Data Center And Enterprise Reviews And News
Data Centers for mission critical applications and cloud services require high-end, fault-tolerant hardware and software for servers, processors, storage, operating systems and more. Meanwhile, enterprise and small business road warriors alike need that same level of reliability on mobile devices and back at the office as well. If it connects people and systems, stores critical data or provides digital tools for business and professionals, you'll find our coverage here - from WiFi routers to Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, High Performance Computing (HPC) and more, this channel means business.
When we sit back and look at the evolving storage market and SSD technologies, there are a couple of competitive camps that are trying to gain traction, in what is without question one of the largest growth areas in storage. The major players in solid state storage solutions have emerged from old-line, incumbents in hard disk media...
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About this time last year, Intel offered us a complete processor revamp and architecture update for both the desktop and mobile markets. Intel called it their evolutionary "tick" step in their manufacturing process migration from 45 to 32nm. The "tock," as it were, follows along in cadence offering refinement and feature enhancement...
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Today’s pre-launch of Intel’s Sandy Bridge-based processors should come as no surprise to anyone who even remotely follows the PC tech scene. We, along with Intel and numerous other companies and media outlets, have been slowly leaking Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-related details for many months now. Heck, we’ve even showed...
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Of all the components in a typical PC, the hard drive is typically viewed as the least sexy and most scorned. When AMD or Intel launch a new CPU, they fill PR statements with promises of incredibly fast databases and improved 3D rendering. If AMD and NVIDIA launch new GPUs, the Intertubes hum with promises of realistic graphics, higher resolutions,...
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What's this, yet another SSD product tap-dancing its way through the HotHardware lab? It's hard to believe that a product category has so much R&D being poured into it, spurring new releases at such a fevered pitch. The investment in the relatively fledgling storage technology makes perfect sense to us, but the average...
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We never seem to tire of new SSD technologies. The storage subsystem has long been the primary bottleneck with respect to general computer system responsiveness. And as a result, the explosion of Solid State Drives in the market is indicative of the ground-breaking performance gains the average SSD offers over traditional hard...
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Day two of the Intel Developer’s Forum was kicked off with a couple of keynote addresses from Renee James, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Software and Services Group at Intel and Doug Davis, the Vice President and General Manager of the Embedded and Communications Group. The main focus of their talks revolved around...
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In typical fashion, Intel kicked off IDF 2010 with a couple of keynote addresses headlined by the company’s President and CEO, Paul Otellini, and GM of the Intel Architecture Group David “Dadi” Perlmutter. Topics of the keynote addresses included everything from Sandy Bridge to WiDi, and a myriad of others in between, but...
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On September 1, GlobalFoundries played host to the first annual Global Technology Conference (GTC for short). While there were a fair number of partner presentations on display, the conference was primarily driven by GlobalFoundries executives and announcements. When we spoke to GlobalFoundries in March we remarked on the company's aggressive...
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Yesterday, we chided AMD for its decision not to reveal more details about Bulldozer and Bobcat, but it turns out we didn't have all the facts. AMD was planning on disclosing more information later in the day at Hot Chips—but the company failed to disclose that before we went live with our previous coverage. We're going to...
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Earlier this week, we covered news that a California PS3 owner, Anthony Ventura, had filed a class action lawsuit against Sony, alleging that the company's decision to terminate the PS3's Linux support via firmware update constituted a false/deceptive marketing practice.While most PS3 owners never took advantage of the system's Linux capabilities,...
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Let's face the facts; unless you have an automatic backup configured, you probably don't back up the information on your computer as often as you should. Even though we would hate to lose critical financial documents, personal photos, music, and movies, we don't often take the time to ensure that these files are safely and securely stored...
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It's rare we get genuinely excited around here about a product. To be honest, likely we're spoiled by all the bleeding-edge technology we have the great opportunity to look at week in and week out. Or perhaps it's just that we're jaded a bit and have heard one too many marketing pitches, but truth be told it takes a lot...
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Network-attached storage (NAS) devices come in all shapes and sizes; some even come without hard drives--with the intention that the users will add the drives themselves. There is even a relatively new category of NAS devices that don't have any internal drives at all, and instead use USB-attached drives as their storage source. These NAS...
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We made our annual pilgrimage to Intel Developer Forum this year and upon arriving in sunny San Francisco, we were greeted with the usual IDF fanfare in a sleek, modernistic environment. Presentations and demonstrations of Intel's latest cutting-edge technologies awaited us in the lobby as we noshed...
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With the growing popularity of cloud-based storage solutions, such as the Amazon S3 and Nirvanix services, many businesses--both large and small--are eschewing traditional onsite file servers, and instead opting for offsite, third-party storage solutions. But the ongoing cost of maintaining cloud-based storage as well as the often unproven...
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Regardless of their size or industry, most businesses depend on ready and secure access to their data. To a business, "secure" means that its data is protected from hardware or software failures and is safe from prying eyes. But small and even some medium-sized businesses often can't afford to maintain a data center, let alone a dedicated...
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Although the worldwide economy may be shrinking, our needs as consumers to store large amounts of data continues to grow at a breakneck pace. Whereas only a few years ago it was uncommon for most PC users to have more than just a few digital images or media files, today virtually every aspect of our lives has some sort of digital component....
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For many, just the thought of setting up and using a network attached storage (NAS) device makes their eyes cross and their pulses increase. While even the technophobic recognize the benefits of having a network-based repository of files for sharing and backup, the concept can still seem daunting to some. The reality is that NAS devices have...
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Bigfoot Networks generated quite a bit of buzz back in 2006 when the company launched the original Killer NIC M1. As many of you probably remember, the original Killer NIC was / is a PCI-based device that featured an on-board network processor, or NPU, that was supposedly able to lower in-game ping times and free up CPU resources, which in...
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QNAP, purveyor of Network Attached Storage devices large and small, has just recently introduced what it's calling the world's most affordable NAS server with iSCSI. The device they speak of is the single-bay TS-119 Turbo Pro, which we've taken into our labs and scoped out across the pages to come. The device itself is just marginally larger...
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Windows Home Server is quite possibly one of Microsoft's most unheralded operating systems. Many speak longingly of Windows XP, jokingly of Windows ME, disappointedly of Windows Vista, and hopefully of Windows 7. But seldom discussed is the little-known and little-used operating system designed to be installed on a home server and act as a...
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