February 20th, 2013 by Josh Linden
SMART Announces Optimus 1.8-inch SAS SSD
SMART is line to become first to market for a 1.8” SAS SSD, with a newly-announced addition to the Optimus SSD line. The Optimus 1.8" SAS SSD is designed for blade servers, caching, and other high-density computing environments, using MLC NAND flash in capacities of 200GB and 400GB with a rated lifetime of 10 drive writes per day for five years.
February 20th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
Dell DR4100 Backup and Recovery Appliance Released
Dell has announced the DR4100, an update to their backup and recovery appliance line that is based on the Fluid Data Architecture. The DR4100 is highlighted by support for deduplication and compression at rates of up to 15 to 1, to help customers tame data sprawl with more efficient storage. While the DR4100 can start as small as 2.7TB, the units are scalable up to 81TB of usable storage thanks to expansion shelves (PowerVault MD1200) and support for 3TB hard drives in the Dell PowerEdge 12th generation server platform that serves as the hardware backbone for the DR4100. The DR4100 also supports 32 to 1 replication ability for improved flexibility and support for data protection at branch/remote offices.
February 19th, 2013 by Josh Linden
NetApp EF540 Flash Array and FlashRay Preview Architecture Now Available
NetApp today announced the availability of its new all-flash EF540 array, intended for performance-driven application and data center deployments. The EF540, built on the SANtricity operating system, can provide more than 300,000 IOPS and sub-millisecond latency in a highly available, fault-tolerant architecture. The company has also released a preview architecture for its new FlashRay product family, which NetApp has built to maximize scale-out and storage efficiency for all-flash arrays.
February 19th, 2013 by Josh Linden
NetApp Announces FAS6200 Flash-Optimized Storage Systems
NetApp today announced the new FAS6220, FAS6250, and FAS6290, additions to its high-end FAS/V6200 storage platform. The new systems are optimized for use in conjunction with NetApp’s other flash offerings to increase IOPS over 80% from previous maximums and reduce latency by up to 90%, improving SAN to over 250K IOPS and NAS performance to over 1.5M IOPS. The FAS/V7200 platform is intended for mission-critical virtualized and cloud application environments that can scale to over 65PB.
February 19th, 2013 by Josh Linden
New HP Converged Storage Offerings for Midrange Businesses and Channel Partners
HP today announced new HP StoreVirtual Storage systems based on the company’s ProLiant Generation 8 (Gen8) technology, aimed at midsize virtualized environments and HP channel partners with entry-to-midmarket storage portfolios. HP has also introduced a channel-only StoreSystem solution with 3PAR StoreServ Storage and StoreOnce Backup functionality.
February 19th, 2013 by Lyle Smith
OCZ Vertex 3.20 SSD With 20nm NAND Flash Announced
OCZ has announced a new 20 nanometer (nm) NAND flash version of its Vertex 3 SSD Series, the Vertex 3.20. Like the original, OCZ's latest SSD refresh is a 2.5-inch, 6Gb/s SATA III-based MLC SSD that implements a SandForce controller; however, the Vertex 3.20 is built around smaller NAND flash process geometry. The change to 20nm comes as NAND manufacturers continue progressing to smaller NAND die to gain production efficiencies and cost savings. The Vertex 3.20 SSD will be available in 120GB and 240GB storage capacities immediately, with a 480GB model to be released shortly thereafter.
Read moreFebruary 19th, 2013 by Lyle Smith
Seagate Business Storage NAS Announced
Seagate Technology has announced Seagate Business Storage, its newest network attached storage (NAS) offering for small office/home office (SOHO), remote mobile office (RMO) and small to medium-sized business organizations (SMBs). The new Seagate storage solution delivers centralized backup, data protection, and remote access to critical business information. The NAS units range from a single bay solution to four-bays and are sold bare or with hard drives in capacities ranging from 2TBs to 16TBs.
February 17th, 2013 by Josh Linden
Micron Announces 20nm 128Gb TLC NAND Flash Device
Micron has begun sampling a new TLC NAND device with select customers, in expectation of full production in the second quarter of 2013. The new 128gb device uses Microns 20nm process, resulting in a total size of just 146 square millimeters, more than 25% smaller than a similar-capacity Micron MLC NAND device.
February 12th, 2013 by Lyle Smith
Intel Cache Acceleration Software 2.0 Announced
Intel has announced its new Cache Acceleration Software (CAS) for Linux, which prioritizes application performance, providing SSD-levels of speed without migration costs as well as built-in data integrity for Intel’s SSD data center family of products. The Linux version will be generally available within 30 days as an enterprise subscription and open source release while complementing the existing Intel CAS 2.0 for Windows (available now).
February 12th, 2013 by Brian Beeler
EMC Launches Continuous Availability Advisory Services
EMC has announced Continuous Availability Advisory Services for organizations evaluating deployment of or improvement to their continuous availability (CA) architecture. CA provides redundancy for organizations that have mission critical applications that need to be able to sustain multiple types of hardware and infrastructure outages while still providing steady performance and uptime. The new service combines EMC's Global Services and VPLEX to eliminate outages while providing best practices for storage virtualization and disaster recovery.
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 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 
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).
HP has been going through a transformation recently when it comes to the 
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.
