Primary storage devices

Qumulo P-Series packs NVMe into scale-out NAS

Qumulo goes after organizations with large, unstructured data stores that have a new need for speed with its all-flash NVMe P-Series scale-out NAS, which holds up to 24 NVMe SSD drives in a node. Continue Reading

Latest data storage technology takes application-centric approach

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SAN purchase and deployment criteria by the numbers

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Learn storage techniques for managing unstructured data use

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Seven ways to unlock the power of all types of unstructured data

New storage services have emerged to help IT pros maintain and deliver access to ever-larger and more valuable data sets, particularly all types of unstructured data. These include data sets for big data analysis, DevOps, storage self-service and cost-control purposes, among other things. This data explosion is the result of several trends, including growth of files and file systems, machine-generated data streams, web-scale application exhaust, endless file versioning, finer-grained backups and rollback snapshots. If you're architecting a new approach to storage and dealing with various types of unstructured data storage at a global enterprise scale, we have seven advanced storage capabilities you should consider.

The on-demand nature of the cloud has not only changed the way enterprises consume and pay for IT resources, it has profoundly altered our understanding and expectations of IT services and infrastructure in general. More enterprises expect to obtain the features they want when they want them and to pay for those features only when and if they need them. This has been acutely felt by vendors and consumers alike in the fragmented and dynamic storage market. It has altered how storage providers deliver expected core features, such as deduplication, replication, compression and encryption, and has led to the development of niche products that meet application-specific needs and use cases. This issue clarifies the new and evolving data storage landscape to help you buy and deploy the right storage products with the features you require and more easily acquire the products you may need in the future.

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Latest data storage technology takes application-centric approach

These data storage strategies support the use cases customers want without breaking the bank or forcing them to buy technology they don't really need. Continue Reading

SAN purchase and deployment criteria by the numbers

Capacity and application needs drive businesses to deploy new storage area network systems, while criteria such as number of LUNs and multipathing are key to purchasing decisions. Continue Reading

Learn storage techniques for managing unstructured data use

Rearchitect storage to maximize unstructured data use at the global scale for larger data sets coming from big data analytics and other applications. Continue Reading

Upgraded Infinidat InfiniBox hoists sail on product launch

Infinidat disk arrays double capacity to 8 petabytes per rack. The new InfiniBox products include InfiniSync DR box, InfiniGuard backup appliance and the Infinidat-hosted Neutrix Cloud. Continue Reading

Dell data storage remains the weak link in FY18 revenue

Finding a way to grow enterprise storage and data protection will comprise a major focus for Dell Technologies this year, company executives told analysts during an earnings call on Wednesday. Dell ... Continue Reading

Primary storage optimization overcomes a range of challenges

Enterprises turn to different products, technologies and tools to optimize primary storage, overcome data storage challenges and make networked storage deployments more efficient. Continue Reading

Nexsan arrays 'ARM' national lab with redundant disk storage

Nexsan Unity disk arrays are based on a dual-controller NST platform. Argonne National Lab uses the storage for continuous operations in inhospitable environments. Continue Reading

Primary storage optimization overcomes a range of challenges

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The future of flash storage: Is NVMe right for your enterprise?

Cracks in the SAS and SATA protocols started to appear with the rise of SSDs and the exponential performance improvements they delivered over HDD technology. This led to the development of the nonvolatile memory express protocol to exploit flash's potential. As the future of flash storage, NVMe addresses many of SAS and SATA's shortcomings by, among other things, connecting storage devices closer to the processor to reduce latency and introducing parallelism using multiple I/O queues and greater queue depth to match flash's ability to process many requests in parallel -- something SAS and SATA drives can't do. NVMe SSD adoption is leading to new storage architectures and helping give rise to disaggregated approaches to storage. NVMe-based devices come at a cost premium, however. Find out if and when you should move to NVMe and what the best use cases are for the future of flash storage and your enterprise.

Monetizing malware through ransomware has led to massive financial losses for companies worldwide. Ransomware is a megabillion-dollar industry and is becoming more sophisticated all the time. Although data backup restoration remains the best way to deal with a ransomware attack, it's no longer foolproof. It's time to rethink your organization's backup and restoration processes, acknowledge the hidden dangers of replication and revisit your permissions model to strengthen your defenses against the ransomware threat. Here's how.

