Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff » TAG: Storage

June 19, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Imation SSD versus Western Digital SATA: Performance test results

TAGS: Storage

In today's shootout between Imation Pro 7000 solid state drives and Western Digital's VelociRaptor SATA disk drive (see "Product review: High price makes high-speed Imation SSDs a tough sell"), Mario Apicella finds that SSD is indeed the fastest storage that lots of money can buy. Given the whopping superiority of the Imation SSDs in read I/O and read transfer rates, their advantages for search-intensive applications may help dull the pain of the price premium ($550 for a 16GB model, $1,700 for 64GB). But for write-heavier workloads, $300 for a 300GB VelociRaptor is a lot easier to swallow. See the results of Mario's speed tests below.

Posted by Ted Samson on June 19, 2008 03:00 AM

January 29, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Review: Brocade DCX Backbone Part 2

TAGS: Storage

Review: Brocade DCX Backbone Part 2

Welcome to the second part of my first peek at the new DCX Backbone from Brocade. If you haven't already, please have a look at part 1 first.

How physical security is implemented in your data center certainly has its weight but, generally speaking, a larger installation such as what you can get consolidating multiple fabrics with DCX, is more vulnerable than a smaller one to trivial errors and to security breaks.

If you want to keep human errors to a minimum, or are concerned about the possibility of someone spoofing a WWN (world wide name) to connect a rogue device to the network, the DCX OS offers a system of policies that can bring some additional protection.

For example, you can define policies to control the connection of storage targets, switches and hosts, allowing access only when a device, identified by its WWN, is connected to a specific port.

The following screen image shows the commands to define a DCC policy for each of the two devices on ports 133 and 134 and to make those two policies actives.

For a large installation, manually setting a policy for each port could be a long and inefficient process, but for initial deployments a similar command can automatically create a policy from an existing configuration linking each active port to he WWN of its connected device.

However created, when a DCC policy is active, trying to connect a device with a different WWN will trigger an error message and access to the port will be denied.

The DCX security policies are not foolproof. Obviously anyone with access to an admin account with proper credentials can modify them, but the system offers an easy to audit log of possible violations, which can simplify monitoring and enforcement of those policies.

Speaking of security and administrative control, the Virtual Fabric feature of the OS is a perfect complement to device connection policies. Virtual Fabric is not a new nor a mandatory feature but its implementation becomes nearly indispensable in the large, consolidated networks backed by DCX.

In essence, with Virtual Fabric you can divide the physical fabric in isolated administrative domains (the analogy with Cisco’s VSANs is too good to pass on) creating software borders that shelter each domain from its neighbors.

Another nice feature of Virtual Fabric is that the implementation of AD (administrative domains) is granular and non-disruptive. For example, you can migrate all or part of an existing zone to a new AD and also assign a device to multiple ADs.

In the large consolidated environments that the DCX makes possible, the ability to assign separate administrative duty for an AD is also of great significance, because it facilitates independent domain updates and confines the impact of each change to that AD.

To prove that case scenario, I copied the same zone to two AD, and assigned a different admin account to each . To create some traffic, I then started Iometer on one host connected to the first domain. Next, to simulate a conflicting configuration change, I logged in as admin for the second domain and removed that host port from its zone.

After making the changed zone active, I switched back to the host on the first domain: Iometer was still running, unaffected by the change made on the parallel domain.

Sharing devices across separate domains is more likely to happen with storage targets than with host ports. However, what device you overlap across domains is irrelevant because the principle is the same: Changes made on one administrative domain have no impact outside of its borders.

The last action item of my DCX evaluation was not as spectacular as other items in my test plan because it consisted in connecting a switch to the DCX and proving that the devices connected to that switch were readily available and usable in normal zones.

Usually connecting a switch to a fabric would be a rather boring and predictable exercise, but that switch was a McData 6140 working in native mode, which made the test worthwhile.

As McData customers know all too well, switch connectivity in native mode to a Brocade fabric was not available before Brocade’s acquisition of McData . After seeing it work in practice, I am glad to say that connectivity of McData switches in native mode is possible now, at least for the 6140.

For more details on which other legacy devices are supported a good reference is the Brocade connectivity matrix.

Obviously there are some limitations when connecting legacy devices. For example the old interoperability mode is now obsolete and is replaced by two new modes: McData native, such as what I tested, and McData open. Also, according to Brocade those two modes work only when connecting devices running Fabric OS 6 and EOS 9.6.

Even with those limits, customers with McData branded items should be in better shape for connectivity than they were before the acquisition, although features such as Top Talkers that query performance counters embedded in Brocade ASICs, are not available for legacy devices.

Brocade DCX Backbone
Availability: Shipping
Pricing: Not disclosed

Verdict:
The most difficult part of reviewing a complex product such as the DCX Backbone is deciding where to stop. Before and in addition to being a fabric backbone, the DCX is a powerful switch. However, my evaluation had to skip on some of the typical grinding you would challenge a switch with, to focus on what makes more sense to have when you put together a super-fabric around the DCX.

I liked what I saw of the DCX, but I cannot make a judgment on its value because Brocade hasn't divulged pricing info at the moment. I expect its price to be on the high side, if only because even a quarter million dollar (I am picking up this figure out of my hat) could be a reasonable price to pay to consolidate multi-million dollar fabrics.

The specs of the DCX are impressive both for performance and capacity, but what I like the most about the solution is the effort to bring more intelligence to the fabric.

QoS and the DCX initial, rudimentary attempt at enforcing security from the fabric are what I find most attractive, but can't help thinking that those features are, must be, only a first step in that direction and that the best of the DCX intelligence is yet to come. Hopefully soon.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 29, 2008 07:00 AM

January 22, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Review: Brocade DCX Backbone - Part 1

TAGS: Storage

InfoWorld Exclusive
Review: Brocade DCX Backbone

Perhaps it’s because of a recent survey where 59 percent of Brocade customers asked for less difficult management. Or may be it’s because last year’s acquisition of McData (together with several other minor acquisitions) made Brocade portfolio much more complicated.

Whatever the reason, in my recent contacts with Brocade I sensed a renewed interest in delivering improved manageability with its products. Time will tell if this new attitude from Brocade will continue to deliver new features or will be remembered only as a well conceived marketing strategy. Regardless, what I saw during some lab demos earlier this year were real product enhancements.

My visit to Brocade was to see live demonstrations of some of the features of the DCX, the new switching backbone announced on January 22.

The DCX is an interesting solutions because it brings to market the first deliverables of Brocade’s DCF (Data Center Fabric), the newly designed architecture that was announced in October.

I will let Brocade’s literature on DCF paint the detailed picture of this rather ambitious architecture. In just a few words, DCF is a promise to deliver a more flexible, easier to manage, policy driven network, able to embrace multiple connectivity protocols and to better respond to applications’ demands and to new technologies such as server virtualization.

In Brocade’s vision, the DCX is the cornerstone of that architecture, with specs that suggest a level of performance never attained before. In fact, Brocade assures me that the DCX has a no compromise architecture capable of sustaining full transfer rate at 8 Gbps on the 896 FC ports supported in its largest configuration..

In addition to FC the DCX supports just about any other connectivity protocol, including FICON, FCIP (FC over IP) Gigabit Ethernet and iSCSI. That versatility brings to mind the Multi Protocol Router, which was the first product from Brocade aimed at consolidating multiple SANs.

