Business News Holding

Category: storage

  • Disk Storage System Sales Badly Impacted By Economy


    Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues fell 13.6 per cent year-on-year to USD $4.2 billion in the first quarter of 2009 (1Q09), according to IDC.

    For the quarter, the total disk storage systems market declined to USD $5.6 billion in revenues, an 18.2 per cent decline from the prior year’s first quarter.

    Steve Scully, research manager, Enterprise Storage at IDC, said the results were driven by continued weakness in server systems sales.

    He said total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 2,146 petabytes, growing 14.8 per cent year over year.

    "The disk storage system vendors are really seeing the impact of the global economic downturn in the first quarter revenues," he said.

    "However, while total revenues declined year over year, the overall storage capacity shipped continued to grow.

    "These contrasting results are due to a combination of currency implications, lower overall sales, shifts in product mix, and aggressive pricing actions."

    Liz Conner, research analyst, Storage Systems, said that although the economic crisis was fully realized by the enterprise storage systems market in the first quarter of 2009, the quarter wasn’t without its bright spots.

    "Entry-level price bands ($0K – $14.99K) showed 9.9 per cent year-over-year growth and the midrange price band ($15K – $49.99K) was flat year over year," she said.

    This supported IDC’s belief that storage products are still in demand, according to Conner, adding that customer spending was trending towards more modular, price point options.

    "In addition, the high-end price band ($300K-499.99K) saw a 14.5 per cent year-over-year growth as vendors discounted their very high-end products, shifting the ASV’s into lower price bands in order to meet the demand for high-end storage while accounting for reduced IT budgets," she said.

    EMC maintained its lead in the external disk storage systems market with 20.7 per cent revenue share in the first quarter, followed by HP and IBM in a statistical tie for the second position with 11.5 per cent and 11.3 per cent revenue share, respectively.

    Dell and Hitachi finished the quarter in a statistical tie for fourth place with 9.8 per cent and 9.4 per cent revenue share respectively.

    The total network disk storage market (NAS Combined with Open SAN) had year-over-year growth of minus 12.5 per cent in the first quarter with more than USD $3.1 billion in revenues.

    EMC continues to maintain its leadership in the total network storage market with 26.0 per cent revenue share, followed by NetApp with 12.0 per cent revenue share.

    In the Open SAN market, which declined 14.3 per cent year over year, EMC lead with 21.9 per cent revenue share.

    The NAS market declined 6.7 per cent year over year, led by EMC with 39.0 per cent revenue share and followed by NetApp with 28.7 per cent share.

    The iSCSI SAN market continued to show strong momentum, posting 40.5 per cent revenue growth compared to the prior year’s quarter.

    Dell led the market with 36.4 per cent revenue share, followed by EMC with 15.8 per cent.

    Natalya Yezhkova, research manager, IDC Storage Systems, said price sensitivity was a big factor in the healthy growth of iSCSI SAN.

    He said that was the only installation environment segment that ended the quarter in positive territory.

    "While still a relatively small segment of the market, iSCSI SAN is the bright spot for end users and for vendors, as it helps end users to deploy network storage, often with enterprise-class functionality, at a lower price point than traditional FC SAN, and, thus, creates more selling opportunities for vendors," he said.

  • NetApp Awaits EMC Response to Data Domain Bid


    The bidding war for Data Domain stepped up this week after NetApp raised the stakes with rival EMC by making a new cash and stock offer of USD $1.9 billion.

    It came two days after EMC’s offer of USD $30 per share in a deal worth about USD $1.8 billion – around 20 per cent over the original USD $1.5 billion offered LINK last month by NetApp.

    Data Domain, a market leader in data deduplication technology, manufactures a series of storage appliances that tightly integrates its dedupe technology with dedicated storage capacity.

    It also offers software for data replication and virtual tape libraries.

    Both EMC and NetApp currently offer data dedupe technology.

    The increased offer from NetApp means that, if accepted, its offer would use up almost all it’s US cash balance of USD $1.26 billion.

    However, EMC is widely expected to counter with an all-cash offer.

  • Sony Ericsson Drops Proprietary Memory Cards For Standard MicroSD


    Sony Ericsson is to stop using its proprietary memory card format in favor of the standard and more popular MicroSD.

    The change will will make moving content between the mobile handsets and PCs easier.

    Among the first Sony Ericsson products to make the shift from Sony’s own Memory Stick Micro cards will be the Satio, Aino and Yari announced last week.

    Sony’s memory cards are a bit narrower and longer than the standard ones made by SanDisk and other companies – making it impossible to insert it into a computer’s built-in memory card reader.

    A user was required to connect their phone to the computer using a cable to transfer music, photos and other content between the two devices.

    While that’s standard practice for many phones, including the iPhone, having standard components makes it easier if not also cheaper.

  • Infortrend Offers First 8g Fc Storage With Comprehensive Form Factor Choices


    Infortrend has announced the addition of 2U and 4U models to its EonStor G6 8Gb/s Fibre Channel (FC) SAN solutions.

    The move by the networked storage expert to provide additional form factors is intended to help more users meet their application requirements.

