Chris Mellor covers storage and allied technology areas for The Register. After experience working for DEC, Unisys and SCO, he became an IT journalist writing for a variety of print publications. He edited the UK's first storage print magazine and then moved into the online world writing for IDG's Techworld, then started up the Blocks & Files blog, which was bought by El Reg.
He has written many sportscar buying guides, a few mountaineering guides and drives a car that's faster than he is.
Supercomputer sage Cray musters Lustre cluster storage hustler
Bold move - HPC legend starts standalone storage biz
Supercomputer company Cray is starting up a standalone storage company with a Cray Cluster Connect product for rustling up business supplying X86 Lustre clusters.
"Connect" in Cray Cluster Connect (C3) does not refer to just the physical connection hardware linking nodes in a cluster. Instead Cray is referring to everything …
Sneaky Seagate slips 'world's fastest' enterprise disk mutant into the wild
Flash-packed Savvio found lurking in Big Blue iron
Seagate has quietly built an enterprise-class 600GB hybrid drive: it combines the capacity of spinning platters with a fast flash cache of hot data.
Up until now Seagate has only delivered notebook-computer-class hybrid disks, namely the Momentus XT and the Laptop SSHD product lines. Oddly it hasn't actually formally announced …
Exagrid hires former IBM exec, Hitachi bod to help flog disk grid tech
CEO: Public cloud OK for archiving data but not for backup
Exagrid, a supplier of deduplicated disk grid systems, clearly isn't worried about its products, but it has added two new execs to help boost the business side of things.
Dana Prestigiacomo takes over the marketing veep brief from previous incumbent Bill Hobbib. Her previous employers include Thomson Reuters, IBM and CA …
Fusion-io's founding CEO quits board
Flynn flies off
David Flynn, Fusion-io's founding and ousted CEO has flown the boardroom coop, as revealed in an SEC filing (PDF). Flynn follows cofounder and ex-CMO Rick White out the door.
Flynn had been replaced as CEO by ex-HP executive Shane Robison in an effective boardroom coup. Robison has made some exec-level changes and canned some of …
Samsung wins Apple MacBook contract, starts spitting out PCIe SSDs
Blocks and Files Small-time card-shufflers are toast
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, third-party PCIe flash card suppliers, it tolls for thee. It looks like Samsung, Intel/Micron and SanDisk/Toshiba will be the only ones left standing when this whole PCIe flash clash is over.
In the wake of its massive win with a contract to furnish Apple's upgraded MacBook Air as well as the …
Seagate reveals a NASty side, tears wraps off WD Red copycat disk
Meow!
Seagate has introduced its own disk for filer-focussed network-attached storage (NAS) boxes, a year after rival Western Digital launched its own Red NAS drive.
The new Seagate spinner comes with NASworks software; it's clearly a startling coincidence that the WD Red's bundled software is called NASware.
The Red is a 1TB, 2TB or …
Fusion-io opens trenchcoat, flashes cheap PCIe cards
Wants to slurp up R&D cash and spaff it on ioScales
PCIe card-flasher Fusion-io has been talking to financial analysts about killing off its "wasteful" research projects and building OEM momentum for its cost-reduced ioScale card.
The message is that costs are about to go down and revenues will climb.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers noted that Fusion is working on a third …
Array slinger X-IO jumps on Windows Storage Server filly, digs in heels
Giddy up, there's a new NAS box to flog
Array supplier X-IO will run Windows Storage Server 2012 inside its data vaults in hope of a Redmond-assisted sales boost.
The operating system software and X-IO's Integrated Storage Element (ISE) disk box have been brought together to power the new File Storage Controller (FSC) 2200: a sealed, five-year maintenance-free …
Intel bakes smaller, slower flash memory. Aah, now that's progress
800GB of 20nm chippery will set you back nearly a grand
Intel has produced a solid-state flash drive, the DC S3500, using a 20nm process - potentially replacing the DC S3700 and its 25nm tech.
In NAND technology-land a 20nm process means you get get more NAND dies out of a silicon wafer than if you use a 25nm process, which is more chips to flog and more cash in the bank. The S3500 …
Thought you could rely on ever-rising storage hardware sales? Think again
IDC: On the bright side, software sales are up...
