditional arrays have been designed to work efficiently with
spinning disks and can't give the promise of SSDs in terms of performance and
scalability for example," said Frank Gana, Business Development Director at
Seanodes. "This limits the usage and markets and as a consequence most
people use them as Direct Attached Storage with all the usual known problems
that come with DAS. Thanks to Exanodes and its innovative design we can
aggregate and use SSDs efficiently, opening new markets and applications to this
technology".
Editor's comments:- Seanodes says it's trying to
fix the problem of aggregating and sharing multiple low capacity, low cost
SSDs between servers without requiring special tuning skills. But I have to
say the quoted IOPS don't sound impressive to me compared to the
fastest SSDs. So
why wouldn't you use less servers and a better SSD instead?
With so
many other competing solutions in the
rackmount SSD and
PCIe SSD market - I
suspect that Seanode's solution may only provide an economic price point for a
tiny fraction of possible applications - or none at all. There isn't enough
data in the press release to be sure.
Careful with that Storage Cocktail Eugene! - compression, dedupe,
encryption
Editor:- February 5, 2009 - this week Storewize issued a
press release suggesting users could get a 200%
improvement in capacity utilization when real-time compression is used together
with dedeuplication.
There are a lot of magic potions being offered to enterprises - and I
was concerned that the type of users who might be looking at these techniques
might also be looking at encryption too. I had recently read an old paper by
Coughlin Associates
which suggested that encrypting data on hard drives could result in capacity
bloat when followed by compression - because the resultant storage needed could
be more than before compression. So I asked Storewize about that.
I
got a helpful reply to my query today from Peter Smails Senior VP Worldwide
Marketing at Storewize - who said "Our technology is based upon real-time
compression so we compress data before it is written to disk. We are also
completely transparent to any downstream operation whether that be encryption,
deduplication, etc. We actually make them both more efficient. You are correct
that due to the exceptionally high entropy of encrypted data it is not
recommended to compress encrypted data."
They would be happy to
discuss with with readers who are interested. It's a complex subject - like many
aspects of the storage market.
A simple way of thinking about it is
mixing cocktails. As I have found from experience - it's possible to take
perfectly good raw ingredients - mix them together and get good (or bad) results
depending on whether you know what you are doing.
As too with
SSDs. If you don't know
what you're doing - they won't accelerate your application at all - but simply
result in more expensive storage. And even if you think you understand the
bottlenecks in your infrastructure - try before you buy is the safest thing to
do. See also:-
video:-
Pink floyd - Careful With That Axe Eugene |
|
| CommVault's
CEO "Unhappy" with 19% Year over Year Revenue Growth |
Oceanport,
N.J. - February 4, 2009 - CommVault today announced $60.1 million
revenue for the 3rd quarter ended December 31, 2008 - effectively 19%
year on year revenue growth.
But this was also a decrease of 5% over the prior
quarter.
"We achieved 19% year over year growth in total revenues"
said CommVault's chairman, president and CEO N. Robert Hammer. "This is
not a growth rate we were happy with especially since our underlying business
and pipeline growth is strong. The major issue that negatively impacted our
reported results was big deal slippage. The outlook for our business continues
to be good and we are really excited about the announced introduction of Simpana
8. Specifically, on
January
26, 2009, we announced the launch of our next generation software release,
the CommVault Simpana 8 software suite - which will enable our customers to
reduce costs and improve operating efficiencies. We believe it will enable us to
further strengthen our position in the data and information management market to
sustain our track record of innovation and double digit growth." ...CommVault profile
Editor's
comments:- when I compiled the list of the
Fastest Growing Storage
Companies in 2007-2008 - 34% was the minimum entry requirement and
there were several companies in the 200-300% region.
With the
effects of the recession you may doubt if any company this year will reach
those dizzy heights. You would be wrong. I'll be running more stories about
those in upcoming articles and news bulletins. From them we can learn a lot
about what the storage market will look like in the future.
StorageIO Founder Publishes Book - Green and Virtual Data Center
Stillwater, Minn.- January 27, 2009
- "The Green and Virtual Data Center" - is a new book (376 pages,
MSRP $79.95) by noted author and StorageIO founder Greg Schulz.
The book sets aside the political aspects of what is or is not
considered green
to examine the opportunities for organizations trying to grow their business
while being environmentally friendly in an economically efficient manner.
Addressing multiple technology domains and disciplines, it looks at design and
implementation tradeoffs using various best practices and technologies to
sustain application and business growth while maximizing resources, such as
power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity.
...StorageIO profile
New Edition - the Top 10 SSD OEMs
Editor:- January 10, 2009 -
StorageSearch.com today published a new edition of - the Top 10 SSD
OEMs.
Based on storage search volume in Q4 2008 - the ranking is
the most reliable indicator and predictor of future success in the fast growing
SSD market. The article includes a market commentary and summary of movements
in the past quarter. The 7th quarterly edition of this article is eagerly
anticipated by users and vendors alike. ...read the article,
SSD analysts / SSD
market research
Is Deduplication of Data safe? - and More Deduplication FAQs
Editor:- September 22,
2008 - StorageSearch.com has published a new article - on the subject
of - "Data Deduplication."
Its author Philip Turner,
UK Regional Director at Data
Domain described his article as the "Ultimate Deduplication FAQs".
But it's more than mere FAQs - as the paper combines multiple mini essays on
this subject in an easy to read guide. ...read the article
| |
| . |
| String Bean Software Announces iSCSI WinTarget | | |
|
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 100 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, | |
| . |
|
|
| . |
| 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 | | | |
