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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.
Oracle muscles way into seat atop the benchmark with hefty ZFS filer
Oracle has announced new cache-heavy ZFS appliances and has seized the SPC-2 benchmark top spot with one of them.
Announced in early September, the third-generation ZFS appliance has most I/O served from DRAM cache, up to 2TB of it, and that makes these boxes stream data like a dragster sucking nitrous oxide.
As before the ZFS …
HGST hoiks out Death Valley-proof hi-cap HDD
HGST has introduced a disk drive to stop you getting lost in Death Valley.
Cars and disk drives mix surprisingly well - so long as you ruggedise the drive so the head and platter can move each move around a bit, taking vibration and temperature changes into account, while still being able to read data. Today's satnav and …
Squeezed budgets, data boom: We knew you'd be back for lovely TAPE
The last of the big independent tape library manufacturers, Spectra Logic, is defying predictions about tape's demise and posting ever-higher revenues.
Against a background of a supposedly declining tape market, SpectraLogic revenues have grown 16 per cent year on year, helped considerably by top-of-the-range T-Finity sales. …
Nixed Nirvanix files for Chapter 11
Cloud storage startup Nirvanix that imploded last month, has formally admitted business defeat by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
It announced the fact on its website on October 1, saying:
On October 1, 2013, Nirvanix voluntarily sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to pursue all alternatives to maximize value for …
Seagate to storage bods: You CAN touch this (at last). Stop, HAMR time
Seagate plans to demonstrate a coming HAMR disk drive in Tokyo next month.
HAMR stands for heat-assisted magnetic recording and is a way of increasing a disk drive's capacity beyond the limits of current perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) technology.
At high areal densities PMFR technology breaks down because each bit …
Big data: You've got to spend a dollar ... to make fifty-two cents – report
What do you expect from big data mining: easy-to-find gold nuggets of information from the dark pits of the data dumps? According to a recent report from the Wikibon consulting group, almost half of big data projects fail.
It also found that the payoffs – using current technology – are not yet worth the costs of running the …
Flash fettlers Fusion-io scoop IBM as reseller partner
Big Blue is gonna flog Fusion-io server flash cards, and is doing its bit to rehabilitate the floundering flash fettler after its founder and CEO fled earlier this year.
IBM's announcement is here, and says the Fusion-io cards are available for System x and BladeCenter servers. Users get from 825GB to 3.2TB of MLC flash per PCIe …
GreenBytes' chairman and CEO resigns
GreenBytes, the deduping VDI software supplier that runs on flash hardware, has abruptly lost its Chairman and CEO, Steve O'Donnell.
Our sources tell us that the company's statement will say:
Steve O'Donnell tendered his resignation as Chairman and CEO of GreenBytes as of September 27, 2013 due to pressing personal obligations …
Sceptical markets snub Violin Memory: Can the flashy biz bounce back?
Violin's IPO was a right debacle: investors judged the stock was worth a fifth less than the valuation of the bankers backing the public offering. What are they seeing that the bankers didn't?
The days of easy flash array pickings are coming to a close. Listen hard and you can hear the screeches in the wind from the iron gates …
Actifio and the curious affair of the AIX copy reduction tech
Actifio seems to having a few problems getting its virtualised file copy reduction technology working with AIX, support for which came with its v6.0 software release.
Here's a note from a customer:
We are attempting to use Actifio here at -----. Unfortunately, we can't get it to work on AIX, nor can Atifio, apparently. They …
EMC snaps up ex Symantec veep to rule new HPC skunkworks
EMC has recruited an ex-Symantec exec to lord it over its Emerging Technology Products division. His product brief includes "hybrid Cloud Gateways and High Performance Computing storage" which is fine ... except EMC hasn't got any such products.
Chirantan “CJ” Desai will be the president of the newly-formed Emerging Technology …
WD unveils new MyBook line: External drives now bigger... and CHEAP
WD has introduced an even bigger single-drive MyBook, a 4TB one with USB 3.0 connectivity.
The MyBook line is a desktop product about the size of a medium-thickness paperback and WD has steadily built up its capacity and speed:
In January 2012 WD reached 4TB and 6TMB capacities with the MyBook Live Duo which had USB 2.0 …
Virident bulks up FlashMAX, but it still can't sprint
Virident has added muscle to its FlashMAX server flash card by more than doubling its capacity – but it isn't as quick as their marketing bumf wants you to believe.
