News

Flash storage and solid-state drives (SSDs)

• November 02, 2021 02 Nov'21

  iXsystems entry-level NAS goes hyper-converged with TrueNAS Scale

  iXsystems TrueNAS can be a fraction of the cost of competitors and with a revamped operating system it can be built into clusters that can run virtual machines and containers

• October 21, 2021 21 Oct'21

  NetApp Insight frames moves to public cloud and cloud native

  Storage player highlights partnerships with cloud hyperscalers and development of Spot portfolio aimed at cloud-native applications, DevOps, FinOps and SecOps

• October 20, 2021 20 Oct'21

  Vast boosts QLC flash offer with ransomware-proof snapshots

  Vast majors on QLC flash bulk storage with 3D Xpoint cache to smooth out traffic into sequential flows

• October 20, 2021 20 Oct'21

  Spectra Logic unveils Vail hybrid cloud storage virtualisation

  Vail provides single pool of storage overlay to on-premise flash, disk and tape, plus cloud via object storage interface with Posix-compliance promised in future releases

• October 04, 2021 04 Oct'21

  Nexustorage aims at file and block access to object storage

  New Zealand-based startup to release Nexfs, which chops files into sub-file chunks and tiers them off to cheap and deep object stores with NFS and iSCSAI access for Posix applications

• September 28, 2021 28 Sep'21

  Pure launches Fusion cloud control layer for storage

  Pure Fusion is a storage control plane across cloud and datacentre. Portworx Data Services also launches to provide database management for container storage platform

• September 20, 2021 20 Sep'21

  Kioxia revisits SLC flash to power FL6 and rival Optane

  SLC flash storage – mostly consigned to the ‘where is it now?’ pile – has been given a lease of life by Kioxia as capacity for rapid access storage-class memory applications

• September 06, 2021 06 Sep'21

  NetApp and AWS launch fully managed Ontap cloud file storage

  But hybrid cloud still limited, according to NetApp. Until containerisation is widespread, applications tend to be built for the cloud or work better in the datacentre

• August 31, 2021 31 Aug'21

  More NAND SSD in fewer hands as WD $20m Kioxia bid likely

  The NAND flash market could soon go from six major players to four, but the fusion of Kioxia into WD and SK Hynix with Intel’s NAND business will still leave Samsung atop the pile

• August 03, 2021 03 Aug'21

  Panasas’s 10x saving bumps NetApp from HPC storage deployment

  University of Wollongong got 1.2PB for the cost of 100TB for HPC storage in its cryo-imaging institute. Scale-out NAS maker Panasas also brought life sciences expertise to bear

• July 06, 2021 06 Jul'21

  Manutan claws back 25% of storage admin time in switch to Pure

  Industrial and office supply giant needed to replace 3Par arrays then made a rapid switch to Pure Storage FlashArray flash storage when the ageing HPE hardware crashed during POC

• June 18, 2021 18 Jun'21

  Vast Data will offer containerised storage software, but not yet

  Vast Data sticking to its plan to provide no-tier “universal storage” via QLC flash and a 3D Xpoint read/write buffer that uses a containerised control plane

• June 02, 2021 02 Jun'21

  SA-based MSP shuns HCI for Nebulon cloud-defined storage

  SYSDBA needed to refresh its HPE 3PAR arrays, and so looked at hyper-converged but decided on cloud-defined storage from Nebulon that marries local storage with a cloud control plane

• May 25, 2021 25 May'21

  Valence brings storage virtualisation for the cloud era

  Startup 22dot6 launches Valence, software-defined storage that throws a virtualisation layer over any backend storage via multiple nodes that split metadata and storage services

• May 19, 2021 19 May'21

  Flexxon bakes AI into SSDs to fight unknown threats

  Singapore-based Flexxon has developed a solid-state drive that uses artificial intelligence to fend off malware and other unknown threats

• May 13, 2021 13 May'21

  Portworx gets container-native array management for Pure hardware

  Container storage player Portworx builds in container-native functionality to allow discovery, provisioning and management from inside Kubernetes cluster, but only on Pure arrays so far

• May 04, 2021 04 May'21

  Nebulon helps DCI offer high-performance edge hyper-converged

  Cambridge-based cloud and colo provider DCI will offer DataQube servers with Nebulon, which marries a cloud control plane with local PCIe-connected flash storage

