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SSD Backup - backup
accelerated by or saved to solid state storage
ALL enterprise backup will
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flash backed DIMMs - a new
directory from StorageSearch.com
Editor:- October 21, 2014 -
Although StorageSearch.com
has been writing about flash
backed DRAM DIMMs since the first products appeared in the market - I didn't
think that subject was important enough before to rate a specific article or
market timeline page.
That's unlike
memory channel
SSDs - which is now 1 of the top 10
SSD subjects
viewed by readers after having had its own directory page since
April 2013.
However, sometimes a
market is defined as
much by what it isn't as by what it is.
And so - to help clarify the
differences between these 2 types of similar looking storage devices (one of
which I think is much more significant than the other - but both of which are
important for their respective customers) I have today created a directory
page for hybrid DIMMs
etc - which will act as the future pivoting point for further related
articles.
Coho Data now shipping 2U MicroArray hybrids
Editor:-
March 6, 2014 - Coho
Data today
announced
general availability of its first product - a 2U
SSD ASAP called the
DataStream
(an SSDserver 4/E) - which
integrates PCIe SSDs,
hard drives and a
server into a web scale expandable unit (using an internal 52 port 10GbE fabric
switch) to implement what the company refers to as a "MicroArray"
designed with the philosophy of
"Turning
Tiering Upside Down (pdf)" to deliver a base building block unit of
180K IOPS
performance (4KB).
Editor's comments:- you may judge for
yourself the lofty scale of Coho's
ambitions by this market
soothsayer quote which they integrated in the launch press release - "By
2017, Web-scale IT will be an architectural approach found operating in 50%
of Global 2,000 enterprises."
See also:-
SSD empowered cloud
get ready for a world in which all enterprise data touches SSDs
Editor:-
January 8, 2014 - StorageSearch.com
today published a new article -
get ready for a
world in which all enterprise data touches SSDs.
"The winners
in SSD software could be as important for infrastructure as Microsoft was for
PCs, or Oracle was for databases, or Google was for online search." ...read the article
the SSD software event horizon
Editor:- October 8,
2013 - Ever wondered about the awesome market power of software?
It's
not just servers and hard drive arrays which have utilization rates.
Meet Ken and the
enterprise SSD software event horizon - the (long anticipated) new home
page blog which discusses the market impact of improving SSD utilization
ratios - and answers the question - how big will the SSD be when SSDs replace
all enterprise hard drives? ...read the article
Permabit has shrunk data storage market by $300 million
already
Editor:- September 30, 2013 - Permabit today
announced
that its
flash
and hard disk customers have shipped more than 1,000 arrays running its
Albireo (dedupe,
compression
and efficient
RAID) software in the past 6 months.
"We estimate that our
partners have delivered an astonishing $300 million in data efficiency savings
to their customers" said Tom Cook, CEO of Permabit
who anticipates license shipments to double in the next 6 months.
See
also:- SSD
efficiency, new RAID in
SSDs
Fusion-io acquires SCSI target IP team
Editor:-
March 18, 2013 - Fusion-io
announced
today that it has acquired another
storage software
company - ID7 - which had been
collaborating on the development of FIO's
ION data
accelerator software.
ID7 was the primary developer of the
SCST (SCSI target subsystem for
Linux) that enables replication, thin provisioning,
deduplication,
high availability,
and automatic backup on
any Linux server or appliance.
will flash save tape? - flape
Editor:- November 9,
2012 - "Flape" - flash cached tape archive - is a new word discussed
in a blog - Flape
and Floud - by Steve
Kenniston - The Storage
Alchemist who says "Over the last two decades I have been in this
business, tape has been killed off more than a bad guy in a James Bond movie..."
Editor's
comments:- It's interesting to think that flash tiering and caching might
extend the life of tape
libraries. But in the distant future (2020 timescale) I expect that anyone
still using tape cartridges might find when they open them - they have archive
SSDs inside emulating the tape media. It was already done long ago for
floppy drives. But even SSDs
become EOL and cause problems for those trying to support legacy systems.
SSDs or hard drives? - the data forensics differences
Editor:-
October 23, 2012 - When you need to retrieve critical unbacked up data from a
damaged notebook (which you left in the car when you clambered out the
window after realizing that the puddle across the road was much deeper than you
first thought) you call the process "data recovery" - but
when a court seizes a suspect's notebook to try and retrieve data which may have
been deliberately "deleted" - they call it "data forensics"
- either way - in the most demanding cases the experts who work on these tasks
are the same.
SSD Data Recovery
(as opposed to dumb flash memory recovery) is a relatively new market which
didn't exist 5 years ago.
A recent article
Why
SSD Drives Destroy Court Evidence - on a site called
ForensicFocus.com - discusses how
techniques which are essential to the operation of flash SSDs (such as
garbage collection
and wear leveling)
mean that from the forensic viewpoint SSDs yield up potentially much less
deliberately deleted recoverable data than hard drives.
future SSD capacity ratios in the server, SAN and archive
Editor:-
September 14, 2012 - Have you ever wondered... how much SSD storage should sit
inside servers compared to being located on the SAN? And what about archive
storage? Something new to think about in an
article inspired by
SSD news
1U MLC RamSan accelerates backup window for Penn State
University
Editor:- May 15, 2012 - a
research group at
Penn State University has reduced its
backup time from 6 hours
(with a 200 drive HDD array) to 1 hour by using a pair of 1U rackmount MLC
SSDs (model RamSan-810)
from Texas Memory
Systems.
