As a globally recognized and trusted authority, SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry in developing and promoting vendor-neutral architectures, standards and educational services that facilitate the efficient management, movement and security of information.

“At this time of profound change in the storage industry, SNIA is focused on the hottest data storage trends, delivering standards, technology enablement, and educational materials that help IT to derive the maximum benefit from the new infrastructures and technologies,” new Chairman David Dale said.

The SNIA Board leads the execution of the SNIA mission and vision. Intel, Micron Technology, NetApp, Oracle and Toshiba representatives were elected to the SNIA Board this year, and IBM, Intel, Microsoft Corporation and Samsung Group representatives were elected to the SNIA Technical Council.

Here is the listing of board members:

• David Dale, NetApp – Chairman

• Jim Pappas, Intel – Vice-Chairman

• Thomas Rivera – Secretary, Advisor

• Allan Zmyslowski, Fujitsu – Treasurer 

• Wayne Adams – Chairman Emeritus, Advisor

• Michael Oros – SNIA Executive Director, Advisor

• Sue Amarin, Micron Technology

• J. Metz, Cisco Systems

• Rupin Mohan, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

• Rob Peglar, Symbolic IO Corporation

• Hubbert Smith, Samsung Group

• Tatsuya Tanaka, Toshiba

• Michelle Tidwell, IBM

• Jim Williams, Oracle 

• Mark Carlson, Toshiba – Technical Council Co-Chairman, Advisor

• Bill Martin, Samsung Group – Technical Council Co-Chairman, Advisor

• S.W. Worth, Advisor 

The 2017/2018 Technical Council is:

• Mark Carlson, Toshiba – Co-Chairman

• Bill Martin, Samsung Group – Co-Chairman

• Alan Bumgarner, Intel 

• Craig Carlson, Cavium

• Fred Knight, NetApp

• Philip Kufeldt, Huawei

• Alex McDonald, NetApp

• Peter Murray, Virtual Instruments

• David Pease, IBM

• Tom Talpey, Microsoft Corporation

• Doug Voigt, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

• Arnold Jones, SNIA – TC Advisor

• Gregory McSorley, Amphenol – TC Advisor

• Leah Schoeb, Turbonomic – TC Advisor

• David Thiel – TC Advisor

• Steve Wilson – TC Advisor 

The Storage Networking Industry Association is a not-for-profit global organization, made up of member companies spanning the global storage market. SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information.

Thus, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For more information about SNIA, go here.

The post Storage Networking Group Reveals 2018 Board of Directors appeared first on eWEEK.

With the natural events of the last three weeks hitting the south and southeast of the United States, numerous physical photo albums, videos and other irreplaceable memories were lost forever as flood waters and high winds tore communities and dwellings to pieces.

A little planning in advance can save these memories forever, and ScanMyPhotos.com is offering to help people think about doing this.

Irvine, Calif.-based ScanMyPhotos.com, founded in 1990 and a service that has scanned more than 400 million photos for posterity, is offering free photo scanning for hurricane relief and preparedness. Obviously, it’s too late for victims of the recent storms, but it’s not too late to plan for future events like these, because they will happen.

If you are a resident of Texas or Florida, ScanMyPhotos.com will digitize your photos without charge for up to 500 4×6 standard pictures per family/address. See this webpage for full details and ordering instructions. There is a $14.95 return shipping and handling fee.

There are some restrictions, but this offer should get people thinking about storing and preserving what’s really important in their lives. Questions can be directed to (949) 474-7654.

The post ScanMyPhotos Offers Free Service for Residents of Texas, Florida appeared first on eWEEK.

The Seattle-based company revealed July 26 that it has signed an agreement with Seagate creating a partnership around Seagate’s ClusterStor high-performance storage product line and spelling out how the two companies will collaborate on future ClusterStor products. Financial information about the deal was not made available.

Cray will add the ClusterStor product line to its DataWarp and Sonexion storage products and will supply additional development of the ClusterStor product line and support its customers, the company said. Cray said it expects to add about 100 employees and contractors and to handle customer-support obligations involving ClusterStor.

“Current ClusterStor customers and partners can be assured that we will continue to advance and support the ClusterStor products,” Cray CEO Peter Ungaro said.

Cray in 2012 became Seagate’s first original equipment manufacturer and has continued over the years to be its largest and most strategic ClusterStor partner, said Seagate Vice-President and General Manager of Storage Systems Ken Claffey.

The post Cray, Seagate Sign Deal to Develop ClusterStor for HPC appeared first on eWEEK.

We’ll even go further than that here: Tiered storage may be obsolete before we know it.

This isn’t marketspeak or industry propaganda. The reason for this is simply the rapid performance advancement of hardware and software tech, thanks mostly to solid-state components. The lines between the tiers are melting away; sooner than we know, enterprises will be standardizing only on Tier 0 and Tier 3 active archiving, and even those will look similar in the management of new-gen storage systems.

For the record, let’s define terms:

–Tier 0 is solid-state memory-based storage that is used to improve performance beyond what current Tier 1 hot-data storage can offer. In the past, Tier 0 storage has been in the form of a RAM disk and was quite expensive; that is changing.

–Tier 1 is where most hot data (the data enterprises need to use daily) resides, and that can be contained in either flash (solid-state) or hard disk-drive hardware.

–Tier 2 is usually backup data stored on HDDs or in a cloud service;

–Tier 3 archive content conventionally is stored on older HDDs or digital tape drives and is rarely accessed.

More Data Needs More Storage, Analytics

This preponderance of unstructured data is caused by the convergence of several major factors: more data than ever is being collected and processed; widespread high-bandwidth networks; the massive number of new connected devices, including sensors and cameras; leaner, more efficient application code; and the wide availability of new on-site and cloud-based analytics apps and services to wring business meaning out of piles of data.

All the major storage providers in the business (IBM, Dell EMC, NetApp, HPE, Hitachi Data Systems) have had a flash option for several years. Newer providers, such as Pure Storage, Violin Memory, Kaminario, Tintri, Tegile, and X-10 Technologies have come into the market with their own variations on the fast data-movement power that flash and memory-based media bring to the table. The sales competition is more than fierce.

“Traditionally, unstructured data has been stored over long periods of time to keep a record, history or backup of an organization’s digital transactions,” Matt Kixmoeller, CTO of all-flash storage maker Pure Storage, told eWEEK. “But with the advent of large-scale data analytics, unstructured data has gone from IT afterthought to critical business tool.”

While these petabyte-size data loads aren’t here yet for most businesses, the increasing deluge of data pouring in from smartphones, laptops, sensors and numerous other end points is becoming a problem for many to decipher and process. The faster and better that incoming unstructured data is stored, protected and subsequently made available for use, the more efficient the IT system becomes—and IT systems are now the lifeblood of 21st century enterprises.

Data movement inside storage systems for decades was the industry’s largest stumbling block. Enterprises need to see the big picture and think ahead about all of this. Unstructured data is expected to comprise 70 percent of most data loads in the next few years.

FlashBlade: First All-Flash Storage Blade Server

Pure Storage separated itself from the pack in March 2016 when it introduced the industry’s first all-flash storage blade server, FlashBlade. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has been selling it for the last six months; on Jan. 25, the company officially went to GA (general availability) status with it.

Using FlashBlade, the barrier between Tier 0 hot data and everything else behind it–except for active archiving–may have disappeared. Why have those complex tiers of data separate from the daily production system when it isn’t necessary anymore? Multi-petabyte-scale sets of unstructured data can live on-premises or in the cloud–anywhere the company desires–and still be located fast with a good storage controlling system.

This is all about storing data streams anywhere in the company data ocean and using smart search and analytics to find the correct metadata and other elements in time for whatever production project you’re doing.

Blades in IT are known for their power and influence on the computing side. A blade server is a server chassis housing multiple thin, modular electronic circuit boards, known as server blades. Each blade is a server in its own right and is often dedicated to a single application.

Elastic, Scale-Out Storage

Pure’s FlashBlade, similarly designed, is a key part of the company’s elastic scale-out storage system that uses all-flash media to handle multi-petabyte-scale sets of unstructured data. Used in tandem, FlashBlade and Pure’s Storage FlashArray comprise a complete platform building an all-flash private or hybrid cloud.

Gartner Research, which has analyzed the data storage market since its beginning, has been impressed with FlashBlade.

“Pure Storage continues to execute well on its vision of software-led solid-state arrays that leverage off-the-shelf cost-effective hardware components, providing cost-effective SSAs that are simple to upgrade and maintain compared to traditional storage array forklift upgrade paths,” the researcher wrote in its most recent (August 2016) “Magic Quadrant Report for Solid-State Arrays.”

