Storage News » Other

2011: the year of the 4TB drives?

vink — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 13:48:55 +0000

Seagate has started talking up their next generation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology. In a recent analyst briefing they announced their sixth generation of this technology, which promises the next round of storage density increases. The Register has done the math, and reckons we should be seeing 4TB drives this year.

While this [...] Related posts:

How green are those 2.5 inch drives? We’ve long heard stories about how 2.5 inch drives would...
Toshiba upgrades 2.5 inch drives Toshiba is about to release a new series of 2.5...
Seagate debuts 3TB external drive, 4TB to follow soon? Seagate is the first vendor to offer 3TB hard drives....

Battle over ZFS heats up

vink — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:36:29 +0000

NetApp has asked one of their competitors, Coraid, to halt the sales of their EtherDrive Z-Series NAS appliances. The reason? Coraid is using the ZFS file system. Coraid has sent a letter to their customers announcing a temporary sales stop. The Z-Series NAS was announced in May, so NetApp didn’t waste any time in [...] Related posts:

Texas Memory Systems announces open source drivers for PCIe Flash Texas Memory Systems (TMS) just announced they are providing open...
More (and less) about the Sun F5100 After the discovery of documentation about Sun’s F5100 flash array...
Does the world need Triple Parity RAID? Chris Mellor from the Register noticed a post on Sun’s...

EMC reminds us not to rely too much on cloud services yet

vink — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:25:12 +0000

Cloud storage might be a good idea for some use cases, but that doesn’t mean any service provider is a good choice. EMC announced last week that its Atmos Online service was no longer offering any SLA’s and is no longer supported for production usage:

We will no longer be offering paid subscription or [...] Related posts:

Trend Micro makes cloud/online backup acquisition Anti-virus (or, as they refer to themselves, “global leader in...
Verizon Business adds cloud storage Verizon’s business services arm is branching out into new territory:...
Nirvanix adds local storage to their cloud product When I first read this I thought it was a...

Toshiba and University of Tokio improve SSD write speeds

vink — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 19:22:53 +0000

Toshiba and the University of Tokio have presented an interesting technique for improving the write speed of Solid State Drives at last weeks VLSI symposium. The technique is targeted at three-dimensional NAND flash stacks; a method of stacking more NAND flash chips on top of each other to improve storage density and bring down [...] Related posts:

Toshiba now shipping 512GB SSD’s Toshiba has just reported that volume shipments of their largest...
Toshiba adds smaller SSDs to their product lineup Toshiba will start volume production of two new SSD modules...
Samsung touts low-power 512GB SSD Samsung has announced a new member for their Solid State...

Nasuni announces $5000 cloud security challenge

vink — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:27:17 +0000

Nasuni, the company offering a cloud storage gateway that I wrote about earlier this year, has announced a challenge: if you can reveal the contents of a file stored via a Nasuni Filer, you can win $5,000. The contest runs for 30 days, so if you’d like to take part you better hurry.

[...] Related posts:

Nasuni shows beta of cloud storage gateway Nasuni, a cloud storage start-up founded by storage veterans Andres...
Nirvanix adds local storage to their cloud product When I first read this I thought it was a...
Trend Micro makes cloud/online backup acquisition Anti-virus (or, as they refer to themselves, “global leader in...

Toshiba doubles NAND flash module size to 128GB

vink — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:17:04 +0000

Less than a year after announcing their 64GB NAND flash modules, Toshiba has already provided a shipping date for even bigger 128GB chips. They have done so by switching from 32 to 64 Gbit NAND chips, built on their 32nm process.

The new 128GB device integrated 16 64Gbit NAND chips and a controller [...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
Toshiba now shipping 512GB SSD’s Toshiba has just reported that volume shipments of their largest...
Retro SSD drive: parallel ATA interface reappears It’s been a while since I last saw a Solid...

Macronix presents new 3D NAND Flash developments

vink — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 18:57:47 +0000

Macronix International has been doing research on new ways of stacking NAND flach memory in more efficient manners than currently possible, by using a 3D structure instead of the current practice of just stacking flash chips on top of each other (2D stacking).

Their most recent findings have been presented in two technical [...] Related posts:

Texas Memory Systems announces open source drivers for PCIe Flash Texas Memory Systems (TMS) just announced they are providing open...
Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
SanDisk CEO thinks Flash prices are too low At the Flash Memory Sumit, SanDisk CEO Eli Harari voiced...

100 Gbps networks getting closer

vink — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:26:49 +0000

Alcatel-Lucent and T-Systems, the corporate customer arm of Deutsche Telecom, have succesfully connected two university networks using a 100 Gbps link, running over a distance of 60 km.

The link was achieved using just a single wavelength, which is an industry first. Previously links of over 100 Gbps have required trunking multiple connections, [...] Related posts:

40 and 100 GBps ethernet now official standards It’s been over a year since the first 40 and...
IDF: Marvell shows 6 Gbps SATA controller Marvell has been showing several upcoming products at the Intel...
Seagate first to add 6 Gbps SATA interface to a 2TB drive The new 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT is the first 2TB...

