Henry Baltazar

From a strict name-association point of view, the word “Auspex” has always been related to “big black box” in my storage-crazy mind. Auspex Systems Inc. has been around since 1987 and is widely seen as a pioneer in the NAS space, for the most part providing Unix servers with high-speed file shares. During my visit […]

One of the first servers based on the Itanium 2 processor, Hewlett-Packard Co.s HP Server RX2600 illustrates that the Itanium 2 will be a boon for database and security applications, among other computation-intensive tasks. However, its too early to predict whether the architecture will be a commercial success. While the initial 64-bit Itanium chip was […]

The concept of Big Brother following our every move is one of the most common clichés in literature and film. However, unlike other classic sci-fi themes like an invasion of UFOs or an attack of giant mutant insects, the threat that technology poses to privacy is real. Recently I, like many other sci-fi-loving box-office sheep, […]

Whether iSCSI will help or hinder the manageability of storage resources depends on the amount of time storage managers are willing to wait for improvements to the technology. iSCSI in its current state cannot exist alone. For one thing, iSCSI cant keep up with Fibre Channel from a performance standpoint. For another, although new products […]

The recently released Solaris 9 operating environment is an evolutionary release whose manageability and capability improvements stem mainly from the bundling of several technologies from Sun Microsystems Inc.s product catalog, including Sun ONE LDAP and application servers. The cost-to-benefit ratio is good for systems with up to four CPUs, but the upgrade argument is harder […]

Whats the future of file systems? At last weeks USENIX conference in Monterey, Calif., two presenters offered concepts that could have a major impact on file systems in the near future. Harvard student Kostas Magoutis presentation covered the functionality and benefits of DAFS (Direct Access File System), a powerful user-level file system backed by several […]

Tired of seeing your companys storage needs being labeled as a budgetary black hole? A new breed of backup auditing tools coming to market can track down users and groups responsible for major resource consumption, accurately measure whos using how much, and set up appropriate billing guidelines. For beleaguered IT departments that dont have the […]

Can Apple really compete as a server vendor? Although it would seem like suicide to enter the rough-and-tumble server market, where margins are relatively slim and price wars are commonplace, Apple does have a few things going for it. First of all, as a new entry to the market, the slate is clean for Apple. […]

StorageX Eases File Management NuView Inc.s newly minted StorageX management software will be a valuable addition for organizations that need help reining in the file servers and NAS boxes that have been aggressively proliferating throughout corporate networks. NuView literature describes StorageX, which began shipping earlier this month, as a “file virtualization” product, but eWeek Labs […]

To be honest, I was less than enthusiastic when NuView Inc. came to eWEEK Labs Foster City, Calif., facility to pitch its new StorageX product, which is being marketed as a file virtualization solution. If there is any buzzword that has been overused the past year, virtualization is it. Despite my initial misgivings, however, Im […]

Although Nishan Systems $29,995 IPS 3300 Multiprotocol Storage Switch is largely unchanged from the version I tested last year (eWeek Labs May 14, 2001, review of the IPS 3300 is at www.eweek. com/links), Nishan has made one important addition—the switch now supports the iSCSI protocol. When testing Alacritechs 1000×1 Single Port Server and Storage Accelerator […]

Sun Microsystems Inc.s Reference Architectures provide powerful e-mail and data warehousing systems, but the company must bring more solutions to market if it wants to melt its reputation as just a big-box vendor. The companys iForce initiative is designed to do just that. Unlike Suns Reference Architecture strategy, which produces large-scale, generic enterprise systems, iForce […]