The Data Center

Seagate Shows Off Capacious 4TB Hard Drive for NAS Boxes

News — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:00:46 GMT

Seagate on Tuesday unveiled a new line of drives custom-built for always-on network attached storage (NAS) systems. Multiple capacities are available, including a 4TB model that's currently the industry's highest capacity available from a single NAS HDD. The new drives are intended for NAS boxes with up to five drive bays.

"Today about 50 percent of NAS arrays are sold diskless meaning that customers are challenged with identifying and installing the right storage for their system. By developing a drive like NAS HDD, we’ve taken the guesswork out of it and made it easy for customers to identify the right drive for their system," said Scott Horn, Seagate vice president of marketing. "By collaborating closely with a variety of partners who specialize in NAS systems, we’re making what was a confusing effort into a plug-and-play one."

In a five-bay NAS, home users and small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) can enjoy up to 20TB of storage by shoving a handful of 4TB drives into the system. To put that into perspective, each 4TB drive is capable of storing 819,000 photos, 1 million songs, or almost 500 hours of high-definition video, Seagate says.

The NAS drives are equipped with 64MB of cache and a SATA 6Gbps interface. Seagate rates the maximum sustained transfer rate at 159MB/s on the 2TB model and 180MB/s on both the 3TB and 4TB models. To keep all that data safe, the drives feature improved vibration tolerance and error recovery controls.

MediaFire Promises Dropbox Killer Dubbed ‘Project Phoenix’

News — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:54:55 GMT

First:You have to hand it to Dropbox. If other companies are claiming they have a product that “kills” yours, that means you pretty much dominate the market space. Of course, that also means that you have a target on your back, and in Dropbox’s case, MediaFire has taken aim.

MediaFire told the press that it will announce soon a product called “Project Phoenix”, which it says will be a direct challenger to Dropbox and its cloud storage and sharing service. The company says that Project Phoenix will bring “comprehensive ‘social’ and collaboration cloud storage sharing directly to mobile and native desktop users”.

MediaFire's current cloud storage plans (Hey, they're on sale!)

Other features include automatic file syncing and one-click file sharing, and the service will cost a “fraction”of what users are accustomed to paying with Dropbox and Google Drive. Project Phoenix will land sometime in July.

The teaser announcement is all the more curious because MediaFire already has a Dropbox-like cloud storage service, not to mention other offerings such as online collaboration tools, ecommerce capabilities, and more. It’s hard to say if Project Phoenix is mostly just marketing bluster or if it will actually prove to be a powerful overhaul of MediaFire’s cloud storage service.

Intel Solid State Drive DC S3500 Series Review

News — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:44:13 GMT

Intel is updating its line of enterprise-class solid state storage offerings today, with a new more cost-effective drive that targets datacenter and cloud-computing applications. The Intel SSD DC S3500 as it is known, is similar in a number of ways to the SSD DC S3700 we evaluated a few months back. The new drives, however, are built around more affordable NAND flash memory than the previously released DC S3700-series drives.

Regardless, data integrity and consistent performance remain key differentiators for Intel’s datacenter-targeted “DC”-branded drives, but the SSD DC S3500 will do so at much more mainstream price points than the higher-end DC S3700-series drives.

The Intel SSD DC S3500 will be offered in 80GB - 800GB capacities in both 2.5” and 1.8” form factors, but a number of capacities, like the 120GB, 160GB, 300GB, and 600GB drives, will only be offered in 2.5” versions.

We’ve got a 480GB, 2.5” drive on deck for you here...

Intel Solid State Drive DC S3500 Series Review

Sears Turns Closed Retail Locations Into Data Centers

News — Thu, 23 May 2013 20:18:40 GMT

If there’s been a more resourceful use of assets to bring profitability back to a huge company like Sears, we’d like to hear about it, because the company is looking to completely reinvent itself as a data center provider as its retail locations close.