I had plenty of ports to spare, so it was not a relevant issue in my test configuration, but it’s interesting to note that the DCX has dedicated ISL ports that don’t take away from the number of total available ports for say, storage arrays or application servers.

However impressive the specs of the DCX may be, its most innovative features are in its software that enables a variety of features including having better control of bandwidth allocation, restricting access to specific ports according to security policies, and better managing separate fabric sections by creating independent domains.

I started my evaluation with the bandwidth monitoring features. In a traditional fabric each connection acts as a gardening hose, a passive conduit that has no ability to regulate the flow it carries.

With DCX, Brocade offers an Adaptive Networking option that enables limiting the I/O rate on selected ports, a feature that Brocade calls Ingress Rate Limiting.

Here is how it works. In my test configuration Brocade had installed two DCX units, one linked to six HBAs on three hosts, the other linked to a storage array. To better show the traffic management capabilities of the DCX, each host HBA was assigned a dedicated LUN and a dedicated storage port. The two DCX were connected using two 4G ISL (inter-switch links).

With a simple Iometer script was easy to generate significant traffic on each host. To measure how that traffic spread across the fabric I invoked Top Talkers, the performance monitoring tool. A new capability of the Fabric OS 6.0, which was running on both DCX, is to define a Top Talkers profile either for specific ports or for the whole fabric.

As the name suggests, Top Talkers monitors and makes easy to list which source-destination pairs carry most traffic. That’s what the Iometer generated traffic looked like when seen from Top Talkers.

The next step was to limit at the source the traffic flowing from one of those hosts. After moving to the CLI of the hosts-facing DCF I typed:

portcfgqos –setratelimit 3/2 200

This command set a maximum data rate of 200 megabit per second on slot 3 port 2 of the DCX, which is where one of my HBAs was connected.

Moving back to the storage-facing DCX, Top Talkers was showing a much reduced traffic rate on that pair, which made more bandwidth available to the other pairs.

The rate limit can be applied in 200 Mb increments and is an invaluable tool to prevent damaging data transfer bursts. A typical real world use could be to rein in bandwidth intensive applications such as backups. When no longer needed, the rate limit can be easily reset with a similar command, which brings those ports back to the previous, unrestricted footing.

To prepare for the next test I had to reduce the bandwidth between the two DCX to make it easier to exceed its data rate. Therefore, I disabled one of the ISL ports and set the other one to 1 Gb.

Almost immediately EFCM, the Brocade Enterprise Fabric Connectivity Monitor GUI changed the link between the two DCX to a bright red to indicate a traffic congestion.

Running Top Talkers showed a much reduced transfer rate of about 22MBps on each pair. The reason for setting an obvious under-dimensioned ISL between the two machine was to show how the DCX can assign different service levels identified as high medium or low, which reserves respectively 60, 30 or 10 percent of the available bandwidth.

With DCX you can assign a specific QoS service level to each zone in the fabric. Strangely enough Brocade has devised a zone naming convention to assign those QoS levels: A zone named starting with QOSH will be assigned a high service level, while a zone named starting with QOSL will be assigned a low service level. Of course the initials QOSM identify a zone with medium service level, which is also the default for zones not following the name coding.

If you think this is an odd way of assigning a QoS level, you are not alone. I would have preferred setting the QoS as an attribute, which wouldn’t require necessarily to change the zone names.

However, Brocade maintains that the zone name approach will better meet customers' expectations because it’s simple to understand and monitor. In fact, simple it is.

To see the effect of different QoS levels on my bandwidth constrained fabric, I created new zones following the proper name coding and assigned hosts and storage devices to each zone.

Back to the DCX where Top Talkers was already active, I saw the transfer rate of the two pairs with high QoS jump well above the others, while the pair in the medium range settled around 20MBps. The third one, which was in the low QoS Zone fell down to 17MBps.

Whatever you think of the naming convention it follows, Brocade QoS is a very simple and efficient way to set your applications in the proper pecking order and make the best use of the bandwidth available however limited or abundant it may be.

I have some more interesting snippets of my DCX evaluation to present, but this article is getting long already. I'll pause here for the moment, but read on for part 2 and the conclusion of my DCX review.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 22, 2008 12:54 PM

January 17, 2008 | Comments: (0)

Review: Onaro VM Insight 1.0

TAGS: Storage

Onaro VM Insight 1.0

While most vendors have concentrated their development efforts on SRM (storage resource management) and SM (storage management) applications, Onaro took a completely different approach.

Since the beginning, Onaro focused the development of the SANscreen suite of applications not on providing new management tools but on automatically discovering and documenting the often complex links between applications and storage components.

Using SANscreen is like navigating your data center with a good GPS system that clearly identifies the paths between application servers and storage.

However, a clear vision of how things are connected in your data center is just one of the benefits of using SANscreen. Over time Onaro has developed a suite of applications that monitor capacity allocation, replicas and provisioning, in essence all services that are storage related.

In fact, using SANscreen you can create proper administrative procedures and make sure that they stay in place. For example, you can create a policy to mandate dual path access between a critical application and its database volume: If that policy is not enforced or is ever violated, the system will immediately raise a flag and automatically send warnings using messaging systems of your choice.

An indication of how successful Onaro has been is the number of customers who bought into that concept: The vendor claims that one out of three Fortune 50 companies has deployed SANscreen.

Another indication of that success is that mainstream vendors have, some of them admittedly, injected in their portfolio some of the functionality of SANscreen.

What's new?

In December, Onaro announced VM Insight 1.0, a new addition to the SANscreen suite that aims to extend its features to VMware ESX servers and to guest virtual machines.

I took my first peek at VM Insight connecting remotely to a system that was already installed on Onaro premises.

The first and perhaps most obvious clue that I was running VM Insight was the ability to point at a VM and seeing the topology map of its s storage, which you could previously do only for physical servers.

Mapping the topology of a VM is cool and perhaps even more useful than it is for a physical server, but VM Insight has another neat feature for customers who deploy clusters of VMs,

You can define a policy dictating that all members of a cluster must have access to the same volumes, which will add another degree of reliability to the VMware environment that would be difficult to attain without VM Insight.

Once that policy is in place, any discrepancy, for example adding a new volume to only one of the members, will automatically create a new entry in the violations log.

If you have multiple VMware ESX servers in your care, deciding where to allocate new VMs is probably a recurring dilemma. Interacting with VMware Virtual Center and collecting performance statistics for each host, VM Insight makes that decision a no brainer.

To find the best candidate for a new VM, you can launch simple queries asking to rank each ESX server according to criteria such as I/O, memory or CPU usage: In response, SANscreen will list the eligible machines ordered according to those criteria.

It's interesting to note that SANscreen collects also performance numbers for each VM and presents those results in tabular format. From those values you can easily create charts, by putting a check mark beside selected criteria. The application will automatically create separate graphs from your selection.

One aspect of charting I didn't like: When selecting similar multiple metrics, such as asking to chart percentage of I/O, CPU and memory utilization, the system will automatically cram all three values on the same chart, which makes them difficult to read.

I hope that in the future users may have more flexibility on what values to chart and how, also because at the moment Onaro doesn't offer a comprehensive set of reports, which could compensate for the confusing charts.

However, I know from having seen a beta version that future releases will have better reporting.

