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Flash cheaper than disk? 'Customers aren't buying that', says NetApp CEO
NetApp's CEO Tom Georgens philosophised about flash storage in the company's latest earnings call with analysts. The top boss said non-volatile NAND memory isn't the be-all and end-all in storage: what matters is where active and inactive, hot and cold, data is stored, and how dear each of those holding pens are.
“Flash, on a …
Don't let the SAN go down on me: Is the storage array on its way OUT?
Storagebod With EMC saying it plans to put VMAX into the "capacity tier"* and suggesting that performance cannot be met by the traditional SAN, are we finally beginning to look at the death of the storage array?
The storage array as a shared monolithic device came about almost directly as the result of distributed computing; the necessity …
Brocade boss drops F-bomb: 'Everyone's for 32Gbps Fibre Channel'
Storage networking biz Brocade has pulled a massive profit leap out of declining revenues thanks to a legal win against rival A10 Networks.
Brocade banked a $119m profit on revenues of $536.6m in its latest quarter of 2013, ended 27 July. The year-ago profit was $43m, so that's a 177 per cent jump and a 153 per cent increase …
Is that a flash stick in your pocket, VMware, or are you pleased to see us?
Blocks and Files VMware has, in your correspondent's opinion, punched below its weight in data storage. Undue respect for drive arrays has inhibited its ambitions. This is about to change, though, as the company begins to take responsibility for providing primary storage to applications, and also networking.
Let's consider the basic IT trio of …
Who's Edward Snowden? Capita bungs its email into Microsoft's cloud
Capita will shunt thousands of employees' email into Microsoft's Office 365 cloud - except those handling sensitive government and financial work.
Some 20,000 staff will migrate from on-premises systems to servers provided by the American giant "by the end of this year", Capita told The Channel.
A spokeswoman for outsourcing …
Do you think spinning rust eats flash's dust? Join the hard drive daddies club
Disk drive makers have joined forces in a desperate bid to keep disk sales up and fend off the flash threat.
Western Digital, HGST, Seagate and Toshiba have formed the Storage Products Association to provide "a forum to educate and advocate about the role of hard disk drives (HDDs) and Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHDs) in …
Nimbus fattens up Gemini twins with smaller flash chips
Nimbus Data has increased the capacity of its Gemini flash arrays by stuffing more smaller flash chips in them; we're talking 48TB in 2U, just pipping Violin's new 6264 array with its 64TiB in 3U.
That 64TiB is equivalent to 70.5TB, meaning that Nimbus's new Gemini averages out at 24T/U versus 23.43TB/U for Violin Memory – …
EMC CTO: I called flash a 'performance tier' but don't like the phrase
EMC CTO John Roese has decided he's not keen on the phrase “performance tier” that he used yesterday at EMC Forum Australia.
Vulture South has been told Roese did his own slideware for the event and that the definitions it offered of pure solid-state storage as “performance tier” storage and disk-based-but-flash-capable products …
Seagate: Storage industry ill-prepared for onrushing big data tsunami
Flash Memory Summit The world is producing such a rapidly surging amount of data that the storage industry – both solid-state drives (SSDs) and hard-disk drives (HDDs) – will be hard-pressed to keep up with demand, says one storage-industry insider.
"You can take that as a crisis; we see it as an opportunity," HDD manufacturer Seagate's SVP in …
Facebook's request to the flash industry: 'Make the worst flash possible'
Flash Memory Summit Flash-memory designers may currently be focused solely on improving speed and endurance, but Facebook's director of capacity engineering and analysis wants something completely different from them.
"The Facebook ask of the industry is make the worst flash possible," Facebook's Jason Taylor told his keynote audience at the Flash …
Fusion-io founder Flynn flies again with new storage upstart
Ousted Fusion-io co-founder David Flynn has a new gig: startup Primary Data.
And the chief marketing officer? Why, none other than Rick White, co-founder of Fusion-io and its chief marketing officer when he resigned along with Flynn earlier this year. He started at Primary Data in June.
The news is reported by the Wall Street …
Skyera unveils rival-crushing 21PB-a-rack flash monster
The ex-SandForce flash controller guys turned all-flash-array-startup guys from Skyera are bringing another flashy product to market. And if the firm's claims are true, skyEagle could be a game-changer in the flash array world.
The upcoming product, due to be unveiled today, will redefine how much flash you can cram on the shelf …
MYSTERY sugar daddies showering flash upstart Tegile in gold named
Western Digital and SanDisk have been named as the two investors that just ploughed millions of dollars into hybrid flash array startup Tegile.
Tegile's Zebi flash-disk array uses WD subsidiary HGST's disks and solid-state drives. With the WD funding, Tegile and HGST have a joint technology development. The companies are chasing …
FalconStor struggles on as antsy backers whine 'C'mon, let's sell'
After losing its CEO a few weeks ago, standalone storage software shipper FalconStor has duly reported poor results. Since then it has got into bed with a new VC to shore up its balance sheet, ended an investment banking deal with Wells Fargo, and teamed up with Violin Memory to develop new products.
