Seagate, Virident team up on PCIe SSDs for data centers

Seagate Technology and Virident Systems today announced a strategic partnership to jointly deliver NAND flash-based storage for data centers.

Under the agreement, Seagate will immediately offer a complete line of rebranded, flash-based PCIe products to its system manufacturer and distribution partners. The PCIe flash modules are a first for Seagate, which has focused on serial-SCSI (SAS)-based solid-state drives (SSDs) for the enterprise and hybrid drives, which combine spinning disk with NAND flash, for the consumer market.

In addition, the two companies said they plan to leverage their "mutual strengths" to create next-generation hardware and software products for the solid-state storage market. In conjunction with the agreement, Seagate has made a $40 million equity investment in Virident, and will appoint one member to the Virident board of directors.

Virident produces a line of high-end, PCIe-based flash modules called FlashMAX. FlashMAX modules are available in both single-level cell (SLC) and less expensive multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash and range in capacities from 550GB to 2.2TB. The MLC-module can generate 325,000 random read IOPS (using 4K blocks) and one million IOPS using 512-byte blocks). The SLC card is able to generate up to 340,000 IOPS using 4K blocks and 1.4 million IOPS using 512-byte blocks

"Seagate is thrilled to team with Virident, a technology leader in one of the fastest growing markets in enterprise and cloud computing," Gary Gentry, general manager of solid state drives at Seagate, said in a statement. "We believe that this strategic agreement immediately strengthens our leading position in the enterprise storage market by adding a broad line of Seagate flash-based PCIe solutions powered by Virident to our portfolio."

In other news, Seagate today reported its second quarter financial results. Seagate, whose quarter ended December 28, 2012, reported revenue of approximately $3.7 billion, a gross margin of 27%, net income of $492 million and diluted earnings per share of $1.30.

"Seagate is executing well in an environment where customer demand forecasting is challenging," Steve Luczo, Seagate's CEO, said in a statement.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about storage hardware in Computerworld's Storage Hardware Topic Center.

How to restore data from Time Machine in Mountain Lion

Now that you've been using Time Machine regularly to back up your computer, you should be fully prepared if your Mac crashes or if you need to move data from one Mac to another. Restoring data from Time Machine is just as easy as backing things up in the first place.

Restore a single file or folder

If you're just looking for a certain file or folder, start by connecting the external drive you use for Time Machine backups or making sure you can connect to your Time Capsule. Click on the Time Machine item in the menu bar at the top of your screen (it looks like a clock with an arrow running counter-clockwise) and choose Enter Time Machine. Here, all of your saved backups appear in chronological order. Use the visual timeline on the right hand side to scroll through your backups and look for specific items or folders. Older dates are indicated in pink on the timeline; the most up-to-date data on your Mac is indicated in white. (You'll see the word "Now" in bold, white letters on the timeline.)

Not sure which backup might hold the last copy of your missing file? Try a Spotlight search in Time Machine based on keywords. You'll see a search field in the corner of each Finder window in the Time Machine view. Type in the file name or keywords from the file, and Spotlight will search through your backups to find the latest copy.

Once you think you've found what you're looking for, use OS X's Quick Look to make sure--select the file and then press the spacebar to view the file without having to launch its parent application.

Select the file or folder and press the Restore button. The file will automatically be copied to your desktop or to the file's original folder. This may take some time, depending on the size of the transfer.

Restore an entire system

Sometimes you may want to restore your entire system from a backup, say in event of a crash or when your computer is acting badly and you'd like to dial back the clock to a kinder, gentler time. If that's the case, first connect your Time Machine drive. Then, start up your Mac from the Mountain Lion recovery partition by pressing (and holding down) Command-R at startup. This launches Recovery Mode, which is a portion of your drive that Mountain Lion treats as a separate volume. It includes a few essential utilities for restoring files in case of an issue. For this to work, you must have a complete Time Machine backup that includes all system files.

The Mac OS X Utilities window appears. Select Restore From Time Machine Backup. This command will erase the destination drive--your Mac--so only use it if you're restoring an entire volume to its original source or to a replacement drive. (Read the next section for setting up a new Mac or transferring data between Macs).

Click Continue until you reach the Select a Backup Source window. Select your Time Machine drive and click Continue. In the Select a Destination window, select your Mac's hard drive. (Using Recovery Modeerases your Mac's hard drive before restoring from Time Machine, but once the process is finished, you'll be able to log in and use your Mac normally).

Transfer data between Macs

Let's say you bought a new Mac and want to transfer all the data from your old system to it. Or, say you simply want to transfer data from one Mac to another. Time Machine can help here too, but with the assistance of another built-in Mountain Lion utility called Migration Assistant.

Once your backup drive is connected, launch Migration Assistant (in your /Applications/Utilities folder). A Migration Assistant window will appear and ask how you want to transfer your information. Choose the From another Mac, PC, Time Machine backup, or other disk option and then click Continue. You may be prompted to enter your administrator's password. Do so, if necessary, and click Continue.

Next, you'll be asked to quit other applications. Do so, and click Continue. In the next window, select the From a Time Machine backup or other disk option and click Continue.

