Today at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, OCZ Storage solutions announced the launch of their next generation SQL Server acceleration solution, the ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5. The new ZD-XL SQL Accelerator 1.5 supports Microsoft SQL Server 2014, 2012 and 2008 R2 versions expanding on the key flash-based storage features that improve I/O access performance. With

Avere Systems has announced that they had raised an additional $20 million in venture financing. The funding was led by Western Digital Capital, and followed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Tenaya Capital. Avere says the funding will be used for accelerating sales, marketing, and continued development of the company’s hybrid

QNAP systems has announced the release of Virtualization Station, a virtualization operating platform for the Turbo NAS that allows multiple virtual machines (VMs) to be hosted on one Turbo NAS. Users can create isolated VMs o a single server and install different operating systems and applications.

QNAP Systems has announced the availability of the Turbo NAS TS-x51 series for SOHO and home users, which includes the 2-bay TS-251, 4-bay TS-451, 6-bay TS-651, and 8-bay TS-851. Also announced are two economical tower storage expansion enclosure companions, the UX-500P and UX-800P. The TS-x51 series is equipped with a Dual-core Intel Celeron 2.41GHz processor,

Panzura has announced that it is completely commoditizing the cloud storage gateway market by offering a free cloud gateway virtual appliance. This cloud gateway appliance provides cloud storage access for disaster recovery, backups and archiving. In a partnership with Google Cloud Platform, Panzura will provide two terabytes of free storage for a full year for

Microsoft has announced two new, higher performing storage arrays and two new integrated management services, the StorSimple 8100 and 8600, which are two, new higher performing storage arrays with fasters connectivity (10G) and expanded workloads and Microsoft Azure StorSimple Manager and Virtual Appliance, which are two new integrated management services with consolidated management through Azure and

HGST today announced that it is now shipping the first batches of its new Ultrastar C10K1800 hard drives in capacities up to 1.8TB. The Ultrastar C10K1800 is a 2.5-inch enterprise-class HDD with a 12Gb/s SAS interface and represents the first 10K drive to market at these capacities. HGST's new C10K1800 offerings are meant for applications

EMC announced today the latest version of the software for their all-flash array, EMC XtremIO. The new XtremIO 3.0 software update comes with several new features and configurations, ecosystem integrations, and business programs. These new features are aimed at offering more scale, more capabilities, and more support for consolidated, virtualized, and performance-hungry workloads. Highlights include

EMC today announced the VMAX3 family, which will shift VMAX towards what EMC describes as open enterprise data services. VMAX's enterprise data service model is an approach that can incorporate cloud access, data mobility, and data protection directly with local VMAX arrays. VMAX3 is built on the company’s new HYPERMAX OS and EMC’s Dynamic Virtual Matrix architecture