“Pure has increased customer satisfaction levels as it has scaled the business,” Gartner said. “Many competitors still cannot offer quick and seamless capacity and controller upgrades between models. Pure Storage’s culture and innovation has been able to attract high-quality personnel as it continues to expand across geographies. The new Pure Storage FlashBlade array for use with object and file applications … maintains Pure Storage’s cadence of vision and thought leadership in the SSA market.”

Availability

FlashBlade is now available now. Go here for more information.

The post Guide to Tiered Storage in 2021 appeared first on eWEEK.

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston also announced that the San Francisco-based company now has 500 million users and has surpassed a $1 billion run rate for its fiscal year–a milestone for any company.

Highlights of the announcement included the introductions of:

—Smart Sync, which Dropbox claims is the industry’s first cross-platform, on-demand cloud storage solution;

—Dropbox Paper: a configurable workspace for teams, which officially launched in 21 languages worldwide;

—An all-new Dropbox web interface and collaborator information package that ostensibly makes teamwork easier; and

—Three new business packages that enable companies to tailor the Dropbox platform exactly to their needs.

“We’re redesigning Dropbox to be fundamentally designed for teams,” Houston told reporters at a press conference. “We’re reinventing sync, bringing a modern collaboration experience to all your files, and launching Paper, a new way to work together that goes beyond the document.

“And we’re building this all on top of a strong business foundation; we’ve reached $1 billion in revenue run rate faster than any other SaaS company in history.”

Industry researcher IDC backed up Houston’s claim.

“With Dropbox’s announcement that their subscription business has surpassed $1 billion in revenue run rate, they have become the fastest software-as-a-service (SaaS) company to reach this milestone to date,” said IDC analyst Robert Mahowald, Group Vice President, Applications and Cloud.

Smart Sync Enables Users to Bring File Servers into the Cloud

Dropbox said that Smart Sync makes all the content in a user’s account accessible from their desktop file system, and that the content takes up virtually no local disk space until it’s needed. Smart Sync works across Windows and Mac computers and is fully backward compatible to Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.9. This is the industry’s first cross-platform, on-demand cloud storage solution, Dropbox claimed.

Smart Sync works on all files and folders in a Dropbox Business account. Paired with the recently released Dropbox team folders, Dropbox becomes a centrally manageable, secure hub for teams to work together on all their files.

Team members gain full visibility and access to their entire Dropbox right from their desktop file system, no matter how large. For more information, go here.

Move Beyond the Document with Dropbox Paper

Dropbox Paper is a virtual workspace that brings teams of people and their ideas together inone place. Users in more than 200 countries and territories created millions of Paper documents while the product was in beta.

Starting Jan. 30, Dropbox Paper became generally available in 21 languages around the world. Paper users will now also be able to add due dates and assign owners to tasks, providing teams with even greater project management capabilities within Paper.

Other recently released features include:
–Presentation mode
–Smart meeting notes with Google Calendar integration
–Improved search functionality
–Mobile folder functionality on iOS and Android
–Improved accessibility features
–eDiscovery and security API

Updates for Dropbox Paper on iOS and Android will also become available in the coming months to enable mobile offline functionality and localization in 21 languages. Paper is available for free to all Dropbox users here.

Three New Business Plans

Dropbox also introduced three new business plans that allow customers to pay for only the features and storage they require.

The new plans include:

—Standard ($12.50/user/month, starting at five users) for teams needing powerful storage, sharing, and collaboration tools.

—Advanced ($20/user/month, starting at five users) for teams and businesses seeking more sophisticated admin, audit, and integration features.

—Enterprise (contact for pricing details) for larger businesses requiring scalable custom solutions with individualized support.

For more information, go here.

The post Dropbox Unveils New Tools Designed for Enterprise Teams appeared first on eWEEK.

Data protection software developer StorageCraft Technology of Draper, Utah announced Jan. 19 that it has acquired storage hardware/software maker Exablox of Sunnyvale, Calif., dropping StorageCraft smack in the middle of a large pool of storage IT sharks that include NetApp, HPE, Dell EMC, Pure Storage and a list of others.

Terms of the transaction were not released.

StorageCraft CEO Matt Medeiros and Exablox chief Doug Brockett, longtime friends and business partners, decided that the time was right to bring their two companies together, share the marketing and sales duties and provide new options for both sets of customers. Last October, the two companies enacted a distribution agreement based on the complementary benefits of their products.