Economic espionage, the theft of intellectual property and trade secrets, is another threat U.S. companies face. It can be rogue employees with access to company information doing the stealing, but most often, cybercriminals commit the crime. Effectively combatting economic espionage requires implementing a range of IT measures covered in this article.

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WekaIO CEO says focus will stay on AI, life sciences

WekaIO CEO Liran Zvibel sees partnerships with HPE, Mellanox and AWS as key for the startup, as it pursues growth opportunities in artificial intelligence and life sciences. Continue Reading

More Nimble, HPE storage revenue jumps 24%

Hewlett Packard Enterprise storage sales rebounded last quarter, thanks to the addition of Nimble Storage and an improvement of the 3PAR SAN platform. HPE storage revenue of $948 million grew 24% ... Continue Reading

RackTop Systems, Seagate launch secure NAS

RackTop Secure Data Protection Platform transfers data to cloud or other storage systems. It is intended for enterprises with compliance requirements. Continue Reading

Best data storage products 2017: Products of the Year

Storage magazine names winners of 2017 Products of the Year awards for best storage products in backup and DR, software-defined storage, storage arrays and management tools. Continue Reading

Datrium DVX 3.0

Datrium impresses judges and wins top honors with its DVX storage architecture, designed to sidestep latency and deliver performance and speed at scale. Continue Reading

Infinidat InfiniBox 3.0

InfiniBox 3.0 stores data on disk, deploying a small amount of flash as an acceleration tier. Its caching algorithm ensures the hottest data is on the fastest storage media. Continue Reading

Pure FlashBlade

Pure Storage FlashBlade is optimized for unstructured data analytics. Its system-on-a-chip architecture uses custom NAND flash blades to accelerate data and its metadata. Continue Reading

NVMe flash hopeful E8 Storage goes software-only route

All-flash array startup E8 Storage has expanded into reference architecture with the launch of a software-only version. The new product, E8 Storage Software, runs on rack servers from Dell EMC, ... Continue Reading

Report: Dell-EMC storage aftermath may trigger IPO

Is the Dell EMC storage merger causing buyer’s remorse? According to published report, Dell Technologies is considering a return to the public market to satisfy the massive debt incurred from its ... Continue Reading

Startup Liqid looks to make a splash in composable storage

Liqid composable storage infrastructure is based on Liqid Grid's custom PCIe fabric switch and orchestration to provision bare-metal servers from disaggregated devices. Continue Reading

Eight data storage startup vendors to watch in 2018

Even as other storage startup companies fail, newcomers have appeared to take on established enterprise vendors. Can they ride the momentum for flash, hybrid cloud and SDS? Continue Reading

SDS, HCI and CDP are key to dream enterprise storage system

Easy to implement and manage may be the buzzwords of the day for enterprise data storage systems, but too often daily experiences of IT professionals belie that rosy scenario. Continue Reading

iXsystems: 'weird' but profitable NAS vendor

Here’s something you rarely hear from high tech companies today: “We’re a hardware company in our heart and soul.” That is how executive vice president Brett Davis introduced iXsystems during a ... Continue Reading

Quantum Xcellis scale-out NAS tackles unstructured data

Quantum's new system takes on scale-out NAS and object markets. The vendor says its Xcellis NAS tier will scale from 40 TB to petabytes without a performance hit. Continue Reading

Hitz: NetApp market growth hinges on cloud, data management

Storage stalwart NetApp celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2017. NetApp founder Dave Hitz reflects on its evolution and the impact of Cloud OnTap, Data Fabric and SolidFire HCI. Continue Reading

Dell EMC all-flash surge collides with softening storage demand

Growth in Dell EMC all-flash storage is one of the bright spots in what remains a tough slog for legacy array vendors. Dell Technologies on Thursday reported consolidated revenue of $19.6 billion ... Continue Reading

Qumulo File Fabric fuses on-prem, cloud storage for studio

Qumulo's File Fabric gives FuseFX ability to burst workloads into Amazon Web Services, giving it a virtual fourth location for file storage for its special effects rendering. Continue Reading