Onaro VM Insight 1.0
Availability: Shipping
Pricing: VM Insight starts at $75,000 for up to 10TB - $250/TB for additional managed capacity

Verdict:

This first version of Onaro VM Insight makes a convincing case of extending the benefits of SANscreen to virtual environments.

Even with the limited reporting capability and the somewhat inflexible charting mentioned before SANscreen with VM Insight 1.0 deserves to be considered by all but the least sophisticated VMware shops.

The suite comes at a price, but is a worthwhile complement for a VMware installation that helps not only to better monitor the use of storage from each VM but also facilitates managing each VMware server with more informed allocation of critical resources such as I/O, CPU and memory.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 17, 2008 03:01 AM

November 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Apple updates, Linux failures, fast storage, and cracks for crackers

TAGS: High-performance computing, Internet security, Linux, OS X Leopard, Storage, Test Center Tracker

Apple updates survivor's guide: Tom Yager offers a guide through the flurry of fixes (count em, 23 updates) that Apple released this week. Where else but in Enterprise Mac.

Rock and a hard place: Randall Kennedy tried to love Ubuntu Desktop, but he could not. Read about his week-long adventure on planet Linux in Enterprise Desktop. And now back to Windows... and a fight with Vista SP1.

How fast can storage go? Mario Apicella discusses DataDirect Networks' and SGI's approaches to increasing the G's. See Storage Insider.

Your underwear is showing: Intruders don't always need fancy tools to worm their way into your network; sometimes the door is wide open. Roger Grimes reveals the many ways in, and what you can do to plug the holes in today's Security Advisor.

Posted by Doug Dineley on November 16, 2007 10:44 AM

October 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Slippery malware, storage clouds on the horizon, and a guide to getting green

TAGS: Green IT, Security, Storage, Test Center Tracker

Mutating malware: Roger Grimes gives us a peek inside the network security arms race, where virus and worm authors evade signature-based detection techniques through "server-side polymorphism," and malware fighters seek a better defense. Say what? Server-side polymorphism? See today's Security Advisor.

Hash and stash: In today's Storage Insider, Mario profiles two startups that are rethinking how data is stored: Instead of storing complete data sets in a single bucket, they break the data into fragments and store them in multiple places. Cleversafe uses "dispersed storage" to boost data security, while RevStor applies the technique to disk to disk backup pools.

Green in twelve steps Going green can save you money, spare the air, engender feelings of goodwill in customers, and allow you to shame reprobate competitors. So good, but how do you get started? Forrester Research has a plan, which Ted Samson examines in yesterday's Sustainable IT.

Posted by Doug Dineley on October 26, 2007 10:49 AM

October 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Green storage, converged storage, and rich enterprise apps

TAGS: AJAX, Application development, Storage, Test Center Tracker

Rotating green matter?: So while AMD and Intel have been shouting in our ear about how they are putting money in our pockets by making their processors more power efficient, storage vendors have been eerily silent. Now they're starting to get the green religion too. Green storage starts with management tools like thin provisioning (hey look, we were green already!) but is moving toward power management technologies like MAID (massive arrays of idle disk) and Hitachi Data Systems' PSSS (Power Savings Storage Service). Ted Samson outlines these developments in yesterday's Sustainable IT. And don't miss his video interview on the subject with HDS CTO Hu Yoshida.

Deja vu all over again: In his October 1 blog post, "All the Wood Behind One Arrow," Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced that Sun would be combining its Storage and Server product teams to "focus on the evolution and convergence of computing." Does that portend a datacenter without arrays? Mario Apicella says grab a camera and take some souvenir photos, because stand-alone storage has booked an appointment for a makeover.

Server-side mashups: For "rich enterprise application" frameworks JackBe Presto and Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite, rich AJAX clients (and in the case of Nexaweb, also Java clients) live to be windows into back-end data resources. These toolkits shine in exposing server-side resources as data services, and creating business dashboards and other clients for interacting with data. See Peter Wayner's review, "Refining the art of enterprise Web apps."

Posted by Doug Dineley on October 5, 2007 09:38 AM

March 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Imation RFID tracking system brings tapes back to the future

TAGS: Storage

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags have already been used for a variety of tasks, such as tracking people or animals or the movement of goods in a warehouse.

Why not use RFID to track computer tapes and make tape management, until now an error prone and mostly human-driven activity, more reliable?

The answer to that question comes from Imation, a vendor who has proposed in the past some daring and innovative products, such as Ulysses
a unique product blending together disk and tape technology.

Imation is announcing today DataGuard RF, a tracking system for removable media based on RFID that will ship starting in April as an all inclusive starter kit.

How does the system work? Think of replacing the antiquate barcode labels of your media with a new version that remains friendly to the barcode reader installed in your tape library but embeds also a passive RFID tag.

A passive RFID has no independent power source but comes to life when going through a scanner, for example. Obviously RFID scanners are also part of the DataGuard RF kit and they come in two models, a desktop and a hand-held version, the first directly connected to a Windows system, the second, much similar to a PDA, is connected via a docking station.

The two scanners have similar functionality, but if you are thinking that the hand-held is overkill imagine how easy it would make checking the inventory of your cartridges, either at your location or at an outside vault.

Part of the kit are also tape management applications from B&L Associates, and a bright yellow carrying case that can accommodate 20 half-inch cartridges and has removable inserts to custom fit different models.

The DataGuard RF kit will sell for about $40,000, according to Imation.

Later this year Imation plans to equip those carrying cases with an AGPS Tracking Transponder, essentially a GPS tracking device that will fall back to the cell phone system to call home if a direct line-of-site to the satellite is not available.

Remember that sequence in Goldfinger when James Bond is tracking the villain across the Alps?

Well, pretty soon you should be able to do the same if one of your carrying cases full of cartridges falls off the truck or off the screen. Stay tuned.

Posted by Mario Apicella on March 5, 2007 01:31 PM

March 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

New appliances squeeze more data into your SAN

TAGS: Storage

Storewiz, Inc. is announcing today two new appliances, the STN-6300 and the STN-6500, capable of compressing files on the fly and without delays.

Data compression is certainly not a new technology, and has been applied with success to segments such as tape backups or cross-WAN transfers to compensate for the limited capacity of the medium or to improve the transfer rate of a connection.

On line, disk-stored data has also been selectively compressed using a variety of applications or OS features, but Storewiz is the first, and for now only, vendor I know of to propose appliances that promise seamless, transparent compression.

According to Storewiz their appliances can squeeze as an average three times the amount of data without adding delays or making any changes to existing application servers and storage devices.

Despite the declining cost/capacity ratio of storage solutions, Storewiz promise to stretch storage capacity has attracted the attention of many customers and numerous partners, such as IBM .

The two models announced today promise even higher compression ratio, up to 4:1 for databases and up to 3:1 for typical office files.

According to Storewiz its on-the-fly software compression adds negligible latency measured at 100 microseconds or less, and can actually improve storage access.

In fact, the smaller data footprint delivered by compression makes the cache of existing storage devices more effective, creating less cache misses which translates in faster random access.

In addition to a 2U rack mountable form factor, the two new models have in common also a disk less configuration (their Linux based OS starts from a flash drive) with 4 64-bit processors and the possibility to add a second unit for active-passive or active-active fail over.

Customers set the configuration options of the appliance, for example choosing the shares to compress, from a browser based client.

Files will be typically compressed when created or modified, but customers can activate a background application to comb for and compress idle files.

A separate application that runs on the most common platforms makes possible uncompressing data when a Storewiz appliance is not available.

