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Going Cloud Native And Avoiding Turbulence
Welcome to the first in a series of four articles discussing the containerization and cloud native movement that is led by Docker, Google and a burgeoning ecosystem of traditional and new players. In this series we venture to define and discuss this emerging and exciting space in an effort to help organizations better navigate it. While this first article will focus on defining “cloud native” and some related moving parts, in future articles we will explore the important layers and related challenges with networking, storage and container orchestration to give you a more complete view…but first let’s start at the beginning.
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StorageReview Podcast #15: Adam Laub, STEALTHbits
It's one thing to store data, manage it, back it up and deal with the rest of the information life cycle. There's much more at play though, and smart organizations are turning inward to better understand what's happeneing with their data. Almost every organization has a NAS or server with unstrcutured data, much of it containing sensitive data from customer information to proprietary business information. Knowing that a file was accessed is one thing, but knowing who is accessed it, when, and what they’re doing with it is crucial to security, satisfying audit requirements, as well as operational efficiency. Adam Laub, STEALTHbits’ Senior Vice President of Product Marketing, talks to us about the issues enterprises face when considering data usage and access and how STEALTHbits aims to provide more insights and intelligence with their new File Activity Monitoring product.
June 2nd, 2016 by Chris Thomas
Texas Advanced Computing Center Celebrates Milestones
Marking its 15th anniversary, the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin announced the dedication of a new building at the JJ Pickle Research Campus, and a $30 million award from the National Science Foundation.
June 2nd, 2016 by Adam Armstrong
Dell Introduces New Liquid Cooling Technology
Today Dell Inc. announced a new innovative liquid cooling technology for data centers, codenamed Triton. This technology comes from Dell’s Extreme Scale Infrastructure (ESI) group and was developed to help eBay improve performance in its new data center. Triton has been able to deliver better performance through cooling and reduce TCO.
June 2nd, 2016 by Chris Thomas
Synology Releases NAS DS416play
Taking the wraps off a new NAS station, Synology today introduced the DiskStation DS416play. The latest in Synology’s play series NAS options, this device supports an impressive number of home media streaming options. One of the main draws to this device as time goes on will be its ability to transcode h.264 4K video, despite the extreme lack of that kind of content on the market currently.
June 2nd, 2016 by Adam Armstrong
IBM Expands SDS Portfolio Leaning Toward Analytics
Today IBM announced that it is expanding its software-defined infrastructure solutions portfolio. This portfolio will now have cognitive features that will improve computing resource management, which in turn will provide faster results from data-driven applications and analytics. IBM is naming this new intelligent resource and workload management software IBM Spectrum Computing.
June 1st, 2016 by Adam Armstrong
STEALTHbits Releases Stand-Alone File Activity Monitor
STEALTHbits Technologies Inc. announced the release of its stand-alone File Activity Monitoring utility. This utility is designed to provide users with straightforward file access recording and data retrieval. The new monitoring product can record access and change activities for data stored on Windows, NetApp, EMC, and Hitachi File Systems.
June 1st, 2016 by Tucker Mindrum
Seagate Mobile HDD Review
Seagate’s new Mobile HDD provides 2TB of storage in a 7mm form factor. During a time when SSD innovation leads the market for this form factor, this drive holds unique appeal for users who want to upgrade their laptop storage without switching over. Although SSDs indisputably outperform HDDs, the Mobile HDD allows users to load up to 2TB of storage into their laptop at a fraction of the cost of an SSD.
June 1st, 2016 by Adam Armstrong
EMC Announces First-Ever Storage Provisioning Framework For Container Platforms
Today EMC Corporation announced its vendor and platform-agnostic storage orchestration, model and API, libStorage. EMC is calling libStorage the first open source technology of its kind. EMC claims that it will provide providing universal and portable storage capabilities for container and application platforms.
June 1st, 2016 by Adam Armstrong
Mellanox Introduces New BlueField Family Of SoC Programmable Processors
Today Mellanox Technologies announced its new family of programmable processors for networkding and storage applications, the Bluefield family. There is an increasing need for higher levels of SoC (System-on-Chip) integration in the industry and this new family aims to address this need. Mellanox believes that broader integration of SoC will result in simplified system designs, lower total power, and a reduced overall system cost.
Designed to improve the overall home and workspace experience, the Dell 23 Monitor (S2317HJ) features a full HD screen with a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 at 60 Hz. The nicely designed S2317HJ comes equipped with VGA, HDMI, audio line-in, and audio line-out ports for the usual connectivity options, and offers both wireless Qi and PMA charging. The S2317HJ also has built-in dual 3W integrated speakers for some pretty decent audio, and boasts a 23-inch 178°/178° ultra-wide viewing angle with full-tilt capabilities. This allows users to easily maneuver the screen in all kinds of different positions and angles, which is ideal for those who work in places where their monitor might be situated in an unconventional location.
In any performance-driven server or storage system, RAM plays a critical role when it comes to managing application latency. The premise is simple; the more memory systems have, the faster they'll go. But RAM is also one of the most expensive components, so it's important to balance performance needs with the proper technologies and RAM footprint to meet the need. Like all other things in IT, memory is making leaps and bounds in innovation. The latest version of memory is DDR4 (double data rate fourth-generation), which is finding its way into leading edge servers and storage platforms. In our lab RAM is one of our most valued assets, helping us push the limits in many of our benchmarks. Crucial has supplied the lab with DDR4 that we've been leveraging to push our load systems to their fullest.
Over the past few years, NVMe drives have been gradually increasing their place in the storage market. The main reason for this is how drastically they improve the storage I/O path, which can significantly improve overall system performance. The Toshiba OCZ RD400 is OCZ’s first NVMe SSD targeting the consumer demographic, specifically enthusiasts and gamers. Casting a wider net, the RD400 also includes an M.2 PCIe adapter for those desktop PCs that do not have an M.2 slot.
Any photographer can tell you: when it comes to storage, speed is king. Bringing back the 
Lowering power usage is a hot-button topic for anyone operating a lab or datacenter these days. Utility costs are always increasing, servers and storage keep growing and there are few signs that "the cloud" is going to do much to help. Regardless of the size of operation, power costs make up a huge portion of an OPEX budget (#4 at StorageReview); including the direct power usage of servers and associated hardware, as well as indirect power usage to cooling everything. During one of my first trips to Dell's headquarters in Round Rock, TX, I had the pleasure of seeing the 
