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Atlantis Computing’s Software Defined Storage, Hyperconverged Infrastructure, and Data Center Design
Atlantis Computing‘s Hyperscale appliance sports an all-flash array for storage, plus adds compute and virtualization to your remote office/branch office (ROBO) sites without the need for on-site IT staff. Its Hyperscale solutions offer your company:
- Data reduction
- I/O acceleration
- Data management
- Data mobility
- Data protection
- Unified storage
Its “turnkey” appliances offer simplified setup with enterprise-class all-flash storage that anyone in your ROBO can setup in minutes at a lower cost than competitive hyperconverged solutions. Starting with a two-node, 4 TB appliance, your Atlantis Computing-based solution can grow with you. You can read my article on ZDNet about Atlantis Computing’s latest announcements and listen to the podcast.
To find out more about how Atlantis Computing’s Hyperscale solutions can help your business, check out an in-depth article complete with supporting statistics and data: From the Field: Software Defined Storage and Hyperconverged Infrastructure in 2016.
Atlantis Computing is also offering you a free ebook so that you can have a look into the building of a modern data center.
Learn how agile IT principles and emerging data center services, such as software-defined storage and a hyperconverged infrastructure, will play an important role in meeting increasing business demands.
Sign up to reserve your copy.
Other free resources from Atlantis Computing:
DeepStorage Report on Atlantis
Atlantis Computing also helps companies setup and manage virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) implementations. If you want your VDI to work like you’ve dreamed it would without spending your company’s retirement fund to do it, check out Atlantis’ solutions for VDI.
Disclaimer: This is a non-sponsored post.
Sponsorship: If you would like to sponsor a post or have me review a product, contact me via Twitter @kenhess.
Lenovo Selects PMC 12Gb/s SAS Storage Solution for ThinkServer Portfolio
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Nov 24, 2014 – PMC-Sierra, Inc. (PMC®) (Nasdaq:PMCS), the semiconductor and software solutions innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data, today announced that Lenovo has selected PMC storage solutions for external connectivity across its ThinkServer portfolio. The Lenovo 8885E by PMC card delivers the full throughput of 12Gb/s SAS and 6.6GB/s PCI Express® 3.0 to maximize the performance of ThinkServer scale-out storage. The card will be offered on Lenovo rack and tower servers.
“Our next-generation ThinkServer portfolio blends storage innovation and standardization for the new software defined age, which requires advanced I/O options,” said Bob Galush, Vice President, System x High Volume Servers and Options. “PMC’s 12Gb/s SAS products include advantages in density, performance and reliability. The Lenovo 8885E by PMC card provides our customers with a scale-out storage solution that can grow based on their needs.”
The low-profile MD2 form factor Lenovo 8885E by PMC card is a Host Bus Adapter that provides eight SAS/SATA ports for 6Gb/s and 12Gb/s JBOD connectivity. The card enables seamless and reliable connectivity to Lenovo JBODs via PMC’s 12Gb/s SAS expanders. It supports all common operating systems, including Windows, RHEL, SLES and VMware variants.
“Lenovo’s ThinkServer products are versatile enough to handle workloads ranging from those found in SMBs to enterprise data centers,”said Pete Hazen, vice president of the Data Center & Server Group at PMC. “A key component of that flexibility comes from their ability to scale based on business needs. IT professionals and data center managers will find that this PMC-based card addresses their immediate storage needs and allows them to future proof against ever-increasing workloads and emerging storage requirements.”
About PMC’s Server, Storage System and Flash Solutions
PMC is a leading provider of enterprise storage system solutions for networked and server storage applications, with a broad portfolio of Adaptec by PMC® RAID adapters and HBAs, Tachyon® SAS/SATA and Fibre Channel (FC) protocol controllers, RAID controllers, Flashtec™ PCIe flash controllers and NVRAM drives, and maxSAS™ expander and FC disk interconnect products. Together, these products provide end-to-end semiconductor and software solutions to the industry’s leading storage OEMs and ODMs and hyperscale data centers. For more information, visit http://www.pmcs.com/storage.
