April 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 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 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 10th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
NetApp and Cisco Announce Updates and Validation for FlexPod
NetApp and Cisco's joint converged infrastructure system called FlexPod is one of the first validated solutions for Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, and it now features a lot of technological updates. Those updates are significant and include: more advanced switching capability, an update to the platform, and 8 new reference architectures - 4 of which are designed for Oracle workloads. FlexPod's Microsoft validation and new Oracle workload-oriented architectures demonstrate NetApp's commitment to deepening their integration. Furthermore, the FlexPod enhancements build on the trend of many enterprise users shifting their datacenters toward implementing converged infrastructures.
April 9th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Nimble Storage Announces InfoSight
Nimble Storage announced InfoSight which is a new set of services for Nimble's storage arrays which utilize the cloud and deep data to streamline activities. The InfoSight data collection engine securely gathers data every five minutes, which comes to a total of 30 million sensor values per array daily. InfoSight analyzes that data so that users can not only monitor their arrays and check reports, but also forecast their future storage needs. This new InfoSight system is being announced in conjunction with an online community forum called NimbleConnect. NimbleConnect offers a wide range of articles and posts about best practices, while also putting peers in contact with one another to bounce ideas about improving their systems' performance capabilities.
April 9th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
LenovoEMC Announces New Network Video Recorders
LenovoEMC is announcing their new line of high performance network video recorders (NVRs) that feature expanded surveillance with high performance in capturing, sharing and storing digital video files. The new line of NVRs is designed for use in SMBs that utilize under 20 IP cameras and have an existing network of surveillance or are upgrading from their analog-based systems. Analog users can optionally continue using their system by adding a PCIe accessory to utilize that existing network. The system is easy to get going with automated setup that should have most users up and running in minutes. All of the new NVRs also include Milestone Arcus multi-platform video management software (VMS).
April 9th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Bocada Announces Prism 8.0
Bocada is announcing updates to their Prism software which enables users to utilize a single console to comprehensively obtain reports and analysis on backup, replication and snapshot functions. Bocada Prism 8.0 features significant enhancements and added support compared to previous versions of the software. Prism 8.0 has new and enhanced reports, architectural updates, and support for Commvault Simpana 9, IBM TSM 6.3 and 6.4, and EMC Networker 8.0. Prism 8.0 also adds support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 10. Bocada has also reworked and improved plug-ins that cooperate with virtual environments.
April 9th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
HGST Announces 12Gb/s SAS SSD
HGST is announcing a summer release for their new 12Gb/s MLC SAS SSD family, the first 12Gb/s SAS SSDs on the market. Three models comprise the new line including the Ultrastar SSD800MH, Ultrastar SSD800MM and Ultrastar SSD1000MR. The new SAS SSDs utilize co-developed Intel/HGST controllers as well as high endurance 25nm MLC NAND. HGST designed these new drives for the most performance demanding applications such as high-frequency trading, online banking, cloud computing, online gaming, and big data analytics. These applications will benefit from hot caching delivered by the new 12Gb/s SAS SSDs.
April 8th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
AC&NC Announces JetStor 712U Unified Storage Systems
AC&NC announced the JetStor 712U suite of ZFS-based unified storage systems that can function simultaneously both as NAS and SAN and are designed for SMBs. These systems support both SAS and SATA drives so that businesses can achieve performance and capacity to meet the needs of archiving and application speeds. These 12-bay 2U Jetstor platforms offer real-time data compression, thin provisioning and block-level data deduplication which takes place in the cache. The devices are designed to be a truly unified storage system and as such offer lots of compatibility. The JetStor 712U work with both clients and servers in VMware, Windows, UNIX, Mac, Novell or even mixed environments. They also support several protocols (Windows CIFS, NFS, AFP, FTP, WebDAV, iSCSI) which helps users to reduce costs - a significant factor for budget-conscious SMBs who don't want to purchase servers for each protocol.
The Buffalo DriveStation DDR is a USB 3.0 external storage device for both PCs and Macs that features 2TB and 3TB capacities and is designed to deliver greater performance than standard external drives by offering an additional 1GB cache for accelerated transfer speeds. The DriveStation DDR also includes the Buffalo Tools software suite for Windows which is designed to boost performance and enable users to backup their content and manage their device effectively. Additionally, DriveStation DDR is compatible with Time Machine and users can use Time Machine with DriveStation Axis to back up Macs.
The Samsung SSD 840 is an entry-level consumer SSD and is the first to be made with TLC (Triple Level Cell) NAND. This differs from the MLC (Multi Level Cell) NAND used in every other consumer SSD. Up to this point, TLC NAND has only been used in less critical applications like USB thumb drives and memory cards, but its acceptance in the SSD space is emerging in large part because of the reduced cost of the NAND packages. Of course the tradeoff for the lowered price-point is endurance, but as consumers are coming to accept, most of them really don't write all that much data to their drives. The Samsung SSD 840 is built off of the same platform as the Samsung SSD 840 Pro with the Samsung MDX triple-core ARM 9 controller which is clocked at 300MHz and leverages Samsung's NAND and proprietary firmware.
The Unitrends Recovery-943 Backup Appliance has 97TB of raw capacity and robust connectivity options, and it incorporates standard features found on existing Unitrends Recovery appliances such as backup, archiving, instant recovery, and disaster recovery functionality. In the past, these recovery appliances have been configured and marketed to small and medium businesses. These smaller organizations face complex backup requirements and don't have the dedicated resources and expertise needed to apply multi-platform backup-administration and as such have been Unitrends target-market. The Recovery-943 is however a step-up from previous Unitrends options with three times the storage capacity of its predecessor and the ability to scale the functionality of the Unitrends RecoveryOS to the enterprise market.
The OWC Envoy Pro EX is a USB 3.0 bus-powered portable storage device that offers capacities up to 480GB and is pre-formatted and primarily designed for Apple systems, though PC users can reformat and use the drive as well. The OWC Envoy Pro is the bare unit, while the EX models add SSD storage using 
HP has been going through a transformation recently when it comes to the 
The WD My Passport Ultra, announced today, is a USB 3.0 portable storage device with capacities from 500GB up to 2TB that features local and cloud backups. The My Passport Ultra includes software for automatic backups to the host system or to the My Passport Ultra as well as the ability to use Dropbox to backup to the cloud. The Ultra, WD's latest My Passport iteration, also enables users to setup password protection and hardware encryption to keep data stored on the device secure from unauthorized access. Cosmetically-focused, the WD My Passport Ultra is available in four different colors (titanium, red, blue and black).
