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Category: storage

  • Mercury Technology Delivers “Green” Cloud for Oracle EBusiness Suite Using RamSan Flash Storage

    Texas Memory Systems and Mercury Technology today announced that the Mercury Technology ultra high performance “Enterprise Cloud” hosted solutions for Oracle-based applications are powered by Texas Memory Systems’ RamSan PCIe-based solid state disks (SSD).

    Users of the RamSan SSD-enabled servers see significantly higher performance so their Oracle applications can handle very high transaction volumes and more simultaneous users than is possible with hard disk-based systems.

    “We added solid state disks to win additional new business with a premium enterprise cloud-based hosting service for large users of Oracle-based applications,” said Brian Day, Vice President of Sales at Mercury Technology. “We also wanted to maintain our cost advantage by building a more energy-efficient, lower-maintenance and greener, data center. The Texas Memory Systems RamSans allowed us to do that.”

    The RamSan PCIe Fault Tolerant Flash-based SSD cards are easily inserted into a server’s PCIe slot to deliver up to 120,000 sustained I/Os per second (IOPS) with a mere 50 microsecond latency and just 15 watts of power. This industry-leading latency is key to RamSan’s ability to accelerate transactions and improve user response time, resulting in productivity gains for users. .

    “We chose Texas Memory Systems because it is the only company that has such a long history in this technology,” continued Mr. Day.

    ”The other vendors are newer players, none of whom have been working in the Oracle world. It’s important to have a partner that is not only knowledgeable, but who also has first-hand experience with other customers running Oracle software, a company that develops its own products based on the feedback it gets from customers. We wanted to offer our clients the stability that only Texas Memory Systems offers today.”

    “Some of the biggest, most demanding Oracle customers are hosted with Mercury Technology so we were delighted that it chose our RamSan solid state disks over all competing alternatives,” said Jamon Bowen, Director of Sales Engineering at Texas Memory Systems. “RamSan solutions are a proven way to turbo charge Oracle performance.”

    Related articles
    Texas Memory Systems Delivers Record 5-Million IOPS Flash-based SSD System
    Texas Memory Systems Sets New SPC-1 Records for Flash Storage Performance
    Texas Memory Systems’ New RamSan-630 Achieves 1 Million IOPS in 6U Flash Storage

  • CDW-G Releases 2010 Government Virtualization Report

    CDW-G has released its 2010 Government Virtualization Report, an assessment of client, server and storage virtualization in Federal, state and local agencies.

    The report, based on a May survey of 600 Federal, state and local IT managers, reveals that 77 percent of agencies are implementing at least one form of virtualization, and of those, 89 percent are benefiting from the technology.

    Benefits of virtualization, a broad term used to describe the abstraction of computer resources, include reduced operating and capital costs, improved utilization of computing resources and greater IT staff productivity, respondents said.

    Despite those benefits – and imperatives such as the Federal data center consolidation initiative – 81 percent of all agencies said they are not using virtualization to its fullest extent, and just 33 percent employ a “virtualization first” strategy, meaning that a requestor must prove that a new software application does not work in a virtualized environment before the agency will buy a dedicated server to support it.

    According to the report, across government, agencies cited lack of staff and budget as top impediments to further virtualization adoption. Nearly half said their IT department is not appropriately staffed and trained to manage a virtual environment. Despite those challenges, most agencies said they will fully implement client, server and storage virtualization by 2015.

    “The cost savings associated with virtualization are exceptionally compelling in the current budget environment,” said David Hutchins, director of state and local sales for CDW-G. “We see many state and local governments starting with a pilot project, and once tangible cost and time savings are achieved, redeploying those resources to other priority initiatives – including additional virtualization, which reaps still more savings.”

    Most Agencies Implementing; Security Concerns Decline

    CDW-G’s survey found that 91 percent of agencies are considering or implementing server virtualization, a method of running multiple independent server operating systems on a single physical server. Eighty-four percent are considering or implementing client virtualization, a method of running multiple desktops and/or applications centrally in the data center, and an equal number are considering or implementing storage virtualization, a method of making many different physical storage networks and devices appear as one entity for purposes of management and administration.