Tech market analyst IDC says that although storage software sales increased in the first 2013 quarter, traditionally strong storage hardware sales have started to shrink.
Using its Quarterly Storage Tracker, the box-counter says that, compared to a year ago, first quarter storage hardware revenues declined 0.9 per cent to $5.1bn …
NetApp clambers over stumbling Big Blue as storage market shrinks
IDC numbers show giants jockeying for 2nd and 3rd place
In the first quarter of 2013, the network-attached storage and storage-area-network markets shrank for the first time in four years, according to IDC. HP, Hitachi and IBM revenues were the hardest hit hard, we're told.
The bean-counters' Quarterly Storage Tracker monitors suppliers' sales of external (networked) storage and …
IBM tells Vegas crowd: Software-defined? Yeah, we're all about that
IBM Edge Storage buzzword bonanza in gamers' paradise
Based temporarily at the Mandelay Bay hotel on the Las Vegas strip for its Edge conference, Big Blue has blasted out a set of storage announcements. IBM appears to be taking its shot at the ever-expanding storage market as the Big Data era begins in earnest.
At the event, IBM rolled out its TMS acquisition-based FlashSystem …
NetApp musters muscular cluster bluster for ONTAP busters
Storage array OS overhauled to juggle more nodes, go down on you, er, less
Data-vault biz NetApp has updated its ONTAP operating system to handle bigger clusters and require less downtime.
It is presented as software-defined storage, although it is not typically sold separate from the NetApp controller hardware on which it runs. The company wants to tout ONTAP as an enterprise-class storage system as …
SK Hynix coughs $240m to settle Rambus IP case
Thanks for the memory...
South Korean chip-maker SK Hynix has signed a five-year licensing deal worth $240m to settle an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by intellectual property licensing firm Rambus.
Hynix and Rambus have signed a five-year DRAM product licensing deal for Hynix to use computer memory IP from Rambus, and settled …
MacBook Air now uses PCIe flash... but who'd Apple buy it from?
Was Not Woz?
Apple's next iteration of its workstation-class Mac Pro will use PCIe flash memory, as will the new MacBook Air. Cupertino's move towards flash memory could set a precedent other consumer manufacturers may follow.
The Mac Pro format changes from a boring rectangular tower, albeit one with alloy handles, legs and mesh screen work …
Gartner magicians mumble, scrawl upstart's rune on disk pentacle
Actifio untimely ripped, apparently
Duplicate file killer Actifio has been summoned by Gartner's sorcerers to appear in their magic quadrant of who's who in enterprise backup.
The storage upstart sits alongside fellow startups and new entrant Veeam and reliable old number-two external storage supplier warhorse NetApp.
Wait, NetApp? You'd think NetApp should be up …
What's HP got under wraps? Looks awfully flash and tape shaped
HP Discover What happens in Vegas won't stay there - we've got the details
HP is indulging in a storage product-fest orgy at HP Discover in Las Vegas with an all-flash 3PAR, deduping VSA software, refreshed backup software, and a new tape library.
StoreServ all-flash array
HP is debuting the 3PAR StoreServe 7450, an all-flasher, with a tad more than half a million IOPS, 550,000 to be precise. We …
Buffalo herds DDR3 RAMs into DriveStation's spinning rust corrals
Claims cache-packed gear keeps up with flash drives
Storage hardware maker Buffalo has given its latest drives a hefty DDR3 RAM cache boost, putting them on par with flash memory's data access times, they claim.
The 2TB and 3TB DriveStation DDR models utilise a USB 3.0 interface. Buffalo says read speeds are up past 330MB/sec, with write speeds topping 400MB/sec. So 800MB of …
QLogic brandishes axe over staff, seeks $20m cost savings
Numerous employees at risk of redundancy
Some of the reasons for QLogic's ousting of its CEO have become clearer after the company issued a restructuring statement.