IDC report shows storage software growth

vink — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:25:27 +0000

IDC’s Worldwide Storage Software Tracker report for the previous quarter was just released, and it shows some mixed data. Year-on-year growth in revenue for storage software was 7.2%, but when compared to last quarter revenue decreased by 1.6%.

Storage growth is lagging behind the double-digit hardware growth in hardware; but most vendors will [...] Related posts:

Large-scale storage: it’s all about the software Backblaze (you know, the guys that offer the same $5/month...
Isilon posts second-quarter loss Isilon, mostly known for their so-called “scale-out NAS” solutions, has...
Nasuni shows beta of cloud storage gateway Nasuni, a cloud storage start-up founded by storage veterans Andres...

Gartner reports double-digit growth for storage market

vink — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:24:38 +0000

Gartner just released their quarterly report on the storage market, and the figures look good. Year-on-year growth for external storage was 18.3 percent, more than making up for last year’s decline. When compared to Q1 2008, growth is 5.2 percent.

The figures also show that EMC and NetApp are gaining the most in [...] Related posts:

Is there a niche for large-scale file storage products? The Register had just published a nice article by Chris...
Plextor enters SSD market Plextor, widely known for their CD-ROM and DVD drives, has...
Nasuni shows beta of cloud storage gateway Nasuni, a cloud storage start-up founded by storage veterans Andres...

Stamp-sized 1TB SSDs coming soon?

vink — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:12:51 +0000

Crunchgear reports about a breakthrough in flash memory production; a Japanese team of scientists have developed a technology that allows a 90% reduction in SSD size, while also reducing power usage and costs.

The full report can be read in The Nikkei; the chip supposedly uses radio communication instead of traditional copper interconnects between [...] Related posts:

Apacer offers new SSDs targeted at gamers Apacer Europe has just announced three Solid State Drives targeted...
SSD-news from OCZ: 1TB drive and garbage collection HotHardware has an article about garbage collection for SSD drives....
Retro SSD drive: parallel ATA interface reappears It’s been a while since I last saw a Solid...

Micron buys flash maker Numonyx

vink — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:34:13 +0000

Micron Technology, one of the world’s leading memory manufacturers, has announced they will acquire flash maker Numonyx. The deal is an all-stock transaction, worth about $1.27 billion.

The deal makes Micron the number two memory maker behind Samsung Electronics, switching places with the new number three Hynix. Interestingly, Numonyx currently has a joint venture [...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...

Riverbed adding solid state storage to WAN accelerators

vink — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:47:18 +0000

Riverbed is turning to Solid State Drives to increase the speed of their WAN acceleration products. The two new Steelhead 7050 models can deliver up to 1 Gbps of WAN capacity for data center workloads, and 622 Mbps for remote office scenario’s; the previous-generation 6050 maxed out at 310 Mbps.

The 7050 comes in [...] Related posts:

Japanese to develop wireless Solid State Drive Tech-On reports that the Japanese government is sponsoring development of...
Solid-State Storage Appliances Make Good Business Sense That is the title a certain storage vendor gave a...
Overland adding SAN products Overland Storage, known mostly for their tape products, is expanding...

3TB hard drives coming later this year?

vink — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:22:52 +0000

TDK’s most recent roadmap shows some new developments. The most important thing I found in this presentation was a roadmap for the next generation of HDD read/write heads.

Drive manufacturers are currently testing heads for 320 and 375 GB platters meant for 2.5″ drives. Models with two platters and 640GB capacity have already [...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
Seagate debuts 3TB external drive, 4TB to follow soon? Seagate is the first vendor to offer 3TB hard drives....
Do consumers need enterprise-class drives? A post over at PC Pro got me wondering about...

EC2 performance issues, what about S3 and EBS?

vink — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 08:09:31 +0000

As reported around the web, it looks like several people have noticed performance issues with Amazons EC2 cloud computing service. While this was to be expected, some people are surprised nonetheless. For those that are surprised: please read “the truth about overselling“. It’s about web hosting, but much of the contents are true for [...] Related posts:

Verizon Business adds cloud storage Verizon’s business services arm is branching out into new territory:...
Nirvanix adds local storage to their cloud product When I first read this I thought it was a...
Intel boosts X25-M SSD performance with firmware update Intel just released a firmware update for their X25-M Solid...

SuperMicro adding double-sided storage server chassis

vink — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:13:12 +0000

SuperMicro, one of the largest suppliers for “white-box” computer makers, presented their solution for high-density storage servers last month. Most traditional storage servers offer twelve 3.5 inch SAS or SATA drives per 2U of rackspace; the only exception to this are vendors offering top-loading drives such as Sun, and those offering disk trays holding [...] Related posts:

Supermicro also shipping SAS 2.0 products Supermicro, one of the largest manufacturers of “white box” servers...
F5100: 1U, 4TB flash storage from Sun StorageMojo is one of the first sites to report about...
LSI presents new storage building blocks LSI, known mostly for their I/O controller chips and storage...

Samsung also readying 64GB NAND flash modules

vink — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:35:56 +0000

Following Toshiba’s announcement last month, Samsung has provided details about their next generation of NAND flash modules. Like Toshiba, the new modules offered by Samsung will be 16-layer stacks of 32 Gbit flash chips, providing a total of 64GB of storage per chip.

