March 25th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Nimbus Announces HALO 2013 Software
Nimbus Data announced the release of their new software HALO 2013, which is marketed toward IT managers working within the cloud who are interested in building all-flash memory architectures. HALO 2013 provides administrators with a simple ten minute startup that allows them to quickly access the analytical tools necessary to measure both the efficiency and performance of Nimbus flash arrays including the new Gemini flash arrays that house up to 48TB in a 2U form factor. Updates to HALO 2013 include an open API (application programming interface), mobile apps for streaming live stats and viewing charts remotely, and, shown below, advanced analytics to monitor over 200 metrics.
March 21st, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Samsung Announces Magician 4.0 and Data Migration 2.0
Samsung recently announced that it released its Magician 4.0 software, a new version that helps users manage performance of their Samsung SSD by giving users drive health status information. The new Magician 4.0 includes significant improvements over the previous version including a simplified OS optimization and redesigned GUI. On top of that, Samsung also released their newest version of Data Migration software, version 2.0, which is designed to help users migrate their data from a previously used SSD or HDD to a new Samsung SSD. This migration includes OS, application software, and user data.
March 21st, 2013 by Bill Valle
Qlogic FabricCache: First in SSD Caching Across Multiple Servers on SAN
A popular industry trend is to utilize ultra fast flash drives to cache data on servers for faster access for demanding business applications. Qlogic has gone a step further than most by having the data cached by these flash devices across a pool of servers on the SAN. FabricCache transforms a single-server captive cache into a resource that can be tapped by multiple servers that support a wide variety of enterprise applications. Last year QLogic began showing the technology off as Mt. Rainier, today's announcement provides more detail on the first product in this family, the FabricCache QLE10000.
March 18th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Fusion-io Acquires ID7, Developers of SCST
Fusion-io announced its acquisition of ID7, a UK-based storage technology company founded in 2006. ID7 is known for software defined storage (SDS), open-source work in shared storage, and as the developers of SCSI target subsystem (SCST) storage subsystem for Linux. The two companies have already been working together developing the ION Data Accelerator software that turns servers into shared storage appliances. Moving forward, from their current locations, all of the ID7 team including their SCST developers will join Fusion-io in collaboration on future projects.
March 18th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Netgear ReadyNAS with OS 6 Released
Netgear has announced availability of its new ReadyNAS products that are spread across three series all running on a new OS. The new NAS also utilizes redesigned hardware and a sleek, modern GUI. Compared to previous models, one significant change that Netgear has implemented is that all of its new NAS units will run unified on ReadyNas OS 6, while previous generations ran different OS versions. Designed for home users and SMB, Netgear is also making an important offering by providing real-time anti-virus protection and unlimited snapshots across the entire ReadyNas line, regardless of unit cost or drive configuration.
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 12th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Seagate Ships 2 Billionth Drive
Seagate announced quite an accomplishment today publicizing that it has become the first hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturer to ship two billion HDDs. The first one billion units took the company 29 years to ship. However, since then over the last four years, Seagate has managed to ship yet another billion drives. The incredible demand for storage driven by social media, cloud storage, mobile usage, and jumps in file sizes has created the intensity in the market that has led to this achievement.
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.
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).
The Kingston MobileLite Wireless is the company's latest portable wireless storage device that ships without embedded storage and instead enables users to use memory cards (SD/SDHC/SDXC and microSD with included adapter) or USB flash drives to increase storage for tablets, phones and other mobile devices. MobileLite Wireless provides a battery life of up to 5 hours for playback and viewing files, and it conveniently charges over USB. The 5-hour life is 25% more than on the previous generation Wi-Drive portable wireless flash drive that Kingston continues to offer in 64GB and 128GB capacities. Uniquely, the MobileLite Wireless also offers the ability to serve as an emergency charger for mobile devices such as phones.
Newer Technology's miniStack MAX functions as an external storage device, optical drive, SD media card reader and USB hub simultaneously while matching the footprint and taking styling cues from the Mac Mini. This design makes it a great companion to the Mac Mini or any desktop or notebook. The miniStack MAX interfaces over USB 3.0, two Firewire 800 ports or an eSATA connection. The machine also features a USB hub with a total of three USB 3.0 ports, two of which have been designed to charge less power-hungry devices while one offers 2.1Amp power to charge tablets and other devices. The miniStack MAX is designed for backup and general storage as well as the needs of creative professionals.
Toshiba's new MG03 SATA enterprise 3.5" hard drives are now being offered as standard or encrypted models in the industry's highest capacity ranging up to 4TB while spinning at 7,200RPM with a SATA 6Gb/s interface. As we noted in our 
The Seagate 600 Pro SSD is a 2.5-inch MLC NAND enterprise-class SSD in a 7mm form factor with a capacity up to 480GB that is designed for read-intensive applications. Due to its size, the 600 Pro easily fits almost any platform, maximizing capacity while minimizing its footprint. Seagate's primary focus during the engineering of this drive though was to build a drive to meet the growing demand within the enterprise for SSDs that offer enterprise-class endurance and adequate performance at a reasonable price-point. Organizations that need these types of drives include centers, cloud system builders, cloud service providers or virtualized enterprises. In these applications, the enterprise requires more endurance than they could get with a client SSD; it wants a drive upon which it can depend to be reliable over time, thus keeping data secure.
The Seagate 600 SSD is a performance-focused 2.5-inch MLC NAND client SSD in z-Height 5mm and 7mm form factors with a capacity up to 480GB that is primarily designed as an upgrade for laptop users who are gamers, enthusiasts or road warriors or simply need the drive for read-intensive applications. Additionally, as an SSD with no moving parts, there is less of a disk failure risk if users accidentally drop their laptop. Primarily though, Seagate developed the 600 SSD with performance focused on reducing wait times; its boot speed and load times are 50% faster than traditional HDDs. As far as endurance goes, the Seagate 600 SSD offers up to 40GB of data written per day for a maximum of 72TB written over its 3-year warranty period.