• April 27, 2021 27 Apr'21

  Scality launches Artesca container-native object storage

  Object storage specialist gets on a burgeoning container object storage market with Artesca, which runs from Kubernetes to provide persistent storage for containerised applications

• April 21, 2021 21 Apr'21

  Winemaker racks Pure all-NVMe all-flash for rapid SAP response

  Concha Y Toro also pocketed a 35% saving in storage costs following a move from as-a-service storage provision to Pure Storage FlashArray//X all-flash hardware

• March 24, 2021 24 Mar'21

  IWM uses StorCycle to free capacity for all-flash SAN upgrade

  Imperial War Museums set to embark on unstructured data archiving project that will archive cold data to tape and free up capacity for a move to IntelliFlash all-flash SAN

• March 11, 2021 11 Mar'21

  Scottish farm subsidy body slashes dev time with Pure all-flash

  Rural directorate ditched hybrid flash EMC SAN for Pure all-flash storage and cut developer time in half, while beta testing Cloud Block Store and planning container project

• February 17, 2021 17 Feb'21

  Executive interview: Tapping APAC’s storage potential

  Lenovo’s head of storage in Asia-Pacific singles out the region’s market opportunities and predicts that the healthcare sector will go full-fledged with flash storage in the next year

• February 16, 2021 16 Feb'21

  C40, C60 R3, go! Pure adds to FlashArray//C QLC flash range

  Hybrid storage killers: Pure Storage adds entry-level FlashArray//C40 R3 QLC array plus re-CPUed C60 R3 that will scale to 5PB or more

• February 09, 2021 09 Feb'21

  IBM refreshes entry-level FlashSystem arrays with a little NVMe

  Big Blue refreshes three entry-level systems – the 5200, 5035 and 5015 – with the flagship of them gaining all-NVMe flash storage capability and cluster scaling to 10s of PB

• January 22, 2021 22 Jan'21

  MinIO stakes leadership claims in cloud object container storage

  2016 startup MinIO reckons it has first mover advantage as a container-native platform that provides private/cloud object storage in and orchestrated by Kubernetes

• January 14, 2021 14 Jan'21

  VVOLs and Pure win VM storage beauty parade for French chain

  VMware Virtual Volumes and a move from NetApp to Pure Storage saw cosmetics retailer Beauty Success make performance gains and eliminate bottlenecks in ordering and logistics

• January 11, 2021 11 Jan'21

  Malaysia’s storage market dips amid uncertainty

  Malaysia’s enterprise storage market declined 9.2% in 2020, but recovery is on the cards this year as business confidence improves

• December 23, 2020 23 Dec'20

  Top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

  Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud storage stories of 2020

• November 24, 2020 24 Nov'20

  Pure adds block, Azure and convergence to as-a-service offerings

  Pure customers can get its storage on-premise, in colocation or the cloud, and now it has added FlashArray C// block capacity and Flash Stack converged infrastructure to the catalogue

• November 10, 2020 10 Nov'20

  Canada ad firm subtracts 44U with HPE and Ctera hyper-converged

  Glenn Davis Group slashed its hardware estate from 48U of rack space to 4U when it ditched its SAN and tape legacy kit for flash-based Ctera X Series and cloud backup

• November 09, 2020 09 Nov'20

  Quantum’s ATFS aims to classify and manage unstructured data

  Quantum triumvirate now comprises ATFS for file system classification and management, StorNext for high performance with large files and ActiveScale object storage as a bulk store

• October 28, 2020 28 Oct'20

  NetApp boosts NVMe, QLC and container hybrid cloud offer

  Storage giant NetApp unveils new AFF, FAS and E-series arrays with NVMe and QLC flash capability, plus object storage in Ontap and Spot cloud container resource management in Cloud Manager

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  Nutanix boosts storage performance by 50% with BlockStore

  Hyper-converged infrastructure pioneer Nutanix boosts access to NVMe and potentially Optane storage with BlockStore, which avoids the need to access the deepest layers of the OS

• September 21, 2020 21 Sep'20

  India’s storage market takes hit but hasn’t lost its shine

  The slower growth in storage spending in India amid the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to be mitigated by digitisation efforts by financial services and manufacturing firms

