Enterprise SSD prices are rising, the NVMe spec extends to SSD zones, key-value stores and disk drives, and Datto has pushed out software-only data protection security to its cloud service provider customers.
Enterprise SSD price rises coming
Research outfit TrendForce says enterprise SSD contract prices for 3Q21 could rise to 10-15 per cent from the previous projection of 5-10 per cent. This is due to growing server shipments since 2Q21 driving SSD demand higher, allied with certain SSD components and parts possibly being in supply due to limited foundry capacity.
The server shipment increase is due to, firstly, North American CSPs and hyperscalers completing inventory adjustments and expanding their storage capacity. Secondly government agencies and SMBs are increasing their budgets for IT infrastructure and so buying more servers. Thirdly, AMD and Intel have upgraded server processors and this is driving a server upgrade cycle.
TrendForce says these effects are also increasing the average enterprise SSD capacity towards 4/8TB SSDs since this can lower the cost of SSD deployment.
As Samsung’s enterprise SSDs have more in-house components than its competitors, TrendForce thinks it will increase its market share and its products are expected to account for more than 50 per cent of enterprise SSDs (in terms of bits) shipped to data centres in North America in 3Q21.
Intel’s market share may potentially decrease in the TLC-dominant enterprise SSD sector.
NVMe Express v2.0 spec
The NVM Express organisation has released the NVMe v2.0 spec which broadens the NVMe scope to cover enterprise and client SSDs, removable cards, compute accelerators and HDDs.
The spec consist of multiple documents, including the NVMe Base specification, Command Set specifications (NVM Command Set specification, ZNS (Zoned NameSpace) Command Set specification, KV (Key Value) Command Set specification), Transport specifications (PCIe Transport specification, Fibre Channel Transport specification, RDMA Transport specification and TCP Transport specification) and the NVMe Management Interface specification.
The ZNS specification provides a zoned storage device interface that allows the SSD and host to collaborate on data placement.
The KV Command Set provides access to data on an NVMe SSD controller using a key rather than a block address. KV allows applications to directly communicate with the drive using key-value pairs, avoiding the overhead of translation tables between keys and logical blocks.
Rotational Media support enables support for HDD on NVMe technology with updates to features, management capabilities and other enhancements required for HDD support.
32/64 bit CRC expands the protection information and data protection to 32 and 64 bit allowing for new types of meta data use cases.
Command Group Control prevents unintended changes after a system is provisioned and protects the system from unintentional or malicious changes.
NVMe 2.0 specifications maintain backwards compatibility with previous NVMe generations.
Datto data protection goes virtual
Cloud backup service provider Datto has announced a software-only version of its SIRIS secure data protection appliance. The vSIRIS product can be vSIRIS can be installed remotely and runs as a virtual machine (VM) in either VMware ESX or Microsoft Hyper-V on an MSP’s own hardware.
The vSIRIS product includes;
- Data Protection: Automated, verified backups are stored locally and in the cloud, making them easy to access and ready to address any recovery scenario.
- Flexible Restores: vSIRIS options include rapid rollback, instant cloud recovery, bare metal restore and everything in between.
- Global Cloud Infrastructure: Datto’s secure, highly available (99.99999 per cent) private cloud provides a range of data retention options, a choice of regional data centres, and the ability to scale and recover clients’ data and business operations quickly.
- Reliable Backups: Datto’s proprietary Inverse Chain Technology combats the high failure rates associated with traditional incremental backup to deliver more resilient protection and efficient storage management.
- Built-In Ransomware Detection: All backups are scanned for ransomware and backup files are resilient against ransomware attacks.
- Automated Data and Boot Verification.
Shorts
Ex-Hadoop startup Cloudera, which supplies Big Data analytics software, has been taken private in a $5.3bn deal with CDR and KKR. Cloudera, started up in 2016, went public via an IPO in 2017 and merged with competitor Hortonworks in 2018. More details here.
SaaS-based data protector Cobalt Iron been granted a patent, U.S. patent #10999290, for dynamic authorisation control based on conditions and events. It enable the use of analytics and machine learning to dynamically adjust user authentication and access to IT resources based on environmental and operational considerations, such as a cyberthreat attack.
SaaS-based data protector Druva nabbed 20 awards in G2’s Spring Reports 2021, and four 2021 TrustRadius Top Rated Awards, including being named a top solution for Disaster Recovery, Endpoint Backup, and Data Deduplication for the second consecutive year.
Independent Managed Kubernetes provider Platform9 has been awarded Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Compliance. This means it provides a secure environment for companies that process, store, or transmit credit card information as well as their service providers. Other, larger hyperscale Managed Kubernetes providers already meet the PCI DSS requirements.
Wasabi cloud storage has been verified for use with Veritas’ Enterprise Vault backup software. This depends upon the S3 protocol with Wasabi being used for both primary and secondary (archive) storage.
Mick Bradley has been hired by Virtuozzo, supplying combined file, block and object storage, to CSPs, to be its VP for Global Sales. His 25-year-plus CV includes, in reverse order, VP EMEA for Arcserve since Feb 2018, VP & GM EMEA Kaminario (Nov 2015-Nov 2017), and, before that, MD EMEA Violin Memory, HP, CopperEye, COPAN Systems, Pillar Data and EMC. Way to go Mick.