About PMC
PMC (Nasdaq:PMCS) is the semiconductor and software solutions innovator transforming networks that connect, move and store big data. Building on a track record of technology leadership, the company is driving innovation across storage, optical and mobile networks. PMC’s highly integrated solutions increase performance and enable next-generation services to accelerate the network transformation. For more information, visit www.pmcs.com. Follow PMC on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and RSS.
MediaFire Launches Native iOS 8 Update With “Power Upload” Feature
HOUSTON, TX–(November 18th, 2014) – MediaFire, a leading provider of consumer online storage solutions, today announced the release of MediaFire for iOS 8, our latest and greatest cloud storage application for iPhone and iPad users.
Available today for free on iTunes, MediaFire for iOS 8 adds a variety of new features that make it easier than ever to access, and share all of your files on the go, including new photo and video playback options, a new “Power Upload” mode for faster data syncing, and a new optimized interface designed to take advantage of the extra screen real estate offered by the iPhone Plus.
To download MediaFire for iOS, 8 visit: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mediafire/id555646196?mt=8
MediaFire’s newest feature, called “Power Upload” allows iOS users to effectively double their upload speeds. The feature can be toggled on and off as needed, in order to quickly and easily upload all of your photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad.
Now iOS 8 users can use MediaFire to access, protect, and share all of their mobile photos, videos, automatically. Files are safely stored in the cloud, and can be automatically synced and accessed on your home computer (via MediaFire Desktop), or the web via MediaFire’s online interface. MediaFire Desktop is currently available as a free download for both OSX and Windows users.
“Everyday, over a Million iOS users choose MediaFire to access, share, and safeguard the files that matter most to them,” said Derek Labian, president and CEO of MediaFire. “Whether you are looking to simply share a file, or to back up and access all of your media from the cloud, MediaFire is the simplest and most affordable cloud storage service on the market today.”
Starting at just $2.50 per month, or 24.99 a year for one terabyte of online storage,
In addition to paid accounts, MediaFire continues to offer users up to 50 gigs of cloud storage for free.
In addition to today’s launch, MediaFire’s complete mobile SDK for iOS has been updated with additional support for iOS 8 devices, enabling developers around the world to easily integrate cloud syncing and storage into their mobile applications.
For a full list of resources and tutorials, visit http://www.mediafire.com/developers/
MediaFire iOS 8 Features:
- Automatically backup your camera photos! – MediaFire for iOS lets you automatically upload and protect all your photos and videos.
- Power Upload -A new selectable mode that allows you to harness the full upload speed from your iOS Device.
- Stream music and videos – Stream your music and video collection anywhere and anytime.
- Share documents and media directly from your mobile device – Easily share through email, sms, or your favorite chat app!)
About MediaFire:
MediaFire is an online storage and collaboration company focused on providing regular people with a complete and easy-to-use solution for managing their digital stuff. Available for iPhone, Android, OSX, Windows, and Web, MediaFire is the only online storage solution to offer unlimited downloads, download resuming, zero wait times and more, all for free. Every month, more than 150 million people use MediaFire to quickly and securely store, organize and share all their personal and work data.
For Developers
MediaFire’s API solutions enable developers to quickly and easily integrate cloud storage and file sharing into their applications. For information on how your organization can use MediaFire to enhance your business, visit http://developers.mediafire.com/, or contact developers@mediafire.com for more information.
Cloud is Reshaping the World of Business for SMBs
On Thursday, June 26, I participated in an hour-long IBM Business Insider Spreecast titled, “Cloud: Reshaping the World of Business,” where host Paul Gillin led the panel through a series of questions and thought points concerning Cloud and small to medium-sized businesses. There was also an associated Twitter Chat that used hashtag, #SMB4Cloud, that I participated in during the event. Though you can’t attend the live event now, you can click the link above and connect to the Spreecast and gain insight into the discussion that we had.
There were a few major highlights that sprang from the panel and participants. First, is the concept that mature businesses move slower to adopt new technologies than their newer counterparts do. Startups are especially onboard with new technologies, such as cloud computing, cloud storage, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Startups don’t always have the capital to purchase infrastructure and data center space that can run into the millions of dollars for the kind of computing power required to run high capacity applications, to store big data, to maintain a potentially huge number of customers, to supply adequate bandwidth, and to provide 24×7 service uptimes.