The STN-6300, a unit intended for departmental or remote office deployment, mounts 4GB of memory and 4 GbE ports that can be expanded to 8 ports. By contrast the STN-6500 offers 6 GB of RAM, can add up to 12 additional processors and start with 8 GbE ports with the option to add 4 more.

The starting MSRP price is $22,000 for the STN-6300 and $42,000 for the STN-6500. Both models are available immediately.

Posted by Mario Apicella on March 5, 2007 07:32 AM

February 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

CipherMax bets the company name on encryption

TAGS: Storage

If the name CipherMax triggers a blank stare, think of Maxxan, a name that you may remember from previous articles , because the two are one and the same.

According to CipherMax, the new name was inspired by a new line of products focused on encryption that the vendor began shipping last year.

In addition to the new name the vendor is celebrating today an injection of VC money and a new line of products that create a less expensive entry point to switch-based encryption.

Dubbed CM100, the new line of encryption devices is based on 1U, 16 ports FC switches, with specialized model to support 256 AES, hardware accelerated cryptography for tape or disk devices.

According to CipherMax, customers can implement encryption deploying any of their models either as a primary switch, or a switch subordinate to a primary unit from another vendor, or as an encryption-only controller.

Using the KeyCruiser application customers can centralize activities such as key management and data recovery regardless of the number and variety of encryption devices.

CipherMax encryption products compete with already established solutions from NetApp- Decru and Neoscale, but the company is confident that improved scalability, up to 256 port with a CM500, flexibility of deployment and centralized management tools will create a significant competitive advantage.

Entry level models for disk and tape are available immediately. A CM100T unit for tape encryption starts at $30,000.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 26, 2007 12:46 PM

February 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)

HP ships D2D backup for SMB, with no tapes, literally

TAGS: Storage

If you're keeping a tally of how many different packaging of the Proliant server line HP can come up with, add one more, actually two more: The StorageWorks D2D110 and D2D120 Backup System.

The two systems have essentially the same form factor and features, the major difference being their capacity. With a post RAID 5 capacity of 750GB for the D2D110 and 1.5TB for the D2D120, each system makes available a small, easy to reach via iSCSI, VTL (virtual tape library) to small businesses.

The emphasis seems to be on small and not only because of the capacity of these two systems. Only up to 4 servers can target each backup system, although HP makes no restrictions on mixing backup and application servers, which should allow backing up more than four application environments.

Regardless of their nature each server should have a proper iSCSI initiator connected to the target GbE NIC of the backup appliance. The most common backup applications are supported and the new, internally developed VTL software can emulate an autoloader with 4 LTO-2 drives and 96 cartridges, according to HP.

This first version of the VTL software doesn't offer the possibility to move backups to a physical tape for vaulting, a feature that should become available later this year and at no additional charge, HP promises.

Both models are available immediately. The D2D110 is priced at $2,000 but the extra capacity of the D2D120 will cost $1,000 more.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 26, 2007 07:58 AM

February 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)

IBM brings a big tape to a small library

TAGS: Storage

Would you expect to see a tape drive such as the IBM TS1120 that sports native dual 4G FC ports, uncompressed cartridge capacity up to 500 GB and a transfer rate of up to 100 MB/sec (without compression tricks) to become available on other than a mammoth size library?

Probably not, but this is what IBM is announcing today with the TS3400, a unit that can pack two TS1120 and slots for 18 cartridges in just 5U of rack space.

The library can mount a variety of cartridges in those slots, which obviously impacts its overall capacity. In addition, customers can use the drives' native encryption capability to secure backups of sensitive data.

The TS3400 should start shipping in March, at a price starting at $30,000, according to IBM.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 13, 2007 12:02 PM

February 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Sepaton pushes more VTLs and de-dup

TAGS: Storage

If you never heard of Sepaton before (wherever you have been, lucky you) just read their name backward to get a hint of where they stand on backups. For a quick update on their approach to de-duplication this should help.

Following last year's battle cry on de-duplication Sepaton is announcing today two new virtual libraries, the S2100-DS2
offering a capacity range between 3.5 and 7 TB, and the S2100-ES2 a larger model with nominal capacity up to 1 petabyte.

The two models share a common 3U module that can mount 500 GB SATA drives, and can double the nominal capacity using built-in hardware compression.

Customers can order the DeltaStor de-duplication software on both libraries, which should increase archiving capacity 25 folds as an average, according to Sepaton.

The two VTL lines are available immediately, at a suggested price starting at $18,000 for a DS2 with 3.5 TB, which becomes $30,000 with DeltaStor, and $59,000 for an ES2 with 7 TB, priced around $190,000 with DeltaStor.

The DeltaStor option is available also as an update for previous models at about $1 per GB, according to Sepaton.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 12, 2007 06:58 AM

February 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Datacore touts a next level for virtualization

TAGS: Storage

Perhaps no other vendor's history has a more profound intertwining with storage virtualization than DataCore Software, a company that if chaired by the former VP of the US Al Gore would probably claim to have "invented" storage virtualization.

Ziya Aral, Chairman and CTO of DataCore doesn't go that far but his comments are nonetheless pungent:

In our segment of the industry virtualization was so hot that produced over 200 companies in the US, most of whom had never got beyond the slideware stage

- he tells me during our interview -

Mr. Aral doesn't shy away from self-criticism either:

We had a fairly competitive strategy in mind. When we first started to come out we were going to take on the major storage vendors. Instead we ended up allying or doing OEM with almost all of them. So we ended up in bed with our enemies

he jokes.

Our advantage is that we don't have to carry around a locomotive sized chunk of hardware

Aral continues.

DataCore is announcing today version 6.0 of SANsymphony Enteprise that promises numerous interesting new features such as creating separate SAN domains to better manage resource allocations, discrete levels of service and security requirements.

It's worth visiting the DataCore site for a more comprehensive outline of the new release of SANsymphony.

DataCore characterizes the new release as the first step toward a new level of virtualization.

SANsymphony 6.0 is the first half of the re- architecting of the base kernel for 64-bit. We are going to shovel a whole lot of new technology at the top such as the Traveler CDP (continuous data protection) technology. That's the first of about half a dozen announcements we will do during the year

Aral explains.

SANSymphony 6.0 Enterprise Edition is available immediately. DataCore suggests a starting retail price of $25,000.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 7, 2007 06:50 AM

February 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Fujitsu unveils "portable" media eraser

TAGS: Storage

How do you dispose of old magnetic media such as disk drives and tapes? Crushing the media with a sledge hammer may seem a good approach but that and other similarly crude methods may not guarantee complete erasure.

Interestingly, that seems to be the approach that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee chose before handing the keys to his successor.

He didn't erase software. He didn't shred documents. He smashed the hard drives.

that article reports.

Crushing the disk drives of servers and personal computers apparently worked for Mr. Huckabee, but if you have to dispose of old media routinely and safely using a degausser is probably a better choice.

In coincidence with the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Fujitsu Computer Products of America is announcing today the Mag EraSURE P3M, a new model of degausser that works without electricity and can erase any kind of magnetic media up to 1" deep, including the latest disk drives with perpendicular recording, in 20 seconds or less.

According to Fujitsu, with its internal permanent magnets the ME-P3M can generate a magnetic fields of up to 1.4 Tesla .

