Today at SATA-IO
Interoperability Workshop
Editor:- June 8, 2009 - ULINK Technology
announced today that the company's newly released software,
Drive Master 2010 Pro
SATA supports SATA-IO's
Revision 3.0 tests in the
SATA-IO Interoperability
Workshop being held this week in Milpitas, CA.
The Drive Master
2101 Pro SATA is the ULINK's newly released flagship product to support
features, such as 6Gbps interface speed. It also includes new features for
Trusted Computing Group's
Full
Disk Encryption testing.
See also:-
Storage Events,
Storage Security,
Storage Testers &
Analyzers
Super Talent Refreshes Tired Flash SSDs
Editor:-
May 15, 2009 - Super
Talent today announced new
firmware
for its
UltraDrive
ME series 2.5"
SSDs.
This includes what the company calls a "Performance
Refresh Tool" to fix performance degradation problems in its earlier
generation of SSDs.
Although some commentators on the web have
attributed such problems to fragmentation - that's completely incorrect!
Since
the access time for random reads in a well designed SSD is nearly identical
for all locations - the real problem in Super Talent's SSDs (and some models
from Intel) was due tobadly
designed products which were rushed to market too soon without adequate
testing. For a deeper look at these issues see
Can you trust flash
SSD specs & benchmarks? - published nearly a year ago - which first
alerted buyers to these problems. See also:-
SSD controllers and IP.
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
Sun Launches Flash SSD Analyzer Tool
Editor:- March
11, 2009 -Sun Microsystems
launched its new Sun
Flash Analyzer - a free Java tool to help users determine how much their
(Solaris, Windows and Linux) servers could benefit from SSD acceleration.
The
company also launched a try before you buy marketing promotion for its servers
which have Sun branded 2.5"
SLC flash SSDs pre-integrated. The 32GB SATA SSDs have sequential R/W upto
250MB/s and 170MB/s respectively. Random R/W IOPS are upto 35,000 and 3,300
respectively (4k blocks).
Endurance is
3 years - assuming max write speed and 100% write duty cycle.
SalvationDATA Offers Better Hope of Data Recovery for flash SSDs
Sichuan,
China - February 6, 2009 - SalvationDATA announced it has developed a
new technology for flash SSD data recovery.
The company says its
methodology will work with all commercial devices (excluding military and
industrial SSDs which have inbuilt secure erase). The new tools are expected to
launch in May 2009 - and will be priced at about $1,300.
...SalvationDATA
profile
Editor's comments:- I didn't think this would be
feasible - and even wrote an
article explaining
why it would be very difficult.
It is difficult! - and does need a
new approach. But this is one prediction about which I'll be glad to be proved
wrong. Lack of an affordable flash SSD data recovery industry could have
triggered a backfire, damping enthusiasm in the consumer SSD revolution - and
such a setback could have been a reactionary market differentiator favoring
notebook HDDs. (Most consumers and SMBs don't do effective
backups - a trend which
hasn't changed in all the many years I've reported market research on this
subject.)
New Tool Acts as Bouncer for Up Market Tape Joints
Boulder,
Colo. - February 3, 2009 - Spectra Logic has extended its Media
Lifecycle Management technology outside the library with a new reader - now
shipping.
The MLM Reader (approx $2,500) is a portable device
that allows customers to check tape health on any computer through
USB, without loading the
tape into a library, and
is designed to proactively identify faulty tape media before it is required for
a data restore. It tracks over 30 non-volatile statistics about data tapes,
such as export details; remaining capacity; encryption information; number of
reads and writes; date of last access; born-on date; and cleaning log. ...Spectra Logic profile |
|
| A New
Methodology for Realistically Predicting Flash SSD Reliability
|
Editor:-
December 15, 2008 - Gary Drossel, VP Product Planning at SiliconSystems
has written a new article - "NAND Evolution and its Effects on SSD
Useable Life."
This is probably one of the 3 most
significant articles on the subject of
flash SSD
reliability which have been published in recent years. Starting with a tour of
the state of the art in the flash SSD market and technology the paper
introduces several new concepts to help systems designers understand why
current wear usage models don't give a complete picture.
- Write amplification - is a measure of the efficiency of the SSD
controller. Write amplification defines the number of writes the controller
makes to the NAND for every write from the host system. The concept stems from
the fundamental mismatch between erase block sizes (256KB for 50nm SLC), page
sizes (4KB for 50nm SLC) and sector sizes (512 bytes). Long, continuous writes
map over this mismatch, but most embedded/ enterprise applications do not
stream data. Instead, they transfer data in a series of shorter, more random
transactions.