Startups have to leverage cloud computing, IaaS, and new technologies in order to get into the market and compete effectively against established businesses.
Second, cloud computing allows companies, at any stage of development, to get to market faster than is possible with traditional computing infrastructure. Provisioning times with IaaS is measured in minutes rather than in weeks or in months.
Third, using a cloud provider or managed service provider (MSP) allows a company to use expertise that might not be available within the company. MSPs also allows companies to leverage these skills that might be out of their salary range. SMBs can effectively compete on a scale and at a speed that wasn’t possible just a few years ago. Only large companies could move infrastructure, people, and skills fast enough and on a large enough scale to take on significant contracts. Cloud computing has opened up new possibilities and expanded business opportunities for SMBs.
Fourth, cloud computing offers a high level of simplicity for SMBs. There are services available that are very easy to use. If the business doesn’t require a lot of customization or specialized services, then cloud usage can be as simple as a few mouse clicks, which allows SMBs to use current employee skillsets to step into cloud services without the complexity.
Finally, the cloud transforms IT people into business people. Fixing computers and troubleshooting problems now shifts to a provider. IT people are now becoming more focused on business outcomes, customer satisfaction, and business growth rather than day-to-day break/fix and operational objectives of running an IT shop.
Panelists:
Paul Gillin – Paul Gillin Communications, Host.
John Mason – General Manager, Midmarket at IBM.
Laurie McCabe – Co-founder and Partner, The SBM Group.
Subbu Balakrishnan – CTO and Co-founder, Good.co.
One of the panelists noted that, “Cloud works for DIY and “Do It For Me” businesses alike.”
That statement covers the gamut of what cloud computing can do for businesses at whatever comfort or expertise level they have at their disposal. Although it’s difficult for some IT people, even CIOs, to see is that if your company isn’t an IT company, then there’s no reason to be in the IT business. Cloud makes it possible to be in the business you’re in, but have the computing power you need to run your business without becoming an IT business.
The conclusions from the Spreecast and the Twitter Chat can be summarized as the following:
- Established businesses must embrace cloud computing to remain relevant
- Startups and young businesses use new technologies and adapt faster
- Cloud computing enables a faster startup and faster presence for new services
- Cloud computing is transforming IT from a service to a business quality organization
- IaaS significantly shortens infrastructure provisioning times
- Cloud computing allows businesses to focus on business rather than on IT
Cloud computing, for some, is quite controversial, but few would argue that cloud isn’t transformative and a paradigm shift from business as usual. Businesses that want to remain relevant and those that want to become agile, or even virtual, should examine the possibilities of what cloud can offer them.
If you’re considering cloud computing for your business, check out IBM’s Cloud Computing Marketplace.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
IBM’s Entry into Software-Defined Storage: Elastic Storage
By now, everyone has heard of the hot new buzzword: software-defined data center (SDDC). SDDC is the new data center paradigm where everything is software-defined: network, computers, and storage. Yes, there’s underlying hardware making the whole thing possible but what do software-defined resources really do for us? The answer is simple: It abstracts hardware into pooled resources that users can partake of in discreet slices for cloud applications and for cloud workloads.
But the real story here is IBM’s venture into software-defined storage that it calls Elastic Storage. On May 12, 2014, IBM announced a portfolio of software defined storage products that deliver improved economics at the same time they enable organizations to access and process any type of data, on any type of storage device, anywhere in the world. Elastic Storage offers unprecedented performance, infinite scale, and is capable of reducing storage costs up to 90 percent by automatically moving data onto the most economical storage device.
For example, if a company has data that’s accessed infrequently, that data will be moved to tape or to low cost disk systems for archiving. Alternatively, data that’s accessed regularly or that requires high speed access will be moved to flash storage. Data redistribution is based on policy-driven rules and data analytics. This type of automated data movement shows cost savings of up to 90 percent.
“Born in IBM Research Labs, this new, patented breakthrough technology allows enterprises to exploit – not just manage – the exploding growth of data in a variety of forms generated by countless devices, sensors, business processes, and social networks. The new storage software is ideally suited for the most data-intensive applications, which require high-speed access to massive volumes of information – from seismic data processing, risk management and financial analysis, weather modeling, and scientific research, to determining the next best action in real-time retail situations.”