    Security concerns about virtualization, the No. 2 barrier to Federal implementation, according to CDW-G’s 2009 Federal Virtualization Report, declined significantly within that group year over year. Today, Federal IT professionals rank security No. 7 among their top barriers, after concerns such as staff knowledge, budget and staff availability. State and local IT professionals in 2010 ranked security No. 8 among their top barriers, after concerns such as budget and staff availability. Across government, nearly half of IT managers report that security is actually a benefit of virtualization, CDW-G found.

    “Security is a critical consideration with any change to agency IT environments, and rightly so,” said Andy Lausch, vice president of federal sales for CDW-G. “As agencies grow their virtualization expertise, many are finding that security is actually improved with virtualization. A centralized IT environment means managers have fewer machines to monitor and manage, which can improve the agency’s overall security posture.”

    Virtualization Not One-Size Fits All; CIO Savvy Essential to Success

    While most government IT professionals are implementing or considering virtualization, respondents caution that the technique is not a one-size-fits all solution. Forty-six percent said some applications should not run on virtualized servers, for example. One respondent noted, “Some applications require such intensive resources, the cost benefit is outweighed.”

    Echoing CDW-G’s 2009 survey on Federal virtualization, respondents again said CIO virtualization proficiency is critical to successful implementation. Agencies whose IT staffs gave their CIOs an “A” for virtualization proficiency were three times more likely to experience a successful virtualization deployment than agencies with C-rated CIOs. Further, 87 percent of agencies that gave their CIO an “A” in virtualization proficiency said their IT department is appropriately staffed and trained to support a virtualized environment.

    Government IT professionals offered the following advice to their peers:
    • Lead: Secure non-IT leadership support and ensure adequate end-user education
    • Analyze: Conduct cost-benefit and performance analyses and set benchmarks for evaluating ROI
    • Plan: Audit current IT environments to determine areas that can immediately benefit from virtualization and areas that will require additional planning
    • Implement: Begin with a small-scale implementation. Apply lessons learned to a subsequent deployment

  • SGI Releases InfiniteStorage 5000 SAS External Storage System

    SGI, a provider of HPC and data center solutions, today announced the release of SGI InfiniteStorage 5000, a RAID storage system that combines leading edge hardware with a choice of host interfaces and drive technologies in a powerful external storage platform.

    SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is SGI’s first storage system to employ 6Gb/s SAS technology.

    SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 provides customers with improved performance and scalability, multi-protocol host connectivity, flexible drive support, data security features and advanced energy savings. With SGI’s DMF software, SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 is an ideal primary or secondary storage solution for tiered virtualization implementations.

    It is also ideal as a front-end for active archive architectures using an SGI® COPAN™ MAID solution on the back-end. It perfectly complements SGI® Altix® UV server and Rackable™ rackmount server environments.

    “As data volumes in the enterprise continue to grow, increased performance, reduced power consumption and system flexibility are of primary concern to customers,” said Rick Chapek, SGI senior vice president of hardware engineering. “By utilizing 6Gb/s SAS technology, SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 brings performance, reliability and a strong feature set normally seen in high-end Fibre Channel systems to an aggressive entry-level price point.”

    SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 delivers bandwidth up to 4,000 MB/s on sustained reads from disk, a 4X performance improvement compared to the previous generation product. The system delivers 40,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second) random disk reads, a more than 2X improvement over the prior generation.

    “Although 6Gb/s SAS for drives has already become common in the industry, completing that transition by including the host side has finally begun in earnest,” said Benjamin S. Woo, program vice president, worldwide storage systems research at IDC.

    “With both 6Gb/s host and drive-side architecture, InfiniteStorage 5000 should provide an affordable entry-point system that offers improved storage performance and scalability, and greatly decreased power consumption. Furthermore, it is ideally-suited for mixed workloads and virtualization, making it a top choice for storage upgrades.”

    SGI InfiniteStorage offers the ability to intermix drive types, allowing organizations to address a wide range of capacity and performance requirements. Customers can deploy high performance solid-state drives (SSDs) or SAS drives for the most demanding application workloads as well as cost-effective nearline SAS drives for less performance-sensitive, high-capacity applications.