Approach Acknowledges Fading of Lines Between Primary, Secondary Storage

Now the new combined company is moving ahead with an approach that recognizes the disappearing lines between primary and secondary storage as well as between data availability and data protection.

“We’ve been growing like gangbusters at Exablox for a few years now, garnering several hundred customers, but what one of the things we looked at was just how fast the industry is moving,” Brockett told eWEEK. “This was an opportunity to move beyond just a scale-out storage play into a much broader data management/data protection, with the addition of data protection, business continuity and data analytics with intelligence on the server side.”

“We knew we could either take our time, and within a couple of years roll out a big sales force and go after that ourselves. Or we could join forces with a company that already had a very compatible channel, a very large sales force, and frankly the software stack that made a much more complete solution for our customers.”

So the StorageCraft deal was made. With the acquisition, StorageCraft now becomes a provider of both primary and secondary storage to its channel partners, Medeiros told eWEEK.

Moving to Complete Data Management

“By adding Exablox’s converged mid-market storage technology, we go from being a leader in business continuity to a leader in the data management market,” Medeiros said. “Our customers’ businesses operate nonstop. At the same time that their data volumes are exploding, their uptime requirements are becoming more stringent.

“We now have the unique ability to address both of these problems and to do so with a solution that has groundbreaking scalability.”

Exablox, a VC-backed startup that launched its first product in April 2013, combines the on-site and cloud worlds by offering an on-premises storage appliance coupled with a cloud-based management system to handle unlimited cloud storage. As a unit, these provide a full feature set for storage administrators and uneasy boards of directors who want to know where their business data is at all times.

Exablox produces its flash- and hard drive-based, scale-out NAS storage packages using an original object storage architecture. Exablox’s customers include top Fortune 500 companies, prestigious research and educational institutions, leading technology innovators, and government entities.

StorageCraft provides highly regarded backup and recovery solutions that goes to market through a highly-developed and well-trained IT channel and managed service provider network.

Brockett told eWEEK that very little of the two companies’ products and services overlap. “We’re going to maintain the independence of both product lines, let our customers make their choices and deploy what they need in their systems,” Brockett said.

Key Attributes of the New Company

This acquisition provides the current and future customers of the combined company with a complete lineup of enterprise products for analyzing, protecting, and storing information, including:

—Data analytics: provides an intelligent, tiered data architecture that enables the identification and prioritization of critical data for protection and performance. It also identifies gaps in endpoint protection.

—Data protection: implements data protection policies that offer the industry’s best and most reliable recovery mechanisms. Frequent backups and efficiently-located mission-critical data minimize recovery time and maximize uptime.

—Data storage: delivers the ability to store all tiers of data with infinite scalability. The object-based storage appliance solves businesses’ common storage pain points of complex installation, cumbersome management, limited capacity and forklift upgrades.

Brockett will remain with the company as president and report directly to Medeiros, who will become StorageCraft’s chairman of the board. Exablox customers and partners will continue to be supported by their existing contacts to ensure a seamless transition, Brockett said.

The post StorageCraft Acquires Exablox to Provide New-Gen Storage appeared first on eWEEK.

Four months ago, the iconic Silicon Valley corporation revealed that it is spinning off its software division in a merger with Micro Focus to create a significant new entity in the software development world and make Micro Focus a force with which to be reckoned.

[On a side note, Chris Hsu, Chief Operating Officer of HPE and Executive Vice President of HPE Software, was selected Jan. 17 to be the Chief Executive Officer for the future combined company.]

Following that news, HPE on the same day (Jan. 17) announced that it will acquire software-defined hyperconverged storage provider SimpliVity for $650 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in Q2 2017.

Privately held SimpliVity was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Westborough, Mass. The company’s software-defined, hyperconverged infrastructure is an original design aimed to meet the needs of enterprise customers who require on-premises technology infrastructure with enterprise-class performance, data protection, and resiliency, at cloud economics.

The combined HPE and SimpliVity portfolio will offer a large set of enterprise data services across hyperconverged, 3PAR storage, composable infrastructure and multi-cloud offerings, HPE Vice-President of Marketing for the Software-Defined & Cloud Business Group Paul Miller told eWEEK.