Sears Holdings has created a new unit called Ubiquity Critical Environments whose task is to take the company’s vast real estate assets--which Data Center Knowledge has pegged at some 3,200 properties comprising 25 million square feet of space--and turn them into data centers, disaster recovery sites, and communications depots wherein wireless providers can lease rooftop space from the company.

Closing Chicago Sears location

Sears will convert a certain number of its closed-down Sears and Kmart locations for the tasks, primarily looking at the ones that are standalone locations as opposed to ones located in or next to malls. Even so, mall locations could be used for disaster recovery sites, as companies need to host their data at multiple geographical locations and such areas would be more desirable for the workers staffing the facilities than, say, a bland concrete industrial park.

Picture a Sears store; now picture this inside of one

Just how ubiquitous are these store locations? According to Sean Farney, COO of Ubiquity, about 70% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Sears of a Kmart. (And yet, so few people go inside of them. Sorry, that was a cheap shot; but seriously, when was the last time you went in one of those stores, without grimacing first?)

Wireless communications equipment will be perched atop defunct Sears and Kmart stores

The first Ubiquity project is slated for a Chicago Sears store, located on the south side of the city with 127,000 square feet, that will be closing at the end of next month. The facility will be repurposed as a multi-tenant data center, and there’s already at least tenant signed up.

This Ubiquity initiative is, if you’ll pardon the tired expression, excellent out-of-the-box thinking. Sears’ solution to the problem of now-vacant retail buildings isn’t to sell them off for scrap and hope for the best but to hang on to its assets and find a way to make them more profitable. Every struggling company and town in this country could learn a lesson from Sears.

SkyDrive Uploads Now Faster, Photos Viewable In Timeline View

News — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:00:32 GMT

With cloud storage apps taking off and becoming more and more important in terms of managing our digital lives, Microsoft is making strides to keep SkyDrive up there with Box, Google Drive and Dropbox when it comes to overall functionality. A new post offered up by the company suggests that photos are the most common file type seen in SkyDrive storage boxes -- both in sheer number and in total storage consumed.

Starting today and rolling out over the next 48 hours, Microsoft is making it simpler for users to view all of their photos across all of their albums + folders, using a timeline view. In the timeline view you can scroll down to navigate through all the images. They're organized into groups by event and time. Take 20 pictures at a birthday party with your phone, and then a photo of your parking spot at the airport a few hours later? Now they'll appear as two different groups in the timeline. If you want to quickly navigate to a specific month, just click the month name.

Moreover, Microsoft is addressing a common complaint: speed. Sometimes, it takes ages to upload via the SkyDrive desktop app, and to improve that, Microsoft has implemented fixes on both the app and server side. The company is now seeing internal improvements in the 2x-3x range.

Give it a go and let us know if you're seeing the benefits in comments below.

Xi3 Brings Style and Substance to the Data Center with FreeForm dataCENT3R Project

News — Wed, 08 May 2013 04:34:05 GMT

Xi3’s modular computers are intriguing to say the least, and now the company is expanding to the data center with a unique take on drive clusters in the FreeForm dataCENT3R. The structure features two vertical steel support posts with seven horizontal curved steel bars perched atop a metal base that has wheels. Attached to the horizontal bars are up to 96 Xi3 modular computers or microSERV3RS.

The whole schmeer measures about four to eight feet tall depending on how many drives are installed, and the structure is seven feet wide and two feet deep.

“For decades, I.T. Administrators and Professionals have been handcuffed into a paradigm that says Data Centers have to be built a certain way,” said Jason A. Sullivan, Xi3 founder, President and CEO in a press release. “That is no longer the case. With the birth of the Xi3 Computer Architecture and our small, energy efficient computers and servers, Data Centers no longer need to fit into traditional rooms and racks.”

Xi3 also says that the dataCENT3Rs are ambient air cooled, require less physical infrastructure, allow for reduced power consumption, and offer a movable and flexible solution that allows users to place the rack virtually anywhere in an office while allowing users to organize the drives in creative ways. They also support 64-bit, x86 operating systems including Windows 8 and most Linux and Unix OSes.

