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 Josh Shaman
SanDisk Announces Extreme II, U110 and i110 SSDs
SanDisk is announcing the release of the SanDisk Extreme II, U110 and i110 SSDs which are designed for OEMs and extend SanDisk's line-up by offering drives that match a range of applications. The new Extreme II SSD is designed for high-performance computing for gamers, multimedia enthusiasts and other users who require high IOPS. The U110 and i110 SSDs are matched for OEMs to implement in notebooks and other mobile solutions. All of the SSDs are built on 19nm NAND for reliability, responsiveness and energy-efficiency. Here at StorageReview, we've already gotten access to the SanDisk Extreme II for review, which comes in capacities of 120GB, 240GB and 480GB and offers 80 terabytes written (TBW) over the drive warranty.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
WD Announces WD Blue Availability
The world's thinnest 1TB HDD, the WD Blue 7mm, 2.5" form factor drive, is now in shipment having been designed to meet the requirements of form-factor constrained applications such as ultra-thin notebooks. The drive is shipping in capacities that range from 320GB to 1TB, all in the 7mm height. The WD Blue also features compatibility with the industry-standard 9.5mm form factor to enhance implementation possibilities. Previously the drive came in that 9.5mm height, but WD managed to get two 500GB platters into this form factor while still maintaining reliability. The WD Blue also packs a range of features to ensure the drive's integrity and reliability.
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.
June 3rd, 2013 by Josh Linden
Seagate 5mm 500GB Laptop Ultrathin HDD Review
Seagate’s latest single-platter laptop hard drive that was announced today has slimmed down to just 5mm thick while maintaining standard SATA connectivity and interoperability with 7 and 9.5mm drive bays. The 5mm HDD market is centered around laptops, tablets, ultrabooks, and other mobile storage; product lines which are also transitioning from larger form factors to 5mm. If its performance is competitive with other third-generation slim drives, the Laptop Ultrathin's flexible form factor may give Seagate an edge in the mobile storage market.
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.
May 30th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
OCZ and Mellanox Announce Collaboration
OCZ and Mellanox are announcing their collaboration using Mellanox's ConnectX-3 EN 40 GbE network interface card (NIC) with OCZ's ZD-XL SQL Accelerator to replicate database volumes in a Microsoft SQL Server environment. This integration provides high-end PCIe flash storage performance and high availability (HA) of data with Ethernet connectivity. In order to attain these results, a Microsoft SQL Server environment containing two servers (each using the Mellanox EN NIC and OCZ SQL Accelerator) are connected using Microsoft SQL Server Always-On. Replicating the ZD-XL SQL Accelerator data using the Mellanox NIC to the secondary server maintains HA.
The HGST Travelstar 7K1000 is a 1TB, 7,200RPM HDD that comes in a 2.5", 9.5mm form factor and interfaces over SATA 6Gb/s. The Travelstar 7K1000 is fairly unique in the space. Many drives are migrating to slimmer z-Heights at 7mm or even 5mm to meet the needs of space-constrained applications such as upgrading HDDs in ultrabooks. However, the 7K1000's target is a larger market - consumers that require robust capacity in their notebook computer or small form factor desktop at an economical price. Matching well with notebooks, the drive also features low power consumption and the highest shock tolerance in the industry. The 7K1000 also leverages Advanced Format which increased the physical sector size from 512 to 4096 bytes (4k). This helps to improve capacity and error correction capabilities.
The Seagate NAS HDD is a 3.5" form factor, 6Gb/s SATA interface hard drive that spins at 5,900RPM, ranges up to 4TB in capacity and is specifically engineered to be installed in one to five-bay NAS devices. With the consumer and small office NAS market growing quickly and with buyers usually opting for diskless models, Seagate is responding to market demand with this specific use-case drive. Of course there are loads of drives out there that users could implement to populate a NAS, but most are overkill or otherwise sub-optimal for the need. Seagate joins the NAS HDD market by designing a drive to handle NAS workload and operational requirements with their NASWorks specialized firmware, three-year warranty and support from many leading NAS vendors.
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 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.
The Netgear VueZone is a battery-powered camera system that is wire-free and delivers extremely simple 10 minute setup so that users can check-in on their pets, kids, home deliveries and anything else they need to monitor using a smartphone, PC or Mac. The second-generation camera system offers motion-detection, and recently Netgear has also introduced night vision cameras as well. The system utilizes a base station that connects to a home network using its Ethernet port. The station supports live streaming views of up to two camera, though with upgraded monthly plans stations can support as many as 15 cameras and can also record content and store it on the cloud.