What SimpliVity Brings to the HPE Storage Lineup

Adding SimpliVity’s intellectual property to HPE’s hyperconverged portfolio provides the following benefits to customers, Miller said:

–built-in enterprise data protection and resiliency that simplifies backup and enables customers to more quickly restore operations;

–enterprise storage utilization and virtual machine (VM) efficiency that helps customers control cost and performance;

–always-on compression and de-duplication that guarantees 90 percent capacity savings across storage and backup; and
–policy-based VM-centric management that simplifies operations and enables data mobility, making development teams and end-users more productive.

“By bringing together HPE’s best-in-class infrastructure, automation and cloud management software with SimpliVity’s industry-leading software defined data management platform, HPE and its partner ecosystem will deliver the industry’s only ‘built-for-enterprise’ hyperconverged storage offering,” Miller said.

One In, One Out

HPE’s software division moves out to join Micro Focus as a new storage entity moves in. As Rick Blaine, the central character in the classic 1942 movie “Casablanca” said: “Well, that’s the way it goes: One in, one out.”

What does that say about HPE’s plan going forward? Looks suspiciously like storage — especially the new-generation, hyperconverged variety–is climbing up the company’s priority list. HPE already owns the intellectual software property of previous independent storage software makers 3PAR, StorageApps, ApplQ, LeftHand Networks and several data management companies that interface with storage. It hasn’t bought a storage company since 2010 (3PAR), however.

The focus on storage is certainly understandable. The creation of data is booming, has been for a long while and isn’t expected to slow down anytime soon, so there is plenty of demand for places to store it all. The hyperconverged market was estimated to be approximately $2.4 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent, to nearly $6 billion, by 2020.

Miller told eWEEK that he believes little or none of SimpliVity’s product line will overlap with HPE’s current offerings.

For current HPE customers and partners, the company will continue to offer its existing hyperconverged products, the HC 380 and the HC 250. For SimpliVity customers and partners, there will be no immediate change in the product roadmap, and HPE will continue to support existing SimpliVity customers and platforms, Miller said.

SimpliVity Omni Stack Will Be Integrated into ProLiant Servers

Within 60 days of closing the transaction, HPE intends to offer the SimpliVity Omni Stack software qualified for its ProLiant DL380 servers. In the second half of 2017, the company will offer a range of integrated HPE SimpliVity hyperconverged systems based on HPE ProLiant Servers.

“This transaction expands HPE’s software-defined capability and fits squarely within our strategy to make Hybrid IT simple for customers,” HPE President and CEO Meg Whitman said. “More and more customers are looking for solutions that bring them secure, highly resilient, on-premises infrastructure at cloud economics. That’s exactly where we’re focused.”

Doron Kempel, Chairman and CEO of SimpliVity, said that “HPE’s broad sales reach, extensive partner channel, complementary technology and commitment to innovation will accelerate SimpliVity’s journey and significantly strengthen our ability to deliver the best-in-class hybrid IT solutions our customers are looking for.”

Whether Kempel will remain with HPE for the time being wasn’t part of the news announcement. Kempel previously has been with EMC and Diligent, which was bought by IBM in 2010.

“SimpliVity’s software will significantly advance HPE’s vision to make hybrid IT simple, bringing a modern software-defined enterprise data service across its hyperconverged, 3PAR storage, composable infrastructure and multi-cloud offerings,” said Antonio Neri, Executive Vice President and General Manager of HPE’s Enterprise Group.

What a Competitor Says About the Deal

Ron Nash, CEO of SimpliVity competitor Pivot3, told eWEEK that the deal eventually should help position HPE for better success in HPI storage market but that it will take time to integrate the two companies and technologies and provide a strong solution to the market.

“Plus, SimpliVity is a mid-market vendor, which is not HPE’s sweet-spot market. So they will have to recalibrate their solutions for HPE’s more traditional market and those customers’ enterprise-grade data, scale, and processing needs,” Nash said.
Nash’s general take on the importance of the acquisition to the enterprise market:

“It’s clear that all the major IT companies covet this market. They are realizing they can’t compete with a repackaged converged solution, and they have to have technology that is truly hyperconverged and is architected to meet the needs of customers. Customers require software-defined infrastructure that is agile, flexible and scalable to support the needs of the business, and they need it to scale to enterprise volumes.

“As adoption of HCI continues, customers will be demanding capabilities to support multiple mixed workloads on consolidated infrastructure. Every major vendor will need to have a solution in this space.”

