May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Offers Enhanced Support For Syncplicity
EMC is announcing support for Policy-Driven Hybrid Cloud, EMC ViPR and EMC VNX on the EMC Syncplicity file sync and sharing product. The support for policy-driven hybrid cloud means that customers will be able to simultaneously access private and public clouds. Additionally, storage performance will be optimized. All of this will be done with consideration given to security and regulatory compliance based on user and content types. EMC Syncplicity will also begin native support for EMC VNX starting in the second half of 2013, and it will begin utilizing EMC ViPR software-defined storage as well.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Announces New and Updated Software Suites
EMC is announcing an enhanced version of their Storage Resource Management Suite and a new product called Service Assurance Suite to provide administrators with unadulterated views into storage, network, and compute infrastructures. This announcement also highlights new integration with the forthcoming EMC ViPR software-defined storage. The new EMC Service Assurance Suite and updated EMC Storage Resource Management Suite share a common presentation layer with EMC ViPR. This shared presentation layer will make the transition to software-defined storage easier, and it enables administrators to ensure that they are meeting service-level agreements and that they are seeing a proper return on their investments.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Announces Upcoming Enhancements to Isilon OneFS
EMC is announcing that it is working on a new version of EMC Isilon OneFS scale-out NAS operating system which will include deduplication, audit and security features and several other updates. The other enhancements to EMC Isilon OneFS are object-oriented storages, Hadoop HDFS 2.0 and Syncplicity file sharing updates. EMC's Isilon is designed to be used in conjunction with large deployments typically starting at a minimum of 100TB and ranging up for cloud-based, mobile and Big Data analytics. Isilon OneFS has a specific focus on work that requires a massive capacity such as Video and Graphics applications, but can meet essentially any large-scale corporate IT need.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Synology Announces DiskStation DS213j
Synology is announcing the immediate release of its DiskStation DS213j dual-bay NAS devices powered by increased RAM at 512MB and a 1.2Ghz processor with an integrated FPU to generate multi-sized thumbnail images faster than before. This enhanced hardware within the DS213j is designed for home users who require control over their cloud-accessible content. The DS213j also runs on Synology's DiskStation Manager (DSM 4.2) that we recently announced, which makes features and accessibility easily available for users. The DS213j will support further updates down the road to keep the NAS current.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
WD and SanDisk Announce Collaboration for WD Black SSHD
WD and SanDisk are announcing that the two companies have formed a partnership to introduce the WD Black SSHD in a 2.5-inch, 5mm form factor with flash memory from SanDisk. SanDisk will supply the SanDisk iSSD storage device for the WD Black SSHD which utilizes proprietary hybrid technology. Incorporating SanDisk's iSSD will help the WD Black that we recently announced to maintain high reliability and performance as well as low power consumption and cost. This move comes as more and more consumers are demanding ultra-slim form factor drives that require very little power for applications such as ultra-thin notebook computers.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Inktank Announces Ceph Cuttlefish Update
Inktank is announcing the newest release Ceph called Cuttlefish which offers enhancements to the massively scalable, open source software-defined storage system. Ceph Cuttlefish updates include Red Hat support, quicker installation for easier adoption, and operational improvements for scaling applications. Ceph also delivers object, block, and file storage in a single system that runs on existing hardware. Amongst larger updates detailed below, Ceph Cuttlefish also includes a few more features in this version: users now have access to incremental snapshots of block devices, at-rest encryption of data and quotas for storage pools. Inktank is marking their continued commitment to Ceph with their commercial support for Cuttlefish and future versions of the OS.
May 7th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Seagate Announces SSDs and X8 PCIe Accelerator
Seagate is announcing its new Seagate 600 SSD, 600 Pro Enterprise SSD and 1200 Enterprise SSDs designed for consumer, entry-enterprise, and mainstream enterprise applications (respectively) and is also releasing information regarding its new X8 PCIe application accelerator card. The new Seagate 600 SSD and 600 Pro Enterprise SSD drives both feature Toshiba MLC NAND and interface over SATA, while the Seagate 1200 SSD features eMLC NAND for even higher level enterprise-grade endurance and is the first Seagate drive interfacing over 12 Gb/s SAS. The X8 PCIe cards are designed for applications where performance is paramount and are rebranded Virident FlashMAX II Application Accelerators.
May 6th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
EMC Announces EMC ViPR Software-Defined Storage Platform
EMC ASD (Advanced Software Division) is announcing its software-defined storage platform EMC ViPR which operates on existing storage to help manage the robust data growth experienced in the enterprise. EMC ViPR can manage both the storage infrastructure and the data that exists within the storage using policy-based automation. Additionally, EMC ViPR enables administrators to view objects as files and provides file access performance without the latency users typically experience in object storage. Coupled with all of this functionality, EMC ViPR is all software-based meaning that it will run both on EMC and non-EMC hardware and can be setup in just a matter of minutes as opposed to lengthier setups with more traditional deployments.
May 6th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Proximal Data Announces Updates to AutoCache
Proximal Data is announcing enhancements to their AutoCache hypervisor caching product that removes I/O bottlenecks to accelerate reads and writes while also improving VM density by 2-3 times. AutoCache and its I/O Intelligence utilize PCIe flash and SSDs to store hot data to increase application performance. Newly updated features are abundant in AutoCache. It can now cache more quickly at the time of installation, pre-warm the cache upon vMotion of a particular VM, support caching for virtual disks stored on NFS or iSCSI datastores, and integrate not only with VMware ESXi 4.1 and 5.0, but also 5.1 (the newest version of the VMware vSphere hypervisor).
May 2nd, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Micron Announces P420m PCIe Application Accelerator
Micron is announcing the release of their new P420m PCIe accelerator card in both half-height half-length (HHHL) and 2.5" form factors, making it the first MLC NAND PCIe SSD in the 2.5" form factor. The Micron P420m provides high performance and reliability with low latency, with a higher capacity than previously offered with the SLC-based P320h. These features make the P420m optimal for enterprise server, appliance and storage platform deployments geared towards read-heavy applications. For an example of just how capable the P420m is, in MySQL OLTP Sysbench benchmark, it delivered over 3,200 transactions per second. The P420m also increases the performance of applications such as online transaction processing, data warehousing and virtualization.
The HGST Ultrastar C10K900 is an enterprise-class, 2.5" HDD that interfaces over SAS, has a spindle speed of 10,000RPM and ranges up to 900GB in capacity. The Ultrastar C10K900 also comes in at a 14.8mm z-Height, classing it in the 15mm category. That small form factor helps to reduce organizations' overall TCO, especially in networked storage arrays or any space and/or power constrained environments. On top of that, other optimal environments for the Ultrastar C10K900 are blade and rack-mounted servers for applications such as online transaction processing (OLTP), any high performance scenario, and cloud computing.
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.