- Wear-leveling efficiency - reflects the maximum deviation of the
most-worn block to the least worn block over time. It is usually discussed in
terms of a percentage. For example, a wear-leveling efficiency of 3% indicates
that there is only a 3% differential of wear on the most worn block as compared
to the least worn block.
The paper discusses the theoretical expected
lifetimes and amplification factors for several applications and concludes that
measurement of wear-out in real applications is the best way to understand what
is happening. It suggests that systems designers can use the company's
SiliconDrive (which includes real-time on-chip endurance monitoring) as an
endurance analysis design tool. By simply plugging in SiliconDrive(s) to a new
application for a day, week or month - the percentage of wear-out can be
measured - and corrective steps taken (in software design or overprovisioning)
to correct reliability problems.
What isn't stated in the article -
but is a logical inference - is that even if your product design goal is to
buy SSDs from other oems - the SiliconDrives can be used in your design process
to capture information in a non invasive manner which is difficult or
impossible to collect using other instrumentation. ...read the
article (pdf), ...SiliconSystems
profile, 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
AMI Announces Successor to BIOS
ATLANTA, GA - October
20, 2008 - AMI announces the release of AMIDiag for UEFI, a complete
OEM diagnostics software package for computer manufacturing, testing and
service.
Based on AMI's award-winning diagnostics for DOS and Microsoft
Windows, AMIDiag for UEFI provides a robust and comprehensive software platform
for testing for computer hardware including CPU,
memory, audio, video and
USB devices. A definite
advantage over traditional Windows-based diagnostics is that tests are performed
from the EFI Shell within the UEFI Boot Services layer, allowing direct access
to the hardware with no interference from operating system drivers or programs.
This simplifies the testing process and improves the reliability of the results.
"AMI is proud to be the first in bringing to market a complete, native
manufacturing-level diagnostics software for the
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface,"
said S. Shankar, President and CEO of American Megatrends. "AMIDiag for
UEFI is a rich testing platform supporting the latest CPUs and technologies from
Intel and AMD. AMIDiag for UEFI provides native UEFI diagnostics that build on
the stability, usability and performance developed through many years of joint
work with primary UEFI promoters as well as feedback from OEM users."
...AMI profile,
Storage Testers &
Analyzers
ULINK Invites SSD OEMs to Participate in SATA-IO Interoperability
Workshop
Santa Clara, CA - September 29, 2008- ULINK Technology will
provide a range of testing tools for designers and manufacturers during the
SATA-IO Plugfestthis
week in Milpitas, California.
ULINK considers that it will be a good
opportunity for new
SSD designers and
manufacturers to test the compliance of SATA-IO industrial standard by working
with ULINK during this coming event.
Storage Events,
Storage Testers &
Analyzers |
| History (of data
storage) |
| ................................................................................................................... |
Nibble
Re: Test Equipment
We're now seeing a wave of storage
peripherals appearing with new faster
Fibre-channel and
iSCSI interfaces. But
even the twenty-something year old SCSI standard keeps evolving and the latest
generation of SCSI adapter
cards contains features such as intrinsic mirroring which seemed like
mainframe features only a few years ago.
So how are you going to test
them?
If you integrate a lot of systems you can really get a lot of
benefit from using specialised test equipment. Even when a system is working
properly, putting a bus analyzer on it can help you understand what's really
happening, which can help you increase system performance, identify bottlenecks
and maybe get more business in the future.
It can also be good for
settling turf wars.
The analyzer will sometimes tell you that the
flaky operation which you thought was a software bug, turns out to be a bent pin
on a connector or a dodgy cable.
If you're an infrequent user, you may
not be able to justify buying some of this expensive stuff. Another option is
hire. You can often hire this type of system from specialised hire companies or
from the manufacturer themselves.
Be warned though! You might see some
scary activity on your analyzer monitor and wonder how any this technology
interface stuff ever works in the first place.
Unfortunately even the
very best test equipment can't solve all problems.
If it's 7 o'clock
on Friday night and your'e still suffering from jitters in the GBICs get out a
magnifying glass to check those little bitty ID marks. Maybe the problem isn't a
technical fault after all, but someone in purchasing ordered the wrong parts. If
that's the case you may think of a new place to store your soldering iron come
Monday morning. | |
..... |
|
|
| . |
 |
Can You
Trust Your Flash SSD's Specs & Benchmarks? |
| No - sadly you
can't! There are many intrinsic technical reasons why you
can't believe most published benchmarks for flash SSDs
(whether done by magazines or vendors) and why even the
tests you carefully do yourself don't give reliable
results which correlate with how the SSD will perform in
real-life applications. |
| We warned you of it
this problem here on StorageSearch.com last year - and now
other publications and vendors are starting to take it
seriously too. ...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 | | | |
..... |
|