It’s hard to tell if the FreeForm dataCENT3R is a brilliant innovation or the answer to a problem that didn’t need solving, but in any case, that sure is a funky-looking cluster.

Seagate Steps Up With Line of Client-Side and Enterprise SSDs

News — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:26:02 GMT

As it turns out, Seagate isn’t going “all-hybrid” after all; the company announced today that it’s releasing an entire lineup of SSDs, including its first client side SSD and updates to its enterprise SSDs. Previously, Seagate had made a niche for itself with hybrid drives (SSHDs), offering the slim, faster-than-HDD options for notebooks, but now the company is braving the waters of the SSD market.

The 2.5-inch Seagate 600 SSD is designed for laptops and offers multiple z-heights (including a 5mm drive) and with a SATA 6Gbps interface with up to 550/450 sustained sequential read/write speeds. It’s available in capacities of 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB.

Seagate 600 SSD

The enterprise-class 600 Pro SSD is aimed more at low power servers, the cloud, datacenters, and the like, and it comes in capacities of 100GB, 120GB, 200GB, 240GB, 400GB, and 480GB. It’s also a 2.5-inch device with a SATA 6Gbps interface and 7mm and 5mm height options.

Seagate 600 Pro SSD

The Seagate 1200 SSD is built for demanding enterprise applications and boasts a dual port 12Gb/s SAS connector (while maintaining backwards compatibility with SAS 6Gbps) in a 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch form factor. Available in 200GB, 400GB, or 800GB capacities, the drives feature 1200MBps transfer rates, sustained data rates of 750MBps, and 0.183 average latency.

Seagate 1200 SSD

Seagate also announced the Seagate X8 Accelerator, which is a low-power PCIe card that boasts 1.1 million IOPS and 2.2TB storage capacity with an x8 PCIe gen 2 interface.

Dropbox Sets Itself Apart With First-Ever DBX Developer Conference

News — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:47:13 GMT

Cloud storage provider Dropbox has grown from just a cool startup with a clever idea to a major player in the consumer and business cloud storage market. The service has some 100 million users and recently has made aggressive moves including acquiring the Mailbox iOS app and targeting businesses with its rebranded Dropbox for Business.

Now, the company is hosting its first-ever developer conference. The DBX conference will be held at Fort Mason in San Francisco on July 9th. Tickets are “limited” and will cost $350.

“At DBX, you’ll meet fellow developers, see the great things they’re building, and share ideas with the engineers and designers working on Dropbox’s API,” reads a post announcing the event. “But most importantly, you’ll be the first to learn about new products that will make developing on Dropbox even easier.”

It’s anyone’s guess what Dropbox has in store, but it’s notable that the service has grown to the point that it warrants its own developer event. There are plenty of competitors in the cloud market, not to mention a lot of Dropbox clones, but this is the sort of thing that makes Dropbox stand out from the crowd.

SkyDrive Hits 250-Million Users Mark

News — Tue, 07 May 2013 15:36:43 GMT

Microsoft announced a new milestone for its online storage service today: SkyDrive now has more than 250 million users. The company is pointing to Windows 8, which launched in the second half of 2012, as playing a key role in the recent rush of user signups. Microsoft took the opportunity to highlight important changes, such as better uploading speeds, a revamped iOS app, and making SkyDrive the default save location for Microsoft Office.

Microsoft released a timeline of SkyDrive's evolution. Image Credit: Microsoft

Although 250 million users is noteworthy, there’s plenty of room to grow: more than 700 million people have Microsoft accounts. What are they using, if not SkyDrive? Aside from people who are reluctant to store important documents in the cloud, many people store their files on Google Drive, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud, among others. It’s a crowded field, so the top companies are trying to set themselves apart with aggressive pricing (all of them start with free accounts and offer additional storage for a fee) and high storage caps. And Dropbox, a pioneer in this type of cloud storage, just announced its first developer conference.