An undisclosed number of staff will be laid off; some engineering operations are going to be consolidated (presumably reducing overlap and costs); and the focus on product development is going to get " …
'THINNEST EVER' spinning terabyte beauty slips out of WD fabs
Size-zero drive packs a whopping 143GB per millimetre
WD says it is shipping the thinnest terabyte drive ever, giving thin and light notebook suppliers and users 143GB of capacity* per millimetre of drive thickness.
The WD Blue drive is 7mm thick (0.28in) and has, we understand, one or two 500GB platters inside it depending on the capacity levels offered – these range between 250GB …
Dell's new Compellent will make you break down in tiers... of flash
FS8600 pops hottest data into the fastest slots
Dell thinks its Compellent arrays will be more compelling with automated tiering extended to different types of flash, policy-driven deduplication and namespace expansion added to the filesystem, and more drives in a smaller space.
The storage boxes' new Storage Center 6.4 software can handle flash tiering and distinguish …
Whiptail whips out SME-friendly flash array
Just half a MEELLLION dollars. More M than S, then
Enterprise flash array fettler Whiptail has announced a flash array for the rest of us: the WT-1100, aimed at branch offices and small/medium enterprises.
It's a diminutive 1UK rack enclosure holding up to 4TB of flash which delivers 100,000 IOPS with a latency less than 0.1msecs. The device runs the same RACERUNNER software as …
Dell's Compellent beats Isilon with 85 per cent fewer nodes
Texans snapping at heels of two-year-old kit
Dell has beaten a 56-node Isilon system's file-serving benchmark performance with just eight nodes - and flash file access punch.
The benchmark is the SPECsfs2008 NFS file-serving one and Dell's Compellent system achieved 494,000 IOPS with 8 nodes, each having 12 fast SLC flash drives and 120 slower MLC flash drives; an all- …
Buy a new flashy sTec storage box, get a Blue Screen of ... Metro
Windows Server 2012 bunged on solid-state byte vault
Flash! Bang! Wallop! sTec is going into the flash-chip filer appliance business with a Windows Storage Server 2012 box - pretty much a first for any mainstream solid-state-drive (SSD) vendor - with its s3000 product.
Typically, SSD vendors supply flash components to array manufacturers. This vertical upwards integration by sTec …
Oi, small biz! Attach our Syncro to your storage, says LSI
Another vendor goes down the Windows Storage Server route
It sounds a paradox but LSI says its Syncro technology can make direct-attach storage (DAS) shareable - and it's doing just that to provide high availability for Windows Storage Server 2012.
Traditional SME and remote office/branch office (ROBO) high availability (HA) server setups have each server in a pair replicating storage …
WD shuns flash, plonks enlarged racks on shelf
Macs, PCs? It's all the same to us...
WD has extended its unified storage Sentinel range into a 1U, Atom-powered rackmount shelf, a first for WD as it enters the rackmount storage market.
Up until now, the DX4000 Sentinel was an Atom CPU-powered desktop box with between 4 and 16TB of capacity from its 4 x 3.5in HDD bays positioned one above the other.
Position …
Drobo makes 'reductions' ahead of Connected Data merge
Layoffs due to 'staff overlaps in some sales channels' - Barrall
SME storage hardware maker Drobo, which is in merger talks with Connected Data, has laid off some of its staff, in what Connected Data CEO Geoff Barrall calls an orderly "Reduction In Force" (redundancies).
Connected Data is a private cloud startup founded by Geoff Barrall in late 2011 and staffed by some of his old colleagues …
EMC inks deal to take Brit F1 racer Lotus to the clouds
Storage bods get a crack at Grands Prix glory
EMC is providing skads of storage to Formula One wannabee winner Lotus for a chance at Grands Prix glory.
F1 regulations are going to change in 2014, mandating hybrid, turbo-charged V6 engines instead of the current normally aspirated V8s. So Lotus decided it need a wholesale storage refresh to help with the changeover.
The …
Pure says two of the four tiers of storage are set to disappear
'Moore’s Law has turned disk into tape'
Pure Storage is brutally flogging its FlashArray technology, driving it faster and faster. The pace of development in flash arrays is picking up with EMC and NetApp get involved, and startups have to hustle and bustle to stay ahead.