Its FlashMAX II capacity model stores up to 4.8TB in a low profile (half height, half length) PCIe form factor. Virident says it's optimised for hyperscale computing …
Look out, world! HP's found a use for Autonomy - rescuing Win XP bods
HP is offering an Autonomy-powered escape route for wannabe migrants from the dead-end of Windows XP.
Microsoft will no longer support for XP, and withhold security updates for the ageing operating system, from next April. Business users will need to upgrade their PCs to run a more modern version of Windows; companies face …
Disk-pushers, get reel: Even GOOGLE relies on tape
Tape has spent some time on the ropes, but now it's back in the ring. After suffering five or more years of onslaught from pro-disk fanatics drunk on disk deduplication technologies, reality has struck home. Tape is cheaper than disk*. Tape is more reliable than disk and, the killer, tape's storage capacity can go on increasing …
Fancy facing an Amazon backup beatdown on cold storage spinners?
The Register's storage desk has heard that the demand for cloud archival services has grown to the point where Amazon's rivals are considering creating Glacier-like services.
Seagate's cloud-backup subsidiary EVault has been linked to just such an effort, although when El Reg asked, it would not confirm this.
Glacier is Amazon' …
Storage array giants eye up cloud rear ends – but will it end in tiers or tears?
It's coming faster than we think, despite the NSA's potential effect on Western cloud sales: the idea that storage arrays could morph into cloud gateways, with traditional on-premises arrays accessing an off-site backend to store older, colder data.
NetApp referred to this with its recent cloud strategy pronouncement – …
Facebook Frankenphoto morgue will store cold, dead selfies FOREVER
The term “cold storage” has something of the morgue about it. Dead bodies in refrigerated cabinets, what an image. Facebook is backing the use of a photo morgue, the use of cold storage for old pix.
Old photos will have low individual access rates but when access is wanted it is wanted at faster speeds than a tape library could …
QLogic: Trying to squeeze MORE from Oracle RACs? Piece of cache
Wanna give your Oracle real application cluster setup a fivefold transactions-per-minute boost? Just add a flash-cached host bus adapter between the Oracle gear and its SAN, says QLogic... preferably its own.
Fibre Channel host bus adaptor (HBA) vendor QLogic has a new line of network adapters called FabricCache which use its …
Tegile: Flashness in front, hardness at the back – and new software to run it
Mutant array maker Tegile has revved its software to get a more than 60 per cent speed increase. It says array IOPS have shot up from 200K to 360K with its latest release and brags it is trampling over its main rival in "customer bake-offs".
Tegile's hybrid Zebi array combines a flash front end with disk drive backend and …
Dedupe-dedupe, dedupe-dedupe-dedupe: Flashy clients crowd around Permabit diamond
Putative OEM deduplication technology supplier Permabit could be about to land some clients, if a recent analyst's note is anything to go by.
Stifel Nicolaus analyst Aaron Rakers sent a note around about private talks with Permabit CEO Tom Cook and what's happening with its Albireo deduplication technology - background here. HDS …
Pure poaches NetApp preacher
Vaughn Stewart used to be NetApp's chief blogger, but it seems he's now evangelising for all-flash upstart Pure Storage.
Stewart, interviewed here by our Speaking in Tech team, has been the director of technical marketing and cloud evangelist at NetApp for the past three years. But earlier this month he was poached by Pure and …
Violin's data-slurp flash SAN frontend to cram box at furious speeds
Violin Memory is now accelerating disk-drive array-based SANs by using a flash front-end caching box, which also sucks data off the SAN and stuffs it in Violin's own 6000-series flash arrays.
The Force 2510 is called a “memory appliance” in Violin's cant and is the company's implementation of the GridIron Turbocharger appliance …
StorNext gets revamp, Quantum claims 5x data throughput boost
Quantum has taken its StorNext file management system and updated it from top to bottom, making it multi-core processor aware and more scalable so it can handle five times more data than StorNext 4.
The company says workflows in the digital media and entertainment business are becoming more complex, involving bigger files, …
Flash biz and virtual database chum: Our tests show we bust spinning rust
A flash array speed merchant and database virtualisation firm have got together to run a benchmark that shows their disk array brethren eating their dust.
Delphix takes a master database and makes virtual copies of it for whomever needs them, including accounting types, big organisations trying to control data spread, and …
Riverbed flows faster with refreshed cloudy Whitewater gateways
Network-polishing tech firm Riverbed is still honking away at its great Glacier front end story, with three new Whitewater cloud storage backup appliances and an operating system upgrade to WWOS v3.0.
