Storage News Digest: 31-Jan-03

Enterprise Storage

The Advantages of Near-Line Storage

Talk about storage, and those in the industry will extol the virtues of iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NAS, SAN and all manner of big, networked storage platforms. Chances are they wont mention near-line storage. Despite a consistent level of spending on new, often centralized storage among businesses, near-line devices continue to hang in there at a desktop and workgroup level. The problem for some companies is that, while online may be more suitable, high demand and low capacity often forces data to spill off onto near-line devices as a short-term fix, which can soon become a long-term legacy.

Read the full story on: vnunet.com

ServerWorks Will Support iSCSI Protocol in IP Storage Nets

Chip set maker ServerWorks has tipped plans to support the iSCSI protocol in X86 servers used for Internet Protocol-based storage networks. Although details of the companys approach are not yet clear, some people familiar with the products said they could derail plans of companies like Alacritech Inc. and others that are making high-end adapter cards for iSCSI with TCP offload engines. ServerWorks would not say whether its iSCSI approach will provide full TCP termination. Many observers contend iSCSI will require such termination as part of a TCP offload engine (TOE) to attain full wire speed and not swamp the host processor.

Read the full story on: EE Times

Personal Storage

Quanta Storage to Launch External Slim-Type Combo Drive in 2Q

Quanta Storage said it would launch an external slim-type combo drive around the end of the second quarter or beginning of the third quarter, citing increasing demand from affordable small-size notebook computers and Tablet PCs. The company estimated that worldwide demand for external slim-type combo drives will come to 15 million units next year. At present, an average of 60-70% of 30 million notebooks produced a year are equipped with built-in slim-type combo drives, the company said.

Read the full story on: DigiTimes

Storage Business

EMC Partnership Focuses on E-Mail Archiving, SEC Rules

The industry has responded to recent crackdowns by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on e-mail archiving compliance, the latest effort has stemmed from an alliance between EMC, Iron Mountain and KVS Inc.. The companies have combined their efforts, and storage products, to offer a new way to archive electronic documents. With EMCs Centera content addressed storage system, customers will receive e-mail mailbox management and compliance supervision from KVS, long-term e-mail archiving, indexing and Designated Third Party Services from Iron Mountain and long-term, compliant online storage media from EMC. The SEC requires the financial industry to save everything for "no less than six years."

Read the full story on: searchStorage.com