Category Archives: Storage

Data storage, storage subsystems, NAS systems, direct attached storage

SCI SPC-1 results analysis: Top 10 $/IOPS – chart-of-the-month

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Ray

Lower is better on this chart.  I can’t remember the last time we showed this Top 10 $/IOPS™ chart from the Storage Performance Council SPC-1 benchmark.  Recall that we prefer our IOPS/$/GB which factors in subsystem size but this past quarter two … Continue reading →

Posted in Block Storage, Disk storage, FC, SSD storage, storage economics, Storage performance, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SMB2.2 (CIFS) screams over InfiniBand

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Ray

I missed the MVP summit last month in Redmond, but I heard there was some more discussion of the Server Message Block v2.2 (SMB2.2, also known previously as CIFS) coming in Windows Server (R) 8. The big news is SMB2.2 … Continue reading →

Posted in Disk storage, Distributed computing, File Storage, Infiniband, Networking, RDMA, RoCE, Storage architecture, Storage performance, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Disk density hits new record, 1Tb/sqin with HAMR

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Ray

Well I thought 36TB on my Mac was going to be enough.  Then along comes Seagate with this weeks announcement of reaching 1Tb/sqin (1 Trillion bits per square inch) using their new HAMR (heat assisted magnetic recording) technology. Current LFF drive … Continue reading →

Posted in Disk storage, Storage density, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NSA’s huge (YBs) new data center to turn on in 2013

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Ray

  Ran across a story in Wired about the new NSA Utah data center today which is scheduled to be operational in September of 2013. This new data center is intended to house copies of all communications intercepted the NSA. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data index, data protection, Data security, Distributed computing, Information economy, Storage density, Strategic Inflection Points, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

What to do with 36TB on my Mac?

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Ray

Western Digital (WD) just released their new Digital MyBook Thunderbold Duo the other day and it features 2-2TB or -3TB disks and of course you can daisy chain up to 6 of these together just in case, for up to 36TB … Continue reading →

Posted in Data density, Disk storage, File Storage, Strategic Inflection Points | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Super Talent releases a 4-SSD, RAIDDrive PCIe card

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Ray

Not exactly sure what is happening, but PCIe cards are coming out containing multiple SSD drives. For example, the recently announced Super Talent RAIDDrive UpStream card contains 4 SAS embedded SSDs that can push storage capacity up to almost a TB … Continue reading →

Posted in SSD storage, Storage, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Storage performance matters, even for smartphones

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Ray

  Read an interesting article from MIT’s Technical Review about a study presented at last weeks Usenix FAST (File and Storage Technology) conference on How Data Storage Cripples Mobile Apps.  It seems storage performance can seriously slow down smartphone functioning, not … Continue reading →

Posted in SSD storage, Storage, Storage performance, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SCI’s Latest ESRP (v3) Performance Analysis for Over 5K mailboxes – chart of the month

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Ray

This chart comes from our analysis of Microsoft Exchange Reviewed Solutions Program (ESRP) v3 (Exchange 2010) performance results for the over 5000 mailbox category, a report sent out to SCI Storage Intelligence Newsletter subscribers last month. The total database backup throughput … Continue reading →

Posted in Block Storage, Disk storage, Storage, Storage Backup, Storage performance, System effectiveness | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment