New benchmark neuters storage vendors
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Or at least neutralizes their hype The Storage Performance Council (SPC) has issued a second benchmark meant to save customers from vendor spin hell.â¦
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(Source: Computerworld)  When it comes to storage systems, small and medium-sized businesses have had their share of challenges. Even when some storage vendors have tried to address the unique needs of the SMBs, it has been with underpowered versions of their enterprise-class products. The advent of unified network storage, exemplified by the DellTM PowerVaultTM NX1950, has dramatically altered the SMB landscape by combining iSCSI and NAS capabilities in a single, highly functional package that delivers simplified management and enhanced scalability at a cost-efficient price point.
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SAS, iSCSI and even InfiniBand offer alternative ways to connect servers to storage and are starting to steal some of Fibre Channel's thunder. But while they are, respectively, cheaper and faster than Fibre Channel for direct-attached storage, that doesn't mean the technology is doomed.
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Network Appliance has announced what it terms a key milestone in its Storage Grid vision with the release of its Data ONTAP 7G enterprise storage software, which the company is touting as bringing newer functionality and lower costs to the concept of
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The leading vendors in the data warehousing market are running scared of new entrants to the market that are offering data warehouse appliances (i.e. pre-integrated hardware, software, storage combinations) that can offer greatly superior performance at a significantly lower price.  In this white paper we will dispel the 'fog of war' that currently pervades the data warehousing landscape, dismissing those question marks that are irrelevant and gratuitous, but highlighting any genuine issues that need to be addressed.
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Storage Decisions Being the competent vendors that they are, Cisco, Network Appliance and EMC all made good use of the Storage Decisions conference being held here this week and rolled out new gear.
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Storage companies continued to demonstrate a wealth of new products and technologies Wednesday at the Storage Networking World in Orlando.
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News and survey results from Computerworld's twice-annual storage conference.
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LIVE WEBCASTAre you considering moving to a disk-to-disk backup and recovery solution for your multi-vendor storage environment? Join this live Webcast on October 12th with NetApp and Symantec and learn how integrating VERITAS&reg; NetBackup&trade;'s robust management capability with the powerful NetApp disk backup offerings can simplify your move to disk-to-disk backup in a multi-vendor storage environment.
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(Source: Plasmon)  In this white paper, Heidi Biggar of Enterprise Strategy Group discusses the ideal solution that creates a multi-tiered active archive for cost-effective, long-term accessibility to compliance data.   According to Biggar, organizations cannot continue keeping non-transactional data on primary storage systems. Archive platforms make better economic sense. Download this white paper to learn more!
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The first official benchmark test results for Intel's Tigerton series and AMD's Barcelona series were released by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. From a pure prowess perspective, neither the new quad-core Xeon MPs nor the new quad-core Opterons walk away with an all-around victory, with Intel's X7350 stealing the show in integer throughput, and AMD's 8350 winning the race in floating-point throughput.
