Business News Holding

Category: storage

  • Upstarts Threatening Giant Oracle's Future Dominance over Database Market


    Database giant Oracle is under attack, and like chip goliath Intel ignored emerging ARM's RISC chips in mobile devices for too long and legacy incumbents such as server-vendors HP and Dell lagged behind as the commodity servers market shifted, it may not notice the ground shifting beneath its feet until it's too late.

    The size of Oracle's database is so huge that even as it's used to facing competition from niche technologies it may be blind to the termites nibbling at its foundations. A marauding hoard of small firms has cropped up to provide low-cost or free databases to the current and future customers of Oracle.

    There has already been migration of more than one hundred companies from Oracle but with a market cap of $152 billion and earnings in the last quarter being $10.9 billion, this is insignificant for now. Given a couple of years of firms adopting the new databases though, the shift will become apparent.

    The current rooster of Oracle customers comprises some of the largest companies in every industry and a large portion of the public sector. However, longtime Oracle customers are looking to cheaper alternative to the notoriously pricey licensing of Ellison & Co. and upcoming companies are unfamiliar with the technology the giant uses. This is the root of the giant's foreseeable problems.

  • Stream Nation Takes Private Video Streaming Global and with No Playback Limits


    Stream Nation     users in the US, UK, and elsewhere now have access to private video sharing that has no limit to the file size or length of video clip streamed to another browser, quite unlike Dropbox and Flickr Pro.

    Cloud storage platforms have vast differences in their specializations and Stream Nation focuses on private video streaming. Jonathan Benassaya, the service founder and co-founder of Deezer, says the concept was born out of the desire to share vacation videos with his family.

    The only hold-ups expected are that an uploader application has to be installed for storage of the photos and videos unless they are being brought over from Dropbox or another web platform. You may find this process a bit slow as a 90MB clip grabbed from Dropbox may take up to 20 minutes to be encoded. Also, videos can only be shared with registered Stream Nation users. Furthermore, anything exceeding 2GB has a price that can only be avoided when you stoop low enough to invite all your Google contacts, in which case you get a bonus 8GB.

    So this may not be exactly what someone who needs unlimited space might want, but it can come in handy if your family and friends are savvy enough to know how to respond to a Dropbox link.

  • Google Upgrades Platform Cloud and Joins Microsoft and Amazon's Cloud Level


    Google has upgraded its platform cloud to include a dedicated memcache, rendering the company's technology characteristically akin to the floating silos operated by Microsoft and Amazon. The open source object caching system, Memcache, is a dedicated serviced for storage of key-value data from multiple servers in pooled RAM. Its adoption by Google App Engine (GAE) comes packaged in the 1.8.2 release of the platform cloud.

    Alongside the dedicated Memcache is support for Git Push-to-Deploy, which allows developers to use the Git code management service. Google has also introduced updates relating to App Engine Modules, which enable developers to break large applications into modular components capable of sharing services. These updates also include Eclipse and PHP support.

    Dedicated memcache will bring developers performance and capacity guarantees for $0.12 cents per gigabyte per hour. They will be able to purchase in-memory data caching capacity leading to more data being cached, and with a higher cache hit rate the applications will be faster and Datastore costs reduced. This is according to a blog post Google cloud product manager Chris Ramsdale wrote.

    Google's service will be competing with Microsofts's Windows Azure Caching with memcache protocol support and Amazon's Amazon ElastiCache. Websites that use Memcache are Craigslist, Twitter, and Wikipedia.

  • Latest ownCloud Enterprise Edition to be Deployed Fully On-Premises

    The heat in the file sharing and sync space just went a few degrees higher as ownCloud made a move towards reassuring enterprise buyers of the security and reliability of its open source software, and satisfying the simplicity and convenience of end-users' needs.

    ownCloud is set to launch an updated Enterprise Edition next month. According to the software firm, the nearly one million users will be receiving an update they can deploy fully on-premises.

    Among the new additions and capabilities of this latest ownCloud EE are integration of home directory via CIFS/SMB or NFS, provisioning API, LDAP and AD integration, and AES encryption for data at rest. In short, there is integrating into existing governance processes, user directories, storage, monitoring, back-up, and security tools. Users can also get access to file sharing, file versioning, and external file system mounts by acquiring plug-in apps.

    ownCloud stored content can be accessed via mobile apps for iOS and Android devices, desktop syncing apps for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, as well as through a web browser. As of July, the update is available at the official ownCloud website at a monthly cost of $15 for an annual subscription, the users being a minimum of 50.

    This move comes at a time when the file sync'n'share world is having escalated activity from the likes of Box and EMC. Box is adding glamorous speakers for its September BoxWorks customer event and EMC is revving up Syncplicity.

  • Western Digital Offers the Thinnest Spinning Terabyte Drive Ever


    For those looking for the latest storage options, once again Western Digital does not disappoint. Their latest offering is in the form of a size-zero drive that allows for a massive 143GB for every millimeter. Western Digital has just begun shipping these beauties.

    This Western Digital Blue Drive is a miniscule 7mm thick and has around one to two different 500GB platters installed inside. There are different data capacities offered in 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750GB and even a 1TB (two platters will be required for the 750GB and the 1TB options).

