April 17th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Mellanox Announces ConnectX-3 Pro Adapter Cards
Mellanox is announcing its ConnectX-3 Pro 10/40 gigabit Ethernet adapter cards with hardware offload engines that are the first interconnect cards to support overlay networks found in cloud environments including VXLAN and NVGRE. ConnectX-3 Pro cards enable cloud providers to build much larger-scale infrastructures without having to rely overly much on CPU overhead. This is made possible since the overlay technologies are implemented within the interconnect hardware itself. Being the first cards to support overlay networks, the Mellanox ConnextX-3 Pro offers the unique positioning of scaling applications and essentially unlimited tenants.
April 17th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Kaminario Announces K2 Version 4 with All Flash
Kaminario is announcing the release of their K2 all-Flash storage array that is now in its fourth generation and provides top-level performance to medium-sized businesses. The Kaminario K2 v4 is based on SPEAR (Scale-Out Performance Storage Architecture), which means that not only do the systems benefit from scaling-up capacities, but also enhanced compute power. This architecture enables enterprises to increase their capacity without decreasing their IOPS and bandwith and without raising their systems' latency. This level of performance makes the Kaminario K2 v4 perfect for just about any workload or application.
April 17th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Nimble Storage Announces Private Cloud Reference Architecture
Nimble Storage is announcing its new validated reference architecture called SmartStack for private cloud deployments on Microsoft’s technology which consists of a Nimble Storage CS200 Series 3U system, Cisco USC C-Series rack-mount server platform, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center 2012. Microsoft's private cloud Fast Track is a reference architecture for building private clouds that helps to deliver the starting point for the building using validated configurations. Nimble's SmartStack has been validated in the Fast Track reference architecture for use with up to 75 virtual machines, and it leverages Nimble's CS-Series flash-optimized hybrid design and Cisco's UCS platform.
April 16th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 Review (HUS724040ALE640)
HGST's Ultrastar 7K4000 3.5" form factor enterprise-class HDD now ranges up to 4TB in capacity and spins at 7,200RPM while interfacing over SATA 6Gb/s. The drive offers the enterprise a 33% capacity leap over previous models, and it accomplishes that task of delivering robust capacity by utilizing five platters at 800GB each to attain the maximum 4TB capacity. This is a huge feature for enterprise customers who need to maintain the same footprint for their drives without increasing their costs. Another significant feature on the Ultrastar 7K4000 is that it is offered in Advanced Format which uses a 4096-byte sector size that is still backward-compatible with the 512-byte sector size. The HGST 7K4000 drive also features 64MB of drive cache.
April 16th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Announces Updates to Data Domain
EMC is announcing updates to its EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems and EMC SourceOne archiving software. Data Domain software helps to keep data recoverable and accessible within a budget. The new version of the EMC Data Domain software includes a load of updates including improved performance, wider support, and Oracle optimized deduplication. With these updates, EMC is also announcing its Data Domain systems are receiving updates to make them faster and increase their support. Meanwhile, EMC SourceOne 7's updates revolve around file, email, and Sharepoint archiving features.
Read moreApril 16th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HDS Announces Hitachi Data Instance Manager
Hitachi Data Systems announced its integrated Hitachi Data Instance Manager (HDIM) software that maps and enhances copies of data throughout the data lifecycle and is designed for midmarket and larger enterprises. With HDIM, businesses can form an information protection strategy that matches their company's use cases, as opposed to trying to fit within an existing strategy. HDIM streamlines and creates efficiency in backup, versioning, replication, dedupe, archiving and continuous data protection. Hitachi also announced that later in the year it will integrate HDIM with Hitachi Content Platform to enable better archiving, search and recovery, and improved data analysis.
Read moreApril 15th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
NetApp Announces OpenStack File Share Service Prototype
NetApp announced it has produced and submitted a prototype and proposal for a file share service to the OpenStack Foundation Technical Committee and community. This announcement from NetApp comes since OpenStack currently doesn't offer native management support for file-based storage. NetApp intends to add a file share service to incorporate a range of file system types as extensions to the OpenStack block-level storage Cinder project or to implement their service separately in another project. The file share service would terminate the need for users to have a separate management interface to utilize applications designed for file-based storage.
April 15th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HP Announces Further Commitment to OpenStack
Already having been a top contributor to Openstack for a couple of years, HP announced that it will continue to expand its commitment with new and enhanced HP Converged Cloud offerings that enable enterprises to lower their costs while still enhancing their user experience. This integration of Openstack technology will enable HP to deliver OpenStack open-source products to its private, public and hybrid cloud portfolio. As part of their announcement, HP says that Cloudsystem, their private cloud solution is being updated. Of course, the updated HP CloudSystem 7.2 now features integrated OpenStack technology. While CloudSystem focuses on provisioning, managing and scaling clouds, OpenStack will increase the feature-set by supporting “bursting” capabilities and RedHat KVM resource pools. The integration makes it so that enterprise users can utilize their external resources from HP CloudSystem.
April 12th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
OCZ Deneva 2 Enterprise SSD Review
The OCZ Deneva 2 is an enterprise-class SSD that interfaces over SATA 6GB/s and has several different models utilizing an array of NAND. Our test model incorporates eMLC NAND to offer users more write cycles than standard MLC, and simultaneously it provides economics closer to MLC than the more expensive SLC. The Deneva 2 also comes in two different series to provides users flexibility in their choices. The R series includes a similar feature set to the C series but with a couple of additional features including power loss data protection and over-provisioning. The over-provisioning is geared more toward heavier write scenarios and is noticeable when users check capacity differences between the C and R models. Our test model is the OCZ Deneva 2 R eMLC NAND 200GB capacity drive. One more design note is that architecturally, the Deneva 2 comes in a 2.5" form factor, but OCZ can tailor it per application.
April 12th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
Dell EqualLogic Family Hands-On
We recently spent a few days at the Dell EqualLogic headquarters in Nashua, NH to experience a deep dive on the EqualLogic family, management software and performance capabilities of the arrays. The EqualLogic full-immersion treatment was to prepare us for the latest generation EqualLogic PS6110 array to hit our lab for full review in the coming weeks. We split time between detailed briefings on features like Linux management and VMware integration and several hours of in-lab time working hands on with the entire PS (peer storage) family ranging from the entry-level PS4110 to the full-on PS6110 hybrid array that combines flash storage with 15K hard drives.
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 
