IDEAS Insights

HDS Device Manager Unifies Block and File Management

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) recently introduced the Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) 100 platform to replace its Adaptable Module Storage (AMS) 2000 family of midrange products. HUS employs the gateway-based architecture of HDS's NAS solutions, featuring an enhanced version of the AMS 2000 FC/iSCSI SAN arrays attached to the Hitachi NAS Platform (HNAS) 3080/3090 gateways. The key enabler of this unified storage solution is the Hitachi Device Manager software, which integrates more deeply with HNAS in order to provide converged management for file and block storage. While HUS already offers a converged software-licensing scheme for block- and file-based features, the updated Device Manager software will now technically enable the same level of unified manageability for all HNAS-based solutions, benefitting many existing customer installations.

Architecture of the HUS 150 (source: HDS)

Oracle Systems Strategy Remains Steady, Focus Turns to Execution

Several IDEAS analysts attended Oracle Industry Analyst World 2012 at its campus in Redwood City, CA a few weeks ago. At this annual event, Oracle provided an update on its strategy to maximize the value that can be gained from integrating its hardware and software assets into complete solutions. The event focused primarily on Oracle’s customer momentum, as well as a review of some hardware and software announcements made since last year’s analyst conference. Oracle took this opportunity to remind analysts that its strategy feels solid and that it does not need to be tweaked on a yearly basis.

 

The USA 76 America's Cup Class Racing Yacht Used by Oracle Racing 

EMC Takes Clouds to the Channel with VSPEX

Storage and server vendors alike are ramping up their efforts to deliver converged infrastructure systems, which combine storage, servers, and networking into a single, preintegrated solution. EMC has targeted this opportunity through its VCE partnership with Cisco and VMware. However, VCE products such as Vblock Infrastructure Platforms have appealed mainly to larger enterprises demanding improved ease of use and fast time to deployment, as well as service providers building out cloud services. Now, EMC has announced VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, a set of prevalidated configurations that includes servers, storage, networking, and virtualization. Delivered exclusively through the channel, VSPEX is aimed at small and midsize businesses (SMBs) that prefer more flexibility of choice in server, network, and virtualization technologies than is offered in Vblocks.

IDEAS Releases Free Storage Hypervisor Evaluation Tool

Server hypervisors have introduced a new level of efficiency to the IT environment, and many enterprises are eager to virtualize storage in similar fashion to maximize their productivity. To facilitate this process, IDEAS has created a storage hypervisor scorecard – a deep functional evaluation of storage hypervisor products from DataCore, IBM, and Virsto – in an effort to identify key storage hypervisor differentiators.

Symantec Takes Lead in Snapshot Integration with NetBackup

The increasing demand for 24x7 availability of data can wreak havoc on backup operations. Advances in backup software technology have shortened backup windows, but such windows still exist and frequently disrupt host operations by disabling write access to achieve consistency. Snapshots provide a method to avoid consistency and host-disruption issues while delivering superior recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTO and RPO), compared to traditional backup methods. Thus, snapshots are becoming the first line of defense in data protection. With the new Replication Director feature in its popular NetBackup software, Symantec has recognized this trend and stepped up efforts to further integrate snapshots into backup and recovery.

 

Intel’s Romley-EP Ratchets Up Performance and Energy Efficiency

On March 6, Intel launched its latest platform for two-socket servers. The Romley-EP platform consists of the E5-2600 Sandy Bridge-EP processors and the C600 Patsburg chipset. Following Intel’s Tick-Tock development model, the E5-2600 is fabricated using the same 32-nm process as the previous chip generation, but it incorporates substantial enhancements to help deliver better energy efficiency, higher performance, more security, and more intelligent management.

HDD Price Increases from Thailand Floods Felt Mostly in Low-End and Midrange Storage Systems

In October 2011, an overactive monsoon season led to the worst flooding of central Thailand in 50 years. Thailand is home to the production facilities of several of the world's largest HDD manufacturers, including Western Digital, Seagate, and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The aftermath of the floods left several major factories submerged under water, resulting in damaged inventory and production shutdowns. Industry analysts warned this could lead to a global HDD shortage, and consequently a rise in prices. Now that several months have passed, one can begin to assess the true impact of the floods on the HDD market. Have HDD prices risen? And if so, how do these increases affect overall storage system prices?

Dell’s 12G Servers Are Engineered to Take the Heat

Dell rolled out a new line of 12G servers this week that it claims are more powerful and much easier to manage than previous generations. Like similar announcements from competitors, this announcement focused on Dell’s high-level strategy and capabilities instead of detailing the components inside the boxes. For hardware, Dell is updating virtually all of its two-socket blades, towers, and rack servers with the new architecture. But it is not necessarily the core server hardware that catches our interest; it is all of the extras Dell has wrapped around the hardware. During development of the 12G servers, Dell says it received design input from 7,700 customers in 17 countries and four continents, and 500 evaluation units have been out since October, ensuring that Dell got this one right.

Mellanox Poised to Attack the Storage Network Market

Mellanox is a proven solution enabler for high-performance computing (HPC). Its InfiniBand (IB)-based interconnects have been widely used in HPC clusters, including clustered storage systems. However, customers have often overlooked the fact that Mellanox is also an end-to-end fabric provider with high-quality, low-priced Ethernet-based products. Recently, Mellanox announced a new top-of-rack 10/40GbE switch with industry-leading density and industry-first PCIe 3.0-compliant network interface cards (NICs). These new products should help solidify Mellanox’s technical leadership in the highly competitive Ethernet fabric market. With more and more network storage systems offering support for iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) host connectivity, IDEAS expects Mellanox to play a more significant role in the storage network market, especially considering that Mellanox’s storage optimization technologies are already embedded in its network interconnect offerings.

Source: Mellanox

Widespread Adoption of Flash in 2012 Will Force Vendors to Improve Storage Management Software

This is the third of four articles that review the details behind IDEAS predictions for 2012. The first two articles focused on the drivers of cloud computing adoption and the changing landscape of client devices.

In 2012, the lines between servers and storage will continue to blur as systems vendors focus on solutions that integrate flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs) into servers, either complementing or replacing hard-disk drives (HDDs). As a result, a need will arise for storage management software that can bridge storage arrays and servers. Automated storage management solutions will also become increasingly important in emerging markets.