The post HPE Invests $650M to Acquire Storage Maker SimpliVity appeared first on eWEEK.

These are but three of thousands of new and intriguing products that debuted Jan. 3 at the International Consumer Electronics Show, which is ingesting Las Vegas through Jan. 8.

An estimated 177,000 attendees have flooded the city of 603,488, boosting the number of inhabitants by a whopping 28 percent for most of the week.

Here are snapshots of a few innovative products being demonstrated at CES this week. eWEEK will have more product news as the conference goes on.

No Cameras Needed in This Home Security Setup

Cognitive Systems Corp. announced Aura, which it claims is the first smart home security system that monitors and protects the home without the use of cameras.
The easy-to-use and discrete two-piece system uses the company’s patented technology to monitor the disruption of wireless signals caused by movement in the home, sending notifications to household members when any unauthorized motion occurs in the home. Aura provides full coverage for the average home, even in rooms where people are typically unwilling to place cameras.
Aura’s accuracy is above those of other motion detection systems, since it is not dependent on light and recognizes the difference between human and non-human movement, the company said.
Starting Jan. 5, Aura will be available for pre-order here for $499, with a special price of $399 for a limited time during CES. Orders are expected to ship by Feb. 28, the company said.

Next-Generation Smart Bikes

China-based LeEco‘s new smart bicycles for the U.S. feature an Android-powered BikeOS with touchscreen display that helps cyclists navigate rides and track performance.

The LeEco Smart Road Bike, which has been recognized as a CES Innovation Honoree, features an aerodynamic Toray T700 carbon fiber frame, fork, seat post, handlebar and wheels, while weighing in at a mere 18.5 pounds. With an 11-speed one-by drivetrain, the bike uses a single chain ring up front and a wide-range cassette in back, eliminating two-derailleur coordinated shifting.

Other components include lightweight brake set with dual-pivot technology, paired with shift/brake levers, mounted to a strong and lightweight carbon fiber handlebar.

The LeEco Smart Mountain Bike features Toray T700 carbon fiber frame and handlebar, SR Suntour XCR Air front fork, and the popular 27.5-inch/650b diameter wheelset, which weighs in at 26.9 pounds. The 11-speed one-by drivetrain model also utilizes a single chain ring crankset, quick and smooth rear derailleur, and a wide-range 11-42 tooth cassette. It includes an hydraulic brake set.

LeEco’s Android 6.0-powered BikeOS system displays on a 4-inch touchscreen that runs on a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor and is powered by a 6000mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

The system provides turn-by-turn navigation tailored for bicycle riding from HERE Maps, online and offline music playback, walkie-talkie communication with other nearby compatible LeEco smart bikes, and ride logging. With the companion app, you can also review and share your rides with others.

For riders who want to monitor health and performance, the bikes feature a full suite of onboard sensors including GPS/GLONASS, compass, accelerometer, barometer, light level, wheel speed and crank speed, while also offering compatibility with third-party ANT+ heart rate and power sensors to help meet fitness goals.

Safety and security are always a concern; the new models offer automatic on-board lighting (front/sides), horn and security alarm. In fact, the bikes automatically notify its owner when the alarm is activated and tracks location via the mobile app. Additionally, the electronics in both models are water resistant to level IP54.

The new smart bikes will be available in the U.S. in Q2 2017, the company said.

Smart Patio Umbrella Knows Where the Sunshine Is

ShadeCraft’s Sunflower, a first-of-its-kind intelligent patio umbrella, launched at CES. It is an automated umbrella that moves with the motion of the sun to keep its owner always in the shade, CEO Armen Gharabegian said.

Features include:

–fully autonomous movement via AI integration;

–runs on solar power, tracking the sun’s movement throughout the day for optimum energy absoroption;

–can connect to other devices in a smart home; onboard cameras connect to users’ existing security to enhance home monitoring service;

–sensor optimized to recognize wind to close automatically, and to understand proximity to obstructions; and

–also features GPS, USB port, controlled lighting and voice command.

The ShadeCraft team will be exhibiting at CES Unveiled and CES at booth 40530 (Smart Home Marketplace). Go here for more information.