The M3-P3M is available immediately at a list price just below $47K.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 5, 2007 06:21 AM

February 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Good morning Vietnam

TAGS: Storage

HP is making a handful of storage announcements as the Asia Pacific StorageWorks Conference opens its doors in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Don't let the esoteric location of the announcements sway you: The new products and features announced today will be available, shortly, not only in Asia but worldwide .

If you are sold on the c-Class BladeSystem from HP perhaps the most interesting piece of news today will be the availability of the Cisco MDS 9124e Fabric Switch on that platform.

The MDS 9124e comes in a 12 and a 24 FC ports version. Both models push their ports up to 4G, are VSAN capable and should be available starting March 1st. Expect a price around $6,000 for the 12-port model, $9,500 for the larger unit.

ProLiant DL585 G2 Storage Server should immediately evoke the convergence of Microsoft Windows Unified Data Storage Server 2003 and HP gear, an expected development after a similar recent announcement from Dell.

The DL585 G2 mount 64 bit dual-core AMD processors and connect to back-end storage via FC ports. Among other features, the new Microsoft OS offers iSCSI target and simultaneous file serving capability. Availability is February 12, for a price just shy of $19K.

Probably the less surprising, but certainly not the least important, part of the announcement relates to Data Protector, HP beloved backup application. Starting sometime in February, version 6 of Data Protector will offer the possibility of encrypting backup data directly at the client using AES 256.

On this most sensitive issue of software implemented tape encryption, HP follows closely the footprints of Symantec and IBM that recently added a similar capability to their flagship backup apps. Data Protector with 10 licenses should sell for about $3,000.

Posted by Mario Apicella on February 5, 2007 12:05 AM

January 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LeftHand Networks adds IBM servers

TAGS: Storage

LeftHand Networks announced today a new server platform from IBM, the x3650 for its SAN/iQ clustered storage solutions.

The x3650 can mount 6 3.5" SAS or SATA drives and can offer a capacity ranging from just a notch below 1 TB to up to 3TB per node. The x3650 can connect to other nodes on the iSCSI network via two GbE ports, but IBM is expected to begin offering 10GbE on the server later this year.

In addition to the IBM X3650, SAN/iQ supports also LeftHand Networks proprietary modules, the NSM160/NSM260, and HP Proliant DL380 servers.

LeftHand suggests a starting price around $52,000 for a cluster of 3 x3650.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 30, 2007 02:00 AM

January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Adaptec doubles SnapServer performance

TAGS: Storage

What CPU is used may not be the first thing that comes to mind when kicking the tires of a storage system, but Adaptec did not hold back processing power in its new Snap Server 650 model announced today.

In fact the SnapServer 650 mounts 2 dual core 64bit AMD Opteron processors along with speedy 300GB SAS drives spinning at 15,000 RPM.

According to Adaptec benchmarks the 650 can deliver about 130 MBps, about twice the transfer rate of its closest sibling, the Snap Server 550, in similar, RAID 5 configuration.

The SnapServer 650 runs the Guardian OS and consolidates file serving and block serving for a variety of clients, including all major OSes and file access protocols.

The Snap Server was one of the first lonely promoter of unified storage for SME, but is facing now an increasing competition from many vendors.

The compact 1U form factor allows room only for 4 drives, which sets the max capacity for the unit to 1.2 TB. However, connecting expansion modules the 650 can grow capacity to over 64 TB.

The Snap Server 650 is available immediately with an MSRP of less than $16,000.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 22, 2007 10:00 AM

January 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)

Isilon adds entry level clusters to its portfolio

TAGS: Storage

Isilon Systems is announcing today the IQ 200, a new node aimed at building entry level clustered storage solutions.

According to Isilon the new node should satisfy less demanding requirements to quickly store and retrieve large multimedia files. Clusters built around the IQ 200 target non transactional storage for departments and entry level customers.

The IQ 200 has a nominal capacity of 2TB in a 1U form factor and can be connected using iSCSI in clusters that can scale from 6TB to 48TB. Complete technical specs are available here.

It's interesting to note that although the IQ 200 runs the same OneFS operating system and the same management applications of its siblings it cannot be used in the same cluster with those units.

The IQ 200 is available immediately at starting price of less than 40,000 for three nodes.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 22, 2007 08:10 AM

January 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LSI, IBM unload more storage for SMBs

TAGS: Storage

The new year starts with a segue to last year's torrential cascade of new storage products aimed at entry-level customers.

LSI Logic is announcing today the Engenio 1932, a 2U enclosure with 12 SAS (srial attached SCSI) drive bays that can be expanded up to 48 drives, connecting up to three extension modules via SAS.

The 1932 is based on the same modular architecture of the previously announced 1331 and 1333 models, but it offers 4Gb FC front-end connectivity instead of SAS, making the device a likely candidate for departmental or entry-level storage networks.

By contrast, the SAS front-end connectivity of the 133X models suggests deployment as host attached storage via direct server connection or using a SAS switch.

The new enclosures also inherit from the 133x models the LSI Logic Simplicity management application and the ability to take snapshots

In a concurrent announcement IBM is revealing two new enclosures, the System Storage DS3200, based on the Engenio 1333, and the DS3400, based on the 1932.

These new enclosures exemplify the flexibility of SAS, with essentially the same technology, providing drive, front-end and back-end connectivity.

It's too soon to speculate, but that flexibility should prove more cost-effective and eventually outsell solutions based on old parallel SCSI.

According to IBM the two enclosures should be available by the end of the month, starting at $4,500 for the DS3200 and $6,500 for the DS3400.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 16, 2007 12:39 AM

January 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)

LTO 4 brings twice the capacity

TAGS: Storage

Long a hub for buzz surrounding LTO (linear tap open) topics, lto.org today is announcing that the specs for the fourth-generation of the storage technology are available, right in sync with timing and expectations of LTO's six-generation roadmap.

The news means that vendors can now apply to obtain a license and start building the next generation of LTO drives and media, which we can expect to see starting in the first of half of the year. And with LTO 4 cartridges to offer a native capacity of 800GB per reel -- twice that of the previous generation -- the announcement marks a turning point for the technology, which already dominates the mid-tier, holding an 80 percent share on new shipments.

With its impressive capacity, LTO 4's sustained transfer rate will vary according to each vendor's implementation but the top performance should hit a zippy 120 MBps -- without compression.

LTO 4 will also inherit WORM (write once read many) capabilities from its predecessor, but encryption is the new killer feature that makes the new generation so much more interesting.

LTO 4 drives will have a built-in ASIC able to deliver AES 256 data encryption with minimal slow downs. Encryption key management will be vendor dependent, but decoding an encrypted tape will be possible on any drive, assuming the same backup application and encryption key are used.

LTO, gen 4, also marks a turning point because, according to the blueprint, LTO will look back at only the two previous generations, which means that LTO 1 cartridges will not be playable in the new drives.

The gap in backward compatibility is no reason in itself to drop or stay away from LTO 1 drives; it does, however, mark the beginning of a polarization at the two opposite ends of the technology that will become more evident as more generations become available.

Posted by Mario Apicella on January 10, 2007 03:00 AM

November 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: EMC Rainfinity 7.0

TAGS: Storage

With its acquisition of Rainfinity in 2005, EMC got a powerful tool to better manage file servers in heterogeneous environments. In fact, the Rainfinity appliance makes moving files to a different system transparent for both Unix and Windows users, with no downtime and minimum disruption.

