Storage news ticker – 12 October

Storage news
Storage news

Data protector Acronis announced its Acronis CyberApp Standard integration technology, which broadens the Acronis ecosystem to third-party vendors, offering them the means to integrate their products and services into Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud. It claims this is only framework that allows vendors to integrate into the Acronis platform with natively incorporated vendor workloads, alerts, widgets, and reports. This ensures a unified user experience for Acronis-owned and integrated applications. Vendors interested in becoming part of the Acronis ecosystem gain access to the versatile Vendor Portal. From the portal, users can build applications, share app details, upload marketing materials, and publish directly to the Acronis Application Catalog. For more information, visit: https://developer.acronis.com/.

Data protector Commvault has announced new enterprise backup and recovery systems powered by Lenovo server hardware. There are no details of these systems available but visitors to the GITEX Dubai exhibition event can learn more at booth #H5-A40. We’ve asked for more information about this.

Data lakehouse supplier Databricks says easyJet is using its Lakehouse and Generative AI. The airline has been a customer of Databricks for almost a year, using it for data engineering and warehousing. It just migrated all of its data science workloads and started to migrate  analytics workloads onto Databricks. Now it’s started using Lakehouse AI for generative AI work, providing a tool for non-technical users to ask their questions in natural language and get insights from its rich datasets. There’s more information here in a blog.

Dell’s PowerProtect Data Manager emerged as the top choice in customer satisfaction for data protection software according to a recent independent double-blind study conducted by a third-party vendor. The alternative choices included Rubrik, Cohesity, Veeam, Commvault and Veritas.  A Dell blog provides more info.

Real-time data platform supplier GridGain has release v8.9 of its eponymous software, with integrations for for Apache Parquet, Apache Iceberg, CSV, and JSON to support more complex datastores, including enterprise data lakes and NoSQL/semi-structured document databases. It has more storage- and read-efficient management of massive data tables, with support for high performance, ACID-compliant queries and diverse document data types, helping developers to build new and more complex applications faster. GridGain v8.9 takes its distributed, colocated, memory-centric computing capabilities to NoSQL and data lake technologies, enabling faster analytics. GridGain Platform v8.9 is available now. Visit the GridGain website to download.

Kristy Mao

TrueNAS software supplier iXsystems has appointed Kristy Mao as its SVP of Finance. She comes from being VP of Finance & Performance Management at Siemens Digital Industries Software, where she led a global team of 90 employees overseeing strategic financial planning, FP&A, finance IT, digital transformation and enterprise risk management. Michael Lauth, President & CEO of iXsystems, said: “iXsystems has evolved into a medium-sized enterprise with a global reach, and Kristy’s expertise and leadership will be instrumental in driving our continued growth and prosperity.”

Micron has launched 16Gb DDR5 memory, with speeds up to 7,200 MTps, and made with its 1β (1-beta) process node technology. The company claims its 1β-based DDR5 memory with advanced high-k CMOS device technology, 4-phase clocking and clock-sync 1 provides up to a 50 percent performance uplift and 33 percent improvement in performance per watt over the previous generation. The new 1β DDR5 DRAM product line offers current module densities in speeds ranging from 4,800 MTps up to 7,200MTps for use in data center and client applications. 

Micron 1 beta process DDR5

Quantum has announced new DXi-Series Backup Appliance bundles; DXi being its deduplicating backup appliance target system. They have built-in replication and newly announced DXi Cloud Share tiering. DXi appliances may be deployed across edge sites, central data centers, and the public cloud. DXi Edge-Core-Cloud Bundles are now available with all the components customers need to deploy across their enterprise. 

They include pre-configured physical and virtual appliances and are available in four standard capacity sizes — Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large — in support of multiple edge locations, central data centers, and cloud-based archiving targets. Logical capacities range from 400 terabytes up to 228 petabytes. The new DXi Edge-Core-Cloud bundles are available immediately. DXi Cloud Share is available as part of the DXi 4.9 software release, planned for release in December 2023. 

Samsung and SK hynix will be allowed to supply US chip equipment to their China factories indefinitely without separate US approvals, according to Reuters. The US has extended existing waivers. Samsung Electronics makes about 40% of its NAND flash chips at its plant in Xian, China, while SK Hynix makes about 40% of its DRAM chips in Wuxi and 20% of its NAND flash chips in Dalian.

Digitimes reports both Samsung and SK hynix are expecting strong growth in HBM shipments due to the surge in generative AI and the corresponding need for GPUs which use this form of memory. Samsung will likely complete a capacity expansion investment in the third quarter of 2024, which should boost HBM3 and later HBM generation output. Omdia forecasts an at least  40% CAGR for HBM from now until 2028.

SIOS Technology announced MailHippo, which enables healthcare providers to send and receive encrypted HIPAA compliant emails and to collect medical data using HIPAA compliant Web forms, is using SIOS DataKeeper Cluster Edition to protect its critical secure email platform from downtime and disasters.

Sony has officially licensed the  Seagate Game Drive PS5 NVMe SSD for the PlayStation 5. It delivers sequential read speeds of up to 7300 MBps, using a Seagate-validated E18 controller (made by Phison we think) with 3D TLC NAND. The drive is available in capacities up to 2TB, with endurance of 1.8M MTBF and up to 2550 TBW. It has a five-year limited warranty and priced at offered for $99.99 (1TB), and $149.99 (2TB). Gamers can play PlayStation 5 games directly from the drive. 

Seagate PS5 drive

UK web hosting business Krystal is using StorPool software-defined storage and NVMe storage clusters for its Katapult virtual infrastructure platform, due to its performance, scalability, and reliability. Founded in 2002, Krystal says it has nearly 30,000 clients who host over 200,000 websites. Read a case study here.

My Truong

Stravito, the Swedish SaaS startup (2017) which provides a central place to store and analyze market research data, has appointed My Truong as VP for marketing. It says this comes after a period of rapid growth within the US market – as of September 2023 leading U.S. consumer goods brands within food, beverage, furniture and telecommunications now account for almost 40 percent of Stravito’s business. Stravito works with brands including McDonald’s, Comcast, Burberry and Danone, and is poised to enhance its market reach even further, with Truong leading its marketing initiatives worldwide. Truong has been a member of teams that led to successful exits such as Endicia (Newell Rubbermaid), VerticalResponse (Deluxe), Demandforce (Intuit), Nexmo (Vonage), Adyen (ADYEN). Prior to joining Stravito, he served as CMO of SaaS company, Surfly.

Version 10.10 of NAKIVO Backup & Replication is now available for download. It adds a beta version of real-time replication VMware. Organizations with virtualized environments can now create replicas of their VMware vSphere VMs and keep them updated with the source VM as changes are made. Replicas are updated in real time as frequently as one second, allowing for near-zero application downtime and minimal data loss in the event of a disaster. Get a datasheet here.

EE Times China reports Yingren Technology (aka InnoGrit) has announced its enterprise-level YR S900 PCIe 5.0 SSD controller, China’s first in-country PCIe 5.0 SSD controller. It is a 4-channel SSD using a RISC-V processor and with 16 or 18 channels. It is said to suit NAND from Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp (YMTC)