September 13th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
NVIDIA Launches AI Data Center Platform
At GTC in Tokyo, NVIDIA announced the launch of its new AI data center platform, the NVIDIA TensorRT Hyperscale Platform. This new platform is stated as delivering the most advanced inference accelerator for voice, video, image, and recommendation services. The platform will leverage the company’s new Tesla T4 GPUs as well as a comprehensive set of new inference software.
September 13th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
Lenovo Partners With NetApp To Aid With Digital Transformations
Today at the Lenovo Transfrom 2.0 conference in New York, Lenovo and NetApp announced a partnership of technology that helps customers modernize their IT, which in turn will aide in their digital transformation. The partnership will bring together the companies strengths in high-performance computing and flash storage. The two companies are also announcing a new joint venture in China delivering localized solutions there.
September 13th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
Qumulo Ups Performance & Lowers Costs For M&E
Today Qumulo Inc. announced that it was making several software innovations that will increase performance in its file storage solutions. These innovations leverage machine learning capabilities with the specific goal of transforming the media and entertainment (M&E) industry through higher performance and lower economics for tasks such as video editing, visual effects and video distribution. The new software innovations will be implemented across all Qumulo product lines.
September 12th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
Veeam & Lenovo Announce Global Partnership
Today Veeam Software announced a new global partnership with Lenovo before the latter company’s event tomorrow in New York. Through this new partnership, customers will now be able to buy Veeam Intelligent Data Management solutions with Lenovo Software Defined Infrastructure (SDI) and Storage Area Network (SAN) offerings directly from Lenovo and its resellers in a single transaction. Lenovo customers will now be able to simplify their IT while adding hyper-availability through Veeam.
September 12th, 2018 by Marshall Gunnell
Eaton Launches 9PXM UPS
Eaton recently announced its latest scalable, modular tower/rackmount backup power solution, the 9PXM UPS. Through its 4 kilovolt-ampere (kVA) plug-and play, hot swappable power modules, the 9PXM UPS aims to provide IT managers and data center operators a highly efficient and reliable solution with the lowest TCO in the 4-20 kVA range.
September 12th, 2018 by Michael Rink
Dell EMC Releases Entry-Level Powervault Storage Arrays
Dell EMC introduced the Dell EMC PowerVault ME4 Series, the next generation family of its entry-level data storage arrays designed for small- and medium-sized businesses today. Dell EMC has an install base of more than 400,000 PowerVault units worldwide. The three models in the ME4 series join these existing units in the PowerVault series.
September 10th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
Cisco Unveils New UCS Server For AI & ML
Today Cisco announced that it was broadening its UCS portfolio of B-Series, C-Series, and HyperFlex systems with the introduction of the Cisco UCS C480 ML M5 Rack Server. This latest sever is designed specifically to deal with the growing footprint of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are having on the enterprise. The new server is built for data scientists and developers, aiding them as they navigate through these new technologies in the near future.
September 10th, 2018 by Michael Rink
Seagate Releases 14TB Drives
Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX) released a wide range of new 14TB hard drives, enhancing the company’s enterprise and specialty drive portfolio. Releasing no less than five new drive designs at the same time, Seagate has given us a lot to talk about. The new designs are IronWolf and IronWolf Pro for network attached storage (NAS) applications; the BarraCuda Pro desktop drive; surveillance-targeted SkyHawk; and Exos X14 for data centers.
September 7th, 2018 by Adam Armstrong
Samsung Portable SSD X5 Review
Samsung introduced what it is calling the first NVMe based portable SSD, the Samsung Portable SSD X5. Leveraging both NVMe and Thunderbolt 3 technology, the X5 is all about max performance. Samsung quotes speeds as high as 2.8GB/s read and 2.3GB/s write (2.1GB/s for the 500GB model). All this quoted performance is housed in a small, portable footprint and runs in capacities as high as 2TB.
September 7th, 2018 by Lyle Smith
Eaton RS Rack Enclosure Review (RSV4261B)
The Eaton RS is the company's newest rack enclosure line that offers organizations a ton of versatility and is well-suited for a range of small to large use cases. The RS Enclosures are highlighted by its customizable and tool-less mounting options for power equipment, high-flow doors to promote effective airflow, and a plethora of different cable management options depending on the specific model.
NVMe SSDs are taking over the data center, quickly cementing themselves as the go-to technology for mission critical applications. The NVMe interface lets flash run free, getting past legacy bottlenecks of SATA and SAS interfaces. Removing the flash floodgates though introduces new architectural challenges that aren't easily solved with traditional HBA/RAID card server layouts. Intel has addressed this problem with a simplified solution for managing NVMe SSDs in servers. Virtual RAID on CPU, or Intel VROC for short, essentially allows the SSDs to have direct access to the CPUs, removing the need for an HBA entirely. This greatly simplifies both the data path and the components required to get the most out of NVMe SSDs in servers. In addition to enterprise-grade RAID, Intel VROC includes the expected serviceability the enterprise demands including pre-boot RAID management, hot plug support and LED management.
Launched today, the Crucial P1 SSD is the company’s latest drive targeted towards end users who want the benefits of NVMe technology in a more affordable package. The Crucial P1 features QLC NAND, which promises to further drive down prices, at the expense of write performance when compared to TLC or MLC products. The P1 comes in 500GB and 1TB capacities (with a 2TB to be announced in the future) and, perhaps most importantly, comes with a 5-year warranty.
With all of the storage technology and new CPUs driving higher and higher performance, one piece of the puzzle that has been delivering on performance for a while is memory (DRAM/RAM). Typically speaking, if more performance is desired, simply throw in more RAM. This can get expensive fast. While Crucial is unable to do much about costs (as component parts are expensive, however the price is slowly softening) they have rolled out higher performing and high capacity RAM modules. That is what the company has done with its DDR4 LRDIMM Sever Memory modules.
Dell is positioning the Wyse 5070 as a highly-configurable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) client platform. The Wsye 5070’s configuration ensures its functionality is suitable for a wide range of situations, from being a basic VDI client for task workers to being one that supports the most demanding of workloads. More specifically, the Wsye 5070 has 21 ports for connectivity, supports five different OSes, two different CPU families, many different memory and storage configurations, and all common remote display protocols. Additionally, it can be configured to support up to four 4K monitors and two 2K monitors, thereby satisfying the most demanding of users.
Announced roughly a year ago, the Seagate Nytro 3000 line of enterprise SAS SSDs is making its way through the market. These drives are part of an endurance-driven family of SSDs designed specifically for demanding enterprise applications and to improve TCO. The use cases include server virtualization, databases, software-defined storage, and all-flash arrays. In this review, we will be looking at the Nytro 3530, the light-endurance line aimed at OLTP and other more mainstream workloads.
The Samsung PM1635a is an enterprise SSD designed to handle mixed read-write intensive workloads. Categorized as a "mainstream" enterprise drive, the PM1635a features a 12 Gb/s SAS interface and a capacity range up to 3.2TB. The Samsung drive is also built to handle 3 drive writes per day (in comparison, the PM1725a offers 5 DWPD).