The interim president and …
EMC demotes VMAX into 'capacity tier'
EMC Chief Technology Officer John Roese has all-but-demoted the company's Symmetrix VMAX arrays from their position atop the company's prow, today declaring the arrays are the biggest and baddest offering in a “capacity tier” of products that possess lesser grunt than a “performance tier” of products.
Speaking at the EMC Forum …
Magnets too slow for disk writes? Use lasers
A group of Swiss researchers has demonstrated using lasers to control magnetisation at extremely high speed, a line of research they hope will one day will help speed up hard drives.
One of the limits of the modern hard drives' performance is how quickly a bit's magnetisation can be accurately changed using a magnetic write …
Enterprise whales leave R&D to the startup minnows
Storagebod Why are the small flash vendors innovating while the big boys don't bother? Why are they leaving them for dust? More to the point, do the big firms care?
Innovation in large companies is very hard; you have all the weight of history pressing down on you and few large companies are set up to allow their staff to really innovate. …
SMART Storage: Super DIMM sum adds up to tasty flash soup
Devilishly fast flash data access is on its way, courtesy of SMART Storage interfacing a DIMM-like flash product to a host's memory bus using Diablo Technologies' MCS TeraDIMM technology
SMART's ULLtraDIMM product has what it says is ultra low latency compared to existing SSDs and PCIe flash cards. It inherits all of the MCS …
Future of storage: Micron bets chips on 3D NAND flash – but NOT YET
As far as the world's number two DRAM chip-maker is concerned, 2D or planar NAND can go through another lithography cycle before 3D techniques may become necessary because a two-year-old NAND design change has enabled Micron to scale its lithography down to 16nm and maybe beyond.
El Reg interviewed Glen Hawk, Micron's VP for its …
They do it with mirrors: Nasuni reveals new cloudy protection plan
Enterprise storage upstart Nasuni claims that customers who store their data in Nasuni front-ended clouds have never lost any of their data. Nevertheless, the company is adding mirroring to its service to guard against cloud data loss.
Nasuni - whose C-round funding El Reg covered last year - says its customers, who have Service …
Seagate's shingle bathers stalked by HGST's helium HAMR-head sharks
A performance-versus-capacity war is brewing in the hard drive industry with Seagate leading on disk-flash hybrids and WD-HGST on helium-filled devices.
At a briefing session for tech journos yesterday, Seagate dropped hints of new solid-state hybrid drives (SSHDs) - which combine a non-volatile NAND cache with spinning platters …
The terrifying tech behind this summer's zombie assault
Feature So there you are in the cinema. Watching Titanic again for some reason. Kate Winslet has just saucily suggested to Leonardo Di Caprio that he paints her like one of his French girls.
Then she leans over and pokes you in the eye.
What happened there? You’ve got a fair idea how 3D films are made, and you’re pretty confident that …
Actifio plans wider data management portfolio
Upstart storage startup Actifio has quickly made a splash with its “copy data” products, but the company has already set its sights on a more comprehensive suite of data management tools including business intelligence wares.
Speaking to The Reg in Sydney today, Actifio founder and CEO Ash Ashutosh said the company's eyeing off …
Samsung rolls out first mass-produced 3D NAND flash memory chip
Samsung has announced that it has begun volume production of what it characterizes as "the industry's first" vertically stacked NAND flash-memory chip.
Samsung's mass-produced 3D vertical NAND (V-NAND) chip
Behold the industry's first mass-produced three-dimensional NAND flash chip (click to enlarge)
"Following the world's …
Seagate goes back to ASICs, slurps upstart's brains in return for cash
Seagate has invested in a bespoke chip designer that can whack new interfaces to the hard disk giant's products.
The silicon slinger is privately-held eASIC, which was tapped up for its "expertise in fast time-to-market, low-cost and low-power" custom chip knowhow, we're told.
The draw for Seagate seems to be the ability to add …
Backers fatten up flash-disk mutant array, sic it on storage giants
Bulk up and get ready to take on the storage giants - that's what hybrid array startup Tegile's backers are telling it, and here's $32m to do just that.
Tegile was founded in late 2009 to devise a hybrid flash/disk storage array, and its Zebi product was launched in February last year - background here. Together with fellow …
KingSpec's 2TB Multicore PCI-E SSD whopper vs the rest
Review Earlier this year we took a look at SSD caching, an alternative way of getting some SSD performance added to a system without too much strain put on the finances. So how about a gander at the other end of the spectrum – huge capacity and performance and a total disregard for the budget
Enter the KingSpec Multicore MC1S81M2T, a …
Veeam chases $1bn revenue dream as VC joins board
Veeam is looking more and more like the Data Domain of virtual server backup suppliers, announcing 100 per cent annual growth in second quarter bookings, boasting more than 73,000 customers and securing a new VC partnership to take it to the $1bn annual revenue level.