    This new Blue Drive has all of the expected capabilities to keep it spinning and providing the data delivery that users expect. Featuring ShockGuard to prevent knocks and other movements from disabling it, this drive is more stable than others. The Blue spins at an incredible speed of 5,400rpm.

    Already, Acer and ASUS are most likely going to be shipping their latest models with the Blue installed. Intel is also in the mix stating that Ultrabooks that contain Haswell processors would work perfectly with the WD Blue drive.

    This Blue drive comes with a 2-year warranty and states that it is able to withstand 600,000 loads and unloads. The 1TB version of Blue is available now at around $139.00. You can view all of the specs and details on the Western Digital website.

  • Seagate Vows to Bring Shingles and More Storage in 2014

    Seagate hopes to deliver to its customers, shingled magnetic recording disk drives with enhanced storage set releasing later in 2013 and in 2014. They plan to introduce HAMR, or heat-assisted magnetic recording technology, which will be released two years ahead of schedule. This early release could be due to Seagate's reaction to the helium gas attack prepared by the WD division HGST.

    Shingled magnetic recording functions by overlapping data tracks to create extra space. SMR will be issued on disk drives as revealed to Rocky Pimental, primary marketing and sales executive, at Stifel Tech conference by Andy Rakers, an analyst for Stifle Nicolaus. Perpendicular Magnetic technology for disk drives is entering the final stages of development since any additional reduction of magnetized bits causes them to be unstable, which means that storage companies should proceed to a more modern technology.

    Pimental stated the new technology would give the drives an extra 20-25% raise in density. Upgrading the disk drive to SMR would increase space to 5 TB. He also mentioned Seagate will begin distributing the 5mm dense 2.5 inch dual disk drive with a hybrid form in tablet PCs and other lightweight notebooks later in 2013. Last March, Seagate talked about a decade of HAMR technology which could generate a 3.5 inch drive with storage capacities of 60TB. Western Digital and Toshiba have made no announcements about the technology they prefer, though, a contest can be expected between HGST applying helium plus SMR and Seagate using HAMR and SMR. Pimental said the premium cost will not be important for shipping over one million hard drives

  • Facebook, Google and Amazon reportedly outsourcing new storage product orders to Taiwan-based ODMs

    Inexpensive data storage boxes from Taiwan are being picked up in lieu of storage arrays from Dell, EMC, HP and NetApp by Facebook and other vast data-centre operators such as Google and Amazon.

    Supply chain insiders say that the juggernaut that is Facebook is about to buy bargain storage kits from original design manufacturers, or ODMs, based in Taiwan. Original design manufacturers work with customer specifications to design and produce hardware. Both Quanta Computer and Wistron will be likely bidders for Facebook's supply contracts.

    Facebook looks to save a small fortune by using arrays defined by its Open Compute Project standard and running its own software. It's quite possible this may not even occur, as reports from Far East supply chain sources tend to be a little questionable, but the information is interesting nonetheless.

    Using ODMs for storage gear doesn't come as a big surprise; Facebook is merely following a trend. According to Digitimes, Google buys all its servers from ODMs and Amazon follows suit about 30 per cent of the time.

    Sales of standardised hardware via distribution channel partners to the West and beyond could start happening anytime. Amazon, Baidu and other cloud giants are likely to expand their services into the cloud; businesses are purchasing fewer storage arrays because of the cloud, so it's no surprise that Amazon, Baidu and others are making forays into this area.

    DEY Storage, a startup company, claims it can follow the trend started by Amazon, Facebook and Google. The company claims they can unbundle "storage management from the physical layer to provide customers with a storage system which is massively scalable and designed to align and integrate with their services-based infrastructures".

    The current crop of servers, storage and network switch vendors may have to look to Taiwan for a new model if they want to continue to be successful.

  • Cloud Storage Vendors Aggressively Slash Prices Again

    Since November, the three leading cloud storage vendors have slashed prices for data storage per month, offering massive discounts for the first terabyte. Amazon Web Services reduced prices by up to 28% to 9.5 cents, extending reductions to its nine regional centers. Google Cloud Storage dropped data rates by 30% to 8.5 cents. Microsoft Windows Azure slashed its prices by 12% to 8.5 cents.

    Vendors are cutting prices to attract as many early cloud adopters as possible, with the knowledge that switching service provider later might prove to be difficult for customers.

    "It's definitely a race, but it's a land grab," said Terri McClure, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). "The race is to the bottom to get more data into the cloud. They are trying to accelerate adoption because the service is very sticky. Once data is in the cloud, it's hard to switch providers."

    Steve Zivanic, vice president of marketing at Nirvanix, a San Diego based cloud storage provider, said the three dormant cloud providers keep competing on price because their services are similar.

    "If you have no technology differentiation between clouds, then it's the same as disk-drive vendors waging a war for the lowest price per raw drive," said Steve Zivanic, "The key is to wrap advanced storage services around the physical drive and sell business value of that overall service. The price cuts between Amazon, Google and Azure are basically battles for cheap, raw online disk."