IBM Says Flash Memory Total Cost Less Than Hard Drives for the Data Center

News — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:02:04 GMT

Desktops and data centers are two very different beasts, and what's true of one might not be true of the other. For example, even though solid state drive (SSD) pricing has fallen dramatically in past year, it's still cheaper to equip a desktop or laptop system with a mechanical hard disk drive (HDD). The same isn't necessarily true when it comes to data centers, and if you ask IBM, the company will tell you that flash-based storage makes more economical sense at this point. How can that be?

Part of the reason is because flash storage doesn't contain any moving parts, thereby making it a more reliable and durable solution, IBM says. Flash storage is also more energy efficient and doesn't require nearly the same investment into cooling as HDDs do. That's not a big deal for a home system, but when you're talking about a data center, those costs add up in a hurry. And then there are the performance benefits.

"The economics and performance of flash are at a point where the technology can have a revolutionary impact on enterprises, especially for transaction-intensive applications," said Ambuj Goyal, General Manager, Systems Storage, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "The confluence of Big Data, social, mobile and cloud technologies is creating an environment in the enterprise that demands faster, more efficient, access to business insights, and flash can provide that access quickly.”

IBM has a vested interest in flash storage and its comments come as it announces the availability of its "FlashSystem" line of all-flash storage appliances, which are based on technology it acquired from Texas Memory Systems last year. According to IBM, its FlashSystem units are much faster than HDD-based solutions and can provide up to 90 percent reductions in transaction times for applications like banking, trading, and telecommunications; up to 85 percent reductions in batch processing chores; and up to 80 percent reductions in energy consumption.

Head Out Of The Clouds: Why Local Storage Still Matters

News — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:19:21 GMT

Smartphones, tablets and computers are constantly consuming (and creating) more and more content. And with that comes massive amounts of data consumption. The amount of sharing that takes place on today's smartphones and tablets is astounding, and every instance of that requires data -- and storage. Lately, it seems as if companies are dealing with these new realities by leaning heavily on the cloud. But trusting your precious data solely to the cloud can be a risky bet...

Head Out Of The Clouds: Why Local Storage Still Matters

Google Expands Availability and Lowers Prices on Compute Engine Cloud Services

News — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:32:25 GMT

Google does everything, including offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) with its cloud Google Compute Engine. The service is just nine months old, and Google is already rapidly adding new features, increasing availability, and cutting prices.

The Google Compute Engine is now available to anyone who signs up for a Gold support package (which costs $400 a month), and the service now includes two new zones in Europe. Google also reduced the cost for using the service by 4%.

The company now offers a Google Cloud Console to let users manage all of their Google Platform services from a single interface; that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of new features, though.

Google Cloud Console

Google added the ability to boot from persistent disks whether mounted as a file system or as a snapshot, persistent disk checkpoint and restore capabilities, and the ability to attach and detach persistent disks from an instance that is currently running.

There are also five new types of instance families, easier migration for virtual machines between zones, and an enhanced metadata server.

Because Google is Google, they also threw in a treat called the World Wide Maze Chrome Experiment. Google describes it thusly: “This game converts any web site of your choice into an interactive, three dimensional maze, navigated remotely via your smartphone. Compute Engine virtual machines run Node.js to manage the game state and synchronization with the mobile device, while Google App Engine hosts the game’s web UI.”

Basically, it’s a goofy toy that shows off the kind of back end services that Google’s Cloud Platform can offer--but it’s also enchanting, clever, and funny.

HP Unveils Intel Atom-Powered HP Moonshot Class of Triply-Efficient Servers

News — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:25:16 GMT

As data requirements worldwide continue to skyrocket, HP is attempting to shoot past those demands with a new class of space-, energy-, and cost-efficient servers with HP Moonshot. Today, the first of that breed is commercially available.

