Earlier Storage
EMC: 'Hardware? We stopped doing that YEARS ago'
EMC World 2013 Storage titan EMC doesn't really believe in hardware any more – the value is in the software.
The company has been on a shift for the past decade to wean itself off of a dependency on proprietary gear, and has instead been pouring resources into developing clever software, EMC head honcho Joe Tucci told The Register at EMC World …
Micron brandishes sharp new flash blade, lunges at Fusion-io
Micron is touting a new server flash drive that's apparently significantly faster than Fusion-io's market-leading ioDrive 2.
Micron is believed to be supplying its PCIe-format drives to EMC for the storage giant's XtremSF flash cards. (EMC's other supplier is Virident.)
Micron's P420m flash drive comes in both PCIe and 2.5in …
EMC, VMware dangle axe over 1,804 workers around the planet
In the week of EMC's self-congratulatory EMC World extravaganza in Las Vegas, the storage giant revealed it will slash 1,004 jobs.
The cuts will be felt worldwide in the company's Information Storage, RSA Information Security and Information Intelligence divisions, according to EMC. The redundancies will cost the biz $80m. This …
EMC throws ViPR into software-defined party
If you can't beat it, eat it - that seems to be EMC's idea with the launch of ViPR, a scheme by the storage provider to gain a foothold in data centers infected with low-cost IT gear.
ViPR can work as a storage controller for traditional and newer infrastructures, and also talk to older systems, EMC announced on Monday at its …
EMC to reveal identity of Bourne-based storage platform
EMC is set to announce a software-defined storage product known as a Sea of Storage (SOS) as a new product category, alongside its Centera and Atmos object storage-based systems.
Vulture Central's storage desk has deduced this from tips, rumours and rumblings around the storage jungle, and we're told a mid-May announcement date …
Brocade's fat pipes shrink: Fibre Channel revenue dip ahead
Brocade has cut its current quarter's estimated revenue by between $19m and $34m, implying there may be trouble afoot in the Fibre Channel world.
Brocade makes Fibre Channel equipment for use linking networked storage arrays to servers, plus a line of Ethernet switch gear. Recently the company reduced its revenue expectations …
Reg boffins: Help us answer this Big Blue RAID data recovery poser
IBM's research department have released a research paper on RAID 5 that has intrigued and baffled our correspondent in equal measure.
The paper, by IBM Almaden researcher Mario Blaum, professes to solve a problem where RAID 5 is insufficient to recover data when two disks fail. Blaum's solution claims to do so better than a RAID …
Seagate's bottom line smacked as users bin desktops for tablets
Hard drive-maker Seagate's third quarter profits slipped by a whopping 64 per cent year-on-year as the company's bottom line was hit by users deserting desktops for tablets.
Revenues for its third fiscal 2013 quarter were $3.53bn, 20 per cent down on an annual basis when revenues were pumped up through Thai flood drive shortages …
SMART brings out 2.5-in, 2 terabyte block-o-Flash to rival sTec
SMART Storage has joined sTec in bringing out a 2TB capacity enterprise SSD using 19nm NAND. But SMART's goes faster, it says.
It's an extension of its 2.5in Optimus SSD line, called the Optimus Echo. Unlike the Optimus Ultra and Ultra Plus SSDs which use Toshiba 24nm MLD (2-bit) NAND the Echo uses smaller cells built using 19nm …
EMC offers 'continuous protection' to hot 'n' heavy VMAX users
EMC has boosted the continuous data protection capability of VMAX, meaning that every change made to the data held in the arrays be recorded and replicated to a remote system. The storage giant's unified file-and-block storage platform VNX will get a software-only version of RecoverPoint, and its data mobility product, VPLEX, …
NetApp's Tour de France quest falls flat
When big vendors take on major sporting sponsorships, the first thing that usually happens is lots of shiny happy marketing material about just how the vendor's technology will propel athletes to success.
So when NetApp in 2012 threw its name, technology and cash behind German cycling team Endura the group at the centre of the …
FalconStor on 13th quarterly loss: 'Unpredictable' OEM dragged us down
FalconStor has blamed "unpredictable performance" from one of its biggest Chinese OEM partners for the dent in its first quarter revenues. It has now totted up 13 loss-making quarters - although last quarter saw a boost in revenues - and the storage virtualisation supplier's lot is not a happy one.
The company is trudging uphill …
Leave keys to your data centre to a Grizzly? Brocade thinks: Yes
Brocade has plunged deeper into the software-defined networks (SDN) pool with a couple of virtual networking products and a switch software revision.
It's presenting this stuff under an "On-Demand Data Center" marketing blanket which, it says "represents another major evolution in networking toward a highly virtualised, open and …
Oracle reveals secret recipe for free DIY storage cloud
World+dog may be busy preparing Dropbox clones, but Oracle seems to think a better idea is to build your own domestic cloud storage rig and has therefore published a recipe for doing so.