By identifying servers that are overcrowded or overworked with numerous intuitive charts and reports, Rainfinity gives administrators a better awareness of which directories should be moved elsewhere to better allocate files according to capacity and frequency of access.

Moreover, Rainfinity further helps optimize storage allocation with the ability to assign available file servers to different tiers, such as grouping the most expensive and fast devices into an online pool and leaving slower but larger capacity enclosures for a nearline pool.

The upcoming Rainfinity 7.0 adds the option of managing archiving with a set of rules and policies to identify the files that should be moved. According to EMC, future versions of Rainfinity will be able to store files to archiving solutions from other vendors and will support multiple file sources and multiple file targets. (The only targets supported in 7.0 are Centera devices.)

Oddly enough, this first dive of Rainfinity into policy-guided archiving can manage only NetApp filers as a source, a choice that I believe is driven by competitive rather than technical motivations. A "soon to be shipped" (that's EMC's best estimate) 7.1 version should extend source files for archiving beyond the NetApp world.

Even with these limitations, my early peek at Rainfinity 7.0 was interesting. My test server was a Windows Server 2003 machine that had access to a CIFS share carved from a NetApp filer, hosting a variety of typical user documents including Office, .mp3, and .pdf files. A Centera machine was also connected to the same LAN.

I accessed the Rainfinity Console and the new File Management application via browser. My test system was already set up, but if you need to do so, a Configuration tab in File Management opens a wizard to add more source servers or Centera devices. To create an archiving policy, I selected the Policy tab, assigned a name, selected Centera as my destination device, and chose a retention time for files archived by that policy, which is expressed in accordance with Centera rules in days, weeks, months, or years.

Within a policy you can define rules, essentially one or more logical expressions that identify the files to archive according to their attributes. Rainfinity uses standard file attributes (file name, file type, modification date etc.) for those expressions, which makes it easy as pie to create a policy that archives all .pdf files not accessed for 90 days, for example.

Defining a policy doesn't automatically archive files. For that you need to define a schedule that runs a policy against a specific folder. Appropriately, a schedule can run only a simulation, listing which files would be affected by a policy but not archiving them. It's very helpful as a means to estimate the impact of policy.

After running my pdf files policy, I opened Windows Explorer and noticed that Acrobat Reader files older than 90 days had been removed as expected. Rainfinity replaced those files with stubs, a sort of shortcut having the same name as -- but much smaller size than -- the original file.

The stubs are placeholders between 4 and 8 kilobytes in size and indicate to your users that those files have been archived elsewhere. However, stubs also make it a snap to retrieve the original file when needed. In fact, when I double-clicked on one of the stubs, Rainfinity immediately replaced the stub with the original file, which I was able to open in Acrobat Reader. Seamless.

What happens if a stub is deleted? Obviously the user won't be able to access that file anymore, but there is an easy remedy: Rainfinity has an application to identify archived files without stubs and recreate the shortcut in the user directory.

I also like that users don't have direct access to archived files, which should guarantee the files' integrity -- definitely a plus when managing sensitive data. But as mentioned before, it's worth noting that this first release is oddly EMC-biased on the archive side and NetApp-biased on the source, although next versions of Rainfinity should remove those limitations.

EMC Rainfinity 7.0
Availability: Now
Pricing: Starts at $92,500
Verdict: I found the newly acquired archiving features of Rainfinity intuitive and easy to use. The application worked as expected in a streamlined yet complex setting. Rainfinity's flexible system of policies and rules has the potential to automate archiving of large volumes of files while maintaining a safety net that gives users instant recovery of a file with one mouse click.

I believe it's fair to say that archiving is a work in progress in Rainfinity 7.0. Future versions should extend not only the variety of platforms supported but also add more selection criteria (from applications such as InfoScape, for example) than just file metadata.

Posted by Mario Apicella on November 13, 2006 06:00 AM

October 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Gear6 sets sights on virtualizing cache

TAGS: Storage

Startup Gear6 is getting ready to launch a new product, Cachefx, that promises to bump up the performance of any storage system by one order of magnitude or more.

How? Imagine an appliance filled to the brim with terabytes of RAM that sits at a nice vantage point in your network, between application servers and your disk drive arrays.

Add some management software capable of selecting which applications or which files need to go faster, and you can probably see where this is going. Gear6 is not divulging many details at the moment, but you can listen to the marketing-speak of their demo clip for a little more.

The first implementation of Cachefx, which is now being beta tested by some pioneering customers, will address only NFS file systems. Sorry CIFS folks, no cigar for now, but future versions should address other file systems and block storage.

According to Gear6, early customers are seeing their applications go 10 to 50 times faster, something that is difficult if not impossible to attain with traditional storage solutions. The Gear6 approach doesn't require massive and expensive hardware replacement, and should resonate well with customers approaching the physical limits of space, power, or cooling in their datacenter.

Moreover, deploying Cachefx shouldn't require any application changes: it should be like having a large virtual cache that you can flexibly assign to different tasks as needed.

Isn't such a large cache a recipe for disastrous data losses if something breaks? Possibly, but Gear6 is playing it safe in their first attempt to bring cache memory outside of the traditional server and storage arrays locations. In fact, Cachefx will accelerate only reads, leaving writes follow their usual, uncached data path.

It's difficult to make a meaningful assessment of a new solution without knowing how much it costs and without a technical blueprint to analyze. However, if the people at Gear6 have been half as good at developing their solution as they are at keeping a veil of secrecy around it, Cachefx should bring a true revolution to networked storage.

Posted by Mario Apicella on October 24, 2006 12:04 PM

September 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Test Center Tracker: Storage and more

TAGS: Storage

Fresh from the Test Center: Microsoft's latest foray into networked storage, Windows Storage Server R2, focuses on centralized management and a more effective file replication process. Our review gives it two thumbs up for adding more useable storage, but remember that it's an OEM product - you can't buy this one direct. Luckily, Mario Apicella got his hands on HP's new StorageWorks All-in-One (AiO) 600, which uses Storage Server R2. Turns out that the management is very impressive, thanks to HP's ASM management app, although you do have to watch out for some storage error message strangeness along the way.

Big storage, small package: When Iomega boosted the capacity of its plug-in REV drive, Oliver Rist knew it was a good thing for SMBs: this made the "sweet little SMB backup device that costs little more than a standard tape drive but doubles as a network hard disk" into a viable backup and shared storage drive combo. Check out his take on the Iomega REV 70 on the SMB IT blog.

Eclipse on the move: Looks like there's no love lost between Eclipse and Sun -- according to InfoWorld's interview with Eclipse Foundation Director Mike Milinkovich, the open-source group is happy to toe the line with Sun's NetBeans, but they've really got their sights set on Microsoft and .Net. For more on products using Eclipse, check out our review of Genuitec's MyEclipse, M7 NitroX, and some other important Java IDEs.

Posted by Stephanie McLoughlin on September 19, 2006 03:00 AM

August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Preview: Veritas Storage Foundation Management Server

TAGS: Storage

Veritas Storage Foundation has been for many years a way to grapple with the increasing complexity of managing a variety of storage devices across multiple operating systems. Last years' acquisition by Symantec has not slowed Foundation down any, as Symantec just recently released a new version, Storage Foundation 5.0, and a global management application for Foundation. Storage Foundation Management Server brings multiple Foundation servers under a common, centralized administration console.