    The enhancements to the EonStor G6 family mean four new models – S12F-R1840/ S12F-G1840 and S24F-R1840/S24F-G1840.

    Thomas Kao, product planning director at Infortrend Technology, said that to safeguard cached data during power outages, Infortrend has introduced our new CacheSafe technology for the EonStor G6 offerings.

    This ensures that during a power failure the Cache Backup Module (CBM) will write all cached data to the flash backup module (FBM).

    Kao said the Battery Backup Unit (BBU) will automatically supply power for this purpose. Once power is restored, the data in the flash module is written back to the storage system which ensures no data loss.

  • Online Data Backup Center Aims For Zero Carbon Footprint


    A UK-based provider of online data backups is building a technically-advanced data center powered solely by renewable energy.

    Located in North Wiltshire, WorldBackups has purchased a 2,600 sq. ft. ex-BT exchange where it will develop its own on-site renewable energy generation, passing on the reduced power costs to its customers.

    The company says it is bypassing the carbon offset route and is instead working towards a time when it won’t have a carbon footprint to counter.

    The data center is due to go live in the second quarter of 2010.

    Roland Scott, managing director of WorldBackups said pioneering technology isn’t solely the preserve of Silicon Valley or hi-tech hotspots in the UK.

    He said the company was building a completely self-sufficient data center and proving that green investment can be good business.

    "Our ethos is two-fold: a duty to make use of renewable and clean energy when we can, and also to be ready for the arrival of future environmental and compliance laws," he said.

    World Backups is developing a system that will shut down its servers at different times throughout the day and night to preserve power.

    In the case of most other data centers providing services such as website hosting and telecoms, the servers need to be turned on around the clock.

    World Backups will be able to switch off unwanted servers, even during peak times, thanks to an advanced application that recognises when extra resources are required and can fire up the necessary network space within one minute.

    The resulting cut back in the power required to run the center will make generating its energy through renewable sources on-site a viable option.

    "We intend to use renewable energy during the day and sell the excess back to a supplier of electricity that comes solely from renewable energy sources," said Scott.

    "We’ll then purchase back that renewable energy if and when it’s needed."

    Scott said that in a recession, there’s always a concern that green businesses will suffer as companies and consumers look to cut costs.

    "We believe that eco-enterprise and commercial success don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

    "’Going green’ will make us more competitive, and our customers won’t have to sacrifice backing up their valuable data during the crunch."

    World Backups’ software can be installed directly on to a server, laptop or PC to protect data such as email systems, databases, directories, office documents and pretty much all files from fire, theft, corruption and other disasters.

    Scott said its online backups are easy to implement, secure, and offer an affordable and reliable alternative to tapes. Customers are guaranteed 24/7 access to their data from anywhere with an internet connection world-wide, and don’t have to worry about mislaid tapes or IT team holidays.

    All data is encrypted before it leaves the customer’s system(s) to be replicated to WorldBackups’ data center, giving customers complete control over its security.

    In addition, data can be backed up or mirrored to a server on the customer’s own site, providing quick and easy local access should a restore be required.

  • Sun Expands Unified Storage Family


    Sun Microsystems is extending its Unified Storage family with an array that allows solid state disk (SSD) drives and hard disk drives to be used in the same chassis and under the same management interface.

    The Sun Storage 7310 is a comprehensive, Flash-powered storage system that includes leverages Hybrid Storage Pool capabilities.

    In addition to the maximum 64GB of DRAM cache, it can be configured with up to an additional 600GB of SSD cache (1.2TB for cluster version) for enhanced application performance.

    John Fowler, executive vice-president, Systems, Sun Microsystems, said the Storage 7310 opens up a door for customers to more widely deploy high availability clustered storage and experience the power and economic benefits of Unified Storage.

    Other features within the Sun Storage 7310 storage system include:

    • Three times (3x) less power consumption than traditional storage solutions
    • Scalability up from 12TB to 96TB capacity with no interruption to system availability
    • High network throughput with four 1Gb Ethernet ports per controller and optional 10Gb connectivity
    • Single controller offers two PCI slots for additional network or tape-backup connectivity for easy plug and play integration

    The Storage 7310 is available immediately and costs from USD $40,165

  • HP Launches New SMB Storage Offerings, Cuts Staff


    Hewlett-Packard is to introduce several new storage, virtualization, PC, printing and services offerings in an effort to capture a larger share of the Small and Midsize Business (SMB) market.

    The move comes as the company begins consultations on cutting nearly six thousand European jobs, including 850 in the UK and Germany.

    Many of these are at its plant in Erskine, Renfrewshire, because production of servers and storage devices is moving to the Czech Republic.

    HP had warned that more job cuts were coming when it announced second quarter results recently. The company made profits of USD $1.72bn on sales of USD $27.4bn in the three months ended April.

    The new offerings announced this week are part of the Hewlett-Packard Total Care initiative for SMBs, aimed at providing a full range of products, services, tools, training, financing and recycling.

    On the storage side, HP unveiled a new SMB line of appliances and expanded its existing MSA family.

    This includes the StorageWorks X1000 family of appliances, which brings together both file storage and application-based storage.

