Unitrends adds Web 2.0 management console to business continuity, disaster recovery software

10/09/08

One of the lesser-known data protection players last week announced a new version of its business continuity and disaster recovery software that lets users simplify the management of data protection environments. Unitrends announced Rapid Recovery 4.0, a software package that sports a new Web 2.0 Rich Internet Application-based management console. The console lets users run either on-demand or scheduled backups for client systems or for vaulting data from Unitrends Data Protection Units (DPU) or Data Protection Vaults.

HP acquires LeftHand Networks to beef up its small, midrange storage offerings

10/07/08

HP acquired one of the last independent iSCSI storage vendors last week in a $360 million all-cash deal. The company snapped up LeftHand Networks to bolster its small and mid-range storage offerings and be able to give its customers a broad storage offering. HP will be able to leverage LeftHand's iSCSI expertise in its up-to-now paltry iSCSI hardware.

Enterprise flash drives on the rise

10/02/08

Enterprise flash drive technology got a boost last week with several announcements. EMC unveiled a package that incorporates EMC Symmetrix DMX-4 storage systems containing EFD with Oracle Database Applications to improve application performance. Meanwhile, the Storage Networking Industry Association took up the EFD cause with the launch of a Solid State Disk Initiative for enterprise and consumer applications.

QLogic, Pillar Data, HP make storage waves at Oracle OpenWorld

09/30/08

Oracle OpenWorld last week was a magnet for storage vendors intent on making their products work better with Oracle's databases and applications.

VMworld exhibitors aim to tackle the problem of storage in a virtualized world

09/25/08

Last week I went to what I thought at first glimpse was a server trade show - VMworld - and found a storage trade show where vendors were showing off their data protection and disaster recovery wares. I won't be as naive as to say that I didn't expect VMworld to focus so heavily on storage, but there it was - an audience of server admins who knew that in implementing virtualization they had a problem on their hands with the storage their servers were attached to.

GreenBytes Cypress aims to offer unlimited scalability in a small footprint

09/23/08

A very cool company - GreenBytes - debuted last week introducing its Cypress storage system, a network-attached storage system that uses Sun's ZFS+ file system and Sun Fire X4540 Thumper storage boxes.

IBM recaps its last two years in storage - all $2 billion's worth

09/18/08

IBM made an omnibus storage announcement last week - the type of announcement that only IBM can make - of having spent $2 billion on storage in the past two years.

EqualLogic rolls out massive iSCSI array

09/16/08

EqualLogic, now part of Dell, launched a new storage array last week that is the company's largest array to date.

Adaptec RAID goes green

09/11/08

Adaptec has joined the power and cooling game with new RAID controllers, which the company claims can reduce power consumption by as much as 70%.

ParaScale dives into the cloud storage arena

09/09/08

ParaScale launched its cloud storage product this week intended to address the content and archival storage markets. The company will allow private enterprises to build cloud storage within the firewall for archival or streaming media or public clouds for service providers, which would compete with Amazon S3 and Nirvanix, among others.

EMC releases multiprotocol NAS array

09/04/08

EMC last week bolstered its products for the small and midsize business and departmental branch office market with the launch of a Celerra network-attached storage server, which handles both file- and block-oriented data.

My system crashed: How I got my data back

09/02/08

Last week was a mess for me - my laptop and I thought my disk drive had crashed - and I lost about two days of work because of it.

E-discovery vendor StoredIQ unveils new platform support, enhancements

08/28/08

StoredIQ last week rolled out a new version of its e-discovery appliance that includes support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and SharePoint 2007.

NextIO launches virtual interconnect platform

08/26/08

NextIO this week launched an I/O platform that allows data center administrators to connect virtually any networks together.

Rackable Systems divests,; Nexan adds SMB NAS device; IBM releases XIV clustered storage

08/21/08

Today, we have storage news from Rackable Systems, which is dropping its RapidScale storage product; Nexsan, which unveiled The Edge SMB storage system; and IBM, which released its XIV clustered storage system.

RenewData revamps its prices based on the number of e-mail custodians

08/19/08

RenewData recently revamped the prices for its e-discovery services. The company, which provides e-discovery and electronically stored information (ESI) risk management services, is now pricing its services based on the number of custodians processed. In this model, which is also available from other vendors, a custodian is an individual whose e-mails or documents are subject to review. The company claims that pricing its services based on the number of custodians it searches for is many times more economical than searches based on the number of terabytes of data processed.

IBM integrates FilesX acquisition; announces FastBack CDP

08/14/08

Following on the heels of its FilesX acquisition, IBM is rolling out software that gives customers continuous data protection for applications, databases and file servers.

EMC gets flashy with new Clariions

08/12/08

EMC last week released its much-awaited Clariion CX4 Series array.

Planning for Disaster - Houston-style, Part 2

08/07/08

Early Sunday morning late last month, specialty chemical company Champion Technologies failed back its data center to its Houston headquarters and I was a fly-on-the-wall during the process. Originally disabled by power being down in its headquarters building, Champion had to execute a disaster recovery drill and failover its data center operations to a site in Scottsdale, Ariz. That failover occurred Friday evening. All operations, which started at 6 p.m. were completed at 11 p.m. that night - five hours later.

Planning for disaster - Houston-style, Part 1

08/05/08

Where do you start preparing for a disaster? I was invited a couple of weekends ago to observe a server and storage-area network failover disaster recovery drill at specialty chemical company Champion Technologies in Houston. I jumped at the idea.

Quantum's new Vision

07/31/08

Quantum is pulling it all together - its management software that is. The company this week announced a new management interface that it calls Vision, which manages all its disk and tape systems and its backup, recovery and archive systems.

Smart move: Brocade buys Foundry

07/29/08

Brocade's recent acquisition of Foundry Networks for $3 billion should raise the market's interest in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).

Solid state disk interest grows

07/24/08

Solid state disk is getting a bigger play in the enterprise. IDC released findings on their testing that reports the differential between SSD and traditional mechanical drives may not be all that the industry has made it out to be.

Nexsan rolls out green, monster array

07/22/08

Nexsan this week rolled out a new storage array that scales from 336TB to a whopping 4PB in capacity and is energy-efficient too.

Drives hitting 1.5TB level

07/17/08

Everything is getting bigger, disk drives included. Last week Hitachi and Seagate introduced some of the biggest drives - Hitachi topped the 1TB level, Seagate rolled out 1.5TB drives.

More

Deni Connor is principal analyst for Storage Strategies NOW.