Infinidat embeds SAN, NAS replication in InfiniBox R4

Infinidat's software upgrade eschews SCSI in favor of custom IP-based replication protocol. The vendor claims InfiniBox R4 delivers target writes at sub-400-millisecond latency. Continue Reading

Panasas storage, director blades split into separate devices

Panasas hybrid storage offers 57 PB of raw capacity with 200 shelves. ActiveStor Director 100 sits atop a rack of Panasas arrays. Customers can scale types and capacities of media. Continue Reading

Dell EMC all-flash SC Series prepped for launch

Dell EMC all-flash inclusive added to the mix for SC Series and Unity arrays. The vendor said each of the midrange storage products has a large customer base. Continue Reading

Are you ready for NVMe storage and the future of flash?

Three factors to consider beyond technical capabilities before designing and investing money and resources in a low-latency NVMe flash storage network. Continue Reading

Elastifile scores OEM deal with Dell EMC

Cloud NAS vendor Elastifile has struck an OEM deal with Dell EMC, one of the startup’s first investors. Dell EMC will integrate Elastifile Cloud File System and CloudConnect cloud transfer and ... Continue Reading

Cisco telemetry data gets streamed from MDS 9700 32G modules

Cisco SAN telemetry sensors capture insight on network fabrics to aid capacity and infrastructure management. The FC feature provides real-time instrumentation analytics. Continue Reading

Hard disk vs. flash storage: The fight of the century?

When deciding which storage method you want in your corner, the benefits of flash storage are very appealing. But should you forget about hard disk arrays entirely? Continue Reading

Gen 6 Fibre Channel helps support flash, but lacks adoption

Sixth generation Fibre Channel has the potential to solve fabric-level bottlenecks, but companies tend to choose Ethernet because it has evolved more rapidly. Continue Reading

Buying NAS: Do you want performance and scalability?

Although SANs still rule the modern the data center, the NAS array maintains a position high up on tech buyers' shopping lists for new primary storage. Continue Reading

A year later: Pros and cons of the Dell and EMC merger

Our experts take measure of the Dell EMC acquisition, the storage and technology merger of the century, a little more than 12 months after the deal closed. Continue Reading

Multicloud storage mitigates risk of public cloud lock-in

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Scality Connect ports S3 apps to Azure Blob storage

Scality's Connect software opens access to Microsoft Azure Blob services for S3 API-compatible applications, making it easier to port S3 API apps to Microsoft cloud storage. Continue Reading

Data Dynamics StorageX 8.0 adds analysis, S3 support

Data Dynamics beefs up StorageX file management software with new single-view analysis portal and support for Amazon S3 API-compliant object storage. Continue Reading

Microsoft Azure taps NetApp Ontap for native NFS storage

NetApp Ontap will become available in Microsoft public cloud as the Azure Enterprise NFS Service. Will we see NetApp do the same for Amazon Web Services? Continue Reading

Investigate how copy data management systems curb data sprawl

The top copy data management vendors offer innovative products to reduce the staggering amount of data that organizations create by replicating multiple copies of production data. Continue Reading

Infinidat boxes up $95M funding haul

Infinidat picked up $95 million in funding today to help fuel an aggressive product expansion – including moves into secondary storage and a public cloud offering. Goldman Sachs Private Capital ... Continue Reading

Dell EMC’s XC (Nutanix) HCI box protects MS Hyper-V VMs

Dell EMC today enhanced its Nutanix-powered XC hyper-converged platform by adding data protection features for Microsoft Windows Hyper-V. The news, made during Microsoft Ignite, shows Dell EMC is ... Continue Reading

Branson’s Veritas Vision 2017 warning: Act now on climate

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson stepped away from his hurricane relief efforts last week to warn against climate change inaction at Veritas Vision 2017 in Las Vegas. Branson said the recent ... Continue Reading

Enter Your Great Storage Product in the Products of the Year Competition

In just a few days, the door will shut—and your outstanding data storage product will be left standing out in the cold rather than in the running for a Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Storage ... Continue Reading

