This post was written by Carrie Smith
Hewlett-Packard has introduced the next generation of its Windows-based home server, which includes nearly four times the memory as the previous version and more storage capacity. The new HP MediaSmart Server comes in two models, the ex485 and ex487. The only difference in the two is in storage capacity. The ex485 comes with one 750-GB, 7200 RPM SATA hard disk drive and the ex487 with two of the same drives for a total of 1.5 TB. The first generation server, released in late 2007, had a base capacity of 500 GB.
StrataScale has announced the availability of a new managed server environment that gives users on-demand control of automated server and storage provisioning via the Web. The new offering, dubbed IronScale, is an automated managed server hosting environment designed to provision and re-provision entire IT environments with a few mouse clicks. The approach is slightly different from some other managed services because it relies on physical servers rather than virtual machines. The IronScale non-virtual, dedicated-server environment offers users the benefits of both physical and virtual infrastructures by automating the provisioning of servers and storage.
Sun Microsystems Inc. has unveiled its first JBOD storage appliances, calling them an expansion of its Open Storage initiative. The new Sun Storage J4000 product line of JBOD (just a bunch of disks, or non-RAID storage) appliances compete is a greenfield opportunity for Sun, which has never had a stand-alone JBOD offering, said Ray Austin, group manager of storage product management for the vendor. The new offerings, Sun Storage J4200, Sun Storage J4400 and Sun Storage J4500, are currently available.
Seagate Technologies Inc. has launched a 300-GB 2.5-inch hard drive for computer servers and storage arrays. The Savvio 10K.3, which is more than double the capacity of its predecessor, consumes 70% less power and can hold more information than traditional 3.5-inch drives. The drive has a speed of 10,000 revolutions per minute. In addition, the product has a reliability rating of 1.6 million hours, which is the mean time between failures, and a SAS 2.0 interface, which delivers a data rate of 6 Gbps. The drive also has government-grade full disk encryption data protection.
Netgear Technologies has announced the availability of the industry s first six-bay desktop network-attached storage solution (NAS) for small- and medium-sized businesses. The product is designed to meet the centralized network storage upto 200-user SMBs. 5TB (RNDP6350), 3TB (RNDP6310), and 6TB (RNDP6610) broadening the company s already existing ReadyNAS product portfolio. ReadyNAS Pro, the newest member of the ReadyNAS product family, provides up to 6TB of network-attached storage, enabling users across the LAN or WAN to store, back up and share digital data from a combination of Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms.
Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the availability of its innovative Unified Storage Systems — the Sun Storage(TM) 7000 family also known as “Amber Road.” This new storage family offers breakthrough diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities, optimized performance, one-fourth the energy consumption, installation and configuration in under five minutes and up to 75% cost savings — all compared to competing storage systems. The world’s first Open Storage appliances, the Sun Storage 7000 family features three products in its initial release: Sun Storage(TM) 7110, 7210 and 7410 - each is the first in a new and broad family of Unified Storage Systems.
Dell Inc. has launched a disk array comprising 2.5-inch drives that deliver higher performance per 1U system than arrays with more commonly used 3.5-inch drives. The PowerVault MD1120 is Dell’s first storage expansion enclosure built with 2.5-inch drives. Until the recent introduction of 300-GB 2.5-inch drives, the smaller devices didn’t have sufficient capacity for storage devices like the MD1120. Praveen Asthana, director of storage and networking at Dell said that the new product is a direct-attached storage device for small companies with a few business applications running on a server.
Riverbed Technology is extending its product portfolio in the storage area with the launch of ‘Atlas’ in the first half of 2009. Atlas, designed to improve the efficiency of enterprise storage, is a stateless, diskless gateway appliance that logically sits in between the primary storage device and the data center Steelhead. Atlas is a transparent solution. Customers can continue to leverage the existing storage network and infrastructure. It aims at addressing one of the critical issues in IT operations - the exploding amounts of storage.
Idera has announced the upcoming release of its Pointbackup™ product, a powerful, easy to use backup and recovery solution for Microsoft SharePoint sites and site collections. It enables administrators to ensure the safety and integrity of vital SharePoint content by automating the backup and recovery process. A powerful and flexible scheduling engine enables automation of backup operations, ensuring that vital content is backed up regularly. Pointbackup saves storage costs by employing powerful compression technology. This reduces backup file sizes by as much as 95 percent.
The global leading data storage company, Proware Technology Corp. has released EP4429, the first high density storage solution of EPICa product line, to meet the increasing needs of enterprise customers. EPICa RAID system is the new generation of RAID products capable of supporting SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) and SATA drives. In order to meet the needs of its enterprise level customers, Proware chose the Seagate Barracuda ES Hard Drive family product.