Startup Alcion, which supplies AI-driven Backup-as-a-Service for Microsoft 365, announced the launch of Alcion for Partners – a Managed Service Provider (MSP) partner program. It claims that, by providing a security-oriented backup offering with simplified licensing, consolidated billing, and a new partner portal, MSPs and partners can monitor and manage multiple accounts from a single pane of glass. Since Alcion’s Series A funding round was announced last September, the startup has grown over 10x with new customers in 15 countries across six continents.
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Is the bathtub curve wrong? Cloud storage provider Backblaze has found that disk drive failure does not consistently increase with age. It tracked annual failure rare (AFR) trendlines (second order polynomial) for various manufacturers’ drives. Here’s the HGST chart:
Backblaze blogger Andy Klein observed: “It does not appear that drive failure consistently increases with age.” Removing the older TB drives from the chart (right-hand version) does indicate that drive failures increase with age. Klein looked at Seagate drives as well:
He concluded: “It does not appear that drive failure continues to increase with age.” Also: “As for the Toshiba and WDC drive models, there is a little over three years worth of data and no discernible patterns have emerged. All of the drives from each of these manufacturers are performing well to date.” Get the full stats report here.
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Data protector Catalogic is undertaking a soft launch of DPX 4.10, which brings new features and improvements for both DPX and vStore. It features:
- Simplify Your Backup and Restore The HTML5 GUI’s integration with file backup and restore jobs makes the process more intuitive and user-friendly, significantly simplifying setup processes for both cloud and disk directory devices, as well as catalog management.
- Enhance Flexibility in Job Scheduling The HTML5 GUI feature for managing Condense job schedules offers greater control and flexibility, leading to enhanced operational efficiency and allowing for more tailored backup and restore task scheduling.
- Boost VMware Backup and Virtualization Performance The addition of VMware backup job archive schedule management in the HTML5 GUI, combined with the upgrade to VMware VDDK 8.0, significantly improves the management and performance of VMware backups, ensuring robust virtualization support for advanced systems like RHEL8 and RHEL9.
- Enhanced Backup Storage Management Integrates volume migration between pools and optimized ZFS settings, offering improved flexibility, efficiency, and performance in storage resource management.
- Advanced Operations and Security Incorporates advanced telemetry functionality, pre-installed DPX Client, and critical security updates, simplifying setup, enhancing monitoring, and ensuring robust data protection.
A PDF has more information about the additions.
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Object First, a supplier of an object storage backup target appliance, has hired Andrew Wittman as its CMO. Prior to joining Object First, Wittman served as CMO at Axcient, Webroot, Okta, and CA Technologies. David Bennett, CEO, Object First, said: “Selecting a CMO is not just about finding someone with marketing expertise; it’s about identifying a visionary leader who can strategically elevate our brand, inspire creativity, and drive impactful connections with our customers and partners.”
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Quantum ActiveScale reseller XENON Systems, an HPC and data storage specialist, has purchased Quantum’s Myriad all-flash, scale-out file and object storage software. It will offer Myriad to its customers with data-intensive workloads that require high speed infrastructure for AI models and multi-variant simulations across life sciences, medical research, engineering, and other HPC use cases. Dragan Dimitrovici, XENON CEO, explained: “The fact that Quantum has comprehensive end-to-end solutions for the entire lifecycle of data – Myriad for the most challenging AI production workloads and ActiveScale for building active and cold data stores at petabyte to exabyte scale – makes their offerings especially valuable to our customers.”
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Decentralized storage provider Storj achieved 226 percent year-on-year revenue growth in 2023, and developed partnerships with 30 tech alliance partners and 15 resellers.
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Data protector Veeam has won the US Navy as a customer. It has a $5 million contract with follow-on options resulting in a total value of $21 million to provide data backup and recovery software. It is supporting PMW 160 – the program office responsible for the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) technology program that enables the fleet to communicate and share information. Veeam will provide configuration, maintenance, and testing of Veeam Data Platform and Kasten K10 for Kubernetes software.
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Western Digital achieved ASPICE (Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination) CL3 certification to continue its commitment of delivering products to the automotive industry. It claims that, with its iNAND AT EU552 UFS 3.1 embedded flash drives, it’s one of the first data storage manufacturers to be so certified.
