Compellent's Storage Center 5.4 Optimises Scale for Enterprises and Cloud Computing

Compellent Technologies released a new version of Storage Center. The new Storage Center 5.4 features state-of-the-art storage hardware, tight integration with leading server virtualisation technologies and flexible software that allows IT to automatically shift storage resources on-demand, non-disruptively to avoid downtime and maintain real-time availability. Enterprise customers can scale up capacity and functionality with a new controller platform that supports a wide range of emerging technologies from FCoE to 10Gb iSCSI and from 6Gb/s SAS drives to a 2.5-inch 24-bay enclosure. New Live Volume software delivers scale out capabilities and business continuity through the simple, flexible, fluid movement of storage volumes between Compellent arrays.

Live Volume allows enterprises to architect a grid of shared storage that can be managed and optimised as one, providing storage agility and high availability while eliminating the islands of storage typical with rapidly growing IT infrastructures. Live Volume acts as a storage hypervisor, actively presenting storage to two Compellent arrays at the same time, allowing organisations to shift volumes between systems to provide continuous data availability. This solves multiple data mobility issues facing IT today, including moving storage for application changes, maintenance, planned outages, load balancing and disaster avoidance.

Kove Sets Record for Sustained Storage Speed with Xpress Disk Gen2

Kove announced the world’s first Terabyte Memory Disk in conjunction with Mellanox® Technologies and R Systems. The Kove Xpress Disk (XPD), in combination with Mellanox’s ConnectX®-240Gb/s InfiniBand, has achieved more than 20 GigaBytes per second of sustained data bandwidth for random reads and writes. The Kove XPD is the world’s fastest storage device in a 4U chassis, providing continuous, sustained I/O for any duration of time. The record-setting performance will not degrade under load or over time, and allows organizations to drastically reduce I/O loads and remove storage bottlenecks.These results were achieved using a single Kove XPD Gen2 storage appliance equipped with six Mellanox ConnectX-2 40Gb/s InfiniBand ports, serving SRP (SCSI RDMA Protocol) storage via an InfiniBand fabric to an 11-node cluster. The equipment used during the testing process was provided by R Systems.

“The next generation Kove Xpress Memory Disk is a continuation of our leadership in high performance storage. The XPD Gen2 provides uncompressed performance for any type of I/O with no loss of performance over time,” states John Overton, Kove CEO. “We are pleased to support Kove in building a world-leading InfiniBand-based storage solution,” said Gilad Shainer, senior director, HPC and Technical Computing, at Mellanox Technologies. “By taking advantage of InfiniBand's inherent efficiencies and Mellanox's advanced offloading and RDMA technology, Kove is able to demonstrate storage throughput capabilities that can help eliminate I/O bottlenecks for next-generation HPC and enterprise data centers.”

FalconStor Enables Virtualized Server and Storage Infrastructure with HA for VMware Environments

FalconStor Software announced that companies that are deploying virtualization infrastructures based on VMware are implementing FalconStor’s data protection solutions for high availability and disaster recovery (DR) of business-critical applications. With FalconStor solutions, new customers like Rug Doctor, 3t Systems, Alea North America Insurance Company, Illinois Math & Science Academy and Domino North America can enable fully virtualized server and storage infrastructures with high availability while saving money on VMware deployments.

Achieving “five-nines” availability of VMware infrastructure deployments with continuous data protectionServer virtualization has become the latest technology that allows IT to efficiently use resources; however, it has created challenges and opportunities for data backup and disaster recovery. FalconStor® Network Storage Server (NSS) and FalconStor® Continuous Data Protector (CDP) help reduce VMware management costs, enhance virtual machine mobility and protect data to ensure availability and rapid recovery. Through the use of continuous data protection and storage virtualization, companies are able to focus on their business objectives without worrying about downtime. The FalconStor NSS solution helps reduce VMware management and supporting infrastructure costs and enhances virtual machine mobility. Additionally, FalconStor CDP software is essential for companies seeking continuous availability of mission-critical applications and quick file and service recovery.

EMC to Acquire Scale-out NAS Vendor Isilon

EMC will acquire Isilon Systems, a fast-growing “Scale-out NAS” (network attached storage) systems company, based in Seattle, Washington.  Under terms of the agreement, EMC will pay $33.85 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Isilon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $2.25 billion, net of Isilon’s existing cash balance.  Isilon is known as the leader and momentum player in the fast-growing “Scale-out NAS” segment, which IDC projects will grow on average approximately 36% annually reaching an estimated $6 billion dollars in 2014(1).  Together, EMC’s Atmos and Isilon’s solutions will offer customers a highly scalable, low-cost storage infrastructure for managing “Big Data.”  Big Data is a term used to describe the massive amount of data produced by a new generation of applications in markets such as life sciences (e.g. gene sequencing), media and entertainment (e.g. online streaming), and oil and gas (e.g. seismic interpretation) to name a few.

Isilon’s scale-out NAS systems are designed to begin small and scale quickly and non-disruptively up to 10 petabytes in size, with extremely high levels of performance and availability.  EMC Atmos object storage provides the perfect complement to Isilon for massive globally distributed environments and object access to data for usages like Web 2.0 applications. Together, Isilon and EMC Atmos provide customers a complete storage infrastructure solution for managing “Big Data” in private or public cloud environments. EMC expects the combined revenue of these two highly complementary storage offerings to reach a $1 billion run-rate during the second half of 2012.

StorSimple is First Cloud Storage Solution to be Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2

StorSimple announced that it is the first cloud storage solution to pass Windows Hardware Quality Labs testing. StorSimple passed the most stringent Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 level. This means that Windows Servers can now connect and store data and content in the cloud, in a Microsoft certified way, for the first time.

“StorSimple exemplifies the new breed of exciting enterprise cloud companies,” said Matthew Clark, senior director, Startup Engagement for the Strategic and Emerging Business Team at Microsoft. “As a member of BizSpark One, Microsoft’s invite-only program for the highest potential emerging businesses on the Microsoft platform, we think StorSimple is going to make a big impact in the market. Application compatibility is a key factor in the experience customers enjoy on Windows Server 2008 R2. To ensure customers are receiving the best experience, Microsoft offers two levels of Application Certification: Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2, and Works with Windows Server 2008 R2. Designed for line-of-business and mission-critical applications, the Certified for Windows Server 2008 R2 logo demonstrates that StorSimple meets Microsoft's highest technical bar for stability, security, reliability, availability, Windows fundamentals, and platform compatibility.