The NVM Express Workgroup announced that they have hit a milestone; a Microsoft Windows driver, Linux Driver, and an NVMe Test Suite. The NVMe specification is being used on many next-generation PCIe SSDs, from manufacturers such as OCZ. Last November, OCZ stated they would begin sampling devices with NVMe support this year, hinting towards a

DataCore has announced that Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer from Hitachi Data Systems now provides detailed monitoring of DataCore SANsymphony-V environments. Enterprises will gain a holistic, single-pane view of their entire data center if a tight integration of the software is implemented, including virtualized storage resources, servers, networks and applications. This gives IT administrators the ability

Fusion-io has announced their financial results for its fiscal second quarter of 2012 which ended December 31, 2011. Fusion-io reported revenue of $84.1 million, which is up from $31.2 million in the same quarter of the prior year, and up from $74.4 million in the prior quarter. The company is placing emphasis on their ioDrive2 storage solution

Samsung has released a new firmware for their SSD 830 line of drives. According to the release notes, firmware CXM03B1Q offers improved compatibility and stability of the firmware update tool, which some users had issues with when upgrading to the CXM02B1Q firmware. Samsung also made the firmware available through Samsung Magician or bootable USB/CD option.

In their Q2 2012 quarterly earnings call, Western Digital indicated drive shipments in the quarter that ended in December were roughly 119 million units, which included a pre-flood inventory of 11 million drives. Of those drives, WD shipped 28.5 million, compared to 52.2 million in the same quarter a year ago. While WD recovers more

OCZ has released a new firmware for the Octane SSD family that up to doubles random write IOPS performance in some capacities. Firmware v1.13 is designed for Octane SATA 6Gb/s SSDs and is available for download now. 

Mellanox has announced a new pricing structure and expanded channel for their line of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) solutions. Good timing, considering Crehan Research estimates market penetration of 10GbE to be about 13% today, with growth in 2012 to scale to 37% of the total annual market shipments.

Nexenta Systems, supplier of OpenStorage solutions, has announced that it has secured over $21 million in Series C financing, with Menlo Ventures– experienced investor in the storage space industry–as its new lead investor. Sierra Ventures and Razor’s Edge Ventures were also chosen for partnership in this round, joining current investors Javelin Venture Partners and TransLink

Micron Technology has announced an agreement to acquire the assets of privately held Virtensys Ltd., a provider of PCIe-sharing solutions based in Manchester, England and Beaverton, Ore. The move helps Micron to strengthen their storage portfolio as they fold in Virtensys’s PCIe virtualization technology. Micron currently offers the RealSSD P320h PCIe SSD solution in 350Gb