Elastic Storage features and benefits:
- Enhanced security – Protects data on disk from security breaches, unauthorized access, or being lost, stolen or improperly discarded with encryption of data at rest and enable HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, EU, and various national data privacy laws compliance.
- Extreme performance – Server-side Elastic Storage flash caches speed IO performance up to 6X, benefitting application performance, while still enjoying all the manageability benefits of shared storage.
- Save acquisition costs – Uses standard servers and storage instead of expensive, special purpose hardware.
- Limitless elastic data scaling – Scale out with relatively inexpensive standard hardware, while maintaining world-class storage management.
- Increase resource and operational efficiency – Pools redundant isolated resources and optimizes utilization.
- Achieve greater IT agility – Quickly reacts, provisions and redeploys resources in response to new requirements.
- Intelligent resource utilization and automated management – Automated, policy-driven management of storage reduces storage costs up to 90% and drives operational efficiencies.
- Empower geographically distributed workflows – Places critical data close to everyone and everything that needs it, accelerating schedules and time to market.
As for performance, IBM’s Elastic Storages boasts the capability of scanning over 10 billion files on just one cluster in less than 45 minutes. This type of performance as extreme implications for analytics and big data applications. IBM’s Elastic Storage solution is built for performance for big data and is based on the same technologies used in the Watson computer.
“Elastic Storage offers unprecedented performance, infinite scale, and is capable of reducing storage costs up to 90 percent by automatically moving data onto the most economical storage device.”
Part of Elastic Storage’s performance enhancement is due to IBM’s parallel data access technology: (General Parallel File System (GPFS). It eliminates the performance bottlenecks and so-called “choke” points of other data access algorithms and technologies.
What it all means is that now you have the same capability to access, analyze, and report on huge data sets in a fraction of the time it used to take to perform these analyses as large companies have. Elastic Storage puts the data where it needs to be to best serve you and your data requirements at a tremendous cost savings.
IBM Elastic Storage supports OpenStack Cinder and Swift interfaces. IBM is a platinum sponsor of OpenStack Foundation and is now its second most prolific contributor. It also supports other open APIs, such as POSIX and Hadoop.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Storage Trends and the Future of Storage
Do you see the Infographic to the right? You only see part of it. How much information can you use from what you see now? Not much, right? It’s the same with your storage–you’re only getting part of the story because you’re only seeing part of the picture. Only seeing part of the picture is disturbing enough here but think about what you’re not seeing from your current storage tools.
What do you know about the storage in your company or organization? One thing you do know for sure, without much investigation on your part, is that a lot of the storage you’ve paid for is wasted. Your money’s wasted. Your capacity’s wasted. And all the while, your technology staff’s begging for more storage because they’re running out of space–or at least they think they are running out of it.
Some of it isn’t your staff’s fault. They too, are only seeing part of the picture. It’s your storage management tools, your storage management strategy, and your storage technology that’s causing most of your space waste problems.
But waste is also only part of the picture. How will you manage the rapidly growing volume of data with which you must contend? How efficiently can you retrieve it? Are you still relying on tape and traditional data recovery technologies?
And how about disaster recovery? How many tapes and restore points will you have to manage in case of a major outage? Have you estimated your mean time to restore (MTTR)?
There’s a way to manage your storage environment efficiently, with less waste, with lower power consumption, and with less sprawl. Check out the full The Top Trends in Storage Infographic from IBM to see the solution and get the whole story.
IBM offers a range of Storwize products from Entry to Enterprise.
Five of the many outstanding features of the Storwize family of products are:
- Flash Copy – Make up to 2,040 copies of your data.
- Remote Mirror Function – Copy data to a remote location for disaster recovery.
- Data Volume Management – Real-time compression takes place on data as it is written to disk.
- Visual enhancements – You can easily view your storage capacity, how much you’re using, how much is free, and how much space is saved by compression.
- Lower costs – Easy to manage storage that is space, time, and cost efficient.
The Storwize product line is part of IBM’s Smarter Storage for Smarter Computing solution.
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
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