The solution consists of the HP Moonshot 1500 enclosure and HP ProLiant Moonshot services, which will be available from a number of HP partners and geared toward specific workloads, respectively.

Features include support for up to 1,800 servers per rack as well as HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLo) management and a claim from HP that they occupy one-eighth the space of traditional servers.

HP Moonshot servers, roughly the size of a handbag

The HP ProLiant Moonshot servers run on Intel Atom S1200 SoCs (at least at first), which are designed to facilitate efficiency and better density than ever for web workloads. Intel boasts that the Atom S1200 family of chips are the “industry’s only available 64-bit SoC with critical data center class features such as full 64-bit software ecosystem support, ECC and Intel Virtualization Technology“ that still falls within a 6W TDP. The Atom chips also help the ProLiant servers drop into any environment without the need for any porting.

Along with the HP Moonshot announcement today, Intel says that Moonshot systems that are coming out later this year will come packing 2nd-generation 64-bit Intel Atom SoCs codenamed “Avoton”, which portend to quadruple the current density per server of the Atom S1200.

Based on a new architecture called “Silvermont”, Avoton will be available sometime this summer and will feature Intel’s 3D tri-gate 22nm process, an integrated Ethernet fabric controller, and even better energy efficiency than is currently available.

Intel Atom and Avoton

HP Moonshot systems are available now in North America (with Europe, Asia, and Latin America availability in May) for a starting price of $61,875. That cash gets customers forty-five ProLiant Moonshot servers, an integrated switch, and the HP Moonshot 1500 enclosure. Of course, customized systems are available, as are financing options.

The need for more efficient server technology is great, and innovation in the area of Internet-scale applications is in high demand. If HP Moonshot delivers on its promise, it will be a huge accomplishment; the company promises that Moonshot servers will use 89% less energy than traditional servers, all while occupying 80% less space and costing 77% less.

EMC Spins Off Amazon Cloud Services Challenger Pivotal

News — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:15:42 GMT

EMC and VMware have pooled their resources to create Pivotal, a competitor to Amazon and its cloud services dominance, and according to the New York Times, Pivotal is now officially a company. Paul Maritz (pictured, inset), former CEO of VMware and a past executive at Microsoft will head the new company. Further details on senior leadership will emerge at Pivotal’s official launch on April 29th.

Pivotal is taking on Amazon; if there was any doubt that Amazon needed a competition in the cloud services market, just note how much of the Internet disappears every time Amazon’s AWS experiences an outage.

From Pivotal's teaser website

The new company’s goals are summarized in a statement on its teaser website: “Pivotal’s mission is to enable customers to build a new class of applications, leveraging big and fast data, and do all of this with the power of cloud-independence.” Pivotal is an amalgam of a a variety of products and services including Pivotal Labs, Greenplum, Cetas, VMware vFabric, and Cloud Foundry.

For those nervous that the emergence of Pivotal and the subsuming of so many existing products under its umbrella could spell trouble for current customers, don’t be; Pivotal says that current agreements and support will remain intact, all products will remain fully supported, and customers can purchase support and services as normal. Even the contact information will remain the same.

Amazon frequently plays the spoiler in certain markets, from retail to music and video services to mobile devices, so it was only a matter of time before the company got a little taste of its own medicine. In any case, having more competition in the cloud services market will only benefit consumers and businesses alike.

Drobo Adds Cloud Copy And Plex Media Server Support To 5N NAS

News — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:04:06 GMT

It's been some while since Drobo has cranked out a new, ultra-smart NAS drive, but that doesn't mean the innovation is on pause. This week, the data storage outfit announced a new software application platform that enables enhanced mobile and cloud-connect capabilities for Drobo 5N customers. The first two applications to be integrated include Copy, a cloud-based file storage, syncing and sharing platform where users can easily store, protect and share data, and Plex, the industry's leading media server for managing and serving digital media (video, music and photos) to nearly any device (TV, PC, or mobile). The company also announced availability of a development kit by which other leading application developers will be able to further extend the power and simplicity of its new networked storage device for remote access/sharing, media streaming, and cloud integration.