In addition to the new flash modules, they also announced a [...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
Samsung touts low-power 512GB SSD Samsung has announced a new member for their Solid State...
F5100: 1U, 4TB flash storage from Sun StorageMojo is one of the first sites to report about...

Toshiba doubles NAND flash size

vink — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:16:51 +0000

Toshiba just announced their next generation of flash memory chips. The new lineup consists of single-chip packages that combine a number 32 gigabit NAND flash chips and a controller into a single FBGA package. Using their 32 nanometer production process, the chips are significantly thinner than the previous generation.

Toshiba NAND chip

[...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
Toshiba adds smaller SSDs to their product lineup Toshiba will start volume production of two new SSD modules...
Toshiba now shipping 512GB SSD’s Toshiba has just reported that volume shipments of their largest...

Future of MySQL: How serious is Oracle about open source?

vink — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:47:38 +0000

During the last days, the the fight over MySQL’s future has heated up. The European Commission still hasn’t approved it, and Michael Widenius is calling upon all MySQL users to help “save” the popular open source database from Oracle. As a response, Oracle has published some promises about MySQL’s future that were meant to [...] Related posts:

Texas Memory Systems announces open source drivers for PCIe Flash Texas Memory Systems (TMS) just announced they are providing open...
More (and less) about the Sun F5100 After the discovery of documentation about Sun’s F5100 flash array...

Intel and Numonyx improve phase-change memory

vink — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:07:35 +0000

Intel and Numonyx have just announced that they have achieved an important breakthrough in he production of Phase-Change Memory. This type of memory is one of the most promising new technologies currently being developed; like Flash memory it retains information when powered off, but provides faster write speeds and better durability.

One of the [...] Related posts:

Intel/Micron joint venture readying 25nm flash memory IMFT, an Intel/Micron joint venture, announced they are sampling flash...
IDF: Intel shows PCI-Express SSD solution reaching 1 million IOPS During the Intel Developer Forum, Intel hasn’t limited itself to...
Fix for Intel SSD corruption issue When Intel ships a new generation of SSDs that have...

Isilon in Deloitte Technology Fast 500

vink — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:57:07 +0000

Isilon has managed to reach the 119th place in this years list of the fastest growing tech companies. The list is based on the revenue growth over the last five years; during that period, Isilon has seen revenue grow by 1,395 percent. Isilon’s CEO, Sujal Patel, offered the obligatory quote for their press release:

[...] Related posts:

Isilon posts second-quarter loss Isilon, mostly known for their so-called “scale-out NAS” solutions, has...
Isilon get VMware Ready status Isilon Systems has just received the VMware Ready status for...
Isilon adding SSD options to scale-out NAS Isilon Systems is adding Solid State Drives to their S-...

Maxwell discovers a new market for their ultracapacitors

vink — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:27:55 +0000

Maxwell sent out a press release today about their “new” PC-10 ultracapacitator. In it, they tout the benefits it has for providing backup power for, among others, solid state drives and enterprise storage systems. That comes as no surprise; Sun has shown that capacitators can be used successfully as a backup power source for [...] Related posts:

New player in the SSD market: Pliant Technology After receiving their third round of funding earlier this year,...
Plextor enters SSD market Plextor, widely known for their CD-ROM and DVD drives, has...
More PCI-express flash storage: Super Talent Within hours of posting the news about the Z-Drive from...

Amazon provisioning 8 petabytes of storage per day

vink — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:05:33 +0000

Guy Rosen did an interesting analysis of the number of virtual machines started in Amazon’s cloud. His findings were surprising, at least to me: according to his stats, nearly 50.000 EC2 instances are started daily. But it all depends on the way you look at it; it’s less than one new VM per second. [...] No related posts.

Cloud storage just got a huge setback

vink — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:17:42 +0000

I’d love to know how Amazons S3 stats looked the day after the Sidekick disaster. Did people stop trusting “the cloud”? Or are they just using cloud storage for less important stuff that they are also backing up in other places? The essence of cloud computing is trusting your cloud provider. Preston de Guise [...] Related posts:

Verizon Business adds cloud storage Verizon’s business services arm is branching out into new territory:...
Nasuni shows beta of cloud storage gateway Nasuni, a cloud storage start-up founded by storage veterans Andres...
Nirvanix adds local storage to their cloud product When I first read this I thought it was a...

StorSpeed presents direct competitor for Avere FXT series caching appliances

vink — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:31:38 +0000

Caching for NAS and SAN systems has been a hot topic the last few days. Late last month Dataram presented their XcelaSAN appliance that sits between a Fibre Channel SAN and the clients accessing it, storing data in RAM. A couple of days ago, Avere Systems announced the FXT series of NAS caching appliances [...] Related posts:

Avere Systems adds SSD to their FXT appliances SSD released a new product in their FXT range of...
Dataram launches SAN caching appliance Dataram finally launched their “mystery product”; it turns out I...
Avere Systems shows first benchmarks Avere Systems has published some benchmark results for their FXT...