"With some of the other 3 solutions we tested, we poked and pried at
them for weeks to get the performance where the vendors claimed it should be,"
said Michael Fenn, systems administrator at Penn State. "With the
RamSan, we literally just turned it on and that's all the performance tuning we
did. TMS was the best solution largely because of its maturity and performance.
It seemed very stable and it just worked out of the box."
HA enterprise SSD arrays
Editor:- January 26, 2012 -
due to the growing number of oems in the high availability rackmount SSD market
StorageSearch.com today
published a new directory focusing on
HA enterprise SSD
arrays.
In my past 20 years of publishing enterprise buyers guides
- I've developed an instrinct for judging when the market is ready for a new
focused directory. Sometimes I've been too early - but with the momentum in the
enterprise SSD market and the number of HA SSD vendors already dipping into
double digits - I think this is exactly the right time for such a new
directory.
university researchers compare SSD and tape archives
Editor:-
November 1, 2011 - a recent white paper -
Using Storage Class
Memory for Archives with DAWN, a Durable Array of Wimpy Nodes (pdf) -
written by academics at University of California, Santa Cruz and Stanford
University - and published under the auspices of the Storage Systems Research Center
compares the long term cost and reliability of solid state archival storage and
traditional media - such as tape.
"Our
investigation has shown that storage class memories have many characteristics
favorable to digital archiving. Despite this, more investigation in several
areas is needed in order to fully understand the tradeoffs and feasibility of a
storage class memory approach." ...read the article
the future of enterprise data storage in the broadcast and online
video market
Editor:- January 23, 2011 -
the
future of data storage is the lofty sounding but aptly chosen title of a
new article published online today in Broadcast Engineering -
written by Zsolt
Kerekes editor of StorageSearch.com
(that's me).
It's a completely new article which synthesizes and
integrates concepts from several futuristic articles which have already
appeared here on the mouse site and wraps them into a cohesive whole. Anyone
who reads it will get a clear idea of where the incremental changes they read
about in storage news pages (like this one) are likely to end up by 2020.
...read
the article
2.5" SSDs accelerate disaster recovery
Editor:-
September 24, 2010 - an update to Intel's SSD Bookmarks
- published today on StorageSearch.com
- includes links to a case study in which
RAID rebuild times for a
real-time education server were reduced from 12 hours to 40 minutes, while
response times became 25x faster. ...read the articles
Can you believe the word "reliability" in a 2.5"
SSD brand?
Editor:- July 29, 2010 - StorageSearch.com today published
a new article -
the cultivation and
nurturing of "reliability" in a 2.5" SSD brand.
Reliability is an
important factor in many applications which use
SSDs. And belief in SSD
reliability is a precondition for the emerging SSD backup market. But can you
trust an SSD brand just because it claims to be reliable?
As we've
seen in recent years - in the rush for the
SSD market bubble -
many design teams which previously had little or no experience of SSDs were
tasked with designing such products - and the result has been successive waves
of flaky SSDs and
SSDs whose specifications
couldn't be relied on to remain stable and in many products quickly
degraded in customer sites.
As part of an education series for SSD
product marketers - this new case study describes how one company - which didn't
have the conventional background to start off with - managed to equate their
brand of SSD with reliability in the minds of designers in the embedded systems
market. ...read
the article
Nimble Storage enters the ASAP market
Editor:- July
15, 2010 - Nimble
Storage announced the release of the
Nimble CS-Series
an iSCSI compatible
SSD ASAP which has
been optimized for backup and compression performance.
The model
CS240 has 18TB of primary storage and 216TB backup. At launch pricing was
under $3/GB (usable) for primary storage and $0.25/GB for backup storage.
survey shows most users think they can't afford zero loss disaster
recovery
Editor:- June 9, 2010 - Axxana today
published
findings from a survey it funded to understand the role that
cost plays in
inhibiting user adoption of zero data loss
disaster recovery
solutions such as its own SSD based solutions.
'This survey has
really shown how today's end users still feel that eliminating data loss though
a disaster recovery strategy is still out of their budget,' said Eli Efrat,
Axxana's CEO. 'Although cost is still an important consideration, the results
support our strategy and I am confident that a year from now solutions such as
our Phoenix System will have a much bigger foothold in the market because they
make zero data loss DR an affordable option.'
SSD Backup
new article - the SSD Heresies
Editor:- June 8, 2010
- more than 10 key areas of fundamental disagreement within the SSD industry
are listed and discussed in a new expanded article published here on StorageSearch.com -
the SSD Heresies.