Available Thursday, March 28, Drobo's first integrated cloud application is Barracuda Networks' cloud-based service called Drobo Copy. The Copy application allows customers to easily protect and synchronize data between their on-site Drobo and the cloud, and to securely share information with friends, colleagues and associates globally. The new Copy application for the Drobo 5N is available beginning March 28 via a free download at www.drobo.com/droboapps and includes free use of 5GB of cloud storage and no per-user fees.

Plex is quickly becoming the default media ecosystem for Google TVs, smart TVs, set-top boxes (STBs), game consoles, DLNA-enabled devices, Roku, home theater PCs, and mobile devices that run iOS, Android, and Windows mobile operating systems. In addition, Plex can extend the media experience across all of these devices with features like web video queuing, recommendations, PlexSync (which enables taking content with you on your mobile device) and more.

In other words... rethinking a gift to yourself in the form of a new Drobo?

Samsung SM843 Pro: High Performance Data Center SSD

News — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:49:25 GMT

We have taken a look at a few Samsung-built solid state drives over the years, including the Samsung 830 and 840 series SSDs, and found them all to be relatively strong performers in their respective product categories. Today we’re going to be looking at a somewhat different type of drive from Samsung, the SM843 Pro Data Series SSD. The SM843 is essentially the same drive as the consumer-targeted 840 Pro SSD, but with a specialized firmware that’s optimized for mainstream, ready-heavy data center applications and increased over-provisioning of the NAND...

Samsung SM843 Pro: High Performance Data Center SSD

OCZ’s Next Generation VXL 1.3 Software Expands Solid State Virtualization and Caching

News — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 19:43:42 GMT

OCZ has released more details of the VXL 1.3 cache and virtualization software it teased before this week’s CeBIT 2013 in Hannover, Germany, and the upgraded offering includes virtualized “SAN-less”, highly available, fault tolerant environments courtesy of the software’s new synchronous data mirroring capabilities. The idea is to prevent data loss and virtual machine downtime at all times.

The software maintains two identical, live copies of virtual machine data by mirroring the information across OCZ Z-Drive R4 PCIe cards (have a peek at our review of the card for more info), which accomplishes the task of keeping two copies of the data and also leverages the PCIe cards’ flash storage, cooling, and power performance.

On the caching side, a “pre-warming cache engine” lets IT managers load the data cache so that it’s available to applications when they’re expected to need it; there’s also a scheduler in the software so that managers can both identify use patterns and set schedules for data cache.

Enterprise users who already have VXL software will able to upgrade to version 1.3 by contacting their OCZ contacts.

Micron Introduces P410m Solid State Drive for Data Centers

News — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:07:53 GMT

Micron Technology on Tuesday rolled out its newest addition to a growing line of solid state drives (SSDs) for data center appliances and enterprise storage platforms, the Micron P410m. It's equipped with a 6Gbps Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface built for performance and reliability for mission critical tier 1 storage applications that require 24/7 data access.

"With this introduction, Micron has one of the most comprehensive lines of enterprise-focused SSDs—we have solutions for every interface and usage model," said Ed Doller, VP and general manager of Micron's Enterprise SSD division. "The P410m gives our customers a reliable SAS SSD that delivers high performance and data assurance at a competitive price point."

The P410m Series is built using Micron's own 25nm MLC NAND flash memory chips. Each drive is qualified to achieve 10 drive fills per day for five years, and there are multiple built-in features for data protection, including onboard power loss protection. There are three capacities to choose from:

100GB (MTFDEAK100MAS-1S!AA): 410MB/s read, 235MB/s write
200GB (MTFDEAK200MAS-1S!AA): 410MB/s read, 345MB/s write
400GB (MTFDEAK400MAS-1S!AA): 410MB/s read, 345MB/s write

The drives are currently in production and sold direct to OEMs. Micron didn't specify how much they cost.