Naturally the recipe includes lots of Oracle products – VirtualBox, Solaris 11.1 and ZFS are all required - but non-Oracle open source kit also …
IBM storage crew: Why bury your BEST kit at the back of the larder?
Storagebod El Reg storage man Chris Mellor’s pieces on IBM’s storage revenues here and here make for some interesting reading. Things are not looking great with the exception of XIV and Storwize products.
I am not sure whether Mellor’s analysis is entirely correct as it is hard to get any granularity from IBM. But his take on Big Blue …
Object Storage: A solution in search of a problem?
Blocks and Files Generally, it seems to me that object storage is suffering from a failure to launch despite more than a dozen suppliers pushing it.
Many of these same vendors seem to have their heads in the sand with regard to their place in the marketplace - they seem to ignore the fact that end-user buyers are confused about what object- …
Stealthy storage startup PernixData picks up VMware guru
Early-stage US start-up PernixData has decided it needs a European evangelist and persuaded VMware's Frank Denneman to jump ship.
Denneman is, or rather was, a senior architect in technical marketing at VMware, based in the Amsterdam area. He has co-authored three VMware-focussed technical books, and is widely acclaimed as a …
GreenBytes' data smite knight gets Citrix green light
GreenBytes' all-flash IO Offload Engine has been certified by Citrix as compatible with XenServer, clearing the way for it to accelerate the cloudy outsourcer's virtual desktops.
The GreenBytes strategy has been to retire from the general-purpose all-flash storage array market - and concentrate on the virtual desktop (VDI) …
SMART Storage, Diablo brew a wee DRAM of MYSTERY tonic
SMART Storage and Diablo Technologies have promised to glue SMART's flash drives and Diablo's memory-channel storage (MCS) electronics into a combined product.
Diablo's website says MCS is "where the memory and flash subsystem are fused together". Well, what does that actually mean? It goes on to say: "MCS will ... allow …
Hard drives snatch hold of semi giant LSI, jump right off a cliff
LSI's latest results paint a gloomy picture for the storage giant, revealing both its revenues and profits were down last quarter.
Revenues for LSI's first fiscal 2013 quarter, ended March 31, were down to $569m. They were $600m in the previous quarter, a 5 per cent fall. A year ago revenues were up at the $622m mark, meaning …
Brocade, wake up: Cisco is here, and it ALSO has 16 gig FC
Cisco has waited two years, watching while competitor Brocade launched and sold 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel, before finally doubling the speed of its own Fibre Channel switch products, belatedly announcing 16Gbps MDS switches.
It's quite possible the networking giant had been hoping that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) take-up …
Reduxio plots 'revolutionary' hybrid array tech: It will need it
You've got to be an optimist to found a startup, especially when you come from one that crashed and burned. Three such optimists have risen from the ashes of scale-out filer startup Exanet and started up scale-out hybrid flash firm Reduxio.
As reported by Globes, the CEO, Mark Weiner, and co-founders Nir Peleg and Amnon Strasser …
HP's StoreVirtual gets a bit older, decides it needs some Fibre
HP is adding Fibre Channel connectivity to its previously iSCSI access-only StoreVirtual range of arrays.
These are the re-branded LeftHand Networks iSCSI arrays and HP is introducing a new mid-range product as well as adding Fibre Channel access.
The new StoreVirtual models are:
4630 for the mid-range with 6Gbit/s SAS, a …
NetApp taps Oz cloud lab for federation exploration
NetApp has approached the University of Melbourne's Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory, seeking collaboration around the Labs' research specialties in federated public clouds.
The Reg has learned that senior NetApp employees from outside Australia visited the Lab last February. Now the Lab's Director, …
Not even Facebook, Apple's millions can halt Fusion-io's bleed
Storage firm Fusion-io reported ugly results for its third fiscal 2013 quarter, with revenues down - albeit higher than analysts had expected - and a thumping loss.
Flash NAND customers Apple and Facebook made up a whopping 50 per cent of its revenue in the second quarter, but execs said the customers' buying patterns led to an …
Wannabe ZFS rival Exablox decloaks MYSTERY NAS box
Mystery storage startup Exablox has finally uncloaked its secret project - which turned out to be a simple scale-out filer managed through a cloud-based utility.
The product is called OneBlox and is managed through OneSystem, a utility service in the cloud; there is no onboard management software. The OneBlox appliance, or node …
Mutant hybrid upstart joins pushback against storage giants
Three hybrid flash-disk array upstarts are eating away at the incumbents' market share - and El Reg has peeked under the bonnet of one to find out how.
El Reg talked about Nimble Storage and Tintri a couple of weeks ago and that prompted Tegile to pull aside the curtain and show us a few more numerical goodies.
Rob Commins, its …
Fusion-io buys NexGen
PCIe flash industry leader Fusion-io has bought a startup: hybrid flash/disk array vendor NexGen, paying $114m in cash and $5m in stock.