    SGI InfiniteStorage 5000 consumes less energy with power supplies that meet the forthcoming Energy Star, 80 PLUS® energy efficiency and Climate Savers Computing specifications.

    Four native 6Gb/s SAS host interfaces can be intermixed with eight 1Gb/s iSCSI or eight 8Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) host ports per dual controller. This flexible and multi-purpose dual protocol approach allows organizations to implement a variety of configurations – from rackmounted server and storage DAS implementations using SAS, to iSCSI and FC SAN environments for larger consolidation and virtualization projects.

  • TwinStrata Improves Its CloudArray Cloud Storage Software

    TwinStrata and TriCore Solutions announced customer validation of cloud storage solutions for Microsoft Exchange 2010 and Oracle RMAN based on TwinStrata CloudArray software.

    CloudArray is the industry’s first purpose-built architecture and software solution that enables intelligent storage clouds to help companies address challenges related to protecting and managing the growth of business application data.

    CloudArray customers are realizing many benefits from transitioning to an adaptive IT storage infrastructure including the ability to better map business objectives to IT, respond quickly to changing needs, optimize IT operational efficiency and improve IT cost controls.

    CloudArray features include cloud storage provider management across private and public storage clouds and Compute Anywhere technology that delivers business agility and increases data availability for business applications. It also features intelligent caching where cloud storage appears and performs like local iSCSI or file storage.

    CloudArray operates as a virtual appliance and supports all market-leading hypervisors: VMware ESX/ESXi, Citrix XenServer, and Microsoft Hyper-V. CloudArray also operates in the cloud supporting Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). CloudArray enables IT solutions for data replication, backup/restore, data archiving, disaster recovery and business continuity, and Compute Anywhere application accessibility both on premise and in the cloud

  • HyperOffice Releases New Version of Cloud-Computing Collaboration Software Suite for SMBs

    HyperOffice made the new version of its award-winning, cloud-computing messaging and collaboration suite widely available to small and medium-sized businesses.

    The release brings to an end a successful beta test program that spanned six months, thousands of users, and continuous enhancements – including innovations guided by a customer-driven Product Development Committee that helped to refine the user interface as HyperOffice reinvented the entire suite.

    The software-as-a-services suite makes it easy for company owners, employees, customers, partners and suppliers to run and grow a business by working together, planning projects, sharing documents, scheduling meetings, and more.

    HyperOffice integrates a range of software-as-a-service business applications over the Internet — shared online calendars and contacts, business class email, document collaboration, project management, web conferencing, databases and web forms; forums, polls and group wikis; project and task portals, Intranets and Extranets; user rights, versioning, commenting, backup, and more.

    HyperOffice builds into the new edition of its namesake web-based collaboration software nearly 10 years of expertise and experience working with small and medium-sized businesses with 5 to 250 employees – and delivers the new edition of the suite after two years of research and development with customers worldwide.

    Under the hood, rebuilt from the ground up, Ajax and an array of Web 2.0 technologies power improvements in performance, scalability and security.

    Where the business user meets the screen, the new version introduces a streamlined, intuitive interface that is instantly familiar to any user of what now becomes the "classic" edition of HyperOffice – yet far more flexible.

    For users ready to migrate online from Microsoft Outlook, SharePoint, Exchange and other conventional, expensive desktop and server email products, HyperOffice provides free support by email and phone, webinars and an array of free, online and custom training options.

    Hosted online, the HyperOffice suite delivers to smaller and medium-sized businesses the power and productivity of costly enterprise collaboration software – for a low monthly subscription fee of about $7 per month, per user, secure, and hassle free.

  • 2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum: Interview with Mathieu Poujol of PAC

    „Cloud Computing will strongly influence the future of the IT. But it will take time before it become the main way of delivering IT,” said Mathieu Poujol in an interview with Storage.Biz-news.com.

    Mathieu is a Director of Technologies at PAC (Pierre Audoin Consultants), a global market research and strategic consulting firm for the Software and IT Services Industry. He will be one of the speakers at 2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum that will take place in London, from 29th June to 1st July 2010

    He thinks Cloud Computing has in fact being stimulated by the crisis: “it is a reality for the majority of the IT managers, according to our surveys,” he siad. He also said that in PAC’s latest recommendations for the EU’s Commission and the French goverenment, the research firm put CC as the top priority for the EU’s investments.

