Storage news roundup – February 22

Microsoft’s Azure cloud has announced a preview of Azure HPC Cache Premium Read-Write designed to provide high-bandwidth and low-latency access to files similar to local NVMe storage. It provides lower latency than the Standard HPC Cache for compute-intensive enterprise workloads. You can provision up to 84TB (80+TiB) of capacity in a single cache and point thousands of compute clients at it to get up to 20GBps of read throughput, reduced latency (150 µsec for reads, 1 msec for writes, 24.5 percent increase in write operations) and IOPS Scalability (170,000 random 4KiB writes, 450,000 random 4KiB reads). Premium HPC Cache provides Azure’s best file-based performance for time-sensitive workloads like media rendering, simulations for genomics and financial models, and chip design. It’s currently available as a Public Preview in select regions. If interested , you can create a new cache and choose the Premium (Preview) option. 

Cloud backup and storage service provider Backblaze has published an IPO playbook in series form for other startups. It says: “The IPO process… is as cryptic as the most jealously guarded algorithms for anyone who hasn’t been through it, and for no good reason.” It’s now “open sourcing” how it went through its IPO. Check out the first installment here.

Storage company Backblaze report

Privately-owned block data migrator Cirrus Data claims it has shifted over an exabyte of block data and says 2022 was a record year for the company, with bookings nearly doubling for the full year and profitability reaching new levels. Its Cirrus Migrate Cloud integrates with all the major public clouds. Customers can purchase data migration capacity directly through the Amazon Web Services marketplace, soon from Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud marketplaces as well. 

Containerized app data protector CloudCasa and container storage provider Ondat have announced a new bundled offering which provides customers with a unified solution to run their stateful applications on Kubernetes without worrying about availability, performance, protection, or data management and recovery. DevOps and platform teams will now have a simple, easy to consume software-as-a-service solution that gives the flexibility to store, manage, and backup applications anywhere on-premises, hybrid, or cloud environments. This bundle is available to existing Portworx customers at a 50 percent discount off the current pricing of Ondat and CloudCasa in the first year.

Data lakehouse supplier Databricks has announced the VS Code Extension for Databricks. It enables developers to write code locally, using authoring capabilities of the IDE, while connecting to Databricks clusters to run code remotely. IDEs let developers employ best practices that become necessary with large codebases, such as source code control, modular code layouts, refactoring support, and integrated unit testing. Databricks will be rolling out support for other IDEs and additional tools.

Dataddo, a SaaS startup with an automated, no-code data integration platform, has joined the Snowflake Partner Network to help mutual customers streamline centralization and distribution of data across their organizations using fewer tools. Dataddo CEO Petr Nemeth claimed: “Customers can use any of our hundreds of connectors to reliably sync data from online services to Snowflake, and from Snowflake to online services. Plus, the transformation and anomaly detection functionalities built into the Dataddo platform ensure that any data it loads into Snowflake meets an essential standard of quality.”

IBM has dropped the Spectrum brand prefix from two of its product websites; the ones for Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Fusion. They are now called IBM Storage Scale and Storage Fusion. But the Storage Scale datasheet still refers to Spectrum Scale. The Storage Fusion solution brief document refers to IBM Storage Fusion, though.

IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS) 3500 offers support for the next-generation Nvidia ConnectX-7 InfiniBand dual-port NDR 200 Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) network adapter and related network cables. ESS 3500 is also adding support for a 10TB self-encrypting drive (SED) option to enable key-managed SED encryption. SED functionality is supported by ESS 3500 solution version 6.1.5. To enable SED, all drives (NVMe and HDD) in a recovery group in the hybrid or capacity configurations must be SED-capable. IBM Spectrum Scale offers file system software encryption and SED support; both can be combined. More info here.

