Storage news ticker – February 1 2022

The 2021 disk drive stats from CSP Backblaze showed that the 6TB Seagate – model: ST6000DX000, the oldest in its fleet at an average adage of 80.4 months – had the lowest failure rate of any drive, with an annualised failure rate (AFR) of 0.11 per cent. Two recent drive purchases are doing well: the 16TB WDC drive (model: WUH721816ALE6L0) has an average age of 5.06 months and an AFR of 0.14 per cent and the 16TB Toshiba (model: MG08ACA16TE) has an average age of 3.57 months and an AFR of 0.91 pure cent. We reproduce Backblaze’s drive stats table here:

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CDS, a provider of multi-vendor services (MVS) for datacentres worldwide, achieved its highest annual revenue ever on 21 per cent revenue growth compared with 2020, significantly improved profitability, expanded relationships with its OEM partners, and added more than 600 new enterprise customers during the year.

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Data protector Cobalt Iron has been awarded patent number 11212304, which describes new capabilities for Cobalt Iron Compass, its enterprise SaaS backup platform, whereby Compass will automatically reconfigure IT infrastructure when it detects cyber threats, such as a ransomware attack. It will dynamically adjust access to backup infrastructure and data to reduce exposures to cyber attacks. It can also provide analytics-based insights into an attack and automatically perform various operations to further secure data.

Data protector Commvault has acquired Israel-based TrapX, a cyber deception firm, to enhance Commvault customers’ capability to proactively detect, defend, and recover from unknown threats. TrapX lures malware actors in with authentic traps that engage attackers, collect TTPs and trigger alerts. It’s massively scalable, flexible and fast, and TrapX can deploy >500 unique traps per appliance in less than five minutes. TrapX was founded in 2012, has raised $47.7 million in four rounds of funding, has more than 300 customers world-wide, and calls itself the world’s leading cyber deception platform. A Commvault blog claims “We believe this new acquisition will set Commvault apart as the only vendor in our industry to offer customers active data management capabilities that are integrated with their security investments.” TrapX technology will be integrated into Commvault’s Metallic SaaS offering.

File and object storage supplier and protector Quantum released ESG survey data that reveals the most common challenges organisations struggle with around effective data management, storage and analysis. It found respondents see unstructured data as under-leveraged and overly complex. Data quality and storage costs most often inhibit data management strategies. Data retention is top of mind and organisations struggle with when to delete or store data. Data sprawl and hybrid cloud models create vulnerable environments. Growing cyber security threats require new approaches. Organisations need a data management strategy to cope with these things.

Veritas has appointed Lawrence Wong as its first chief strategy officer. He’s also an SVP. Wong’s role is to partner with other Veritas leaders to develop and execute a comprehensive cloud strategy and he will lead the company’s corporate growth strategy and acquisition efforts. He will report to CEO Greg Hughes and be a part of the Veritas Leadership Team. Most recently he was at Accenture, acting as managing director and member of the Global Leadership Council (GLC). He has also held leadership roles at McKinsey & Company and HPE. 

Veritas saw CMO Todd Forsythe depart to be an exec partner at Gartner in December last year. CTO Cameron Bahar left towards the end of 2020. Veritas currently lists no CTO or CMO on its leadership web page.

ReRAM startup Weebit Nano has appointed ReRAM and non-volatile memory (NVM) expert Gabriel Molas as chief scientist. It has recruited him from its research partner CEO-Leti where Molas researched NVM for the past 17 years, leading numerous ReRAM research projects including work with Weebit’s ReRAM. Molas said “I am excited to join Weebit as the Company moves to commercialisation. Over the past decade, ReRAM technology has continued to mature, and it is now poised to become a mainstream non-volatile memory alternative. Weebit’s ReRAM is particularly well positioned for success in both traditional memory and AI applications.” He is an IEEE Senior Member – an achievement that recognises his more than 150 international conference publications, 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and 25 patents.