The first thing to clarify about Storage Foundation Management Server is that it doesn't manage storage directly, but is able to collect all the information seen by each Storage Foundation server via SQL queries. The system includes the Central Management Server (CMS) and Symantec Authentication Services, the latter a suite of applications to ensure controlled access to the CMS.

The remote administration capabilities of Storage Foundation Management Server were the first thing that impressed me during a demo prepared by Symantec. The demo was conducted by an admin based in Florida accessing a Foundation Management Server in India and controlling a geographically dispersed storage network with Foundation servers in India and the U.S.

The system can manage both Storage Foundation 5.0 and 4.1 servers, which facilitates a gradual update to the new version. The CMS conveys the data collected by remote agents into a dashboard that sums up possible errors or changing conditions using numbers and color codes.

The Dashboard has three different sections for storage, applications, and hosts, each presenting the number of objects present on the network and their status. In our demo, for example, 20 out of 572 volumes assigned had experienced errors.

It's worth remembering that in Symantec speech an application is the logical intersection of one or more objects such as databases, hosts, files systems, and disk groups, which creates an aggregated element not founnd anywhere else in the datacenter and must therefore be entered manually.

Naturally, the storage section totals the amount of space managed, listing also the overall amount of available and used space. From this overview, it's easy to dig for more details. In fact, selecting a segment, say applications in error, opens a list of applications affected and the errors that triggered that status.

Moving further down the path, it was easy to find that the reason for a certain error was a disconnected volume. On the same page the admin can access a variety of volume provisioning and maintenance tools to recover from a storage error, or shrink or expand a volume, without having to access the specific tools of each device.

Other standout features:

-- Intelligent provisioning, essentially the ability to select storage for a new group from aptly named volume organizations such as "mirrored-raid5" or "striped-mirrored." This should be useful both to experienced and rookie admins.

-- Global queries, which can find almost instantly answers that would otherwise require manually polling each server on the network. Take for example dynamic multi-pathing: A simple query will find all the single path exposures in your network, showing the volumes, applications, and storage devices affected. CMS can save those results to several formats, including Excel spreadsheets, a popular choice for many system administrators.

-- The Inventory view, a live picture of the system that can easily zoom to hard to find but important details such as the level of firmware and the port name of each HBA in your network.

-- The ability to monitor the progress of a replication task. This is unfortunately limited to Symantec solutions, but includes the recently released "bunker replication" that creates simultaneous mirrors at multiple locations.

Like previous versions, Storage Foundation Server 5.0 has a powerful rule creation system that can capture troublesome conditions such as a hardware error or a volume getting low on space and automatically start actions such as sending an e-mail message, adding to an SNMP queue, or running a script. Also worth noting is the effort by Symantec to give the CMS a friendly UI. For example, error codes are hyperlinked to Web documentation that explains in more detail possible causes and remedies.

Existing customers that have many Storage Foundation for Windows machines may want to wait; at the moment Storage Foundation Management Server doesn't handle Windows servers. Otherwise, my suggestion is to dive in. If the demo I saw is an indication of what the suite can do, you won’t be disappointed.

Veritas Storage Foundation Management Server
Symantec
Price: Free, but customers need a valid license for Veritas Storage Foundation; Veritas Storage Foundation 5.0 license starts at $695 per processor per socket
Verdict: Storage Foundation Management Server brings together dispersed storage environments for customers that have already adopted the Veritas Storage Foundation paradigm. In addition, the ability to control the space managed by just about any OS and a large variety of storage systems makes the offer from Symantec particular intriguing.

Posted by Mario Apicella on August 30, 2006 12:23 PM

June 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

LSI Logic reveals low-profile SAS controllers

TAGS: Storage

LSI Logic is announcing today two new low-profile RAID controllers, dubbed MegaRAID SAS 8308ELP and 8344ELP.

Both cards have PCI Express interface but the 8308ELP View image
can support up to 8 internal connections to SAS or SATA drives while the 8344ELP View image
can connect only 4 internal drives and has an external connector for 4 additional devices.

Both adapters are immediately available through channel resellers, but a kit version of the 8344ELP will begin shipping later this month. LSI suggests a retail price of less that $800 for a kit version of each card.

Posted by Mario Apicella on June 1, 2006 11:50 AM

May 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

HP shrinks the VTL for branches and SMEs

TAGS: Storage

Speeding up backups using a VTL (virtual tape library) at a remote office promises additional benefits such as eliminating the need for clerical staff to handle tapes, and facilitating safer backup cycles with fewer headaches -- if you can afford it, that is.

If budget constraints and complexity have kept VTLs out of your remote offices or your small datacenter, you might take a look at the StorageWorks VLS1000i, a new line of VTL appliances that HP will begin shipping in May.

The first model of the new line, the VLS1002i, has the appearance of a 1U server and a usable capacity of 1.5TB, carved out of four 500GB SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration. Using the Web-based management application, you can make the appliance simulate up to 12 LTO-2 tape drives and up to 180 cartridges.

Connectivity is via GbE. The appliance and its virtual drives and cartridges communicates with Windows servers via the free iSCSI initiator from Microsoft. Support for Linux should follow but HP has not yet announced a date.

For about $6,000, the VLS1002i bundles a single server license of HP's Data Protector Express, but I am told that qualification of the VLS1002i with other major backup apps is in progress.

What's not to like about the VLS1002i? It's a pity that the appliance cannot run the backup application itself, because that would consolidate two boxes into one, a great plus if you have many branches. Also, WORM is not an option; you'll have to look elsewhere if your lawyers say it's needed.

Finally, the appliance doesn't expand beyond 1.5TB, so you'll have to deploy multiple units for more capacity. If these points don't avert your interest, the HP StorageWorks VLS1002i comes with a price and features that put many LTO-2 autoloaders to shame.

--Mario Apicella

HP StorageWorks 1002i Virtual Library System
HP, http://www.hp.com
Cost: $6,000
Availability: May

Posted by Mike Barton on May 24, 2006 04:28 PM

May 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

HP adds data protection options for SMBs

TAGS: Storage

HP will unveil today two new products aimed at small and medium businesses the StorageWorks MSL4048, a new tape library and the StorageWorks VLS1002i a new virtual tape library.

The MSL4048 View image can mount up to 4 half-height LTO-2 or 2 LTO-3 tape drives in a 4U chassis that can load 48 cartridges.

The library, that connects to a server machine via SCSI,offers a bar code reader and 4 mailboxes for loading media. The MSL4048 is available immediately for a list price starting at $11,300.

The VLS1002i,View image the second device in today's announcement is a 1U virtual tape library that mounts 4 SATA drives in RAID 5 configuration for a total capacity of 1.5 TB.

The VLS1002i has iSCSI connectivity and can emulate LTO-2 based devices. The library will begin shipping in June at a list price of $6,099.

In the same announcement HP is also disclosing new options for its entry-level backup application, the StorageWorks Data Protector Express, that include the ability to backup replicas created by the ProLiant Data Protection Storage Server and support for one-button disaster recovery.

Data Protector Express is available immediately and has a list price of $979.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 24, 2006 06:11 AM

May 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MaXXan brings encryption to the switch

TAGS: Storage

MaXXan Systems is announcing today immediate availability of CipherMax, a system comprised of encryption software and hardware accelerators that brings encryption services to its intelligent switch platform.

CipherMax joins MaXXan's numerous applications delivered on MXV250 View image and MXV500 switches, including NAS, disaster recovery, disk-based backup and virtualization.

