StorageReview.com offers in-depth news coverage and detailed reviews for hard drives, SSDs, NAS units, other storage hardware, and software for enterprise and consumer markets. Storage support forums provide a user community ready to offer storage-related discussions, buying advice and technical support.
Consumer Reviews - SSD | HDD | PCIe Storage | Desktop Externals | Portable Drives | SOHO NAS | Accessories
Enterprise Reviews - SSD | HDD | Application Accelerators | Large Enterprise | SAN/NAS 12 Bays+ | Small SAN/NAS
FEATURED by Brian Beeler
Flight Options On-Site Visit
Writing about storage and our experiences in our own lab is enjoyable, but every now and then we like to get out in the field to talk to end users and to see storage in the wild. Our most recent visit took us 250 miles up to Flight Options which is located just east of Cleveland, Ohio. Flight Options is a private aircraft operations company with 102 airplanes under management currently. That makes them the 2nd largest private jet operation globally. Like many other regional jet operators, Flight Options sells fractional shares of jets. The Flight Options fleet ranges from a small cabin Hawker 400XP that seats seven, to a large cabin Legacy 600 that seats up to 13 and has a range of over 3,700 nautical miles. Unlike other similar operators though, Flight Options has invested heavily in proprietary software solutions to manage their owners and aircraft which comes through no more obviously than their NASA-inspired control center. From a storage perspective, what makes all of these systems stay online all the time is Dell Compellent.
FEATURED by Josh Shaman
Synology DS1513+ NAS Review
The Synology DS1513+ is a 5-bay NAS that provides up to 20TB of raw storage with the ability to scale out to 60TB using expansion bays, and it features a dual core 2.13GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and Synology's DiskStation Manager 4.2 (DSM 4.2) software. The DS1513+ is also shipped with loads of connectivity via USB 3.0 and 2.0, Ethernet and eSATA ports. The DS1513+ updates the DS1512+ and is designed for the enterprise SMB market. Compared to the DS1512+, the DS1513+ provides increased throughput, more redundancy and easier business application usage. Another stanadard feature included on the DS1513+ is Synology High Availability which works to prevent drawn-out downtime and performs network load balancing to optimize storage across drives.
June 18th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
SanDisk FlashSoft 3.2 Announced
SanDisk is announcing the new version of its FlashSoft software for Window Server and Linux operating systems as part of a significant upgrade to its enterprise software portfolio. FlashSoft 3.2 is a server-side solid state caching software designed to strengthen the performance of existing applications and server and storage systems. FlashSoft 3.2 now features support for multiple SSDs as well as SSD mirroring for write-back caching. Additionally, it supports up to four caches on just one server and a maximum cache now up to 2TB per cache. FlashSoft 3.2 also now supports DAS and SAN configurations and can accelerate up to 2,048 volumes per cache.
June 18th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Zetta.net DataProtect 4.0 Availability Announced
Zetta.net is announcing the general availability of its DataProtect 4.0 which is an enterprise-grade cloud backup and disaster recovery solution designed for SMEs, remote and branch offices, and managed service providers (MSPs). DataProtect 4.0 provides several new features including WAN traffic optimization, local backup functionality for all data sets, a new UI, and an improved Exchange Server Backup plug-in. Zetta.net is also announcing its growth with its customer base having expanded year-over-year by 243% and with Series B funding of $8,000,000 to enable further expansion (which bring the company's total backing to $39.5 million).
June 14th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Seagate and IBM Enterprise SSHD Announced
Seagate recently blogged about a new enterprise solid state hybrid hard drive (SSHD) though the company has yet to publicly mention the product. The new enterprise SSHD is branded as an IBM drive and is designed as a storage upgrade in IBM System x servers. From what is known so far, the drives are based off of Seagate models that are 2.5" form factor, 600GB drives that spin at 10,000RPM and interface over 6Gb/s SAS. The drive also features a robust 128MB of on-board cache, and the hybrid component comes in the form of 16GB of eMLC NAND. With the enterprise SSHD that is designed for mid-range servers and storage subsystems, Seagate is aiming at 100% better performance than the base 10K drive.
June 14th, 2013 by Bill Valle
DataCore SANsymphony-V Updates Announced
DataCore Software is announcing updates to its SANsymphony-V storage virtualization platform as part of its version R9 release. The new version of the software adds the following enhancements: improved management with wizards, templates, and support for group commands for multiple hosts; a new database repository option for recording and analyzing performance history and trends; improved remote replication and connectivity optimizations for faster and more efficient performance; and support for higher speed 16Gbit Fibre Channel networking. Overall, the SANsymphony-V Update 9.0.3 is a strategic productivity solution that works infrastructure-wide across many storage hardware brands and models.
