RSSNimbus Sets The Stage For Mainstream Enterprise SSD
February 13, 2012 9:00 AM
Solid-state array pioneer Nimbus Data's new E-Class array system is a sign that solid-state storage is moving from the high-performance fringe to the mainstream of the enterprise data center. Most first-generation, all-solid-state arrays, including Nimbus Data's own S-class, were best suited to targeted applications where high performance with single points of failure was acceptable. The new asset class, like most midrange disk arrays, has a dual-controller design to satisfy my enterprise reliability requirements.
EMC VFCache: Project Lightning Strikes
February 13, 2012 9:00 AM
EMC's recent announcement of the culmination of the code-named Project Lightning resulted in the new VFCache solution, a server-based flash cache, which may be used as a complement or alternative to flash storage that appears as if it were a disk drive. This lightning strikes twice, though not in the same spot. The first is dramatically improved I/O performance for customers and the second is the challenge that VFCache brings to competitors trying to distinguish their own flash storage solutions.
Riverbed's Granite Virtualizes Branch Office Storage
February 10, 2012 9:00 AM
When Riverbed and others brought WAN acceleration to the market around the turn of the century, many of us hoped that with WAN acceleration we could pull the servers, and the headaches they cause, from branch offices. Unfortunately, many organizations found reasons to keep servers in the branches. Riverbed's new Granite appliance allows organizations to keep servers in their branch offices while eliminating many of the headaches through what Riverbed's calling Edge Virtual Server Infrastructure.
DocuSign Does Android
February 09, 2012 9:00 AM
One of the great promises of the mobile device explosion is increased productivity. But productivity is in the eye of the beholder, and many mobile users still haven't caught on to the notion that you can sign documents digitally, with a legally binding signature, from a mobile device. Whether the goal is paperwork reduction or expedience, DocuSign combines the power of digital ink and a slick, cloud-enabled document-handling framework to put an end to the likes of scanning and faxing. And now, those of us with Android devices can use DocuSign, too.
Dysfunction in DC--The Lightsquared Matter
February 07, 2012 9:00 AM
What happens when the federal agency that is charged with regulating communications in the US butts heads with other agencies who oversee the likes of national defense, transportation, and aviation over issues of potentially devastating radio interference? Why, you get the FCC's current very strange stance on Lightsquared, a wannabe mobile broadband wholesaler.
EMC's Lightning Strikes
February 07, 2012 9:00 AM
The storage cognoscenti have been all atwitter this morning as EMC announces the details of Project Lightning, the flash-based server cache solution it previewed last May at EMCworld. The first version of the renamed VFCache is now available, and it's clearly a version 1.0 product. Hopefully, EMC will get some of the road map items out the door, as well as the just announced Thunder, soon.
dinCloud: Making a Big Impact in the Cloud
February 06, 2012 9:00 AM
Have you reached the saturation point yet on the cloud? The endless cacophony of cloud messages seems to have transformed into white noise, where trying to distinguish and differentiate among competitive cloud offerings can leave one in either a state of decision-making paralysis or trusting that familiar vendors know what they're talking about without, perhaps, the full measure of due diligence that is appropriate. Enter dinCloud, which plans to break through the droning blather and show how its approach to cloud is different.
Why I Like Juniper's QFabric (And A Mea Culpa)
February 02, 2012 9:00 AM
While I was visiting Juniper in early December, I got a chance to sit down with the QFabric folks to discuss some of issues with QFabric and what I saw as a proprietary—with all the badness that word implies—product set in search of a reason. While QFabric is proprietary because of how the components are interconnected, I came away with the impression that the overall design and capacity looks extremely powerful. I think the upsides of the QFabric product set far outweigh the downsides. Give a month's time between visiting Juniper and now, I'd say that all my ballyhoo about being proprietary was a non-issue. My bad.
HP Storage Tech Day
January 31, 2012 9:45 AM
Last week I joined a dozen or so fellow bloggers and storage industry gadflies for a storage field day at HP's Fort Collins, Colo., facility. Much like the more ecumenical Gestalt IT Tech Field Days run by our own Stephen Foskett, HP Tech Days let vendors show off their shiny new products while the street-wise delegates asked tough questions and took no marketing speak for an answer.
Prepare The Mobile Ship For Ludicrous Speed!
January 29, 2012 12:30 PM
Thinking back on the 1987 movie "Spaceballs," I picture a comical Dark Helmet standing on the bridge of his ship. In my mind, he holds a smartphone and contemplates the latest buzz on mobile network speeds, fresh from the International Telecommunications Union. As he ponders the 100-Mbps data speeds soon to be delivered by his preferred carrier, he utters the order, "Prepare for ludicrous speed," and the ship IMT-Advanced warps off to hyperspace at an impossibly crazy velocity. Speeds in the mobile data world are about to get quite exciting.
