New ideas for storage may be changing how we buy bytes
Curious about the mysterious ISE from Xiotech? A picture paints a thousand words, and a video does it all the better. Here’s a fun peek of the ISE at SNW from Robin Harris, coincidentally generating 48 simultaneous video streams. Oooh! Aaah!
It’s energizing to see conventional disk drive technology turned on its head to provide dramatic new value. It goes to show that innovation is limited not by technology but by its application.
Atrato is another innovative take on ‘black box’ storage – keep an eye on them as well.
Huh? Pillar has been shipping drive trays with RAID controllers in them for almost three years. The “black box” seems a little irresponsible. The component that fails the most in a storage system is disk drives. With these sealed disk packs you can’t replaced these failed parts. Their technology to fail just a head or platter in a disk also sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Partially failing a disk will impact the ability to predict performance and guarantee capacities. Would you drive a car that had a failed piston? It would work but would you do it? Not for long.
Pillar’s been doing innovative stuff, no doubt. My take is that Atrato and Xiotech have gone beyond drive trays with controllers, though.
The “black box” concept could be irresponsible -unless they are able to deliver on what they’ve promised. If they do, watch out!
I just don’t see what the big deal is. If I have the option of a brand new drive or one that has had a head or platter failed (or the whole drive disabled) I’ll take the new drive.
[…] was the Belle of the Ball at Storage Networking World with their demo of ISE technology. Much more significant is that customers are starting to do more than kick the tires. Evidence: […]
[…] was the Belle of the Ball at Storage Networking World with their demo of ISE technology. Much more significant is that customers are starting to do more than kick the tires. Evidence: […]