In related news, if you've ever wondered how SSDs are made, this video is for you:

OCZ to Debut Next-Gen Enterprise Storage Solutions, Sign Up for Beta Testing

News — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 03:00:13 GMT

If you’re in Hannover, Germany next week for the CeBit conference, pop on over to OCZ’s booth and sign up to be a beta tester for the company’s new ZD-XL SQL Accelerator, a combination hardware and software tool that allows database administrators to optimally manage data cached to SSD storage. OCZ is actively looking for beta testers who are willing to operate under NDA, so get in line to sample the good stuff.

The ZD-XL SQL Accelerator isn’t the only enterprise product OCZ brought along to show off, though. There’s also VXL 1.3 Virtualization Software and LXL Acceleration Software, which include OCZ Direct Pass Caching Technology for running multiple concurrent server loads on a single physical host, thus maintaining high availability as well as better CPU and memory usage.

Finally, OCZ announced the next generation of its workstation-class PCI Express SSDs, which will sell under the Vector brand and feature four PCIe Gen2 lanes and a suite of flash management tools.

OCZ didn’t reveal any pricing, but we’re sure that info will be out soon enough.

AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 Server Doubles Compute Density of Livestream Service

News — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 15:55:58 GMT

Livestream, the company that connects millions of people over the Internet to live events, has upgraded its infrastructure with AMD's SeaMicro SM15000 server with SeaMicro Freedom Fabric Storage as the core platform to provide live video and collaboration, AMD announced today. Equally important, Livesteam's decision to invest in fabric technology provides further validation to AMD's decision to acquire SeaMicro for $334 million, the price it paid back in March 2012.

Livestream's investment allows it to double its computing density while reducing power consumption, all while providing plenty of capacity for future expansion. Furthermore, Livestream received a grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) that covered a "significant" portion of the purchase price, so it was really a no-brainer on Livestream's part.

"Our data center has plenty of rack space, but we just could not fill them with servers because we could not get enough power to the racks," said Thomas Bonnin, chief architect, Livestream. "SeaMicro technology provides the highest density servers on the market allowing us to get multiple racks of servers into a quarter of a rack with AMD’s SeaMicro SM15000 system. What’s more, the technology allows us to reduce power consumption and the resulting cost savings goes straight to our bottom line. The SeaMicro SM15000 server also allowed us to double our computing capacity while at the same time retiring our energy-inefficient servers."

The SeaMicro SM15000 server will play a critical role in Livestream's goal of building out an architecture that will scale to support hundreds of millions of people.

Micron RealSSD P400m Enterprise SSD Review

News — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 04:54:36 GMT

Micron is announcing a brand new, enterprise-class solid state drive today, the RealSSD P400m. We have a looked at a number of Micron-built solid state drives in the past, including the ultra high-end RealSSD P320h PCI Express-based beast and the consumer-targeted RealSSD C300, but what makes the P400m somewhat different is that it was designed from start to finish by Micron’s NAND and SSD engineering teams to provide high endurance and reliability and superior data protection. That’s not to say Micron’s previous products lacked in those departments, but the P400m goes a few steps further with custom NAND and firmware and physical power loss protection designed for mainstream enterprise applications...

Micron RealSSD P400m Enterprise SSD Review

IBM’s Watson Supercomputer Scores First Commercial Deployment in Healthcare Industry

News — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:26:16 GMT

When IBM’s Watson supercomputer proved that the meatsack we call a human brain was inferior to its robot intellect on TV’s Jeopardy, it was an entertaining parlor trick-style PR stunt to show that Watson was capable of “learning”. Now, IBM is putting Watson to use in real life by deploying it in the medical field.