Select your backup drive and enter a password for it, if necessary. Then, choose which items you'd like to migrate (chances are, this will be everything). Click Continue, and your files will begin to transfer. For more tips about using Migration Assistant, see "Move data from an old Mac to a new Mac."

Hitachi releases new 1.6TB flash modules

Making good on the flash strategy it announced in August, Hitachi Data Systems has unveiled its first flash module, a 1.6TB SAS-interface flash card.

Three months ago, HDS lifted the covers on its flash strategy saying that like EMC, it will put NAND flash products in servers, storage and appliances in order to enable compute acceleration, caching and high-performance storage.

Hitachi's Accelerated Flash Module

The new modules and accompanying flash chassis is being marketed for use in enterprise-class mission critical applications such as online transaction processing (OLTP) and financial data and metadata indexing.

The company is calling its solid-state platform Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage.

At the heart of the Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is a proprietary flash controller, a CPU with firmware that manages its multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash-based storage modules.

"We will not be dependent on any vendor per se for the SSDs [solid state drives]. We can use any. If tomorrow Samsung comes up with a drive that has four times the capacity of today's NAND or Toshiba comes up with 8X NAND, we can use that," said Roberto Basilio, vice president of Infrastructure Platforms Product Management at HDS.

HDS's controller is a multi-core, high bandwidth architecture with up to 128 flash DIMMs (dual in-line memory module).

HDS is currently offering a 1.6TB flash module. Next quarter it will add a 3.2TB module. Following that it plans to offer a 6.4TB flash module.

By comparison, flash storage maker Virident offers a flash module called a FlashMAX that is available in both single-level cell (SLC) and MLC NAND flash and range in capacities from 550GB to 2.2TB. The MLC-module can generate 325,000 random read IOPS (using 4K blocks) and one million IOPS using 512 byte blocks). The SLC card is able to generate up to 340,000 IOPS using 4K blocks and 1.4 million IOPS using 512 byte blocks.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage also uses a new 8U-high (a U or unit equals 1.75-in) flash chassis that holds up to 48 drives, a rack-optimized flash module drive (FMD) and associated interconnect cables. The new flash chassis is a set of four drives per 2U-high tray.

Each enclosure can scale from 6.4TB up to 76.8TB of flash storage, giving it 2 times greater density than the largest MLC SSD available today, Hitachi said. Up to four flash enclosures can be housed in Hitachi's high-end Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) array, enabling more than 300TB of flash per system.

The flash storage can be configured for RAID 1, RAID 5 or RAID 6.

The single 1.6TB module, which uses a 6Gbps SAS 2.0 interface, can perform just over one million random read I/Os per second (IOPS) using 8K block sizes and 270,000 random write IOPS, HDS said.

HDS said it would not provide pricing for its drives or storage platforms, "but based on our calculations, Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is up to 46% lower in cost when compared to an MLC SSD of similar capacity," a spokesman wrote in an email reply to Computerworld.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage introduces several new capabilities including inline write compression that speeds writes on flash and improves MLC flash memory endurance. When compared to standard 400GB MLC SSDs, Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage has four times better performance, improved environmental characteristics (power and space), the company said.

Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is fully compatible with all Hitachi VSP features, including Hitachi Dynamic Tiering (HDT), which allows data to be moved to different tiers of storage based on use patterns.

"Today's announcement is a milestone achievement in how flash technology will be used in the enterprise data center moving forward," Basilio said in a statement. "Hitachi Accelerated Flash storage is the first flash device that is optimized for the performance and reliability required for mission-critical applications."

How HDS's flash modules broken down by drive, enclosure and chassis and how they would fit into an HDS VSP array.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about storage hardware in Computerworld's Storage Hardware Topic Center.

Citrix and NetApp simplify on-premises data sharing

Citrix Systems and NetApp have jointly developed a software and hardware package optimized for Citrix's ShareFile with StorageZones.

ShareFile with StorageZones is Citrix's enterprise-friendly answer to cloud-based file storage and sharing services like DropBox, Apple's iCloud and Google's Drive, and allows CIOs to place data in the organization's own data center as opposed to in the cloud.

Enterprises can now meet compliance and data sovereignty requirements, while users can still access their documents and images from anywhere at any time. Storing data close to users also helps improve performance, the two companies said on Wednesday.

By joining forces, Citrix and NetApp hopes to help enterprises simplify and accelerate on-premise, large-scale data sharing and storage deployments, they said. The two have seen to it that StorageZones works with NetApp's FAS and V-Series storage systems running its clustered Data ONTAP software.

The integration lets enterprise take advantage of features such as de-duplication and compression to decrease the amount of storage needed to host employee content.

De-duplication does that by eliminating duplicated content, so if two users are storing the same image there only needs to be one copy.

NetApp's Snapshot technology can be used to backup and recover the data.

This is the second time in less than a month Citrix and NetApp have joined forces to make life a little easier for IT staff.

Last month the two companies announced they are working on integrating NetApp's storage software with Citrix's CloudPlatform and the Apache CloudStack project, offering features such as storage automation and virtual machine backup and recovery.

