Xiotech Unveils Disruptive Storage Technology 145
Lxy writes "After Xiotech purchased Seagate's Advanced Storage Architecture division, rumors circulated around what they were planning to do with their next-generation SAN. Today at Storage Network World, Xiotech answered the question. The result is quite impressive, a SAN that can practically heal itself, as well as prevent common failures. There's already hype in the media, with much more to come. The official announcement is on Xiotech's site."
Unclarity (Score:2, Interesting)
These are just some of the questions popping into my head:
What is SAN?
What does it do?
How is it disruptive?
Who does it disrupt?
What does it store?
Can't say skimming through TFA makes it a lot clearer either.
Also, two obscure articles is media buzz?
Re:Unclarity (Score:4, Interesting)
Tired of overused buzzwords (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite misuse was when a marketing droid referred to Intel moving from a
Re:Disruptive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sweet... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Disruptive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looks like it's next-gen primary disk... (Score:3, Interesting)
Next generation hardware that is patent encumbered and will require a lawyer and several court proceedings for anyone and everyone to get their data back.
I mean come on, when is the industry going to figure out we do not need proprietary, closed storage solutions that are a rehash of the old IBM AS/400 days when you could only buy super expensive IBM gear.
No thanks I will take my open code and commodity hardware and build solutions that will kick this patented solutions arse at 1/100th the cost.
Besides, if these features are really worth their salt the open source community will provide them sooner or later. Preferably in Europe where these silly patent claims that this product is so unique nobody could possibly figure it out, gimme a lot of money because I am brilliant.
Not brilliant and not worth the cost in my opinion. (Both in restrictions due to the patents and infrastructure choices this product imposes and the cost in currency).
-Hack
Re:Compellent (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want data automatically moved down to a slower tier, but it gets touched just once a day. Good luck in getting it to move down automatically.
I anxiously await the day when the SAN market is acknowledged as the scam it is (a glorified raid controller), and the various SAN companies die off in droves or become an everyday appliance they really are. It's obscene paying a grand for a run of the mill sata disk, and additionally paying about as much or more than the disk in various licenses. All the while gouging you yearly for 'support' contracts which are a sizable fraction of the cost of both hardware/disks/and licenses.
Hurray for hemorrhaging cash!
Re:Move along, nothing to see here (Score:3, Interesting)
The purpose of this product isn't to penetrate large data centers... of if Xiotech thinks it is, then they need new marketing employees (and quickly). Large data centers HAVE the expertise on site to do individual disk replacements, and those large enterprise data centers will demand the feature sets that exist in the much larger equipment from the larger vendors named above.
This is targeted at much smaller data centers, probably those with very simple SANs (think a dozen or two servers), where the data center management skills won't match those in the larger data centers (simply because you have one or two generalists, not a dozen+ specialists). For those smaller sites, the return on investment for a system that requires less maintenance (and also less expertise) may make sense...
Yes, this is evolutionary from a technical perspective, but it still approaches the solution in an interesting way... and may find its own market niche.
Re:Move along, nothing to see here (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess what? It didn't work out. The bad zones spread and they spread faster than the the raid software could detect the new failure and rebuild onto the spare.
I quite enjoyed the experiment, but these were on my home servers. I wouldn't dream of doing this in a production environment. When the raid controller kicks the drive for -any- reason, it's back to the manufacturer for warranty replacement. The data is far to valuable to play games with it.
Re:Unclarity (Score:3, Interesting)
better heat/vibration support, but not a user servicable component
Heat is key here. Have you ever stood next to a petabyte of storage? Or even a few terabytes? Most Sans kick off a lot of heat from all those disks. When looking San to Hvac, 1 TB to 1 ton is typical.
Xiotech's ISE mounts the disks on a very large aluminum alloy heat sink. The heat is wicked away from the drives. This makes for better heat dissipation and less heat on the disks, thus improving cooling and extending lifespan.
Xiotech had a petabyte of storage on the SNW expo floor. I stood right next to it, surrounded by the crowd. The heat? Next to none. There was no additional cooling required for the demo either. It was completely ambient temperature. The cost savings in HVAC must be rather impressive.
J Wolfgang Goerlich