According to a Forbes report, IBM has partnered with Memorial Sloan-Kettering and WellPoint to employ Watson to help doctors treat lung cancer patients. Hospitals can access Watson via the cloud or with their own small (not nearly the size of the beast we all saw on Jeopardy) server. The report notes further that Watson’s processing power has also since been increased by 240%.

The idea is that Watson is able to acquire and process information in a far greater capacity than your average human doctor and can help those folks make more accurate care decisions for patients. Doctors can apparently pose a question to Watson using plain text on a tablet and have an answer in around 30 seconds.

While this may seem either terrific or frightening depending on your trust of humans versus robots, it’s further interesting to note that Watson will be used on the insurance side of things as well, in the area of utilization management. Which means that Watson might help your doctor make you better but can also screw you out of coverage when the bill comes.

LogMeIn Launches Evolved Dropbox Clone

News — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:33:28 GMT

In the cloud storage and sharing market, Dropbox is the prototypical service that everyone emulates, and LogMeIn’s new offering, Cubby, indeed bears a striking resemblance. Like Dropbox, it offers 5GB of free cloud storage that you can access, manage, and edit via a Web browser, mobile device, or synced desktop folder. If you invite people to the service, you can “earn” up to 20GB of additional storage. You can share certain folders with whomever you want, and your content enjoys 256-bit AES encryption.

As you might expect, there’s a Cubby Pro version (which starts at $6.99/mo for one user and 100GB of storage), but the Pro version boasts some juicy additional features. The best one by a longshot is DirectSync, which gives you all the same folder sharing and syncing across your own devices or with others without using your cloud storage.

There’s also a Cubby Locks feature, which lets you protect given folders with an extra security key that requires your password to unlock, as well as unified account management and billing and access to additional support.

A cloud storage service by any other name is still a cloud storage service (and “Cubbies” are still essentially just “folders”), but LogMeIn has created something with some choice extra features that make Cubby an attractive service for consumers and businesses alike. It’s further bolstered by other offerings in LogMeIn’s product portfolio, including its eponymous LogMeIn service and join.me collabroation and meeting tool.

IBM Taking Aim At HP and Oracle with Lower Cost Power PC Based Servers

News — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:51:10 GMT

IBM on Tuesday announced that the way it's going to compete with Hewlett-Packard and Oracle in the server space is by offering lower priced and easy-to-configure solutions for small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs). Towards that end, IBM rolled out eight new servers powered by its latest Power 7+ processor, starting with an entry-level model that costs less than $6,000, along with new PureSystems for big data and cloud-storage chores.

"Big data and cloud systems that were once only affordable to large enterprises are now available to the masses," said Rod Adkins, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "With these new systems, IBM is forging an aggressive expansion of its Power and Storage Systems business into SMB and growth markets."

Not only are the new systems cheaper and comparable in price to equivalent x86 solutions, they're also easy to deploy and don't require specialized skills, opening the door to SMBs that have struggled to adopt big data and private cloud solutions because of an inability to maintain such setups.

With pricing now roughly in line with x86 solutions, IBM points out that it's Power processors are better suited for big data and cloud because embedded memory and virtualization are built into the processor. And compared to older models, the new Power 7+ parts offer 2.5 times more cache memory and up to a 20 percent boost in clockspeed.

Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3700 Review

News — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:57:12 GMT

Intel set the solid state storage market ablaze when it released the X25-M a few years back. Up until that point, solid state drives had steadily been improving in performance, but there was no real dominant player in the space. When the X25-M arrived though, with its proprietary controller, firmware, and NAND, it blew the doors of the competition and remained “the” drive to own for enthusiasts for quite some time. The X25-M was relatively pricey, but its performance was unrivaled.

However, Intel eventually moved away from its proprietary controller technology in the consumer space. But the Intel DC S3700 we’ll be showing you here features a new Intel-built, SATA 6Gbps controller that’s designed to offer more consistent, lower latency performance than previous generation Intel SSDs...

Intel Solid-State Drive DC S3700 Review