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As small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) save more data and rely on it more, they are turning to networked storage even under the burden of limited budgets and IT expertise.Regulatory requirements, more sophisticated applications and reliance on Web-based supply chains all are forcing small businesses to collect and store more information, according to IDC analyst Rick Villars. They may not have enough data to fill an enterprise-class storage system today, but they want systems that let them add more capacity as they grow, he said.EMC is aiming at this growing market with its Clariion AX4, a platform that can scale from a few terabytes of storage to 60TB and take advantage of many advanced EMC storage management applications designed for large enterprises. The company was set to announce and ship it Tuesday.Swervepoint, a provider of promotional gifts in Middleton, Mass., has less than 1TB of data between its two locations but wants to be able to add storage capacity without buying new servers.&quot;We should buy our servers for the server qualities and buy storage for our server needs,&quot; said Kevin Phoenix, principal in charge of operations and administration.The 15-employee company&#39;s main concerns about networked storage are cost and complexity, and the AX4 eased those worries, Phoenix said. Swervepoint, which counts EMC as one of its own clients, has been a beta tester of the AX4 and purchased a unit. It came with management software that was easy to use, said Phoenix, who said he handles IT for the company but is not an IT specialist.The AX4 comes with at least 3TB of storage and can be expanded by stringing together as many as five systems with 12 drives each. Each AX4 can be ordered with either a Fibre Channel or a iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) connection, meeting demand for IP (Internet Protocol) connectivity among SMBs, according to Barry Ader, senior director of Clariion marketing at EMC. Smaller companies tend not to have expertise with Fibre Channel, which is typically used in large enterprises, he said. On the AX4, there is no price difference between the two interface options.The systems will come with 750GB drives at first, but 1TB drives will be available starting in March, opening the door to the AX4&#39;s top-end storage capacity of 60TB, Ader said. Within the full AX4 system and even within each enclosure, users can mix and match SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives. Companies can use management tools including snapshot, failover, business continuity and Microsoft Exchange replication capability with the AX4.By mixing SAS and SATA drives, users can set up a tiered storage system in which the more critical data is on better-performing, more expensive SAS drives and less critical on lower-performance SATA disks, said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT. Support for enterprise-class software is another benefit of the AX4, which goes up against SMB storage products from competitors including Network Appliance and Equalogic, King said. In particular, its support for virtualization software from EMC&#39;s VMware subsidiary appears to be stronger than in competing products, King said.
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The latest storage numbers are in and -- big surprise -- storage spending is up.
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InfoWorld - At Storage Networking World (SNW) in Orlando this week, several storage vendors are adding to their arsenal of products and technologies aimed at IT managers dealing with the explosion of data storage.
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Plain kit, sweet file system Rackable Systems this week made an unusual acquisition for a no nonsense server vendor. It bought flashy storage software maker Terrascale for $38m in cash.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Enterprises are reaching deeper into their pockets to add data storage capacity to their computer networks, according to an industry report released Friday. Worldwide revenue for external disk storage systems rose to $4.3 billion in the third quarter of 2006, a 9.9 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to the research firm IDC. This is the 14th consecutive quarter of storage revenue growth, a trend IDC attributes to more companies buying storage because of the demand to save more data, and to existing customers buying larger capacity systems. "There is definitely a bump in the quarter on the systems side," said Brad Nisbet, manager of IDC's Storage Systems Program. Sales growth has been particularly strong for midrange-priced systems while flat for high-end systems, Nisbet said. While the cost per megabyte of storage has continued to decline, the average selling price of systems has continued to rise because enterprises are buying larger and larger capacity storage. The market share rankings of the top storage vendors were unchanged in the latest report. EMCÂ kept the No. 1 spot with a 21.4 percent share on an 18 percent increase in revenue over the year-ago quarter to $927 million. Hewlett-Packard ranked second with a 17.6 percent share on only a modest 1.8 percent revenue increase to $760 million. Third place went to IBM, with a 13.7 percent share. Dell, which sells co-branded Dell/EMC storage, ranked fourth with an 8 percent share, and Hitachi Data SystemsÂ was in fifth place with a 7.9 percent share. The entire disk storage systems market grew 7.9 percent to $6.186 billion. In the overall market, the top five vendors, in order of share, were HP, IBM, EMC, Dell, and Hitachi. Also of note, the market for storage area network (SAN) technology grew 17.3 percent. The SAN market excludes sales of network-attached storage (NAS), in which servers are liked to just one storage appliance. SAN refers to a larger network of multiple storage devices that are grouped together as a single resource. In particular, storage networks linked together with iSCSI (for Internet Small Computer System Interface) connections showed dramatic growth of 108.4 percent over the third quarter of 2005. IDC attributes that growth to the ease of use and low total cost of ownership of iSCSI-based networks compared Fibre Channel-connected storage. The IDC report excludes sales of tape storage technology.ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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Storage appliance maker EqualLogic says its newest product improves performance by doing a better job of balancing the data load between storage arrays in a network.