• September 16, 2020 16 Sep'20

  Pure flashes the cash, paying $370m for Portworx

  Flash storage pioneer believes container storage is the next frontier and pays big money for container persistent storage software provider Portworx in deal set to close this month

• September 15, 2020 15 Sep'20

  Scality aims at high-performance object with Ring 8 all-flash

  Object storage specialist – with file storage capability – aims at tier-1 use cases such as AI/ML, content delivery and some backup tasks with all-flash upgrade to Scality Ring 8

• September 10, 2020 10 Sep'20

  Broadcom launches Brocade gen7 Fibre Channel switches

  New generation Fibre Channel doubles performance to 64Gbps with switches and HBAs now available. But what future for Fibre Channel with NVMe-over-fabrics hitting the datacentre?

• September 02, 2020 02 Sep'20

  Nimbus Data launches 64TB of QLC flash in one drive for £8,000

  Flash pioneer aims QLC-equipped ExaDrive NL at AI/ML, analytics, media streaming and archiving use cases. Nimbus eschews NVMe for well-established SAS and SATA connectivity

• September 01, 2020 01 Sep'20

  Pure aims at unified file and object and launches new QLC storage

  Flash storage maker says unified storage in file and object is what is needed for contemporary analytics and AI workloads, while it launches a new all-QLC version of FlashArray//C

• August 25, 2020 25 Aug'20

  Intel’s DAOS tops the IO500 speed challenge for HPC storage

  Following on from Lustre, Intel’s DAOS is an object storage-based system with that is designed specifically for use with Optane for metadata and SSD for bulk storage in HPC environments

• August 18, 2020 18 Aug'20

  Panasas launches storage tiering by size instead of usage

  Dynamic Data Acceleration moves data to media dependent on file size and claims performance advantage over rival as it gets the best out of flash and spinning disk hard drives

• August 12, 2020 12 Aug'20

  Pure and Cohesity launch FlashRecover for flash-speed restores

  Flash market pioneer links up with scale-out backup product maker to provide bundled backup plus super-fast recovery based around Pure FlashBlade storage arrays

• July 23, 2020 23 Jul'20

  Commvault refreshes HyperScale backup appliances with Hedvig

  Backup player set to replace Fujitsu/Red Hat-based backup appliances with new hardware and storage software from Hedvig, which it bought late last year

• July 08, 2020 08 Jul'20

  Pavilion adds object storage to NVMe Hyperparallel Flash Array

  Pavilion responds to customer demand for object storage to support AI/ML, big data analytics workloads with multi-controller NMVe flash storage architecture

• July 01, 2020 01 Jul'20

  Qumulo hybrid cloud NAS provides special effects for Cinesite

  Hybrid cloud scale-out NAS from Qumulo used to offload Active Directory lookups and other workloads to the AWS cloud that had suffered in peak times when on Isilon

• June 25, 2020 25 Jun'20

  Nebulon emerges with software-defined storage, but from the cloud

  Startup to offer on-site storage with local I/O and some controller functionality in the cloud, combining software-defined and cloud to bring “fleet management at scale”

• June 16, 2020 16 Jun'20

  QLC + 3D Xpoint = Vast Data’s universal storage

  Vast marries cheap-and-deep QLC flash with super-fast 3D Xpoint to bring flash for all data, with a particular eye on analytics and with NAS and S3 object access for now

• May 29, 2020 29 May'20

  Kaminario offers cut-price virtual SAN in the cloud

  Flash pioneer Kaminario builds its VisionOS out to the cloud and says its cloud block storage is much cheaper than what is available from the native cloud services of the big three providers

• May 11, 2020 11 May'20

  Dell EMC launches PowerStore NVMe container-based storage array

  PowerStore controller software is based on container modules for SAN and NAS storage, while the mid-range array is all-NVMe and aimed at performance-hungry use cases such as Splunk

• April 23, 2020 23 Apr'20

  What comes after flash? Weebit Nano hopes its ReRAM will

  Weebit Nano’s ReRAM stores bits by building resistive filaments and promises a 1,000x speed boost over flash in chips that can store data for years and is well-suited to edge uses