AI Embedded into Toothbrush for Kids and Adults

Kolibree, a tech company focused on connected solutions in oral health, launched Ara, a CES 2017 Innovation Award Honoree and the first toothbrush with embedded artificial intelligence.
“Patented deep learning algorithms are embedded directly inside the toothbrush on a low-power processor. Raw data from the sensors runs through the processor, enabling the system to learn your habits and refine accuracy the more it’s used,” Kolibree founder and CEO Thomas Serval said.
Ara knows precisely where in your mouth you are brushing, even when not connected to the app on a mobile device. Whether brushing on or offline, brushing data (frequency, duration and brushed areas) is captured in the toothbrush and automatically synced via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE 4.0) when the app is open.
Ara’s advanced offline mode is a new step for IoT in oral health. It’s the culmination of studying behaviors, over a three-year period, of more than 10,000 people who have used a Kolibree toothbrush, the first electric connected toothbrush, Serval said.

The company has learned that children are motivated to brush their teeth –and have learned to brush more effectively–when enticed by a mobile game, such as Kolibree’s Go Pirate, which is part of the Kolibree app.
Key features:

–Proprietary AI technology in the toothbrush in addition to 3-D motion sensors, accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer

–Offline data capture and analytics include date, time, duration and zones brushed.

–Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth Low Energy) for easy automatic connection and data sync

–Kolibree Index on the mobile app (iOS and Android) displays your personal score based on cumulative online and offline brushing.

–Weighing only 2.5 ounces (70 grams), and with a 2-week battery life, Ara by Kolibree travels easily.

–Weekly e-mail report shows at a glance how well you’ve brushed over the last seven days.

Ara is priced at $129. Pre-orders are accepted here for $79 now through Feb. 28, 2017.

Extra Functionality, 6TB Storage for 2016 Apple MacBook Pro

OWC, which makes accessories for Macs and PCs, announced the OWC DEC, which it claims is the first storage expansion solution designed specifically for the 2016 Apple MacBook Pro.

The OWC DEC dock enables users to extend the life and the functionality of the high-end 2016 MacBook Pro. The DEC is the latest in OWC’s long line of upgrades for nearly every Mac made, the company said.
The OWC DEC attaches completely flush to the bottom of the 2016 MacBook Pro, providing additional flash storage and connectivity, ultimately increasing the performance of MacBook Pros. With the OWC DEC, users will get an enhancement path for their 2016 MacBook Pro and MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to keep their system upgradable for the long term in a clean and integrated fashion.
This dock has a range of features, which include:

–up to 4TB of additional Flash/SSD storage (for a maximum of 6 TB, including factory capacity);

–SD Card Slot/Multi-Media card slot;

–USB 3 Type A Ports for standard USB cabled devices; and

–Gigabit Ethernet.

The post Five of the Most Innovative New Products Debuting at CES appeared first on eWEEK.

Now science researchers and other customers with hefty cloud storage needs have room for their most demanding workloads, according to Michael Hauss, a Microsoft Azure Storage program manager. “The increased blob size better supports a diverse range of scenarios, from media companies storing and processing 4K and 8K videos to cancer researchers sequencing DNA,” he wrote in a blog post.

Hauss also announced that Azure Blob Storage’s maximum supported block size had been raised to 100MB from 4MB. The 50,000 block per Blob limit remains unchanged.

Developers can start building solutions that support bigger file sizes with .NET Client Library version 8 or the service’s REST API (version 2016-05-31). Java, Node.js and AzCopy support will filter down in the coming weeks, Hauss added.

Microsoft also announced the addition of its Azure Import/Export service, which enables data transfers to and from Azure Blob Storage via physical hard drives, to the Azure Portal management hub.

Customers can use Azure Import/Export to physically transfer large amounts of data to and from their Blob storage accounts, a “sneakernet” approach that involves shipping hard drives loaded with data to Microsoft and solves the problem of costly and time-consuming transfers over the public internet.

There’s also an updated version of the WAImportExport software tool that streamlines the process of copying large amounts of data onto hard drives before they’re shipped to Azure data centers.

“You will no longer need to shard the data and figure out optimal placement of data across multiple disk,” boasted Microsoft program manager Rena Shah, in a separate blog post. “You can now copy data from multiple source directories in a single command line.”

Customers who have deployed StorSimple Virtual Device Series hybrid-cloud storage can now manage their virtual arrays using the Azure Portal.

Aimed at remote and branch offices, a StorSimple virtual array runs on an organization’s existing hypervisor infrastructure (versus a physical StorSimple array) and supports the iSCSI and Server Message Block protocols for both block-level and file storage access. A new software extension enables customers to create an Azure Resource Manager that provides visibility and control over their StorSimple resources.