    An analyst for IT infrastructure and cloud at 451 Research Cloud, Carl Brooks said that while storage prices have come down, the costs of bandwidth, replication, security, compliance and maintenance, make the price of cloud storage high compared to on-premises storage.

    "Cloud providers are well over the cost of actually provisioning on-premises storage," said Carl Brooks. "Hard drives are almost a commodity at this point. We have not seen that in the cloud market. The trend behind the price cuts are more about cloud providers trying to get ahead of the trend. They don't want to be undercut by other vendors."

    "Amazon, Azure and Google cut prices to continue to be relevant," Brooks said further. "You are going to see price competition for a couple of years, and you will see cloud service providers go out of business.

  • OCZ Launches SATA III-based Vector SSD Series

    OCZ, SSD supplier, was recently saddled with a fallible CEO and is now under new direction. OCZ has launched its new consumer SSD through the use of its in-house controller technology, called the Vector.

    OCZ's tumultuous story from a promising start-up to a failing business can be found through this link (insert link). The new power of OCZ, Ceo Ralph Schmitt announced that the product was almost exclusively developed under the previous CEO by using the technology that was purchased with Indilinx in March 2011.

    Schmitt states that the product consists of a 7mm thick 2.5-inch format SSD that is shipped out with a 3.5 inch adapter. It comes in 128Gb and 512 GB capacities. It features a 6Gbit/s SATA interface. The performance numbers are pretty impressive: 100,000 random read IOPS, 550MB/sec and a sequential read bandwidth at 530MB/sec for sequential wiring. These numbers only apply to the compressed or uncompressed data. The device has a five year warranty that guarantees that it will perform 20GB of host writes per day.

    This device uses the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller with MLC NAND, reported the CEO Ralph Schmitt. He also informed the press that these are some of the first SSD products that are delivered by the new OCZ and they offer leverage with a cutting-edge controller technology that has the ability to deliver groundbreaking levels of both sustained reliability and performance for customers who require a superior SSD for their high-performance computer applications and programs.

    Onyx 3 is a 120GB-240GB MLC SSD using an earlier Barefoot 2 controller from Indilinx and is positioned as a low cost, value product. It is well outclassed by Vector doing a maximum of 23,000 random read IOPS, 235MB/sec sequential reads and 230MB/sec sequential writes.

    OCZ will not be required to pay any license per their component fees to have the ability to use this technology as they would if they were using LSI Sandforce controllers.

    Their existing 2.5 inch consumer SSDs include the Onyx, Vertex, and the Agility product lines. The Vertex 4 uses MLC NAND and has a capacity range from 64GB up to 512GB. It has the same 6Gbit/s SATA interface. The Vertex performs up to 95,000 random read IOPS with incompressible data. It has 560MB/sec sequential reads and 520MB/sec sequential writes. The product uses the Indilinx controller and also has a 5 year warranty. Vector will be replacing Vertex 4 with a smaller amount of performance improvement.

    The Agility 4 is also another MLC, 6Gbit/s SATA and there is a SAS version as well. The Agility 4 performs 48,000 random read IOPS and 85,000 random write s at 400MB/sec on both sequential reads and writes. Vector clearly outperforms it.

    Onyx 3 is a 120GB to 240GB MLC SSD that uses an older Barefoot 2 controller from Indilinx and is a low cost valued product. It is very well outclassed by Vector, only performing a maximum of 23,000 random read IOPS at 235MB/sec on sequential reads and 230MB/sec on sequential writes.

    OCZ will probably introduce Barefoot 3 controllers into other products in its range, using SAS and they are looking forward to improving their gross margin on products using Barefoot 3. If it performs as they expect and is reliable enough, then OCZ can look to gain a better product reputation, one of their weakest areas of business.

  • Cloud Storage Supports Genealogists

    The benefits of Cloud Storage have been brought to bear in many different industries, from finance to real estate and certainly personal computing. But genealogists have been taking advantage of the off-site storage with more and more frequency, due to the safety and security it offers.

    Genealogists spend years researching their findings, and the specter of losing all of that effort can be terrifying. Cloud Storage completely removes those fears. If a genealogist experiences a malfunctioning hard drive, it could cost them dearly. With all of their data stored in the cloud, no type of physical storage issue, no matter how extreme, can cause the irrevocable loss of work.

    Another useful benefit of Cloud Storage is the fact that data can be accessed from several different devices, in a variety of locations. That means a genealogist can access the same file and continue his work, whether on a personal computer, an office workstation, or a mobile device in transit between the two.

    File-sharing is also made much easier thanks to Cloud Storage technology. Many genealogists must share their findings regularly with associates, and also want to deliver summations to clients and family. Many Cloud Storage services come with file-sharing built in. If both parties have a Dropbox, SkyDrive or Box account, they can access and download files from any of their devices, making the sharing of even the most complicated or lengthy genealogy report an instant endeavor.

    Cloud Storage probably won’t completely take the place of physical storage, at least not until several more years of consistent, worry-free service are accrued. But at some point, the physical hard drive might end up a relic of the past, much like the names genealogists pour over during their studies.