RSSTapes and Disks Channel
News Analysis
Dot Hill Doubles Fibre Channel Bandwidth
Storage hardware OEM Dot Hill Systems today unveiled the 3000 series, an all-new line of rack-mounted storage area network arrays that support the 8Gb/s Fibre Channel speed variant as well as dual-interface models that add 1Gb/s iSCSI support, effectively bridging the two protocols without the need for a second network. The 3000 series is available now to OEMs and will begin shipping under the Dot Hill brand next week.
More News Analysis
- Toshiba Unveils Big Capacity In Small Form Factor
- IT Executives Have Better Handle On SSD's In 2010
- NAND Advances Put The Squeeze On Fibre Channel
- Avere Takes On Storage In Stages
More News Analysis in Tapes and Disks Channel »
Architectures
MySpace Finds Unique Use For SSD Technology
Companies in the IT industry can be ingenious, sometimes jerry-rigging different technologies to meet their own unique computing needs. MySpace, a well-known provider of social networking software and services, fits into that category. The company applied SSD technology, not to one of its typical uses, such as speeding up disk storage, but as a replacement for servers that acted as RAM cache for data intensive applications. By making the change, they reduced server requirements significantly.
More Architectures
- Poor Performance Leads To Deployment Of SSD Technology for Aspirus
- Full Disk Encryption Evolves
- Odyssey Logistics Moves To SSD
- The Solid Future Of Solid-State Disks
More Architectures in Tapes and Disks Channel »
Reviews & Workshops
SSD Poised To Move Into The Data Center
Very high costs versus very dramatic performance improvements. Those are the two items that enterprises will have to balance as Solid State Disk (SSD) encroaches upon hard disk storage in the data center. Currently, the number of SSD products available is limited both by availability and their high price tags. Despite those obstacles, a number of companies have forged ahead and are deploying with SSD systems, which, though far from perfect, are proving to be intriguing.
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Blogs
FalconStor And Violin Add SSD To NSS
March 10, 2010 9:00 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
While I had been waiting for FalconStor to add flash support to their Network Storage Server (NSS) storage virtualization software, I was expecting flash volumes off a Fusion-IO or TMS PCIe flash card with promises of automated tiering to arrive sometime before Snow White's prince. I was pleasantly surprised when the folks at FalconStor called to tell me they were aiming a little higher than that and using Violin's solid state memory array as a cache.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Doing IT On The Cheap
February 23, 2010 9:30 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
I was having a chat the other day with a senior exec at one of the cloud storage vendors. He said they were closing a big deal with a service provider to OEM their services as the service provider's other option, which involved a major vendor's private cloud hardware. I started wondering how it was that a huge service provider, with lots of smart engineers and the economies of scale of building a multi-petabyte system couldn't get their costs down to competitive with a third party, who is of course marking up their own costs.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Holographic Storage And Other Science Projects
February 12, 2010 9:49 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
There's been a lot of news over the past month or so about the fringe data storage technologies I think of as science projects. You know, holographic memory, 35TB tapes, 10 layer 200GB Blu-Ray disks, optical tape, isolinear data rods and data crystals. Oh wait -- the last two are science fiction, for now. The biggest news was the Colorado Department of Revenue seizing the assets of InPhase Technologies after it was shuttered last week. InPhase, a 10-year-old Bell Labs spin-off, has been demonstrating a 300GB holographic disk and promising to deliver in 6-12 months for at least the past three years.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Is D2D2C The Next Big Thing In Backup?
February 2, 2010 9:30 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
Today CommVault announced that their Simpana integrated backup and archiving software can now use public cloud providers in addition to local disk and tape as a data store. I hope that CommVault is, as they were with deduplication, leading a new wave of disk-to-disk-to-cloud (D2D2C)backup and archive solutions. While I firmly believe that there's a lot of life left in tape, especially for long retention archives with relatively low access rates, 25 years of consulting to organizations has taught me that tape drives, like backhoes and other heavy equipment, should be left to trained professionals. Small and even mid-size organizations rarely handle tape properly, leaving them exposed to data loss.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Opternity Knocks
January 29, 2010 11:00 AM
Posted by David Hill
You probably haven't heard of Opternity, a start-up company that promises a new "laser" tape technology for enterprise space that increases the capacity of a tape cartridge by nearly an order of magnitude, or 10 times, that of existing tape technology for the same media cost while at the same time dramatically increasing the tape's shelf life to fifty years. Why is this important? Consider first all the predictions about the continuing deluge of data. To paraphrase Mark Twain on the weather (and to exaggerate a bit), everyone talks about innovation, but nobody does anything about it. If Opternity misses its opportunity, we will all be missing an opportunity, but we won't know it.
See all blogs by David Hill
Do We Need 35TB Tapes?
January 28, 2010 8:44 AM
Posted by Howard Marks
Last week IBM and Fujifilm announced that they've developed a new tape technology that could hold a whopping 35 TB on a DLT/LTO size cartridge before your data supposedly compresses 2:1 to put 70TB in the palm of your hand. While I'm impressed with the technical feat, I'm wondering what we would use a 70TB tape for.
See all blogs by Howard Marks
Best of the Web
Data deduplication: Declawing the clones
Data deduplication is emerging as a critically important new arrow in the storage administrator's quiver to answer hard questions about the increasing problem in storage growth costs.
Compression, Encryption, Deduplication, and Replication: Strange Bedfellows
One of the great ironies of storage technology is the inverse relationship between efficiency and security: Adding performance or reducing storage requirements almost always results in reducing the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system.
WAN Optimization Whitelists and Blacklists
Optimization is a fantastic way of saving money and creating really happy customers at the same time, but it doesn't work flawlessly for all applications.
WAN Optimization as a Managed Service: It's Not About the Cost
This insight examines how organizations outsourcing their WAN optimization initiatives to a third-party go about achieving their goals for application performance, reducing operational costs, and streamlining enterprise infrastructure.