Pure's perception of the enterprise data centre networked storage market is that we are moving …
CIA's sugar daddies shovel MEELLLIONS into Pure Storage
If we told you exactly what for, we'd have to kill you
All-flash array upstart Pure Storage has received the blessing of the CIA after the spooks' venture capital arm In-Q-Tel made an investment in the firm.
In-Q-Tel is based in Arlington, Virginia, and was created in 1999 as a non-profit organisation. It invests in companies offering technology that could help the intelligence …
Beam us up! Upstart's Transporter whisks small biz from cloud madness
Store data on your desk? So crazy it just might work
Connected Data has launched its cloud-free Transporter storage box in Europe. A second-generation version is due to go on sale in the US.
The upstart hardware maker, which yesterday announced a merger with file storage firm Drobo, is betting that not everyone is keen on doing backup and storage over a distributed network owned …
WD's new disk-flogging brainwave will bring you close to tiers
New product, new promises ... how about some new sales?
Disk drive giant Western Digital has announced a new five-tier data centre storage strategy, with a new Se drive targeted at scale-out NAS filers and cloud storage.
The industry leader's profits have been flagging of late, so it must be looking for ways to reassure shareholders and investors that it hasn't fallen behind trends …
No Dell, no EMC? Well, HP's storage champ then
Beats IBM at poorly attended storage benchmark party
A HP 3PAR system is top of the storage heap in the SPC-1 benchmarks for storage systems costing less than $200,000 and also achieved a top price/performance ranking. Of course, many of the big boys failed to make a showing, so we're not sure how valuable the crown is.
Out of all systems submitted to the Storage Performance …
Transporter upstart Connected Data could will merge with Drobo
Updated Barrall, beam me up!
Connected Data - the peer-to-peer, cloud-free, file sync 'n share Transporter-maker startup - could buy* Drobo, the supplier of the eponymous and absurdly easy to use protected file-storage devices. Both companies were founded by Geoff Barrall and he is currrently the CEO of Connected Data.
Barrall also founded Drobo, whose …
HP's plunging storage revenues could yet be saved
Green shoots springing up amidst decline
The good ship HP is being held back by many things and storage ain't helping, yet. The one brightspot there - 3PAR - can't overcome plunging revenues elsewhere.
The company reported its second quarter of its financial 2013 revenues yesterday. Within the overall Enterprise Group, the storage segment declined 13 per cent year-on- …
Grim outlook for Big Storage as revenues dip across board
Snapping up the minnows only keeps the wolf at bay for so long
Mainstream storage vendors seem to be in trouble as Dell, HP and IBM's storage revenues have tanked over the past two years.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers created a spreadsheet comparing his records of how these vendors' storage revenues changed quarter by quarter. El Reg's storage desk charted the numbers:
Vendor …
Samsung flogs slim, flashy new model: Protection included
Server-level SSD gets endurance, capacity upgrade
Samsung has upgraded its SM843 server-level SSD, doubling its capacity and tripling its endurance.
The new SM843T SSD also has power-loss protection for the most recent data and AES-256 bit encryption.
This is a 2.5in form factor SSD using 2-bit MLC flash. As server and data centre SSDs, the SM843 has capacities of 120GB, 240GB …
What's that Dell? You're out? HDS punts pay-per-use cloud storage
Pay us, pay the other guy, we're not fussed
Hitachi Data Services will begin offering pay-per-use cloud storage services to its customers and for use by service providers to build their own services as part of its Cloud Service Provider programme.
This move by HDS comes as Dell withdraws from public cloud services and after its cancellation of its DX6000 object storage …
Backup bods Veeam quietly gobbling up ever-greater market share
Slow and steady really does win the race
Backup software supplier Veeam is quietly doing extraordinary things; it's growing its backup business while touting their latest software as a means to continue growing its market share.
Veeam is privately-owned and focusses on virtual machine backup. It has no venture capital funding as far as we can tell. Despite that, it's …
Watch out, chaps, it's another storage sync 'n' share produ-ARRRGH
HDS chucks new contender onto teetering heap
Object-storage flogger HDS has upgraded its object storage platform to provide firewall-guarded file sync 'n' share access to BYOD users.
The Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere product is the sync 'n' share version of the original Hitachi Content Platform (HCP).
With the Anywhere product, data is kept on HCP, where it is secure …
Bunging servers in disk arrays achieves nothing. There, I said it
Blocks and Files If you disagree with the Reg storage desk, explain yourself
A while ago in-array compute was going to be a big thing, with apps running inside VMAX and VNX arrays using spare controller engines and getting rid of network-lagged data access latency.
DataDirect Networks went down the same development avenue, and Lustre and the GPFS stack certified to run in its storage arrays.
Bringing …
NetApp: We laid off 100s, profits dived - and it's all YOUR fault
Analysis 'Constrained' IT budgets blamed as sales growth flatlines
Storage giant NetApp has reported unremarkable revenue growth and falling profit for its 2013 financial year. It signals that NetApp is now a mature company and not a high-growth stock.
But, behind the numbers, the firm has laid off hundreds of employees to help it stay in the black and keep investors at bay. The recently …
Our new 1.5TB lappie drive isn't thick, it's just the densest - HGST
WD biz stakes claim on highest megabytes per mm cube
Western Digital subsidiary HGST is touting a 1.5TB notebook drive with three platters inside a standard 9.5mm-thick 2.5in form factor.
HGST claims the drive has the highest storage density of any hard disk drive available, in terms of megabytes per cubic millimetre. Generally 9.5mm-tall, 2.5in drives have two platters, not three …
New 4TB drive spaffs half a telly season into your eyes AT ONCE
You like porn Game of Thrones, right? How about 16 eps simultaneously?
Seagate has a new 4TB 3.5in hard disk for digital video recorders, TV set-top boxes and other such entertainment gear.
The Video 3.5 HDD can operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with an initial 0.55 per cent chance of drive failure per year. It has a wide range of capacity points - 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and …
Flailing QLogic's boss gives up CEO, president gigs
That seat on the board? You can have that too...
Simon Biddiscombe, server adapter maker QLogic's CEO and the driver of its Mount Rainier flash-enhanced HBA program, has resigned "to pursue other opportunities," with a search for a new CEO underway.
Biddiscombe's departure comes after two years of falling revenue and a decline in profitability. He has also left his position as …
NetApp boffins first to go in 'WORKFORCE DECIMATION' plan
300 R&D bods out the door in proposed cull of 1,300, say insiders
Storage array biz NetApp has laid off 300 people at a research and development centre in India and “hundreds” more in the US, according to industry sources.
The Times of India reports that anonymous insiders at NetApp's Bangalore operation - which is the company's largest R&D facility outside of the US - have been given their …
Is it time for the great Jihad against networked storage?
Blocks and Files Big boys look wide open with eyes wide shut
Dheeraj Pandy is running Nutanix as if the company is on a crusade against networked storage. Data delivery latency from networked storage is plain unacceptable, it seems, and clustered virtualised servers should run and present their local storage as part of a pool.
There's more of course with big-iron converged systems being …
Look behind you, NetApp: Angry investor is coming for YOU
First Xyratex, then Emulex and Brocade... now Elliot's stalking a storage giant
Activist investor Eliott Management, of Emulex fame, always pushes to have its voice heard - especially when it thinks bosses of its "investment companies" don't put shareholders first. Now the fund has actually taken on storage giant NetApp.
According to a Bloomberg report, Elliott is pushing NetApp to change its board. We can …
Have your users managed to force iOS devices on you?
Check this, it might stop them losing all the data
NetApp has used its acquired IonGrid technology to provide iOS mobile devices with access to file data stored on its FAS arrays, along with browser access to business apps.
Apple iPad and iPhone users will have an App Store app they can use to log into their corporate system, using Active Directory or a multi-factor …
Honey, I BLEW UP the International SPACE STATION - in full 3D
CTO's radical rig blasts Sandra Bullock into Spaaace
A few years ago the idea of accelerating a BlueArc filer would have seemed bizarre; it's got its own hardware acceleration. But now media special effects processing can be so mind-blowingly intensive that the hardware accelerated filer itself needs accelerating.
The case that's illustrating this point is the new George Clooney …