Classic StorSimple portal is being migrated to the Azure Portal during the next few weeks. The process will be seamless and incur no downtime, assured the company.

Over at Project Bletchley, Microsoft’s consortium blockchain platform, the company welcomed a demonstration of the open-source Corda distributed ledger technology for financial institutions.

Available in the Azure Marketplace as a virtual machine image, Corda from R3 is designed to help banks and other firms manage and automate financial agreements. Unlike other blockchain-based systems where data is broadcast to all participants, Corda restricts data sharing to parties that are authorized to view or validate transactions.

The post Microsoft Gives Azure Blob Storage Massive Capacity Upgrade appeared first on eWEEK.

This IT sector is a prime example of the data center convergence and hyper-convergence trends. While the size of the storage drives is shrinking, capacity continues to increase. The media itself, whether spinning disks or solid-state NAND flash drives, is being produced with higher quality—including capaciousness—all the time.

Every change in one component leads to changes in other areas, unlocking new ways of looking at data. The increasing demand to monetize an ever-growing pool of unstructured data pushes against storage limitations, forcing storage manufacturers to innovate.

In this eWEEK article, which uses timely industry information from Samsung Product Marketing Director Richard Leonarz, we examine eight practical tips for storage administrators to keep their shops up to date.

1. Migrate from a Spinning Disk

The ongoing improvements in the performance of PC components pushes against physical limitations of hard disk drives (HDDs), creating bottlenecks that throttle performance. The use of solid state drives (SSDs) and flash memory storage alleviates these bottlenecks and allows engineers to build faster data paths that make the additional cost of an SSD worthwhile.

2. Upgrade Your Storage Interface

Advancements in interface and storage technology are giving companies new ways to manage the world’s massive influx of data. While ribbon cables were once fast enough to handle early PC requirements in storing data on floppy and spinning disk hard drives, improvements in CPU and memory speed have required manufacturers to improve the storage component as well.

3. Improve Speed, Performance with PCIe and NVMe

Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) interface and PCI Express (PCIe) protocol SSD technologies significantly improve the speed and performance of data centers. They deliver substantially higher bandwidth, lower latency and help avoid bottlenecks. Benefits include increasing the numbers of users on the network and faster data analytics or data streaming.

4. Factor Total Cost of Ownership into Storage Investment Decisions

Users must look beyond cost per gigabyte and compare the performance, reliability, and security of SSDs vs. HDDs to measure the true benefits to the organization. Faster transfer speeds improve PC Boot-up and Application Load times, which leads to significant time savings. Additionally, with no moving parts and fewer opportunities for mechanical failure, SSDs can reduce the cost of IT support and most modern SSDs have heightened security features to ensure data is protected.

5. Use AES Encryption to Improve Data Security

Most SSDs are designed with AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption, meaning that data going through the controller is encrypted prior to being stored. Unlike standard software encryption that sits over the operating system, AES encryption limits the ability of hackers to insert malware between the OS and the software encryption.

Features such as Crypto Erase and Secure Erase also help protect data when users or companies are looking to recycle their drives.

6. Shift from 2D to 3D NAND

NAND flash, at one point, made it possible to pack more into each cell, but NAND flash cells became over packed, which led to interference and reduced reliability. Moving from 2D to 3D with V-NAND technology involves creating multiple-layer cell towers that drive improved performance and endurance over planar NAND.

7. Use the Right Storage Solution for the Job

Storage solutions come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but there is no one size fits all. For example, SSDs are designed to work in either client/PC or enterprise server types of environments and can be either internal or external drives.

The data demands on SSDs vary greatly between a client PC used at home, work or school and a data center working 24/7. Manufacturers design their drives to meet the requirements of one application or the other, but not both. IT managers should fully test and qualify the drives to ensure that the warranty adequately covers their applications.

8. Archive Your Storage

A tiered storage approach helps improve the cost effectiveness of the modern data center. A “cold” tier archives the bulk of data center data in HDDs or tape-backups. This takes advantage of the lowest cost per gigabyte, thus allowing data centers to more fully optimize “warm” data and “hot” data in higher-performance storage devices.

[To see a larger version of the chart above, right-click on it and select “View Image.”]

The post How to Evolve Your Storage Technology in 2017 appeared first on eWEEK.