Tegile becomes the latest Western Digital acquisition

Western Digital's acquisition spree continues with the pickup of flash vendor Tegile Systems. The drive-maker says Tegile storage complements its ActiveScale object storage. Continue Reading

Tegile IntelliFlash array family welcomes all-NVMe sibling

A rack of Tegile's IntelliFlash N Series NVMe arrays scales to 60 PB of effective capacity. Tegile promises 3 million IOPS in a single array with full data services at low latency. Continue Reading

Disaggregation enables on-demand resource pool management and creation

Disaggregation may not be a new concept, but it has become more important to IT in recent years. Here, it means breaking computers down to the core elements of compute, memory, I/O, storage, cache, network fabric and so on, to enable resource pool management and create more agile, cost-effective data centers. Done correctly, disaggregation lets you stand up and break down infrastructures almost instantly while better serving the needs of individual applications. Meanwhile, resource utilization soars, and resource pool management costs decline because of the automation that's enabled. Delve into the world of disaggregation and find out how vendors are applying the concept to their products.

Hybrid cloud storage can let you run, manage and move primary storage workloads between the cloud and on-premises data center. It can also improve IT agility and cut costs. Today, a number of products and services fulfill the promise of the hybrid cloud like never before, knocking down barriers that have inhibited wider adoption. Hybrid cloud products open new possibilities for deploying production applications, but you must choose wisely.

Pundits have predicted the demise of the hard disk for years. Not only is solid-state much faster than hard disks, the price differential between the two storage technologies is rapidly disappearing. Yet the HDD vs. SDD controversy continues with the death of the former still a long way off. The question shouldn't be when hard disks will disappear, but instead, how to best use flash technology within the memory-storage continuum that starts with tape and goes to L1 cache, the fastest and most expensive memory in a system.

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HDD vs. SSD: Is there room for disk in a solid-state world?

Although SSD vs. HDD speed is vastly different, for the foreseeable future, hard disks will have a place in our increasingly solid-state and even DRAM-centered data centers. Continue Reading

HDD vs. SSD: Is there room for disk in a solid-state world?

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Disaggregating network, compute and storage allocation demystified

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Startup Morro Data launches CloudNAS services for SMBs

Startup Morro Data makes available hybrid cloud storage services for SMBs, blending an on-premises cache appliance for frequently accessed data and Amazon S3 or Backblaze. Continue Reading

SoftNAS Cloud NAS software paces itself when moving petabytes

SoftNAS engineers encountered a problem early this year with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure clouds that caused a delay in the SoftNAS Cloud NAS 3.5 release. The engineers hit a snag while ... Continue Reading

TrueNAS X10: iXsystems' open source storage contender

The TrueNAS X10 entry-level hybrid array from iXsystems provides a low-cost alternative to legacy arrays. The unified array scales to 360 TB in 6U for $55,000. Continue Reading

New WekaIO file system incorporates flash, object store

WekaIO launched its scale-out file system, which is optimized for server-based flash storage and designed to tier data to cheaper object storage on premises and in public clouds. Continue Reading

Hyper-converged infrastructure vendors offer range of storage options

Hyper-converged infrastructure vendors have integrated software-defined storage, compute and networking into easy-to-use, turnkey appliances. But the transition from a traditional, three-tier architecture to a hyper-converged data center can take getting used to. That's why it's important to carefully assess hyper-converged infrastructure vendors and the HCI appliances they offer when making this change. We'll show you ways to simplify the process.

Today, we mostly store unstructured data on NFS-based NAS file servers. More efficient, flexible and practical object storage is a rising alternative, however, particularly in products that layer file-based interfaces on top of object-based storage for the best of both worlds.

Tiering and caching can make a huge difference in active data storage performance. These two processes work in different ways, however. Tiering is about more than distributing data into hot, warm and cold tiers, while caching increases the speed of reads and writes. Both tiering and caching require choices.