Scale Computing: New Twists To Scale-Out Storage For The Mid-Market
January 27, 2012 3:30 PM
Startup Scale Computing delivers scale-out, unified storage for the mid-market, meaning users can access SAN/NAS resources from the same, scalable pool of disk storage. Scale Computing is by no means alone in doing this, but the company goes beyond just delivering storage in a box to delivering a data center in a storage box. And that is very interesting.
Alas, Poor Virtensys, I Knew Virtual I/O Horatio
January 25, 2012 10:00 AM
I must admit I was one of those folks who was intrigued by the idea of I/O virtualization. I led sessions at conferences exploring the various ways one could connect servers and peripherals to each other. The very idea that I could share expensive resources like RAID controllers and network connections from a shared pool seemed like a path to the flexibility I always wanted. Apparently, most of you disagreed, as at least one I/O virtualization pioneer, Virtensys, bit the dust this week.
Meraki Ups The Cloud-Based Networking Ante
January 23, 2012 10:10 AM
Mainstream network players and those chasing them are out to erase the lines between wireless and wired networking. As the network edge gets redefined and the cloud makes its presence felt in LAN and WLAN spaces, announcements like Meraki's latest update are getting to be more commonplace--and exciting. With a number of interesting product updates to share, Meraki is starting 2012 with a bang.
Thought Experiment--Forget ROI
January 23, 2012 9:50 AM
Boys and girls, today's homework assignment is a thought experiment. I want you all to put yourselves in the shoes of the CXO team making a decision to move to private cloud. There is, of course, one catch: You may not factor in ROI. We're dropping ROI because it clouds the subject (bad pun intended.) Let's skip the why-should-I-do-this-experiment; I'd of course default to,"Because I told you so."
Dell Moves Ahead Fluidly in Storage
January 20, 2012 12:32 PM
The IT industry is always adapting to new trends, from client-server and the PC revolution of the '80s and '90s to cloud computing and big data today. These trends inspire successful new vendor entrants, but they can also be problematic for established IT vendors. Over time, some leaders don't adapt and die (see Digital Equipment Corporation), while others swoon and survive in a reduced state by being acquired by larger saviors (see Sun Microsystems).
Are There No Fans For The FAN?
January 19, 2012 9:00 AM
A few years ago, Brad O'Neill, then an analyst with the Taneja Group, coined the term FAN (file area network) to describe a virtualized file storage system. Organizations that build FANs that integrate multiple heterogeneous file stores presenting a single unified, optimized name space should be able to save a significant amount of time, effort and money. The collapse this month of AutoVirt is just another example of how this promising technology has never gained any traction with paying customers.
Nearbuy Brings Shopper Analytics To Retail Wi-Fi Spaces
January 18, 2012 9:00 AM
As more consumers prowl store aisles equipped with smartphones, retailers have multiple reasons to want to harness the capabilities of these user endpoints for their own benefit. Nearbuy Systems is bringing an interesting tool set to merchants that should also benefit tech-savvy shoppers with its new Captive Portal and analytics utilities.
Thai Flooding Drives Disk Prices Up, Warranties Down
January 17, 2012 11:00 AM
The effects of fall's record-setting flooding in Thailand continue to reverberate throughout the storage industry. The flooding put several factories that made both completed disk drives for Seagate and Western Digital and components like platters, spindle motors and heads under several feet of water for weeks. The estimated production shortfall of 20 to 50 million drives in the fourth quarter has had a significant impact on the storage industry.
GridIron Systems: Mining Big Data 'Gold' in a Flash
January 12, 2012 9:27 AM
Trends in the IT industry sometimes resemble gold rushes as vendors pan for revenue "nuggets." The use of solid state devices (SSDs)--most notably, flash memory--is the central point of one of these, but just as with the real 19th century gold rushes in California and Alaska, not all prospectors (that is, vendors) will be successful. Where the claims are staked can make all the difference in the world, and GridIron Systems is staking one with a focus on accelerating big data analyses.
Shared Data Plans Will Have Significant Impact
January 10, 2012 6:01 AM
As the major U.S. carriers get closer to unleashing shared data plans for mobile devices, it’s worth noting how this change in offering will likely impact both the private and corporate sides of the mobile client world. Smartphones and tablets have already been profoundly disruptive in a number of ways, and new multidevice data plans will only magnify the effect.
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On Resilience of Spit-Architecture Networks
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