June 11th, 2013 by Bill Valle
HP StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library Announced
HP is announcing the new HP StoreEver MSL6480 Tape Library which is built on a modular, scalable architecture and is designed to meet both short term backup and longer term archiving needs of medium size businesses. By starting small and growing as needs increase, the MSL6480 provides scalability, density, and performance at a price point that is competitive in the industry. The MSL6480 can deliver up to 60.4 TB/hr and can grow from 240 TB to 3.5 PB in a single tape library. Compared to the nearest competitor’s product, this yields 2.1 times faster performance, 1.3 times more density, and 1.3 times more scalability.
June 11th, 2013 by Bill Valle
HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Announced
HP is announcing their new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 which delivers over 550,000 IOPS and has extremely low latency with a 0.7ms response time, and it doesn’t require a separate storage architecture. The new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 Storage enables customers to improve application response time with flash specific software optimizations such as adaptive read and write optimization and autonomic cache offload which dynamically adjust the granularity of cache-to-flash operations based on demand. Also, the system sustains high performance with multi-tenant I/O processing and higher-performance mesh-active clustered controllers which ensure that all application volumes are active on all disks and controllers at the same time. The system also manages flash efficiently with the new media wear gauge, it extends media lifespan with load-balancing. On top of all of this, it lowers costs by reducing capacity requirements by 50%+.
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HP Data Protector 8 Announced
HP Data Protector 8 is the newest version of the company's backup and recovery software which can scale to accommodate thousands of clients and as many as 100,000 sessions daily. Additionally, Data Protector 8 can manage up to 1 trillion unique filenames, a figure over 100x larger than that of competing products, and it enables protection for up to 50,000 clients in a single management environment and offers throughput up to 144TB/hr. The software is a comprehensive approach to data protection across primary storage, disk backup and tape archives. HP Data Protector 8 also features bandwidth control so that administrators can configure max bandwidth allocations for backups. This ensures that critical data is protected and cuts the costs associated with needing a dedicated network.
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Intel SSD DC S3500 Enterprise Review
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 DC S3700 that we've also reviewed, is designed for the mainstream and high-performance enterprise market segments. These SATA 6Gb/s interfacing drives both take on the new four-digit naming convention Intel is incorporating to give more clarity and distinction to which drives belong to which category (consumer, pro, enterprise).
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
LenovoEMC Rebranding Iomega Announced
LenovoEMC is announcing the rebranding of their Iomega network storage products and programs which places significance on the identity of the joint venture. The transformation starts with a new Acronis agreement to provide PC backup software for Lenovo storage devices. The new branding means that consumer products that previously solely went by the Iomega branding now take on Lenovo Iomega branding. That includes the desktop single-drive Lenovo Iomega EZ Media and Backup Center, the desktop double-drive Lenovo Iomega ix2-300d Network Storage and the desktop quad-drive Lenovo EMC ix4-300d Network Storage.
June 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
NetApp Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 Announced
NetApp is announcing a new version of their storage OS, Clustered Data ONTAP 8.2 which enables organizations and cloud service providers to provide more capacity and new services with a minimum amount of system downtime. As business and application needs changes, ONTAP 8.2 helps to eliminate the performance, availability, and efficiency limits of traditional hardware. ONTAP 8.2 provides more than 99.999% reliability to yield continuous data access during scheduled downtime and to load balance dynamically without disruptive data migrations. ONTAP 8.2 also supports seemingly limitless scaling with up to 69PB of storage and 24 controller nodes, 49,000 LUNs, 12,000 NAS volumes supporting over 100,000 clients and single container up to 20 PB.
June 10th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
WD Se HDD Review
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.