June 12th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HP Converged Cloud Expansion Announced
HP is announcing innovations to its Converged Cloud portfolio for greater agility and innovation as well as reduced cost for hybrid cloud environments. Part of that announcement is that HP has now delivered the next phase of a common OpenStack-based architecture for HP’s private, managed and public cloud offerings. On top of that, HP announced new software and services that accelerate time-to-market for private cloud, and HP has unveiled new capabilities for its managed and public cloud solutions. Much of what HP is announcing comes on the heels of research that HP commissioned that suggests that by 2016, 75% of enterprise IT will be delivered across hybrid cloud. The study also open standards are important for cloud deployment.
June 12th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Imation Assureon 7 Announced
Imation is announcing the release of its Nexsan Assureon 7 disk-based secure automated archive solution which consolidates storage tiers, secures data and reduces complexity in storage management for SMEs. Particularly, government, healthcare and financial organizations that deal with compliance for industry and government regulations are the target-market for this software which can automate storage policies to encrypt, self-authenticate, self-manage, self-heal and self-configure storage for all unstructured files and content. Going one step further, Assureon doesn't necessitate that applications be customized to use proprietary APIs in order to store data in the archive making Assureon easier to operate.
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HP Big Data Analytics Expansion Announced
HP today announced the expansion of their big data portfolio with one of the additions being HP HAVEn. Overall, these additions provide organizations with improved data insight and a view of real-time outcomes as HP commissioned research shows that more than a third of organizations have failed with a big data initiative. HP's expanded portfolio provides the tools for these organizations to be more successful. In part, that's where HP HAVEn comes in. HAVEn is a big data analytics platform that utilizes HP’s analytics software, hardware and services to create big data-ready analytics applications and solutions.
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Buffalo LinkStation 400 Series NAS Launched
Buffalo is launching its recently announced LinkStation 400 Series high performance NAS which provides up to 8TB of ultra-fast storage and backup and is being marketed toward users from novices all the way up to enthusiasts. The 400 series is quoted at transfers up to 100MB/s, nearly 3X some other NAS devices. It enables users to organize and protect content, stream media and access files from any computer smartphone or tablet at home or away from home. The LinkStation 400 is compatible with both Mac and PC computers, and when connected to a wireless router, yields access to centralized storage and backup.
The HGST Ultrastar C10K900 is an enterprise-class, 2.5" HDD that interfaces over SAS, has a spindle speed of 10,000RPM and ranges up to 900GB in capacity. The Ultrastar C10K900 also comes in at a 14.8mm z-Height, classing it in the 15mm category. That small form factor helps to reduce organizations' overall TCO, especially in networked storage arrays or any space and/or power constrained environments. On top of that, other optimal environments for the Ultrastar C10K900 are blade and rack-mounted servers for applications such as online transaction processing (OLTP), any high performance scenario, and cloud computing.
The HGST Travelstar 7K1000 is a 1TB, 7,200RPM HDD that comes in a 2.5", 9.5mm form factor and interfaces over SATA 6Gb/s. The Travelstar 7K1000 is fairly unique in the space. Many drives are migrating to slimmer z-Heights at 7mm or even 5mm to meet the needs of space-constrained applications such as upgrading HDDs in ultrabooks. However, the 7K1000's target is a larger market - consumers that require robust capacity in their notebook computer or small form factor desktop at an economical price. Matching well with notebooks, the drive also features low power consumption and the highest shock tolerance in the industry. The 7K1000 also leverages Advanced Format which increased the physical sector size from 512 to 4096 bytes (4k). This helps to improve capacity and error correction capabilities.
The Seagate NAS HDD is a 3.5" form factor, 6Gb/s SATA interface hard drive that spins at 5,900RPM, ranges up to 4TB in capacity and is specifically engineered to be installed in one to five-bay NAS devices. With the consumer and small office NAS market growing quickly and with buyers usually opting for diskless models, Seagate is responding to market demand with this specific use-case drive. Of course there are loads of drives out there that users could implement to populate a NAS, but most are overkill or otherwise sub-optimal for the need. Seagate joins the NAS HDD market by designing a drive to handle NAS workload and operational requirements with their NASWorks specialized firmware, three-year warranty and support from many leading NAS vendors.
The Intel SSD DC S3500 is designed for data center applications such as in cloud computing, web hosting and other read-intensive environments, and the drive features an in-house controller, 20nm MLC NAND, and form factors at both 2.5" and 1.8". The DC S3500 is the latest SSD in Intel's new line while its sibling, 
The WD Se HDD is the company's latest 3.5" enterprise-class hard drive that ranges in capacities up to 4TB, spins at 7,200 RPM and interfaces over SATA 6Gb/s. The WD Se is designed to provide robust storage for large-scale NAS deployments, replicated environments, bulk cloud storage, and backup and archiving. The WD Se isn't geared toward revving up to the highest IOPS offered by an HDD; the drives are more affordable than performance variations and offer features required for data security by SMBs and the growing mid-range NAS market. That said, WD designed the Se series to still support moderate-workload applications with maximum sustained transfer rates claimed at up to 171MB/s.
