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.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
LSI Announces SandForce SF-2200 TCG Opal Compliance
LSI is announcing that their SandForce SF-2200 client Flash Storage Processors (FSPs) now meet standards that enable SSD manufacturers to build drives that comply with the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal specification, a specification designed for self-encrypting SSDs that simplifies deployment and management. The SandForce FSPs often found in corporate mobile computing meet the spec by promoting interoperability with popular encryption and security management products such as those offered by Wave Systems and WinMagic. This news from LSI comes as more and more organizations worry about the increase in mobile/remote work that can put corporate data at risk.
June 3rd, 2013 by Bill Valle
LSI Announces Syncro CS Availability
LSI has announced the availability of its Syncro CS which is a robust, cost-effective, and easy to deploy high availability storage solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Syncro CS brings shared storage and storage controller failover into DAS environments at a fraction of the cost. Additionally, it drastically reduces the complexity of traditional high availability (HA) solutions. Built on LSI MegaRAID technology, Syncro CS solutions use two controller cards to allow system administrators to build their highly available, shared DAS solution. Syncro CS does this by supporting two deployment models.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
PMC Announces Adaptec 78165 RAID Adapter
PMC is announcing the Adaptec 78165, the industry's first low-profile, 24-port PCIe Gen3 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID adapter which makes for even denser architectures for scale-out and space-constrained environments. The Adaptec 78165 is PMC's latest addition to their Adaptec Series 7 RAID adapter family. Naturally, with 24-port connectivity, the new PMC offering more than triples existing 8-port RAID adapters. On top of that, it doubles the performance of competing products with performance at up to 6.6GB/s on sequential reads and up to 5.2GB/s on sequential writes (RAID 0). The combination of these features and speeds reduces power and costs.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Mellanox Announces Virtual Modular Switch (VMS)
Mellanox is announcing the immediate general availability of their Virtual Modular Switch (VMS), an Ethernet data center aggregation switch infrastructure. Mellanox VMS is constructed by connecting Mellanox's SwitchX-2 based 40 and 56GbE systems in a non-blocking topology and is managed using Puppet and Chef management applications. Mellanox VMS provides up to 720 ports of 40Gb/s with latency under 2µs. Simultaneously, it reduces power consumption by as much as 90% and reduces expenses by up to 85%. Beyond that, compared to traditional chassis-based switches, the Mellanox VMS maintains up to 90% of aggregation bandwidth during switch failures.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Broadcom Announces New StrataGX Processors
Broadcom is announcing the release of the new StrataGX BCM5862X Series processors designed for wired and wireless NAS devices and routers. The new processors deliver ten times the performance as well as ARM-based FlexSPARX security and storage features that support hybrid cloud services. This is essential as many new NAS devices are designed to support secure hybrid cloud and remote access of content. The new StrataGX series also delivers Gigabit connectivity speeds on wired and wireless connections and support for 5G Wi-Fi, based on the latest IEEE 802.11ac standard.
May 31st, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Netgear ProSafe Plus XS708E 10GbE Switch Review
The Netgear ProSafe Plus XS708E 10GbE switch is part of a new family of ProSafe switches that are designed for SMBs to address the concerns of both enormous network traffic growth and the increasing performance capabilities of networked storage. Most storage arrays are sold with 10GbE these days either standard or as a reasonably priced option and 10GbE is likewise gaining traction in the server market. While gigabit Ethernet remains the standard, the benefits of 10GbE are immense, but a long time stumbling block has been the capital investment in equipment to support the interconnect, especially for small businesses. The key then with the XS708E is both speed and cost - the XS708E brings performance capabilities to the masses, with a street price of close to $100 per port.
May 31st, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Toshiba PX02SM Series Enterprise SSD Review
Toshiba's PX02SM is a high performance enterprise-class SSD that features eMLC NAND with capacities up to 1.6TB as well as a new dual port SAS 12Gb/s interface. The PX02SM updates the Toshiba MKx001GRZB Enterprise SSD that we reviewed which was previously Toshiba's pinnacle enterprise SSD with 32nm SLC NAND and SAS 6Gb/s in a 2.5", 15mm form factor. This time however, the Toshiba PX02SM comes to market in a 2.5" form factor that has been slimmed down from 15mm to just 7mm (still 15mm for the 1.6TB model). Additionally, Toshiba has chosen to implement eMLC NAND, attaining comparable endurance and even greater cost-effectiveness, yielding lower prices for organizations' IT budgets.
May 31st, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
OCZ Talos 2 R Enterprise SSD Review
The OCZ Talos 2 R is a 2.5" form factor enterprise-class SSD that ranges in raw capacity up to nearly 1TB and features a SAS interface with dual-port support as well as cost-effective MLC NAND. The Talos 2 R also features OCZ's Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) 2.0 that ties together a pair of SandForce flash controllers to deliver performance and capacity enhancements. This much makes the Talos 2 R similar to its sibling OCZ Talos 2 C that we recently reviewed. However, the Talos 2 R differentiates itself from the Talos 2 C by tacking on power fail protection to protect in-flight data from unexpected power loss, an upgraded controller and additional over-provisioning at 28% versus 7% on the Talos 2 C.
May 31st, 2013 by Josh Shaman
PMC Sierra Announces Acquisition of IDT
PMC Sierra has announced that PMC is acquiring Integrated Device Technology's (IDT) enterprise flash controller business as well as some of their PCIe Switch assets, their IP and 75 of their patents for $100,000,000. The PMC acquisition of IDT was made to propel PMC into the enterprise SSD space with state-of-the-art controllers such as the first NVMe flash controller. PMC also holds that their time-to-market should improve by about two years as a result of this transaction. This is also significant news as IDT said it expects the enterprise SSD space to account for 50% of all SSD sales starting in a few years, which will also further drive controller sales.
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 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 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 