NexGen, founded in 2010 by its CEO John Spiers and CTO Kelly Long, uses Fusion-io flash cards in its n5 arrays which are sold to small and medium enterprises. It has total funding, that we know …
Reg man crunches IBM's storage hardware revenues
Analysis IBM's under-performing storage hardware business can be understood better if we look at the quarterly revenue numbers.
For that to be made possible someone has to dive into IBM's results over the past few quarters and work out the storage hardware revenue numbers, seeing as IBM doesn't present them on a plate. That's what El Reg …
World's first 5mm-thin gyrating models paraded on disk catwalk
Western Digital has launched the world's first single-platter 5mm-thick disk drives - including one with a cache of flash memory.
It's also announced an enterprise-class 2.5in drive in a 3.5in frame so as to ease migration from 3.5in performance to the XE, a 2.5in form factor.
The single-platter 5mm-thick UltraSlims are …
BitTorrent offers file sync tool for PCs and NAS
BitTorrent has opened the Alpha testing program for its new BitTorrent Sync tool to all.
Announced last January but only available to a select few, BitTorrent Sync looks a bit like the numerous DropBox-without-the-cloud-in-the-middle contenders inasmuch as it lets you set up a source of data, then involve trusted third parties …
CFO warns IBM's 'underperforming' storage crew: We'll take 'substantial action'
Analysis IBM's first quarter 2013 results were disappointing, and if you're in storage and servers at Big Blue, it appears the numbers guys are focusing on some of your product lines. In the earnings call, CFO Mark Loughridge said: "There are parts of our business that are in transition or have been under-performing like elements of our …
Astute: Hey small biz, you too can afford speedy flashy goodness
Astute has announced a lower-cost MLC flash version of its ViSX flash-based storage accelerator, saying it's good for small and medium enterprises because it costs about the same as the disk drive arrays they're buying on a $/GB basis.
The ViSX Performance Storage Appliance uses hardware TCP/IP and iSCSI acceleration with its …
Big money in Big Data: SGI debuts petabyte-juggling archiving tool
The tidal wave that is unstructured file-based data is lumbering towards data centres. SGI is hoping the Big Data trend means that file access storage will become a hot property.
Meanwhile, customers love the idea of all file locations being stored in a single virtual silo, instead of multiple different silos with differing …
Diagnostics tools ARE useful, but more for the vendor than me
Storagebod It never ceases to amaze me that vendors believe that they can charge an additional fee for something which makes their product work properly, as it should have done in the first place.
I believe certain products should be free and I struggle in many ways to understand why they're not.
I can’t imagine they are sold an awful lot …
SanDisk '2-3 years' away from mass-producing 3D flash chips
Enterprise flash storage is proceeding inexorably down the process-shrinking road. But what happens when the shrinkage stops and flash devices evolve from using 2D to 3D chips? SanDisk thinks it might have the answer.
SanDisk makes consumer and enterprise flash. Its CEO and co-founder, Sanjay Mehrotra, gave a glimpse into …
Kaminario: We've made K2 faster, cheaper - NOW will you buy all-flash arrays?
The VC-backed storage crew at Kaminario make three types of K2 array: K2-D, which has DRAM modules; K2-H, with both DRAM and flash; and K2-F, which is all-flash and uses Fusion-io flash cards. But despite a market which is somewhat put off by the high cost of all-flash products - and despite a slew of rivals entering the same …
WD glams up SmartWare with Dropbox
WD has glammed up its SmartWare consumer backup software with a Pro version embracing Dropbox.
Smartware presents you with a file-folder view of your, er, files, through its control centre. You can tell it to continuously backups of your files and folders, or scheduled snapshots - hourly, daily, monthly - using the specified …
Gridstore does classic founder-to-CTO jive
Scale-out filer storage start-up Gridstore's founder is shuffling sideways to the CTO spot as his firm recruits a new CEO.
Gridstore was founded by its previous CEO, Kelly Murphy, and its chairman is Geoff Barrall of Drobo and BlueArc fame. Now, Murphy has stepped back to the chief technology officer role and brought aboard …
EMC jazzes up its archive offerings
EMC's released a spring boost for its Data Domain backup deduping package as well as updating its SourceOne file and email archiver.
Data Domain stores deduplicated backups and archived files. SourceOne software discovers and indexes file and mail content and archives it to a storage setup, such as a Data Domain system.
Data …
'Fastest storage in the WORLD' plugged into mighty boffinry Cray
DDN claims it has sold the fastest storage system in the world to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for its Titan superduperwhoopercomputer, shooting data out faster than 1 terabyte a second.
Titan Racks Colourful Titan storage racks
The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a US Department of Energy facility managed by UT- …
Dell kills 3-year-old object storage appliance line
Exclusive Dell is closing down its DX6000 object storage appliance product line just three years after starting it up. Its OEM'd Caringo software will be available through Dell’s Digital Download Store. But there are concerns that this move will tarnish Dell's reputation as an enterprise raised-floor data centre supplier.
Object storage …
