For years now, 3.5 inches has been the reigning size of disk drives for enterprise storage arrays. Now, however, smaller, more efficient 2.5-inch SFF (small form factor) drives are proving viable challengers to their larger brethren.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again: SFF (small form factor) drives allow you to squeeze more spindles into the same rack space, giving you better performance in the same real estate. As an bonus, using 2.5-inch drives reduces the amount of electricity you use and creates less heat than using their larger cousins, essentially making your storage array less demanding on your wallet and on the electric grid.
I find it ironic that Seagate chose Earth Day to celebrate the shipment of its billionth disk drive. After all, increased drive dependency in the datacenter is fast transforming into an unsustainable energy demand.
Although you often find statements that seem critical of disk drives in this column, I never criticize disk drives per se, but rather how we use them. As of late, I've been interested in the innovative use of disk drives in storage arrays. The latest news from Xiotech fits right into this discussion, providing further proof that the storage industry is fast turning evolution into revolution in rethinking its approach to disk drives.
Storage Networking World came and went last week, and judging from the hype, FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) is coming out of the conference with a head full of steam.
The EonStor B12 from Infortrend represents an intriguing proposition: an enterprise-class storage solution in miniature, built on 2.5-inch SAS drives. One look at this small-form-factor vision of the future, and you'll be reconsidering the long-term viability of behemoth arrays.
Most storage solutions are optimized for fast access and frequent updates, a formula that fits the requirements of transactional applications to a tee but isn't necessarily well suited to archiving files that - whether by law, or policy, or practice - either must not or will not be changed.
Now that loose SSDs (solid state drives) are available, you may be wondering how best to take advantage of the technology. Here's a breakdown of where retrofitting current machines with solid state could reap worthwhile rewards.
At 104 kilos, the Brocade DCX Backbone would be on the lighter end of middle linebackers in the NFL, but it's well-built to fill the middle of a storage network. Unveiled in late January, the DCX represents the first deliverable of Brocade's DCF (Data Center Fabric), the company's newly designed architecture that promises a more flexible, easier-to-manage, policy-driven network, one that embraces multiple connectivity protocols and is better able to respond to applications' demands and to support new technologies such as server virtualization.
Conventional storage systems work well for local file sharing, but no system I can think of can help you share files outside your organization, unless you commit to cobbling together an in-house solution.
I would bet dollars against pennies you didn't miss the EMC buzz about SSDs (solid-state drives) in Symmetrix. The vendor carefully orchestrated the announcement in hopes of capitalizing on the most interesting innovation to its portfolio in a long time.
As you may have heard, Dell and EMC this week trumpeted branded versions of the Clariion AX4 storage solution -- in Dell's case, the AX4-5 -- aimed at SMBs. Developed jointly, the technology differs little, yet market strategy may mean Dell will reap deeper rewards.
Looks can be deceiving. Take Hitachi GST's recent additions to its Travelstar line. The 2.5-inch drives may not look that much different than other small form factor drives, but one glance at their specs is enough to see the beginning of a storage revolution away from 3.5-inch drives.
To paraphrase a sentence often attributed to Mark Twain, everybody talks about the cost of managing storage, but nobody does anything about it.
Cutting through the sales-pitch hype of Tier 1 vendor presentations often means checking in with their suppliers. After all, conversations with suppliers tend to reflect what Tier 1 vendors ask of them. Less sales-oriented, these talks can be refreshing in that they are less likely to be sugarcoated with hype and more likely to be built on facts.