On Wednesday, Citrix also announced two new NetScaler MPX hardware appliances aimed at smaller enterprises, it said.

The MPX 5550 and MPX 5650 cost from US$14,000 and are now shipping. They can be used for load balancing, SSL processing and traffic inspection to protects against threats such as cross-site scripting and SQL injections.

Send news tips and comments to mikael_ricknas@idg.com

Disk drive shipments rebound from Thai floods

Windows 8, ultrabooks expected to give hard drives a boost 

A year after a flooding disaster in Thailand took out a large portion of hard disk drive production, the industry has fully recovered with shipments to the computer market expected to hit a record level this year.

According to market research firm IHS iSuppli, hard drive sales have rebounded, driven by demand in the enterprise market as well as the upcoming arrival of the Windows 8 operating system next month.

HDD shipments in 2012 for the overall computer market, including PCs, are forecast to reach 524 million drives, up 4.3% percent from 502.5 million units last year, according to an IHS report.

Hard drive prices, however, will remain high, and prices are not expected to fall to pre-flood levels until 2014, IHS stated in a report earlier this year.

Hard disk drives shipments

In the wake of the flooding in Thailand last year, hard drive prices rose to an average of $66 in the fourth quarter of 2011, a 28% leap from the $51 average price in the previous quarter, according to IHS.

The average price held steady at $66 in the first quarter of 2012 and is expected to decline only marginally, to about $65, in the second quarter.

While the number of hard drives shipping this year will top an all-time record, shipments are expected continue to rise briskly over the next four years. In 2016, hard drive shipments will hit 575.1 million units, IHS said.

"The forecast includes drive shipments only to the PC computer segment, which includes client hard disks for desktops and notebooks, and enterprise drives for servers and storage systems. The forecast does not include drive shipments for other markets, such as in the automotive industry, or for external hard drives or DVR devices.

In contrast to the glowing performance of drives for the PC space, annual drives shipments for consumer-related products will decline this year from 2011 levels.

"HDD shipments for computers will overcome a sluggish third quarter to reach record levels in 2012," said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. "The yearly rise in HDD shipments is the result of greater demand from the consumer and enterprise PC segments, both of which continue to clamor for disk space in order to hold storage-intensive media like music, videos and other forms of social media content."

Another major contributor to drive shipment growth is the Windows 8 operating system, which is expected to be launched in October, and the subsequent purchase of PCs with the new OS.

Hard drives sales will also get a boost from ultrabooks, including machines that use hybrid drives, which combine spinning disk with solid state storage. Those drive shipments are flat now but will take off in the fourth quarter of this years, according to IHS.

This past year, Seagate, which had been the only maker of hybrid drives for laptops, was joined byWestern Digital and Toshiba. Both companies announced they expect to ship products next year.

The Windows 8 launch and ultrabooks are "believed to be the best hope by the beleaguered PC sector to take on smartphones and tablets such as the iPad from Apple Inc.," IHS stated.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about data storage in Computerworld's Data Storage Topic Center.

WD releases 4TB enterprise drives, again

Western Digital Thursday unveiled an upgraded line of 1TB to 4TB 3.5-in hard drives for data centers.

WD had released another 4TB enterprise hard drive, the Ultrastar 7K4000 made by its Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) unit, in April.

WD completed its acquisition of HGST, now known as Viviti Technologies Ltd., in March

WD today expanded its enterprise-class storage offerings with the release of new WD RE SAS and WD RE SATA hard drives that offer capacities of up to 4 TB, said to be the highest available capacity today.

The RE drives are available in 1 TB, 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB capacities for nearline SAS (serial-attached SCSI) and 2 TB, 3 TB and 4 TB for drives based on the lower-performance SATA (serial ATA) specification.

The RE SAS drives have a sustained sequential data transfer rate of up to 182 MB/s, while the RE SATA drives have a sustained sequential data transfer rate of up to 171 MB/s.

Like the Ultrastar 7K4000 line, the new RE SAS and SATA 4TB drives, contain five 800GB platters.

Both the SAS and SATA drive products use the latest 6Gbps-interface specification.

Unlike the Ultrastar drives, the new RE SAS and SATA drives do not have a native encryption option. WD said it would be offering encryption on the RE SAS model in the future.

"The WD RE SAS and SATA 4 TB drives are designed, tested and optimized for enterprise storage and applications, enabling 33% greater capacity than previously available drives and up to 2.4 PB of raw capacity in a single enterprise rack," Doug Pickford, a senior director of business marketing for WD, said in a statement.

Dell is one of WD's resellers offering the new drives in its PowerVault MD3 arrays, offering up to 240TB of capacity in a single array.

The new RE SAS and RE SATA drives offer a 1.4 million and 1.2 million hour mean time before failure, respectively. The 3.5-inch WD RE SAS and RE SATA hard drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty.

The new RE drives pricing schedule follows:

4TB RE SAS drive: $479

3TB RE SAS drive: $369

2TB RE SAS drive: $249

1TB RE SAS drive: $139

4TB RE SATA drive: $459

3TB RE SATA drive: $349

2TB RE SATA drive: $229