June 5th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Dell Compellent, FluidFS, and Hadoop Updates Announced
Dell is announcing new storage solutions and expanded analytics for greater performance and lower expenses. Beginning with Dell Compellent solutions, Dell has made substantial updates to their storage portfolio aimed at performance-hungry applications. Dell is also implementing their Compellent Storage Center 6.4 array software which has been optimized for data-intensive workloads. The new Dell Compellent Flash Optimized Solution offers the first storage solution in its class with intelligent data placement across multiple types of flash technologies or in combination with traditional drives. Dell is also now offering the super-dense Compellent SC280 5U shelf that provides up to 336TB of storage. The 5U footprint significantly reduces data center space, power and cooling requirements for the number of drives stored inside versus the same capacity found in multiple 2U shelves.
June 4th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Dell Announces Expansion of Converged Infrastructure
Dell is announcing expansion and differentiation in its converged infrastructure (CI) line to meet the applications of a wide-range of workplace requirements in medical, science, finance and other sectors. Dell's CIs can be tailored for specific workloads and applications to enhance productivity and performance while reducing expenses. This announcement focuses on a few of Dell's latest offerings including Dell Active Infrastructure for HPC Life Sciences, Dell Active Infrastructure 1.1 and Dell Modular Data Center, while we are also covering the PowerEdge VRTX. All of these products from Dell features more robust performance, greater management and cost-savings.
June 4th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
Dell PowerEdge VRTX Shared Infrastructure Announced
Dell is introducing their PowerEdge VRTX which is a Private Cloud in a Box shared solution that comes in a tower form factor and is specifically designed for remote and small offices. The VRTX solution features support for up to four compute nodes, eight addressable PCIe slots, Gigabit Ethernet, support for 12 LFF HDDs or 25 SFF HDDs, and is powered by redundant standard 110V outlets (versus 220-240V with other data center solutions). While many workload and applications-centric infrastructures have been designed around the needs of large organizations, Dell is pioneering to meet the needs of growing remote/branch offices (ROBO) by offering robust enterprise-class features and capabilities with the PowerEdge VRTX.
The SAS 616iSD 10G is part of an extensive line of block-level storage arrays offered by JetStor. The iSCSI 616iSD offers up to 48TB of storage via 16 3.5" bays in a 3U enclosure. JetStor features dual redundant active/active RAID controllers and four 10GbE ports, two per controller. Each controller is powered by an Intel IOP342 64-bit Chevelon dual-core storage processor, and includes features like parity-assist ASIC, iSCSI-assist engine and TCP Offload Engine (TOE). Should 48TB prove insufficient, the 616iSD can be expanded with four JBOD shelves (SAS716J) for a maximum capacity of 240TB per array.
The StarTech 2636 cabinet is a 15U server rack that ships fully assembled and is ready to go right out of the box. The growing rack space requirements of the 
The Mellanox SX1036 is a 1U managed Ethernet switch that provides up to 2.88Tb/s of non-blocking throughput via 36 40Gb/s QSFP ports that can be broken out to achieve up to 64 10Gb/s ports or offer a mixture of 40Gb/s and 10Gb/s connectivity. As a backbone to the .jpg)
The Lenovo ThinkServer RD630 represents a calculated entry into the server market: an affordable server with specifications that support database applications and virtualized infrastructure. The RD630 was announced earlier this year as part of an initiative to expand the ThinkServer brand into enterprise cloud and virtualization deployments. It is a scalable 2U rack server solution featuring hardware RAID and eight to sixteen 2.5-inch hot-swap SAS or SATA drives. Powering the ThinkServer is the Intel Xeon E5-2600 processor family with the Intel C602 Chipset. New products like the RD630 are positioning Lenovo to take on other OEMs like Dell and HP that already operate in the enterprise server market.
Eaton’s Advanced Monitored family of ePDUs are designed to allow administrators to remotely monitor the power usage of individual outlets or sections over the network. Out-of-the-box web monitoring is built into the ePDU, and SNMP allows integration with third-party management systems. The eAM001 Advanced Monitored ePDU brings 20 C13 outlets and 4 C19 outlets to the 