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IT infrastructure transformation: Backbone of the digital revolution

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With trepidation, Tintri storage takes Nasdaq plunge

Tintri heads into the July 4 holiday wearing a new status symbol: publicly traded company. Still, it's initial public offering came a day late and $40 million short. Shares in Tintri storage ... Continue Reading

FlexPod SF converges NetApp SolidFire onto Cisco hardware

SUNNYVALE, California -- NetApp today launched its second SolidFire-based converged product this month, this time in partnership with Cisco. The FlexPod SF extends the FlexPod converged ... Continue Reading

Dell EMC storage revenue drops – was the calendar to blame?

Dell EMC revenue from storage systems in the first quarter dropped 16% from 2016 according to IDC, a fall Dell EMC executives blame on a change in the vendor’s reporting calendar. Dell EMC uses the ... Continue Reading

DDN GRIDScaler parallel file system aids consolidation

To consolidate storage, Van Andel Institute chose DataDirect Networks' GRIDScaler GS7K parallel file system arrays and WOS object platform for active archiving. Continue Reading

Solving enterprise-class storage challenges in the age of convergence

In this age of data center convergence, with technology evolving faster than ever, planning how to transition from traditional yet rigid environments to more agile software-defined ones is among the trickiest challenges facing IT shops today. Fortunately, a plethora of options exist to lengthen the life of or implement a wholesale replacement of current enterprise-class storage.

Rapid advancements and developments such as memory-based flash DIMMs, the emergence of nonvolatile memory express, greater densities and lower prices enable flash data storage to meet the requirements of the most demanding enterprise-class storage use cases.

The varied and competitive world of cloud-based disaster recovery has changed the way we protect and secure data to recover from disaster. Discover the must-have features to consider when shopping for a disaster recovery-as-a-service provider to protect enterprise-class storage.

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Multiprotocol unified storage systems poised for growth

With support for block, file or both types of data on the same device, unified storage architecture is a flexible storage option for the modern data center. Continue Reading

Multiprotocol unified storage systems poised for growth

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Tintri IPO filing shows spikes in sales, heavy losses

When technology executives discuss initial public offerings these days, they usually say how the goal has shifted from rapid growth to fiscal responsibility. In other words, investors want to see a ... Continue Reading

Speeds of storage networking technologies rise as flash use spikes

Speeds of storage networking technologies are rising as faster flash storage is gaining adoption, giving IT organizations more options to meet their performance needs. Continue Reading

HPE flash upgrade covers 3PAR, MSA, new Nimble array

Hewlett Packard Enterprise previews flash upgrades to 3PAR StoreServe and hybrid MSA systems, plus its first Nimble Storage array for reusing backup and copy data. Continue Reading

Infinite io clusters its network storage controller

The Infinite io network storage controller 'bump on the wire' proxy scans storage to capture metadata in flight and speed movement of inactive files to the cloud. Continue Reading

OpenStack Ocata storage projects add enterprise features

The Cinder, Swift and Manila OpenStack storage projects focused on performance, stability, scalability and enterprise-level capabilities in the latest Ocata release cycle. Continue Reading

Upgraded Nexsan Unity unified arrays get jolt of flash

Nexsan eliminated the need to run its E-Series arrays as Unity back-end storage. JBODs with RAID allow FASTier flash cache SSDs to run on 12 Gbps storage shelves. Continue Reading

All-flash data center still an idea in development

The concept of the all-flash data center isn't new, and as the cost of SSDs continue to decline, vendors are pushing the of the all-flash data center like never before. Reality is a different matter, though. When it comes to older data, slower technology tiers -- such as tape and high-capacity HDDs -- and the cloud can still save plenty of money and resources. So how much flash is enough? It depends.

IT resources must remain continuously available nowadays. Establishing data center resiliency through technologies like replication and erasure coding, as well as implementing continuous backup and instant recovery, is only a start. Learn how to develop a resiliency plan of your own.

An increasing array of backup, disaster recovery and archiving services has turned the public cloud into a favorite target for secondary and tertiary data. Advances have also made the cloud a viable option as a primary storage tier in the storage hierarchy. Particularly if tier-two or tier-one workloads could benefit from the scalability, resilience and broad accessibility the public cloud delivers. Here's why.