    “With Cloud Computing, a big part of the IT is moving from light –workforce intensive- industry to a heavy –capital and automation- intensive industry. A bit like the automotive industry between the two World Wars,” he claims.

    Mathieu Poujol

    Asked about the business value of the cloud and how the economic crisis has changed it, he had this to say: “The goal of the IT since it exists is better IT Business alignment at lower costs. Trying to meet specific needs with cost effective mutualisation. Open Source, package applications, shared services and many more are all in this line. According to our latest studies, the business value of Cloud computing is optimisation, agility, simplicity and elasticity. So it is in the right sense of the IT history.”

    Mathieu said that Cloud Computing is growing very fast in Europe–more than 20%, according to their data, and will reach 4B€ in 2010. “But it is still a huge marketing hype, with everything that is virtualised being called Cloud Computing. Companies will also see that not everything is eligible to CC,” he said.

    He said he totally agrees with Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal’s opinion, that it’s becoming a hybrid system: for example, one creates his work on software on his PC, and then he saves it and shares it through the cloud. “IT Systems are by construction hybridizing technologies. If your SAP FI/Co is working well, why taking the risk and the complexity of putting it in the CC now?” said Mathieu.

    When asked which of the deployment strategies and integration techniques he consideres the best and most promising for enterprises, he said: “As always in any IT project, planning is critical. Also try CC on some already mature workloads such as messaging then the best is to make your IT “CC compliant”, to adopt private cloud, so you ill be able to better use all kind of CC, and more important asses data, security and backsourcing issues. According to a phone survey we do in March on 200 French IT manager, 71% of them will first embrace Private CC.”

    Mathieu also shared with us his thoughts on “private cloud”: “It will be either in-house or with a hosting company. As with traditional outsourcing, it is a good way to better use external cloud providers and not depend entirely on them.

    With private Cloud you manage your data and your security and have less network problems. IT inside the company is heading this way as it is confronted to the competition of external providers.

    Also, some regulations and security measures will prevent you from outsourcing some data: for example, none of Europe’s banks can put its client data out of its country of origin,” he said.

    When asked “Would you agree that cloud services will replace the Microsoft desktop?”, he answered: “VDI will also grow by more than 20% and competition is more open now with interesting Open Source and SaaS offers. But MS has also this kind of offers and capacities to remain a leader on this market. What I see, it that this increase competition, mostly based on prices will damage MS margins.”

    He also said that green IT and sustainable computing are not issues for the cloud today, “even if marketing is pushing it.”

    “Cost optimisation is the issue and the CC mutualisation, a bit like public transportation, is greener,” he said.

    Asked about the key challenge for 2010 in cloud computing, he said: “For the coming year, network will be the issue. No bandwidth, no CC.”

    Mathieu expects to meet CC project owners and share with them at the 2nd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum in London.

  • StorSimple Announces Integration with Amazon, EMC, Iron Mountain, and Microsoft

    StorSimple today announced integration with Amazon, EMC, Iron Mountain, and Microsoft to enable customers to seamlessly and securely use these cloud storage services with their existing data-center applications.

    By providing an easy on-ramp to cloud storage for application-specific requirements, StorSimple aims to change the game by bringing the operational benefits of the cloud to applications such as SharePoint, Exchange, Windows User Files and Virtual Machines.

    “With the upcoming launch of SharePoint 2010, customers will increasingly look to extend their deployments with cloud-based services,” said Ed English, group product manager, Microsoft SharePoint.

    “The hybrid storage solution from StorSimple is a good example of this; it shows how SharePoint customers can realize cost and scale benefits by using the Windows Azure Platform.”

    “Iron Mountain’s Archive Services platform is a natural fit for enterprises looking for simple but secure cloud storage,” said Jaimin Patel, director of developer programs, Iron Mountain Digital.

    “By combining StorSimple’s robust solution with Iron Mountain’s proven cloud storage solutions, companies can now integrate secure cloud storage into their environments with the confidence that their data is protected by one of the leading information management services brands in the industry.”