    The X1000 line replaces HP’s entry-level All-in-One storage appliances. It is based on the vendor’s latest-generation ProLiant G6 server platform, and includes Microsoft’s new Windows Storage Server 2008 Standard x64 Edition operating system.

    Another newcomer is the StorageWorks X3000, a gateway appliance that connects to other storage capacity on the back end to add iSCSI and file services capabilities to existing storage arrays.

    HP also unveiled two new models in its MSA 2000 family of storage arrays. The StorageWorks 2000i includes an iSCSI interface, and the StorageWorks 2000sa includes a SAS interface.

    HP also is helping smaller businesses with new virtualization bundles that include both server and storage technology.

    The bundles include a combination of ProLiant servers, LeftHand software for building virtual storage appliances, VMware software for building virtual servers, ProCurve switches and HP’s Insight management software.

  • Corevault Issues Guidelines on Disaster Data Protection


    CoreVault has released guidelines to ensure organizational safety and expedient data Relevant Products/Services recovery in the event a catastrophe strikes.

    The managed backup and recovery solutions provider said that forward-thinking companies in severe-weather-prone area should take maximum precautions when preparing for disruptions caused by tornadoes and other natural disasters.

    The US experiences more tornadoes each year than any other country in the world.

    In 2008 alone, there were 1,691 confirmed tornadoes reported in the US, second only to 2004 with 1,817 confirmations.

    Tornadoes cost roughly USD $2 billion in damages and 125 lives lost each year.

    Jeff Cato, vice president of Marketing for CoreVault, said catastrophic storms affect businesses in the United States each year.

    He said this meant companies must take a more proactive stand on protecting their data in a more secure and off-site manner, especially those in high risk areas.

    "Preparation and proper planning is the best defense against extended downtime in these situations and having a proper disaster recovery plan in place can make the difference between keeping or losing one’s business," he said.

    According to Disaster Recovery Planning: Managing Risk and Catastrophe in Information Systems, companies that experience a computer outage for more than 10 days will never fully recover financially, and 50 per cent of companies suffering such a loss will be out of business within five years.

    Five things organizations of any size can do to ensure business continuity in the event of a catastrophe are:

    • Develop a written disaster recovery plan that identifies systems and assets critical to business continuity
    • Establish a disaster recovery team with assignments and training that leverages employee strengths in order to address the difficult and stressful task of rebuilding operations after a disaster
    • Identify a physical recovery location to restore business operations should the organization’s physical location become unusable
    • Update and test disaster recovery plan processes on a regular basis like performing recovery drills to assure reinstatement of both physical and digital assets. In addition, testing the functionality of IT systems is also critical
    • Protect business database Relevant Products/Services, email and all important Electronically Stored Information (ESI) off-site at a trusted managed backup and recovery provider’s information vault

  • PANDUIT Launches Fiber Optic System To Address Data Center Demands


    PANDUIT has introduced next-generation, high-speed data transport capabilities for the data center.

    The high performance, fiber optic system to connect server, storage, and network systems is aimed at meeting ever-increasing bandwidth and application requirements.

    Rick Pimpinella, fiber research manager at PANDUIT, said that as virtualization, consolidation, and convergence initiatives continue to grow more pervasive, so do the demands placed on the physical infrastructure.

    He said PANDUIT was launching its OM4 Fiber Optic System to meet the needs for faster processing speeds and greater storage capabilities, as well as long-reach and cross-connect deployments.

    "As a result of our continued research into multimode fiber performance and our active participation in standards committees, we can now offer the next progression in high performance optical connectivity," he said.

    "PANDUIT is able to offer a fiber system that exceeds the bandwidth specification being proposed in the draft standard for OM4."

    Pimpinella said the company’s OM4 Fiber Optic System offers high performance and seamless integration of 10 Gb/s Ethernet and 8Gb/s Fiber Channel network capabilities and beyond, to minimize physical infrastructure risk in the data center.

    He said it integrates multi-fiber low loss MTP and single fiber connectivity solutions with premium grade high performance laser optimized multimode fiber (with a minimum EMB of 5000 MHz·km) to deliver consistent performance and reliability of critical systems.

    The modular system includes pre-terminated cassettes, interconnect assemblies, equipment cords and harnesses.

  • SanDisk CEO Harari Bullish About Flash Memory


    SanDisk CEO Eli Harari believes that at $2/GB SSDs aren’t competitive yet with hard drives.

    But he is bullish about the technology’s prospects and believes it offers an ideal storage solution for netbooks.

    In an interview with Tech Trader Daily, he said that you can buy an 80 GB HDD for USD $30-$35.

    SanDisk CEO Eli Harari

    However, that same USD $30 would only get you 15 GB of flash. He suggests that 32 GB of storage is probably enough for many netbook applications.

    But to be competitive with hard drives, Harari said the flash industry will have to be able to sell at USD $1/GB while maintaining profitability.

    He said that wasn’t possible at the current 42-43 nm process technology now used for manufacturing flash.

    But he believes it should be possible at 24 nm, or two generations ahead of the current technology.

    Harari told Tech Traders usage of SSDs will start to pick up in this year’s second half and hit the mainstream in a big way in 2011.