May 30th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
WD Announces WD Sentinel RX4100
WD is announcing the WD Sentinel RX4100 to meet customer demand for a 1U rack-mount small business NAS that builds off of the success of the Sentinel DX4000 that we reviewed. One of the features that makes the RX4100 4-bay NAS attractive is its all-in-one build that includes hardware, software and service all from WD. The RX4100 also provides simple integration into Windows shops by featuring Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials, though it is also compatible with several versions of Mac OS. While simple and affordable, the RX4100 also features enterprise-class features that small businesses still require such as RAID protection, automatic server-based backup and restoration, redundant network and power options, as well as integrated NAS functionality and iSCSI SAN capabilities.
May 29th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Kingston Announces KC300 SSD
Kingston is announcing the KC300 SSD, the newest addition to its SSDNow family designed for client users in the enterprise, enthusiasts and mobile users who require maximum performance and energy efficiency. The KC300 replaces the Kingston V+200 and KC100 SSDs that we have reviewed. It also provides advanced power management via an LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller and features enterprise-grade SMART attributes which enable administrators to monitor drive wear and how much life the SSD still has left as well as write amplification and total bytes written. In addition, to extend the KC300's life, Kingston has implemented Data Integrity Protection featuring DuraWrite technology which decreases the quantity of writes. Further, RAISE trims down the number of uncorrectable errors in the drive beyond the ECC rate.
May 29th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Mellanox Announces SX1012 Ethernet Switch
Mellanox is announcing their SwitchX-2 based SX1012 Ethernet switch which delivers 12 ports of 40GbE for small-scale, high performance computing. The SX1012 also has the industry's smallest footprint with two SX1012 models fitting into 1U of a standard rack. Each of the 12 ports can be configured to deliver as much as 56GbE line rate to increase the performance of the switch. Additionally, the ports can each be split into four standalone 10GbE interfaces. The SX1012 is based on Mellanox’s VPI technology and can run the full capabilities of MLNX-OS. This enables the switch to operate in mutual Ethernet and InfiniBand environments to meet a variety of applications.
May 29th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Pure Storage Announces FlashArray 400
Pure Storage is announcing the immediate availability and shipment of the FlashArray 400 Series, its third generation all-flash enterprise storage array. The FlashArray 400 has twice as much storage capacity and performance at 100TB of usable all-flash capacity and up to 400,000 8k IOPS. It achieves these figures using Intel's latest 8-core Sandy Bridge processor. Additionally, it is powered by the Purity Operating Environment 3.0 software which has several new enhancements: CloudAssist support technology, ZeroSnap accelerated VM cloning, always on data-at-rest encryption and tighter integration with third-party applications. With simple implementation, the FlashArray 400 Series enables deployment in just minutes as well as upgrades and expanded deployments of the FlashArray 300 Series.
May 28th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
WD Announces WD Se HDDs
WD is announcing the availability of its new enterprise-class WD Se hard drives that range in capacities up to 4TB and are designed for scale-out datacenter deployments. The drives provide robust storage for large-scale replicated environments, mid-sized NAS deployment and backup and archiving. Being implemented in data centers that are seeing immense growth, the drives are affordable, but they also offer the features required for data security by organizations. On top of that, with the SMB to mid-range NAS market growing, the WD Se can also support high-workload applications experienced in those environments.
May 28th, 2013 by Josh Linden
Synology Announces 8-Bay DS1813+ NAS
The new DS1813+ NAS is Synology’s latest eight-bay desktop DiskStation. In addition to its internal storage, the DS1813+ offers a maximum raw capacity of 72TB via expansion units, as well as providing four gigabit NICs which can be aggregated for maximum read speeds of 350 MB/s and write speeds of 200 MB/s. The DS1813+ supersedes Synology’s DS1812+, which we recommended in February as a robust 8-bay NAS likely to exceed performance and feature expectations for small and remote offices. Since then, the hardware platform underlying the DS1813+ has a number of enhancements more akin to the five-bay DS1513+ which was also recently announced.
May 22nd, 2013 by Bill Valle
Dell Announces Solutions for Citrix XenDesktop and XenApp
Dell is announcing several new products for Citrix XenDesktop 7 and XenApp that lower the cost of integrated storage, increase graphics capabilities and provide dual and quad-core processing to thin client desktops. By unifying applications, desktops and hosted VDI environments with a common management platform, Citrix XenDesktop 7 supports virtualized workloads based on Windows 8/Windows Server 2012 as well as HDX 3D enabling virtualized graphics for OpenGL applications. The cost-savings and the increased hardware capabilities come from several new products including: DVS Enterprise, Wyse Xenith Pro 2, D90Q7 and Z90Q7.
May 21st, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Permabit Annouces Albireo Compress and Replica
Permabit Technology is announcing its Albireo Compress and Albireo Replica data compression and replication applications that integrate with Permabit Albireo Virtual Data Optimizer (VDO). Permabit already offers a comprehensive Linux-based software-defined-storage solution in VDO that features deduplication and thin provisioning. Compress works with VDO's deduplication to reduce data storage requirements by as much as 35x. Replica coordinates with VDO to optimize data for content. Together with existing features on Albireo VDO, Compress and Replica enable Permabit OEMs to deliver performance and scalability on top of lowered time, resource and monetary investment.
May 21st, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HGST Announces Travelstar 5K1500
HGST is announcing its new Travelstar 5K1500 which is the first 9.5mm, 1.5TB HDD to reach the market and is designed primarily for OEMs to install in their higher-end notebook computer offerings. The drive also meets applications such as inclusion in external devices and all-in-one PCs. The HGST Travelstar 5K1500 achieves its capacity expansion by using three platters instead of just one or two. This presents some challenges as operating shock becomes an issue with three platters in a 9.5mm form factor, but HGST has innovated a way of raising the cover to avoid shock problems. HGST is getting out ahead in the market with the Travelstar 5K1500 by offering 1.5TB in a 9.5mm form factor now instead of waiting for a possible engineering enhancement later that may enable greater density so that 1.5TB can fit on one or two platters in 9.5mm drives.
May 21st, 2013 by Josh Linden
Seagate Announces Purpose-Built 4TB Video HDD
Seagate has announced the Video 3.5 which at 4TB will be the industry’s largest-capacity 3.5-inch hard disk drive engineered specifically for digital video recorders (DVRs), set-top boxes and surveillance systems. The Seagate Video 3.5 offers a 0.55 percent annual failure rate and other features which will be attractive to manufacturers, integrators and installers looking for a drive that can be relied on in the field. The flagship 4TB drive is designed to support 16 simultaneous HD streams or 20 standard-definition streams. Some of the tradeoff for decreased transfer speeds are low power consumption and heat emissions as well as engineering for 24x7 operation.
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.