    "EMC believes there is an opportunity and approach to cloud storage that delivers financial and functional benefits to both our partners and the customers they serve," said Mike Feinberg, senior vice president of EMC Cloud Infrastructure Group. "By making our cloud infrastructure accessible and allowing easy API integration, we enable our partners to respond to customers’ fast-growing demand for cloud-based solutions with greater scalability, elasticity, and lower costs. We are pleased to work with StorSimple to embrace and deliver these benefits to our joint customers.”

    “Our relationships with Amazon, EMC, Iron Mountain, and Microsoft allow us to deliver the integrated support and operational experience of enterprise storage with the business and operational benefits of cloud storage,” said Ursheet Parikh, co-founder and CEO of StorSimple.

    “Enterprise cloud storage service providers have chosen to partner with StorSimple, because of our differentiated technology that optimizes for application-specific data-access patterns to ensure primary storage performance for target applications.”

    The StorSimple Armada Storage Appliance is a hybrid storage solution that makes cloud storage appear like local data center storage that integrates into customers’ existing storage and data management tools. Armada identifies and stores all the hotspot and bottleneck data on a tier of high-performance Solid State Drives (SSD), enabling the use of lower-cost SATA storage and/or cloud storage as primary storage. StorSimple also performs real-time data de-duplication to minimize the footprint of the data stored and provides the WAN optimization functions for cloud storage. All data that is stored in the cloud is encrypted.

    About StorSimple

    StorSimple has developed an application-optimized hybrid storage controller for SharePoint, Exchange, Windows User Files and Virtual Machines that delivers consistent storage performance at scale, significantly simplifies data protection, and reduces cost by up to 90 percent compared to traditional enterprise storage used with these applications. StorSimple is based in the Silicon Valley and is funded by Redpoint Ventures and Index Ventures.

  • 300,000 Petabytes of Storage Capacity to Enterprise Datacenters and Clouds

    According to new research from IDC, HDD shipments for enterprise applications will increase from 40.5 million units in 2009 to 52.6 million units in 2014.

    Moreover, the HDD industry will ship more Petabytes for enterprise applications in the next two years than it did in the preceding 20 years.

    Several ongoing trends will continue to impact enterprise HDD market revenue over the forecast period, including a continued shift away from higher cost performance-optimized HDDs to lower cost capacity-optimized solutions and solid state drives (SSDs) to complement HDDs in storage systems.

    HDD revenue derived from enterprise markets will grow at only a 1.7% CAGR during this time. Additionally, there will be an increased effort among end users to better utilize existing storage system assets.

    "We’re definitely seeing intensive cost cutting measures among end users striving to bring more efficiency to current solutions," said John Rydning, research director for Storage Mechanisms: Disk.

    "The employment of technologies such as data deduplication, thin provisioning, storage multitiering, and storage virtualization are all contributing to reducing end-user costs."

    Other key findings from IDC’s research include the following:

    * The transition from 3.5in. to 2.5in. performance-optimized form factor HDDs will be complete by 2012

    * Growing interest in new storage delivery models such as storage as a service, or storage in the cloud is likely to put greater storage capacity growth demands on Internet datacenters

    * The price per gigabyte of performance-optimized HDD storage will continue to decline at a rate of approximately 25% to 30% per year

  • QStar Technologies Joins Active Archive Alliance as a Founding Partner

    QStar Technologies announced today that it has joined the Active Archive Alliance as a founding partner.

    The Active Archive Alliance is a non-profit storage industry association dedicated to promoting active archives for simplified, online access to all archived data.

    Organizations are archiving increasing amounts of data as they grapple with data growth, retention compliance rules and the need to leverage the knowledge and information within their organization.

    As organizations archive more data, the challenge of accessing that data when needed has intensified. Active archive solutions resolve this issue by turning offline archives into visible, accessible extensions of online storage systems – enabling fast, easy access to archived data.

    The industry trend toward active archiving is being enabled and accelerated by recent advancements in active archive applications as well as archive tape and disk storage technologies. Today’s innovative applications provide the ability to see and access data on tape through a file system interface, making it easy and affordable to view and search archived data files in large heterogeneous online active tape and disk storage pools.

    “QStar is excited to be a founding member of the Active Archive Alliance,” said Dave Thomson, senior vice president of sales, QStar Technologies.