Cloud Storage gateways are local converged server and storage appliances that provide a dedicated on-ramp to the cloud. This ramp …
OK, we're flogging a disk array, but cut us open and we bleed TAPE – SpectraLogic
Tape library supplier SpectraLogic has quietly added a spinning rust product to its archive portfolio: the nTier Verde array.
Hmm. Tape-based data protection vendors like Overland Storage and Quantum have gone into the disk array business to offset declining tape revenues. And results have varied: financial impact has been …
Cloud storage biz, one careful owner, six years on the clock... any takers?
Cloud storage startup Nirvanix has imploded, with Brit-based partner Aorta Cloud reacting fast in prepping a takeover to continue services for Nirvanix's customers.
All parties are hoping that this doesn't give customers the dreaded "cloud fear" and that Amazon, Google and Microsoft don't become the sole holy trinity of cloud …
Wizard of WOS drops screen, reveals TREELLION object storage array
Amazon might have its Glacier data archive, but Data Direct Networks, which is in the business of WOS (Web Object Scaler) wizardry, can now store a whole continental ice sheet of data with its trillion-object WOS7000 array.
DDN, primarily known for high-performance computing storage, has long said that it would bring out a …
NetApp unveils ONTAP cluster-shuffler: Do it with any vendor, in public or private
NetApp is hoping to turn cloud agnostics into ONTAP believers with its new "seamless cloud data management" product, Clustered Data ONTAP.
The new "universal data platform" works across any type of cloud infrastructure with "seamless data portability and management across all clouds – public, private and hybrid."
The Sunnyvale …
Storage players' lovechild VCE flashes fresh flash additions
VCE, the lovechild of Cisco, EMC and VMware, hits the storage world with a trio of announcements: a pair of VNX2 and vSphere 5.5 implants; Oracle-specific Vblock; and a VDI Vblock using XtremIO all-flash array technology.
Vblocks are converged server-storage-and-networking systems made up of Cisco UCS servers and network …
Flash biz Violin plays for $162m shower of notes - will rivals drown it out?
Flash array startup Violin Memory wants to raise $162m in a stock-market debut, according to paperwork filed for its IPO.
Earlier this month rival Pure Storage received $150m in a funding round, which may or may not be significant in Violin's pricing calculations.
Other recent big-bucks flash-array news this month has included …
NetApp exec veep hands his papers in, shuffles off to mystery startup
NetApp's executive vice president of product operations, Manish Goel, is no longer with the company.
The company filed an 8-K form with the SEC saying Goel would go on September 20 after having tendered his resignation on September 9. Goel was one step down from God, as it were, reporting to CEO Tom Georgens.
According to CRN …
Exploring our way to the source of EMC's mighty VNX Nile
EMC, we have a problem. Your Project Nile has exabyte-plus capacity and is built from EMC's ViPR control/data plane software and VNX arrays. Yet, the biggest VNX is the 8000 at 4.5PB capacity, about 223 times too small. What gives?
EMC COO and president David Goulden said in Milan that Project Nile will use ViPR and VNX to …
New head for disk drive array upstart: Coraid moves CEO to board
Ethernet storage biz Coraid has moved Kevin Brown from the CEO seat to its board and installed David Kresse as its new chief exec.
Coraid builds EtherDrive arrays using commodity hardware, which are accessed via the lightweight ATA-over-Ethernet (AoE) protocol devised and patented by company founder Brantley Coile.
Kevin Brown …
Tape's NOT dead. WHOMP: This 8.5TB Oracle drive proves it
Oracle has introduced the world's highest capacity tape drive, all raw 8.5TB of it, and the fastest too.
The StorageTek T10000D transfers uncompressed data at 252MB/sec and 756MB/sec with 3:1 compression running. Its 252MB/sec data rate is 57.5 per cent faster than LTO-6's 160MB/sec, and LTO-6 only stores 2.5TB raw, less than …
Shrinking market doesn't scare the NASty boys of storage
The network-attached storage market appears to have shrunk slightly, but it seems that Buffalo, Seagate and Overland think the market's set to grow soon.
There has been quite a bit of NAS action of late, with Buffalo pushing out a new product, Seagate spinning out a pair of rackmount NAS shelves, and Overland introducing one …
Seagate REJECTED buyout offer for Virident – analyst
Hard drive supremos Seagate had first refusal on buying out enterprise flash startup Virident – and turned it down, leaving WD free to snap it up for $685m.