To activate encryption with CipherMax, customers create security policies that identify an initiator-target pair and assign an encryption key. A similar process can identify also homogeneous groups View image containing hosts or LUNs controlling or storing sensitive data, Maxxan explains.

Pricing for CipherMax was not discussed in today's announcement.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 23, 2006 06:00 AM

May 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MonoSphere adds Storage Planner

TAGS: Storage

MonoSphere, Inc. is announcing today the release of Storage Horizon 2.2, a new version of its storage capacity planning software.

According to MonoSphere, Storage Horizon 2.2 maintains an agent less architecture and collects storage usage data from Linux, Unix and Windows servers using standard protocols such SSH (Secure Shell) and WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation).

The new version adds a Storage Planner module that allows users to forecast the amount and type of storage needed in future months. The reports created using Storage Planner will support more informed decisions about purchasing additional storage devices, the company explains.

Among other improvements, Storage Horizon 2.2 offers differentiated user roles and guidelines on correctly interpreting storage use trends.

Storage Horizon 2.2 is available immediately. The company indicates a license cost per TB of storage managed ranging between $500 and $1,500.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 15, 2006 06:27 AM

May 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Maestro appliances to orchestrate NAS

TAGS: Storage

Startup Attune Systems will unveil today Maestro, a new appliance aimed at consolidating the management of disparate file serving solutions.

The 2U, resilient rack-mountable Maestro appliance hosts up to 12 Ultra-SCSI drives and 10 1GbE switching ports for host servers and clients connectivity.

Maestro includes File Manager, an application that facilitates discovery, analysis, policy-based administration and optimization of customers' data across multiple tiers, Attune explains.

Attune indicates that the numerous components of File Manager can be developed gradually, in stages ranging from initial discovery with functionality such as search and reporting, to extended mode with features including global namespace, file striping and mirroring, file virtualization and storage tiers.

Maestro is available immediately. Attune suggests a retail price of $45,000.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 9, 2006 06:44 AM

May 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Nexsan announces Assureon 4.0

TAGS: Storage

Nexsan Technologies introduced today Assureon 4.0, a new version of the security appliance that the company began shipping last year.

Assureon are clustered appliances engineered for high availability, that deliver features such as single file encryption, access authentication and content addressable storage, Nexsan explains.

"Assureon is not a "copy-to device" - points out Diamond Lauffin, senior executive vice president for Nexsan. Lauffin then explains that all data transfers to the appliance are managed via customers' defined policies.

New features of the Assureon 4.0 include accelerated encryption via onboard ASICs and automatic point-to-point active redirect of file access to the Assureon appliance.

"When we move a file to the Assureon we leave a pointer in our agent" - explains Lauffin, - " if that primary device dies the application will see those pointers as the original files."

Assureon 4.0 adds also automated audit capabilities, including verifying the integrity of files and media and ensuring that the content of archival media is not altered over time.

Nexsan indicates a price around $4,500 per terabyte for Assureon 4.0 appliances.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 9, 2006 06:00 AM

May 09, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Dell brings more storage to the server

TAGS: Storage

Dell will announce today the PowerVault MD1000, a new 3U JBOD (just a bunch of disks) box that mounts up to 15 3.5" SAS (serial attached SCSI) drives.

The MD1000 can be equipped with fast performing 15K RPM drives in 36GB, 73GB and 146GB capacity, or with less expensive 10K RPM devices with 146 GB and 300GB capacity.

The enclosure attaches to Dell servers via SAS and can be set to any RAID configuration supported by the server controller.

According to Dell, further capacity can be added by daisy-chaining up to three enclosures with SAS connections.

The PowerVault MD1000 is available immediately. Price with just two drives starts at $4200.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 9, 2006 06:00 AM

May 08, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The Dell-EMC duo ships more Clariions

TAGS: Storage

View image

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 8, 2006 06:00 AM

May 05, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sepaton turns the table on deduplication

TAGS: Storage

On Monday Sepaton, Inc. will announce DeltaStor, its deduplication software offered as an option for the company S2100-ES2 Virtual Tape library.

Sepaton will announce DeltaStor at Symantec VISION in San Francisco. At the event Sepaton is going to demo this new ContentAware application.

"The reason we call our applications ContentAware is that as data comes into the tape library we capture metadata about that data" explains Linda Mentzer VP of marketing for Sepaton.

"We work very differently from any of the competitors" - Mentzer adds - "to avoid slowing down backups we do data deduplication after the backup is complete".

Another major differentiator is that DeltaStor deduplication compares the content of each file with a previous version as opposed to comparing the ash keys of file fragments as other vendors do.

"We keep the most recent file as reference and create pointers to the byte differences. We can do the same also for databases." Mentzer says.

DeltaStor gives customers also the option to verify the integrity of deduplicated data before eliminating redundant files.

Mentzer suggests that using DeltaStor customers will reduce the size of backup sets 25 to 1, but they can attain higher ratios using also Lempel-Ziv, a conventional compression application bundled with Sepaton appliances.

Being triggered by file attributes, DeltaStor will not deduplicate some obvious redundancies, such as files with same content but different file names. By contrast, ash key based solutions can address those redundancies.

However, Mentzer doesn't seem concerned: "We work equally well with both full and incremental backups, but some of our competitors quote two different [compression] numbers for incremental and full backups."

Sepaton will license DeltaStor in 10TB increments at a price averaging less than $1 per GB.

DeltaStor should be available in Q4 to customers using Veritas, IBM or EMC- Legato backup applications. Support for other backup software should follow in 2007.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 5, 2006 05:58 AM

May 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Idealstor opens to SATA drives

TAGS: Storage

Idealstor is announcing today support for SATA drives on its two lines of disk to disk backup devices.

Idealstor products include Backup Appliance, with disk enclosures that can host up to 8 removable drives, and FrankeNas appliances that combine a RAID 5 NAS system and removable drives.

The adoption of SATA drives translates into a significant performance increase on both lines of products, according to Ben Ginster, Idealstor channel marketing manager.

Support for SATA drives and controller adds about 5 percent to the price of comparable parallel ATAView image models.

Idealstor suggests a price of $4,900 for a 1 bay Backup Appliance and of $16,500 for an 8-bay model.

Products with SATA drives such as this 4 drives 4U enclosure View image are available immediately.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 1, 2006 07:00 AM

May 01, 2006 | Comments: (0)

msystems announces management system for USB drives

TAGS: Storage

msystems will unveil today mTrust Manager a new management system for USB drives that should bring an unprecedented level of monitoring and control over those devices, according to the company.

mTrust Manager includes a server component that installs on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 machines and requires a Microsoft SQL Server database to store data and policies about USB drives and their users.

The product makes possible centralized management of USB drives and associates ownership of each devices to a user. Some of the features of mTrust Manager include integration with directory services, doing backup and restore of USB data, administering access passwords and auditing usage, the company explains.

mTrust Manager supports mTrust Drives, devices that have been hardened adding a non removable software agent. mTrust Drives are available from vendors such as Kingston and Verbatim, msystem suggests.

The new product complements mTrust Shield, another application from msystems that limits corporate use of non-approved removable devices.

mTrust Manager is available immediately. The price of a one server license is $5,000, plus a one time fee ranging from $20 to $40 per drive.

Posted by Mario Apicella on May 1, 2006 06:00 AM

April 26, 2006 | Comments: (