That would mean, El Reg's storage desk thinks, passing …
Upstart's 'FLASH KILLER' chips pack a terabyte per tiny layer
Memory-making start-up Crossbar came out of stealth mode on Monday, announcing that it has developed what it characterizes as "very high capacity and high-performance non-volatile memory" based on a new approach to resistive RAM (RRAM) technology, and capable of storing one terabyte of data on a single-layer 200mm2 chip.
That's …
Pernixdata: Psst, sysadmins – wanna virtualise that server-side flash?
Flash upstart PernixData is hoping to become the best friend of VMware sysadmins everywhere tomorrow when it launches its Flash Virtualisation Platform (FVP).
The product promises to expand the number of VMs that a single hypervisor can support by turning individual servers' flash storage into a cluster-wide resource.
FVP …
Trouble closing the wallet, Joe? EMC boss Tucci's cloudy shares rain $10m
EMC CEO and chairman Joe Tucci has earned himself a cool $10.5m after selling hundreds of thousands of shares in the storage biz.
Tucci made $10,583,406.96 from selling 400,000 EMC shares on 30 July and 1 August, according to the SEC Form 4 website, which links to this SEC filing.
Tucci's transaction consisted of selling 192, …
Multimillion-dollar sack of Microsoft cash soaks up Quantum's bloodbath
Two charts show the essence of storage biz Quantum's problems: declining revenues are converting profits into deepening losses. But could 2014 be a breakout year?
First, here are the quarterly revenues for fiscal years 2011 to 2013:
Quantum Quarterly Revenues What happened? Quantum quarterly sales reducing over the years
We …
Psst. Want to stop the data drip of leaky clouds but don't know how? Look here
Storagebod Edward Snowden’s revelations about the activities of the various Western security organisations have not come as a real surprise. Yet they were a wake-up call to how the landscape of our own personal data security has changed.
Multiple devices and increased mobility have meant that we have looked for ways to ensure that we have …
Flash upstart: We're doing so well we might even tell you HOW well one day
Hybrid disk and flash startup Tintri has posted yet another quarter of solid results, while murmurings from its CEO suggest that it might be going public by the end of next year.
The purpose-built VM-aware storage platform maker says it had a very successful Q2 of fiscal 2013, just like it did last quarter. Back then it had 53, …
Why you wanna go and put STaaS in their eyes? Toshiba pays $3m for Zadara
Flash foundry operator Toshiba has invested $3m in a startup offering virtual private storage arrays in the cloud, citing a "unique and strong strategic fit" between the two companies.
Storage upstart Zadara offers its Virtual Private Storage Arrays (VPSAs) as storage-as-a-service, offering iSCSI or NFS-based storage. Customers …
HDS scores 6PB slice of Oz research cloud
Australia’s ambitious Research Data Storage Infrastructure (RDSI), a project aimed at creating a federated cloud of high-class storage rigs that will allow wider sharing of research data, will use kit from Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) in one of its nodes.
RDSI plans to establish nodes around the nation, housed at universities and …
Imation posts FOURTEENTH loss-making quarter
Scalable-storage biz Imation's revenue slump continues while management continues to talk the talk about recovery, which – worryingly, for Imation – depends mainly upon storage array product developments in a brutally competitive market.
The firm's revenues – and profitability – crashed as tape and optical disk media sales …
Benchmark bods reckon NetApp storage has the edge over Isilon
Analyst outfit DCIG rates NetApp over Isilon for private cloud storage. Which comes as a bit of a surprise to The Register's storage desk.
DCIG produces buyers' guides and then sells the rights to distribute these guides to vendors. This raises a suspicion that top-ranked vendors have somehow influenced their position in the …
Micron buys Apple supplier Elpida for $2bn, becomes world's No 2 DRAM baker
The chip firm from Boise, Idaho, has done well – Micron has finally closed its deal to buy bankrupt Japanese DRAM-maker Elpida.
This means Micron is now the number two DRAM chip-maker in the world after Samsung.
Elpida's plant in Hiroshima, Japan
For around $2.5bn, Micron gets Elpida's 300mm DRAM fab and has also bought a 24 …
Quizzed Quantum veep quashes hardware quit rumours
Interview Is big data and big storage biz Quantum finally moving away from its hardware business to the cloud?
This question was raised by a statement from Henrik Rosendahl, Quantum's Cloud Solutions SVP:
Quantum is transitioning its business from being a predominantly hardware-based, on-premise data protection provider to turning into a …
Symantec: We've lopped off half our heads, but look how well we're doing now
Storage and security software behemoth Symantec reported increased revenues but profits down in its first fiscal 2014 quarter, as CEO Steve Bennett's companywide reorg made some progress. Symantec's new strategy of focusing the sales firehose on service providers looks like it's beginning to pay off.
First quarter fiscal 2014 …
Upstart chip chef Diablo's DIMM yum dumplings cram NAND in RAM
Canadian storage startup Diablo has pulled out what it hopes will be a PCIe-flash killer: its new tech provides fast flash data access by interfacing a NAND partner's solid-state drives to a host server's memory bus.
Diablo, founded in 2003, has invented what it calls Memory Channel Storage (MCS) in which NAND flash is packaged …
