Category Archives: Data Storage

SAS disk arrays offer new 600 GB disks

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Winchester Systems Inc., a leading data storage solutions provider, today announced that their FlashDisk SX-2300 and SX-3400 SAS/SATA disk arrays now support the new larger capacity 600 GB, 10k rpm, disk drives thus expanding enterprise capacity.

For typical enterprise applications requiring the speed of 10k rpm disks, the 600 GB drives provide 50% more capacity per shelf and per disk array than with 400 GB disks — at lower cost per gigabyte. The SX-2300 that supports up to 60 disks including the base unit and four expansion shelves now supports 36 TB of 10k rpm disks. Likewise, the SX-3400 that supports 80 disk drives now supports 48 TB of 10k rpm disks.

As tiered storage systems, the SX-2300 and SX-3400 continue to support 7.2k rpm disks up to 1 TB that provide a maximum capacity of 60 TB and 80 TB respectively. Each shelf supports either SAS or SATA disks so it is easy to create up to three tiers of storage using 15k, 10k and 7.2k disks in a single storage solution.

According to the company’s chief executive officer, Mr. Joel Leider,

“At a time when IT managers need to do more with less, FlashDisk now offers 50% more high performance storage in the same space.”

Read whole article

StarWind iSCSI Server now free

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StarWind Software now offers their leading iSCSI SAN software – a fully functional basic version – at no cost. This new Free version permits an unlimited number of connections and a very large capacity of 2TB.

StarWind ISCSI Target Free version installs on any standard 64-bit or 32-bit Windows server and converts it into a fully-functional and blazingly fast SAN, offering shared storage to any applications on the network.

Key Features of StarWind Free Version include:

  • Large 2 TB capacity
  • Support for Server Clusters with VMware ESX and ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Unlimited number of supported concurrent iSCSI connections
  • Compression, Encryption and CHAP authentication
  • iSCSI RAM disk for network performance tuning
  • iSCSI CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD emulation
  • Intuitive GUI, easy to install and manage

StarWind iSCSI Server can be downloaded for free from http://www.starwindsoftware.com/free

Sun’s data storage ‘Startup’

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It’s just a tiny part of a $13 billion company, but Sun Microsystems’ (NASDAQ: JAVA) Open Storage program exemplifies everything the company had hoped to achieve in its turnaround efforts.

Built on intelligent storage controllers, industry standard hardware and open source software, the program achieved 63 percent year-over-year growth in billings in one of the worst markets in memory for data storage spending.

What’s more, the program has been able to convert users who download Sun’s open source software into paying customers, realizing a central vision of CEO Jonathan Schwartz.

“We’re able to monetize a lot of these open source opportunities,” said Graham Lovell, director of Sun’s Open Storage efforts. “We’re the poster child for the success of Jonathan’s strategy.”

With $127 million in billings in the last four quarters, just a small part of Sun’s $2 billion data storage business, the Open Storage program might not be big enough to have much of an effect on Sun’s overall business, but Lovell said he and other members of the team have joked about what a good startup the program would make.

“If this was a startup, we’d be having celebrations in the street,” he said.

Read whole article (enterprisestorageforum.com)

How to setup OpenSolaris Open Storage Server

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This is a great way to build UNIX based NAS server with all goodness of ZFS.

Sun recently announced the addition of powerful developer tools and expanded professional service capabilities to help developers better leverage the growing open source communities that are fast changing the economics of the storage IT landscape. Over 3,000 members and 30+ projects within an active and growing OpenSolaris storage community demonstrate a groundswell within the storage industry for developers and enterprise companies to use open source alternatives to expensive proprietary storage offerings.

Sun further claimed that average developer will be able to set up an OpenSolaris server is about 10 minutes. You can build a OpenSolaris operating system storage server in 10 minutes or less. This how-to recipe is intended to familiarize developers with the simple commands in Solaris for performing data management tasks, i.e. ZFS, NFS, CIFS, COMSTAR etc.

Setting Up an OpenSolaris Storage Server in 10 Minutes or Less

Setting Up an OpenSolaris NAS Box: Father-Son Bonding

Source:  Cybercity.biz

3 Minutes to 3 Terabytes

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It truly is a beautiful thing when something just works. This is especially true with computers. High capacity storage has become almost a commodity with the price of an external 1 TB USB hovering around $100. All you have to do is plug in the power and connect the USB cable, and you’ve got instant storage expansion. Works great for a single computer, and you could even unplug it from one and plug it into another. While that does work, it tends to get old after a while, and if you’re using that method for backups, you will more than likely end up forgetting or just quitting altogether at some point.


Network Attached Storage (NAS) is one answer to sharing large storage devices over a network. You could buy a NAS device from your favorite local or Internet supplier, but chances are you’ll wind up with something less than what a “real” NAS has to offer. That’s where VIA’s ARTiGO A2000 comes in. The A2000 fits a full-featured computer with space for two 3.5″ SATA drives in a package about the size of a shoebox. Add to the hardware the FreeNAS open source software and you’ve got a really capable storage solution.

Read further (LinuxPlanet – 17/04/2009)