March 15th, 2013 by Bill Valle
Sanbolic Announces Melio5 Software
Sanbolic's newly available Melio5 software supports up to 2,048 nodes and 65,000 storage devices with 650,000 IOPS per server, and the software is aimed at reducing scale-out hardware costs for businesses in the enterprise. Melio5 improves the economics of deploying server-side Flash, SSD, and HDD primary storage. The theory behind the software is that installing flash storage arrays is overly expensive, exponentially more so than using Melio5 to accelerate hardware. So, Melio5 is designed to intelligently utilize a mix of storage to integrate both performance and security at a more reasonable price-point.
March 14th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Advatronix Cirrus 1200 Review
.jpg)
The Advatronix Cirrus 1200 server features the Intel Xeon E3 family in either the E3-1220LV2 or the more powerful E3-1265LV2 iteration that our review model employs. Offered as an equally powerful alternative to more traditional rack servers, the Cirrus 1200 is presented in a relatively small, blue cube-shaped form factor. This gives the Advatronix a unique size that allows users the kind of access they typically expect from a desktop. Accordingly, instead of being tucked away somewhere remotely as rack servers often are, SOHO and creative houses can keep their Cirrus 1200 just about anywhere. This makes it easy both to service and maintain when necessary, which are must-have features when positioned in the SMB and private cloud computing space.
March 11th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
StorageReview Debuts MarkLogic NoSQL Storage Performance Benchmark
Working jointly with MarkLogic, StorageReview has developed the first actual NoSQL environment to benchmark storage that clearly illustrates the benefits of flash coupled with the industry’s fastest interconnect. Previous benchmarking efforts have simulated database workloads, but this is the first time we’ve been able to test against an actual NoSQL instance working against the best host-side flash solutions on the market today. Now MarkLogic customers can clearly see the stratification in performance and be able to select a storage solution qualified by StorageReview.com that meets their capacity, budgetary, and/or performance needs.
March 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Data Protection Advisor 6 Released
EMC has announced Data Protection Advisor 6, an update on their software that enables organizations to easily gain visibility and insight into their backup infrastructures. As data needs grow and more companies expand existing storage and add virtual storage, EMC's Data Protection Advisor 6 monitors, alerts, analyzes, optimzies, and reports on those infrastructures enabling users to verify the status of their systems. The update on Data Protection Advisor (DPA) includes a new user interface, analysis engine, and architecture, as well as some updated features. DPA 6's updates improve upon DPA's ability to analyze and report upon backup storage, VMware, NAS/SAN, and the like.
March 11th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Sepaton Announces S2100-ES3 Backup and Recovery System
Sepaton announced immediate availability of their S2100-ES3 series 2925 large enterprise, government-class purpose-built backup applicance (PBBA) featuring version 7.0 software. The S2100-ES3 series helps enterprise and government data centers to deal with data growth, risk, and financial constraints. Using the S2100-ES3, just one administrator can manage tens of petabytes within a single system. Significant upgrades implemented to the S2100-ES3 include: new processing nodes, enhanced network connectivity options, and high performance compression cards to nearly double ingest performance to 80TB/hour.
March 6th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
LSI and NetApp Announce Collaboration on Server-Based Flash Acceleration
LSI announced that its Nytro WarpDrive cards have been validated for use with NetApp Flash Accel software, making them amongst the first PCIe flash devices to have been qualified for Flash Accel use. Together with NetApp Flash Accel software, LSI's Nytro WarpDrive family of cards speed application performance by converting server-based flash into data cache critical for enterprise applications. That "hot" data is the most frequently accessed data which is then transported to the PCIe flash for its low latency and performance ability. Utilizing the cache yields significant results; throughput increases up to 80% while application and server latency decreases up to 90%.
March 5th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
OCZ Releases VXL 1.3 Cache and Virtualization Software
OCZ announced the general availability of VXL 1.3, the newest version of OCZ's VXL Cache and Virtualization software. VXL software works with OCZ's Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSDs to create and distribute caches from which the OS allows virtual sessions to run. The previous version, VXL 1.2, provided some solid updates. It enabled Z-Drive R4 PCIe SSD flash drives to be virtualized to aid in distributing unallocated flash as a dynamic cache resource no matter how many VMs were running. Also, VXL 1.2 enabled host-based distributed flash volumes with high availability and fault tolerance. VXL 1.3 builds on that progress and implements a whole host of new features and updates over the previous version that will benefit end-users such as IT managers in the enterprise.
March 5th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
EMC Adds Family of PCIe Flash Cards, Consolidates Flash Products Under Xtrem Brand
EMC has consolidated their array of flash offerings under new branding, Xtrem. The EMC Xtrem family incorporates three core offerings. XtremSF (server flash) includes PCIe application accelerators, XtremSW (software) includes caching solutions, formerly referred to as VFcache, and XtremIO, the all flash array formally referred to as Project X and part of the XtremIO acquisition. As part of today's announcement, EMC has revealed that they have expanded their line of XtremSF cards, adding three MLC-based offerings to the mix. Also, their XtemIO flash array is now entering directed availability with general availability expected later this year.
March 4th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Fusion-io ioDrive2 Duo SLC Application Accelerator Review (1.2TB)
The Fusion-io ioDrive2 Duo is a full-height, half-length application accelerator that, when paired with SLC NAND, offers 1.2TB of low-latency, high-endurance storage for today's most demanding applications. While branded as a second generation product, the naming is somewhat misleading as Fusion-io has long been a pioneer in the memory-as-storage range with their assorted ioMemory products. That experience shows not just in product development and spec sheet highlights, but all the way through to management as well; Fusion-io boasts the most robust drive management software suite on the market with ioSphere. Still, pretty software and proven drive design are only part of the equation. Enterprises deploy these products with one goal in mind; reduce application response times by attacking storage system latency. The SLC iteration of the ioDrive2 brings laser-focus to this issue, offering read access latency of 47µs and write access latency of 15µs. This compares to read access latency of 68µs in the MLC-based ioDrive2 (they have the same write latency) and while roughly 20µs doesn't sound like much, it can be a virtual eternity for applications that have been tuned for use with flash storage.
March 4th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Violin Memory and Toshiba Announce Strategic Alliance, Adds Velocity PCIe Storage
Violin Memory and NAND leader Toshiba announced an expanded alliance that has led to the launch of the currently available Violin Velocity PCIe cards. By virtue of this concentrated alliance, Violin has gained access to Toshiba's supply chain, manufacturing, distribution, and R&D. Both companies will be sharing their enterprise intellectual property (IP) to develop future products. Toshiba has a lot to offer as the owner of a third of the NAND market, while Violin has been developing and producing enterprise-class flash-based storage to meet the high-performance demands of businesses.
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 
