- Application Accelerator
- SSD
- HDD
- Large Enterprise Storage
- Medium SAN/NAS (12+ bays)
- Small SAN/NAS (up to 8 bays)
- Backup and Recovery
- Attached Storage
- Storage Adapters
- Networking
- Server Rack
- Server
- Power Management
- Software
- Accessories
FEATURED by Kevin OBrien
Micron P320h 2.5" PCIe Application Accelerator Review
In March of last year, Micron announced a new 2.5" form factor for their P320h application accelerator card. PCIe cards have been the de facto standard for any enterprise looking to drive maximum responsiveness from their storage. The form factor does suffer though from issues that don't bother traditional 2.5" and 3.5" form factors such as hot swapability. It's rarely practical to power down a server and remove it from a rack to service the storage inside. Thus, the 2.5" PCIe form factor enables the speed that the PCIe interface can deliver, with the serviceability that standard drives offer. Of course a new interface means little without server support, and as part of the announcement from Micron, Dell stepped up with server support for the new drives in many of their 12th Gen PowerEdge servers. The Dell servers, like our Dell PowerEdge R720 12G with Express Flash (Dell's branding of 2.5" PCIe), offers up to four 2.5" P320h drives accessible by standard access in the front of the server via a specialized backplane.
FEATURED by Kevin OBrien
Micron P320h 2.5" PCIe Application Accelerator Review
In March of last year, Micron announced a new 2.5" form factor for their P320h application accelerator card. PCIe cards have been the de facto standard for any enterprise looking to drive maximum responsiveness from their storage. The form factor does suffer though from issues that don't bother traditional 2.5" and 3.5" form factors such as hot swapability. It's rarely practical to power down a server and remove it from a rack to service the storage inside. Thus, the 2.5" PCIe form factor enables the speed that the PCIe interface can deliver, with the serviceability that standard drives offer. Of course a new interface means little without server support, and as part of the announcement from Micron, Dell stepped up with server support for the new drives in many of their 12th Gen PowerEdge servers. The Dell servers, like our Dell PowerEdge R720 12G with Express Flash (Dell's branding of 2.5" PCIe), offers up to four 2.5" P320h drives accessible by standard access in the front of the server via a specialized backplane.
May 20th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Unitrends Recovery-943 Backup Appliance Review
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.
May 20th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Unitrends Recovery-943 Backup Appliance Review
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.
May 15th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
HP StoreEasy 5000 Storage Review (StoreEasy 5530)
HP has been going through a transformation recently when it comes to the branding of their storage products. 3PAR, LeftHand, NAS and JBOD storage solutions have become more neatly accounted for with clear steps defined to help buyers understand which solutions fit their needs. The StoreEasy family addresses the SMB and midmarket with storage offerings that range from 1U entry-level filers to more complex arrays that could include elements from the enterprise 3PAR and virtual storage offerings. The StoreEasy 5000 takes its place at the top of the StoreEasy family. The StoreEasy 5530 configuration that we're now reviewing can either operate on its own as the primary NAS storage for a small organization or branch/remote office, or the 5530 can form the beginning of a much larger storage environment. Either way, the StoreEasy runs Windows Storage Server 2012 and is designed to be an easy drop-in for Windows-based environments. The storage server itself offers dual blade servers in an active/active configuration to offer not just a highly-available (HA) solution, but one that can also load balance and offer non-disruptive in-place upgrades.
May 15th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
HP StoreEasy 5000 Storage Review (StoreEasy 5530)
HP has been going through a transformation recently when it comes to the branding of their storage products. 3PAR, LeftHand, NAS and JBOD storage solutions have become more neatly accounted for with clear steps defined to help buyers understand which solutions fit their needs. The StoreEasy family addresses the SMB and midmarket with storage offerings that range from 1U entry-level filers to more complex arrays that could include elements from the enterprise 3PAR and virtual storage offerings. The StoreEasy 5000 takes its place at the top of the StoreEasy family. The StoreEasy 5530 configuration that we're now reviewing can either operate on its own as the primary NAS storage for a small organization or branch/remote office, or the 5530 can form the beginning of a much larger storage environment. Either way, the StoreEasy runs Windows Storage Server 2012 and is designed to be an easy drop-in for Windows-based environments. The storage server itself offers dual blade servers in an active/active configuration to offer not just a highly-available (HA) solution, but one that can also load balance and offer non-disruptive in-place upgrades.
May 8th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Toshiba SATA HDD Enterprise 3.5" Review (MG03ACAx00)
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 recent review of the MG03 4TB SAS, Toshiba has seen increasing demand for encryption and as such, they will now be offering it across all of their new models. As with the sibling SAS drives, the SATA drives offer a big jump in capacity to 4TB from 2TB as well as up to 18% faster sustained transfer rates and power consumption reduced significantly by up to 15%. Rounding out the enhancements, this new generation of SATA drives now interface over 6Gb/s SATA instead of 3Gb/s.
May 8th, 2013 by Josh Shaman
Toshiba SATA HDD Enterprise 3.5" Review (MG03ACAx00)
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 recent review of the MG03 4TB SAS, Toshiba has seen increasing demand for encryption and as such, they will now be offering it across all of their new models. As with the sibling SAS drives, the SATA drives offer a big jump in capacity to 4TB from 2TB as well as up to 18% faster sustained transfer rates and power consumption reduced significantly by up to 15%. Rounding out the enhancements, this new generation of SATA drives now interface over 6Gb/s SATA instead of 3Gb/s.
May 7th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Seagate 600 Pro Enterprise SSD Review
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.
May 7th, 2013 by Kevin OBrien
Seagate 600 Pro Enterprise SSD Review
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.