    “Our company has exclusively offered solutions in the archive world for more than 23 years and completely endorses the messages involved in Active Archiving, namely combining disk and tape technologies to maximize the benefits of each. An active archive offers optimized performance and data security for an organization’s most valuable resource: its data.”

    QStar offers a wide range of data migration and archiving software solutions that allow organizations to tailor-make a cost-effective archive that precisely fits their individual requirements. Specifically designed for mixed system and data types, QStar supports the entire enterprise, including servers and clients using Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac. The product suite also allows for storage and retrieval to disk and tape solutions situated locally or, for disaster prevention purposes, remotely.

    QStar’s Network Migrator software utilizes advanced policy management for storage virtualization and data lifecycle management. Data Director HSM software, built for enterprise level archives, creates a virtual hard disk system on tape media and mirrors it for disaster prevention. QStar solutions work to create secure archives that allow seamless access to data using standard interfaces and protocols across the network.

    Active archiving eliminates the typical trade-off between keeping data visible in online disk arrays and moving the data to more cost-effective near-line or off-line tape. It enables organizations to keep all archive data online, searchable and quickly accessible, while ensuring media and data integrity and simplified management.

    In addition to QStar, founding technology partners of the Active Archive Alliance include Compellent Technologies, FileTek Inc., and Spectra Logic Corporation.

    The mission of the Active Archive Alliance is to provide organizations with the best practices, tools and information they need to achieve simplified access to the online storage of their archived data. Please visit www.activearchive.com for more information about the Active Archive Alliance and to become a member.

  • Turbulence Ahead for Cloud Computing

    Cloud computing took a serious hit with Google’s exit from search business, and its subsequent service issues, in mainland China, announced Canalys.

    While cloud solutions will remain appealing for certain customers with limited international ambitions, the platform’s inherent security and access issues will herald a shift back to traditional software models, said the industry analyst group in a recently issued report.

    ‘The two biggest trends in the IT industry – the rise of cloud computing and China’s emergence as a global growth engine – have just collided with a bang,’ said Steve Brazier, President and CEO of Canalys.

    ‘The hacking of Google’s systems in China has demonstrated that security weaknesses in the cloud have moved from a possibility to an actuality.’

    Canalys maintains that legacy software companies that reposition themselves for local services, or at least a mixed model, stand to benefit the most from cloud computing flaws, as customers demand increased security and access controls: ‘Customers will want global solutions that help them decide what information is stored where, coupled with systems that function competently, even when Internet access is down or restricted,’ said Brazier.

    As companies have sensitive information across many domains – finance, HR, legal, R&D and marketing, among others – a security breach anywhere could have devastating and far-reaching effects. Likewise, the regulatory threat posed by the local political landscape in emerging countries will influence multinationals’ choice of software platform moving forward.

    ‘It would be extraordinarily naïve for a company to believe Google’s situation with China is unique,’ said Brazier. ‘All the US giants have struggled, while local Internet brands have snagged top positions across major areas, such as search, auctions and video sharing.’

    Late entry, language and cultural issues, such as failure to adapt to local market trading conditions, combined with site performance, have encouraged customers to stick with local solutions in China. Similarly, other emerging regions, such as the Middle East, Russia and Indonesia, are capable of making unilateral business decisions to the detriment of foreign companies, while the situation in India and Brazil – more stable for now – could change due to the influence of neighboring countries.

    According to Canalys, cloud computing will not disappear for some time, due to the continued support of US-based proponents, which have yet to see the model’s challenges in emerging markets. Smaller companies, more willing to live with risks, and public bodies, mainly restricted to national borders, will be less concerned about international access issues and local hacking threats.

    The future of cloud computing will be a key technology track at EMEA’s largest and most influential annual channel event, the Canalys Channels Forum, being held from 5-7 October at the Hotel Arts in Barcelona. This two-day, invitation-only event will feature senior one-to-one meetings, business-savvy keynotes, research into industry and channel trends, and expert-led debates among an audience of more than 500 executives from top vendors, distribution management, leading SMB resellers and Canalys analysts. More information about the event can be found at www.canalyschannelsforum.com.