Why can't SSD's true believers agree about a single coherent vision for the
future of solid state storage? ...read the article
Nimbus launches remotely replicatable iSCSI SSD rackmount
Editor:-
April 26, 2010 - Nimbus
Data Systems today
launched
its S-class
storage system - a 2U 10GbE rackmount SSD with 24 hot swappable
internal 6Gbps SAS
flash SSD blades in an 80W power footprint offering 5TB protected capacity for
$39,995.
Powered by Nimbus' HALO storage OS the systems support
iSCSI, NFS, and CIFS
protocols and provide inline
deduplication
(typically 10 to 1), continuous local and remote replication capability
in-the-box at no additional cost. Data protection inside the box ensures that no
data is lost even with 2 simultaneous blade faults.
reaching for the petabyte SSD
Editor:- March 16,
2010 - previewing the final chapters in the long running
SSD vs HDD wars -
StorageSearch.com today
published an industry changing new article -
SSDs - reaching for
the Petabyte.
What will the PB SSD look like? When will it appear?
What technology problems do
SSD designers have to
solve to get there? What about the
storage architecture
that the PB SSD fits into? How much electrical power will it consume? And...
you may be curious - how much will it cost?
All these questions and
more - are discussed and answered in this article which - I anticipate -
will inspire product managers and company founders to create completely new
types of SSDs. ...read
the article
Solid State Storage Backup - new directory for a new market
Editor:-
February 16, 2010 - StorageSearch.com
launched a new directory today for -
Solid State Storage Backup.
Although
these are still early days for the S3B market - the new page will help you
filter out news, articles and messages from the S3B pioneers which otherwise
might get lost in the clamor of the
SSD market bubble.
"In
the early days of the
disk to disk backup market the old
tape vendors scoffed at
the idea that hard disks
might one day steal their market. Now most of those old tape dinosaurs are gone
and the hard disk backup market reigns supreme" said editor, Zsolt Kerekes.
"Despite that - I expect that most vendors in the
D2d / VTL market today
will not even be dreaming about the possibility that
SSDs will one day
transform their own cozy market too. But they urgently need to start having
fresh ideas about what backup and recovery are really for? The
S3B page will chronicle the
news from the nascent Solid State Storage Backup market - and help to accelerate
those changes."
ioSafe Launches Disaster Proof Backup SSD
Editor:-
January 5, 2010 - ioSafe
launched the
ioSafe Solo SSD - an ultra rugged
USB /
eSATA
external
flash SSD with
upto 256GB capacity ($1,250) designed to provide data protection against
disasters such as fire, flood, and building collapse.
ioSafe offers
a "no questions asked"
Data Recovery policy
to help customers recover from any data disaster including accidental deletion,
virus or physical disaster.
"The new ioSafe Solo SSD is the world's most rugged and versatile
desktop external hard drive. It can be used alone or in conjunction with any
offsite or online backup
strategy to add real time, zero data loss, synchronous disaster protection to
any data that sits vulnerable," said ioSafe CEO, Robb Moore.
Tape library maker discusses future backup technologies
Editor:-
December 7, 2009 - Spectra Logic
published a
blog
article - which discusses the prospects of
HDD backup versus
tape and it also talks
about
tape
backup versus SSD backup.
$9 million Funding Round for flash SSD Enabled SAN Backup
Editor:-
November 18, 2009 - Axxana
announced it has
secured $9 million Series B
investment led by Carmel Ventures.
Axxana's existing investors, Gemini
Israel Funds and the serial entrepreneur
Moshe Yanai,
also participated in the round.
The funds will be used to accelerate
the adoption of The Phoenix System - the first "Black Box" Enterprise
Data Recorder which was demonstrated at EMC
World in May 2009.
"Axxana's EDR brings a disruptive solution that is well poised
to transform the entire storage replication market and create a whole new
category within it," said Ronen Nir, Partner at Carmel Ventures. "We
are impressed with Axxana's strong founding team and their achievements so far,
including impressive endorsement by leading storage vendors worldwide."
Editor's comments:- Axxana's solution is a lossless data
recovery system which sits on the
SAN and records data into a
rugged flash
SSD-enabled, locally situated, data survival box. Although Axxana talks
about it "complementing" other types of data protection - such as
offsite / online backup
my gut feel is that if the product shows itself to be usable and
reliable in a wide
range of environments - it will set a new standard for
backup which will
supercede anything possible with rotating
disk backup systems or
tape.
The
clearest explanation is in
Axxana's datasheet
(pf).
Dedupe Makes SSD Affordable - says WhipTail's CTO
Editor:-
October 12, 2009 -
WhipTail Technologies
became the 1st SSD appliance company to market integrated in-line
deduplication.
At
SNW WhipTail
announced
it will ship its newly renamed Racerunner (6TB) NAS SSDs with
Exar's Hifn
BitWackr
deduplication and compression solution in Q4 2009. Racerunner has demonstrated
deduplication performance in excess of 1Gbps.
James Candelaria, CTO of
WhipTail Technologies said "Once again, we're proving
Tier 0 storage
doesn't have to be expensive. By providing in-line de-duplication, customers can
save money by investing only in the storage they need." | |
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