Category: Bits & Bytes Blog

Here are some more thoughts about MapReduce, this time on storage. Let’s say you have 128 nodes, with one disk on each node for a total of 128 disks. The bandwidth to each disk is likely over 100 MB/sec, based on specifications sheets from various disk vendors. We therefore have 128*100 MB/sec, which is 12.5…

There was a sizable uptick last month in the readership of a blog entry that appeared nearly two years ago on DCIG’s website on the topic of data loss on SATA storage systems. While this blog entry received a fair amount of interest when it was first published, exactly what prompted a resurgence of interest…

Arkeia Software is putting the final touches on the 9.0 release of its Arkeia Network Backup software, which the company plans to deliver in the first quarter of next year, possibly by mid-January. We’ll cover that release in more detail as the company gets closer to shipping, but for now . . . The key…

NetApp is advancing its efforts in the cloud storage market with the acquisition of Bycast, a developer of object-based storage virtualization software that turns multiple storage devices across geographically dispersed locations into a single pool for storing fixed content data. NetApp announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held…

ast year, the number of startups that entered the storage market just about equaled the number of storage vendors that were acquired in the M&A fever. I have no idea when a startup ceases to be a startup, but when I first started this top ten list I gave it a three-year window. That proved…

Much of the talk about the demise of Fibre Channel relates to its prospects as a disk drive interface, where it is rapidly losing ground against SAS and SATA drives. But Fibre Channel as a SAN interconnect is still going strong, despite rapid growth in the NAS and iSCSI markets. In fact, the Fibre Channel…

The Dell’Oro Group market research firm recently released market figures for SANs, including Fibre Channel HBAs. Both Emulex and QLogic immediately put out positive press releases, both claiming market share gains. Emulex’s release QLogic’s release How can these arch rivals both have gained market share? Through the miracle of spin. It depends on how you…

It’s hard to believe that there’s already been 10 storage acquisitions this year, but in fact there were more like 15. And if the last couple weeks are any indication, we may have another 10 before the year is out. To whittle the list down to 10, I factored in the size of the deal,…

I originally posted a Top Ten acquisitions list in September, under the assumption that after the blockbuster HP-3PAR buyout we may have seen the last of the big storage acquisitions for the year. Wrong. The storage industry capped a crazy year of M&A fever with the EMC-Isilon and Dell-Compellent acquisitions. With those additions, I had…

Dell dropped a bombshell on the data deduplication market today with the announcement that is has signed an agreement to buy Ocarina Networks. The amount of the deal was not disclosed (but I’m working on that). We’ll be following up on this announcement in the near future as we get more info, but for now:…