Lenovo says that PC revenues declined substantially in its Q3 FY23 results announced Feb 17, storage revenue more than tripled (+345 percent) and it’s now now #5 in the world. Lenovo says it experienced an record sales in Server, Storage, Software and AI Edge, which led to 156 percent year-over-year growth in operating profit. CFO Wai Ming said in the earnings call: “The latest quarterly third-party statistics indicated that ISG (Infrastructure Solutions Group) market share by revenue in the global storage market nearly doubled year-on-year.”  ISG president Kirk Skaugen said: “Within Storage, we had records for hyperconverged, traditional entry and midrange and cloud storage. So it was very broad-based.”

Lenovo storage revenues
Lenovo segment revenue history. Storage and servers are included in the ISG segment, with PCs in the Intelligent Devices Group

MSP-focused data protector N-able has launched N-able Managed Endpoint Detection and Response (Managed EDR), a threat monitoring, hunting, and response service designed for MSPs that have standardized on N-able Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR). MSPs can reinforce their IT security or Security Operations Center (SOC) team with enterprise security specialists through N-able Managed Endpoint Detection and Response.

Data protector NAKIVO ended calendar Q4 2022 with year-on-year revenue growth of 15 percent in EMEA and Asia. Of the total revenue in Q4 2022, 63 percent came from the EMEA region, 28 percent came from the Americas, and 9 percent came from the Asia-Pacific region. The US, Germany, and South Africa were the highest revenue contributors in the quarter. NAKIVO has over 25,000 paid customers in 177 countries. The customer base grew by 16 percent in Q4 2022 versus Q4 2021. The number of new customers grew by 16 percent in the EMEA region, by 18 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, and by 14 percent in the Americas.

Next Pathway’s SHIFT Cloud is available as a SaaS offering on the Azure Marketplace. Customers now have access to a robust and performant code translation engine that allows them to translate legacy SQL code and ETL pipelines to Microsoft Azure in a self-service capacity, we’re told.

Chris Hetner, Panzura
Chris Hetner

Cloud file services supplier Panzura has formed a Customer Security Advisory Council, chaired by Chris Hetner, a respected leader in cybersecurity. The council will provide education and awareness around data resiliency with a mission of advancing business, operational, and financial alignment to cybersecurity risk governance. Hetner served as the Senior Cybersecurity Advisor to the Chair of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and as Head of Cybersecurity for the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination at the SEC. He will provide ongoing education to Panzura customers about cybersecurity and operational resiliency. 

PNY Technologies announced the launch of its CS2230 M.2 NVMe portable SSD designed to replace SATA SSDs and provide faster speeds for gamers and business users. Available in 500GB and 1TB versions, the SSD can achieve read speeds of up to 3,300MB/s and write speeds of up to 2,500MB/s for the 500GB version and 2,600MB/s for the 1TB version. It runs across PCIe gen 3 x4 and includes Acronis data protection. USB-C to USB-C and USB-C to USB-A cables are included.

PNY storage

Release 7.0 of Chinese supplier Vinchin‘s Backup & Recovery is coming soon with features including NAS backup, physical server backup for Linux and Windows servers, VMware backup verification, MariaDB protection, and more advanced Hyper-V protection. Vinchin Backup & Recovery 7.0 also delivers a more intuitive and dynamic data visualization interface with attached statistics from daily operations for enhanced and straightforward data management.

Vinchin backup dashboard

Weebit Nano will be rolling out its first production-ready Resistive RAM (ReRAM) IP at Embedded World next month (Hall 4, booth 650a). Weebit ReRAM is silicon-proven, non-volatile memory (NVM) that provides a needed solution for a broad range of embedded applications, with ultra-low power consumption, excellent retention even at high temperatures, fast access time, high tolerance to radiation and electromagnetic interference (EMI), and numerous other advantages, we’re told.

Western Digital has announced the end of support for the Discovery for My Cloud Home utility which provides the ability to mount the My Cloud Home device as a local desktop drive. From June 23 it will no longer be supporting the WD Discovery software for the My Cloud Home Desktop App. The company said: “There will also no longer be any new releases or security updates for My Cloud Home on WD Discovery. We will discontinue all development, including critical security updates and technical support. As new versions of operating systems are released, these features might stop working and will not be fixed. WD Discovery will continue to function and be supported for other compatible WD storage products.”