Storage

Surprise, surprise… A little war of words is brewing over solid-state drives (SSDs) and their market ascendancy in 2012. SanDisk, a company best known for making memory cards — the kind that goes in cameras and other gadgets — says that its “small form-factor client SSD” business is going gangbusters. Moreover, this is the year that [...]

Read more SanDisk, Western Digital at odds over SSDs

by Pedro Hernandez on January 26, 2012 · 0 comments

Later this year, solid-state drives (SSDs) are expected to drop beneath that magical barrier that really spurs adoption: $1 per gigabyte (GB) from a relatively lofty $1.56 in 2011. According to IDC, SSDs will reach this milestone in the second half of 2012. (Pro tip: hold off on that upgrade ’til then.) Mind you, SSDs are still [...]

Read more SSDs sales rise, prices drop below $1 per GB in 2012

by Pedro Hernandez on January 10, 2012 · 1 comment

This year’s devastating floods in Thailand have upended lives. They also illustrate the interconnected nature of the global economy. Take, for instance, Toyota. The Japanese automaker expects parts shortages in the region to clip its profitability and result in “230,000 vehicles in lost production this business year,” according to this Reuters report. The effect on several [...]

Read more Thailand flooding the SSD tipping point?

by Pedro Hernandez on December 9, 2011 · 0 comments

Brisk VC activity surrounding makers of flash storage systems continues apace. The latest funding success is Solid Fire, which just added $25 million to its bank account. It’s not hard to see why it was able to pry open those checkbooks. The Boulder, Colo.-based startup combines two of the hottest trends in IT, SSDs (solid [...]

Read more SolidFire is the latest flash storage funding winner with $25M

by Pedro Hernandez on November 1, 2011 · 0 comments

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are pretty energy efficient, but there are those in the industry that feel that they can do a lot better and are partnering on developing a new standard called SATA DEVSLP. Who are they? They’re SanDisk, Samsung, Intel and Microsoft SanDisk. It’s important to note that three out of four of those [...]

Read more Tech heavies team for SATA DEVSLP, a low-power SSD standard

by Pedro Hernandez on September 14, 2011 · 0 comments

Let’s get it out of the way, solid-state drives (SSDs) like Toshiba’s enterprise-class unit pictured above are expensive when you compare them to regular, magnetic hard drives. Old news, but it’s still a huge roadblock toward massive, widespread adoption. But those that are in the platter-free data storage camp are finding benefits that far outweigh [...]

Read more SSDs: Beyond the price premium

by Pedro Hernandez on September 8, 2011 · 0 comments

In recent years, the data storage part of the IT energy efficiency equation has been getting a ton of attention. From deduplication drama to a white-hot flash startup scene, where our data’s stored and how it’s managed have become big priorities. The good news is that when it comes to architecting an efficient storage infrastructure [...]

Read more Think green for efficient data storage

by Pedro Hernandez on September 1, 2011 · 0 comments

Hot on the heals of flash storage all-stars Fusion-io and Violion Memory, comes Pure Storage, a startup that’s making some bold claims about its tech, particularly surrounding costs. Pure Storage, which just emerged out of stealth, has attracted $55 million in funding, including $30 million in a just-announced series-C round of funding led by Redpoint [...]

Read more Pure Storage enters flash startup race

by Pedro Hernandez on August 24, 2011 · 0 comments

The past couple of years have been good for startups that specialize in flash memory storage systems for data centers. Though they peddle pricey wares, flash chip-based data storage and SSD makers are giving data centers a performance edge with energy savings boot. And in an era that’s unkind to pokey cloud performance and is [...]

Read more Fusion-io’s Flashy IPO

by Pedro Hernandez on June 9, 2011 · 0 comments

Flash memory is once again taking the performance crown by enabling Violin Memory and HP to claim bragging rights today on a TPC-E benchmark. According to the companies, a Violin Memory Array in conjunction with an HP Proliant DL380 G7 server running Microsoft SQL Server 2008 set a record for a dual socket with a [...]

Read more Violin, HP blast benchmarks, make case for solid-state storage in the data center

by Pedro Hernandez on May 9, 2011 · 0 comments