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Data center storage architecture gets smarter with AI

Trends, such as event-triggered computing, as exemplified by Lambda Architectures, converge on data center storage to hasten data center intelligence evolution. Continue Reading

Building an IT resiliency plan into an always-on world

A multipronged approach is the best protection against unaffordable and unacceptable downtime in today's 24/7 business cycle. Continue Reading

Scalability drives SAN market growth

Better performing, more scalable and capacious storage area networks are required for ever-growing amounts of unstructured data, demanding applications and big data analytics. Continue Reading

Is an all-flash data center worth it?

The elevated cost of flash technology is a reason to limit flash usage. Find out what other factors go into a flash purchase and how it's used in today's data centers. Continue Reading

Evolution of storage technology ending one-size-fits-all approach

Some storage vendors want you to think that one type of storage will work for all scenarios and enterprises. Thanks to changes in storage technology that's not always the case. Continue Reading

Symbolic IO IRIS a breakthrough in server, storage architecture

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Is an all-flash data center worth it?

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Scalability drives SAN market growth

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Data center storage architecture gets smarter with AI

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Evolution of storage technology ending one-size-fits-all approach

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Western Digital earnings rosy, NAND issues remain

Western Digital reported a solid $4.6 billion in revenue during last week's earnings call yet chip and NAND flash supply issues hang over the vendor. Western Digital, which sells hard disk drive ... Continue Reading

All-flash Synology FlashStation NAS welcomes 'little brother'

Midrange NAS provider Synology America Corp. is expanding its FlashStation all-flash storage platform. Synology FlashStation FS2017, which became available April 27, is the "little brother" to the ... Continue Reading

Seagate sees 10 TB drives as sweet spot

While much of the storage world is talking up NVM Express and other flash technologies, Seagate is pushing ahead with shingled magnetic recording, heat-assisted magnetic recording and large ... Continue Reading

New Virtual Instruments software improves NAS, flash models

Version 5.3 of Virtual Instruments' Load DynamiX 5 software supports time-based NFSv3 workloads, eases preconditioning of flash arrays and improves the user interface. Continue Reading

Persistent container storage vendors take center stage

Portworx expands persistent storage features with PX-Enterprise upgrade. Virtuozzo Storage adds erasure coding to file and block, while StorageOS makes beta available. Continue Reading

Cisco gets MDS 9700 ready for 32-gig FC storage

Cisco 6 FC storage module brings 32 Gbps support across MDS 9700 director family. Cisco and partners certify UCS C-Series servers for 32 Gbps-ready host bus adapters. Continue Reading

Elastifile builds file system for cloud, flash storage

Elastifile's distributed file system designed for use with flash hardware and on-premises and public-cloud storage is adding CloudConnect capabilities for AWS and Google. Continue Reading

Toshiba ships capacity-optimized 8 TB HDD

Toshiba has started volume shipments of its MG Series 8 TB HDD -- the largest capacity-optimized, 3.5-inch enterprise HDD the company has ever produced. The 7,200 rpm, 6 Gbps SATA HDD improves ... Continue Reading

Flash, hybrid RealStor added to Seagate storage arrays

Hybrid and all-flash Seagate RealStor arrays are sold to original equipment makers to build branded storage systems. The all-flash pricing is pegged at less than $50,000. Continue Reading

Microsemi upgrades controllers based on HPE technology

Semiconductor maker Microsemi unveils SmartROC 3100 and SmartIOC 2100 SAS and SATA technology gained in the PMC-Sierra acquisition. The chipset is used to build custom server boards. Continue Reading

Qumulo funding set for sales/marketing expansion

Qumulo closed a $30 million funding round today, which the scale-out NAS startup will likely use to hire more former Isilon employees. Qumulo is striving to replace Isilon as the scale-out NAS ... Continue Reading

Purchase of NAS arrays driven by need for capacity, desire to expand

As unstructured data continues to lead storage growth, businesses are opting for scale-out NAS arrays to handle current and future capacity. Continue Reading

Red Hat Gluster Storage 3.2 boosts performance, containers

Red Hat's latest Gluster storage update improves performance, deepens container support and introduces space-saving alternative to three-way replication to ensure data integrity. Continue Reading

Purchase of NAS arrays driven by need for capacity, desire to expand

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