This little bombshell burst forth from a report on a Seagate Analyst Day by Stifel Nicolaus' chief, Aaron Rakers. A second juicy nugget was that Rakers thinks there were …
Joyless times at cloudy Joyent: CTO packs bags, heads for hills
Cofounder Jason Hoffman is resigning from his chief technology officer position at cloud computing provider Joyent.
In a blog on the company's website he writes, "I cofounded Joyent 10 years ago when I was working as a scientist and looking for a better way to run compute on my data... [The] 'think differently' spirit of …
The numbers are in: EMC still ruling storage LIKE A BOSS
It's that time again: another round of IDC's quarterly storage tracker figures. The total disk storage market has gone down 5 per cent on an annual compare, dragged down by falling server sales.
The external storage (networked disk array) market has gone down just 0.8 per cent, showing the effect of server drag on direct-attach …
Flash floggers whip out flash cards, SSDs, unleash frantic flood of updates
While Pure Storage's $150m funding round and the WD/Virident and Cisco/Whiptail acquisitions take centre stage at the flash fairground thee's lots going on at the side stalls with Fusion-io, Intel, OCZ and sTec.
Fusion-io ioFX cards Fusion-io ioFX workstation flash card
HP customers can optionally use Fusion-io's ioFX flash …
'800lb Fibre Channel gorilla' Brocade axes 300 staffers worldwide
SAN fabric leader and Ethernet networking wannabee Brocade is going to fire 300 people to cut costs as it realigns its resources towards data centres and software-defined networking.
The pink slip news was slipped out in an SEC 8-K filing (PDF) on 10 September. This should take its headcount from 4,180, to 3,880.
Stifel …
EMC pinches top Oracle engineer and Microsoft bod for Isilon
EMC's scale-out filer shipper Isilon is scaling up its organisation; Oracle's top storage SVP, Phil Bullinger, is moving from the Redwood Shores-headquartered firm to EMC subsidiary Isilon, and a Microsoftie is coming aboard as Isilon's COO.
Bullinger is joining EMC's Isilon unit as its senior veep for engineering and operations …
Storage firms, tremble: MASSIVE tech beast Cisco has just spaffed $415m on Whiptail
Cisco intends to buy all-flash array startup Whiptail for the huge cash sum of $415m, catapulting the networking giant full tilt into the storage market and threatening its close relationship with EMC.
John Chambers' networking giant declares: "Whiptail will strengthen Cisco's Unified Computing System (UCS) strategy and enhance …
WD's billion-dollar flash slurps: All this tech, and STILL no deal with chip-fryers
WD has splashed or intends to spend a whopping $1.1bn on building its flash technology and products portfolio, in the most aggressive series of moves yet by a hard disk drive vendor into flash, and yet it still hasn't inked a long-term chip supply deal with a flash foundry.
Just yesterday it paid $685m for Virident. So what are …
Shingle me timbers! Seagate brags of 1m SMR drives - where are they?
Seagate has said it's shipped a million shingled disk drives to date.
Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) increases a device's capacity by squeezing more readable tracks of data onto a platter's surface, albeit by hammering rewrite speeds.
When committing bytes to disk, the tiny electromagnet in the disk head that writes the …
Got the CLOUD FEAR? Connected Data has a black 'n' blue cone to sell you
Connected Data has introduced the second version of its private cloud storage device, Transporter 2, and is hoping to cash in on those users who have been put off by public cloud outages.
This is a file sync 'n' share product with a difference; instead of files being copied from your computer to a public cloud service (Box, …
Can't get enough of flashy upstarts, can you, WD? Firm pays $685m for Virident
Western Digital has bought PCIe flash array supplier and startup Virident for $685m in cash and given it to its HGST subsidiary to add to its stable of flash businesses.
Virident got itself a new CEO, Mike Gustafson, on 19 September last year. From hire to sale in 12 months is pretty damn good. Virident's board and backers will …
Enterprise storage: A history of paper, rust and flash silicon
The story of data storage is one of ever decreasing circles. What started as holes punched into cards, then into tape, became hard disks, floppy disks, then hard shiny disks, until eventually circles are no longer involved at all.
It is also the story of transitions from one medium to another as the IT industry searched for …
Don't bother competing with ViPR, NetApp - it's not actually that relevant
NetApp doesn't need to compete with EMC's all-singing all-dancing ViPR product. Why not? NetApp only has one storage array product – ONTAP – whereas EMC has an entire family of arrays, which ViPR virtualises into a single resource and delivers to server apps needing storage.
Look at it like this: the EMC storage array product …
