A lot of the innovation in iSCSI storage systems is coming from midrange iSCSI vendors. We list some key points to help you determine if iSCSI is a fit for your organization.
Big enterprise storage iron has always hogged the data storage limelight. For many IT pros, the high end of the storage food chain -- with its soaring throughput rates, huge disk counts and stunning performance -- came to represent the entire storage market.
But times change, and that's no longer the case...
Storage QoS is more than just a way to isolate workloads on a shared storage system to guarantee performance levels, it is the key enabler for long-term hybrid architecture viability, John Spiers, Co-Founder and CEO and Kelly Long, Co-Founder and CTO describe why. Topics include hybrid, benefits of storage QoS, storage media proliferation, hybrid storage system challenges, QoS controlled tiering and caching, storage efficiency and affordability.
As technical director for the Rocori School District in Stearns County, Minn., Brian Michalski was looking into virtual desktop infrastructure as a way to cut costs in the schools' 13 computer labs.
He figured with less expensive endpoints and centralized control of resources, VDI would be more efficient and cost effective than the Dell desktops running Windows that the district had in place.
The plan was to use VMware View as the VDI client and he considered several other vendors to...
NexGen Storage, Inc. announced its n5 Series storage system has been deployed by ROCORI School District for its district-wide VDI.
The school district consolidated its VDI storage and the data storage for all of its other applications and systems onto a single NexGen n5 Series storage system. Based on a hybrid solid-state architecture, the n5 Series storage system provides storage QoS capabilities that enable users to manage mixed workloads and guarantee performance for all...
Automation, rising overseas prices and new demand from companies is reviving domestic contract manufacturing — and reversing assumptions that all new high-tech devices will be made overseas.
U.S. manufacturing activity has grown steadily since mid-2009, according to the Tempe, Ariz.-based Institute for Supply Management.
Computer-related manufacturing hasn’t rebounded to the degree other U.S. manufacturing industries have, but that masks a revival for specialty technology...
NexGen Storage, Inc. announced new performance automation capabilities for Software-Defined Datacenters.
NexGen's ioControl 2.1 offers the ability to provision and guarantee VMware datastore storage performance. By offering embedded performance intelligence along with the ability to provision and guarantee VMware datastore performance within vCenter, NexGen makes it easy and affordable for mid-sized enterprises to guarantee application performance in virtual environments.
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The hybrid storage specialist has enhanced its performance management capabilities. Will storage QoS create differentiation for NexGen Storage in a crowded market?
I was struck at the most recent Next Generation Storage Symposium and Storage Field Day how multiple vendors are betting that the next big thing in storage is going to be managing storage performance via some form of quality of service. While the industry is busy integrating flash into its storage architectures, a few vendors are considering not just how to deliver higher performance to applications, but how to make the performance each application receives more predictable.
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The future of software-defined datacenters is still hazy, but NexGen Storage sees an opportunity to capitalize on this enticing phenomenon and challenge VMware for a piece of the action. ioControl 2.1 is the key, which enables users to provision and guarantee VMware datastore performance within vCenter.
NexGen describes ioControl 2.1 as the basis for Storage Quality of Service (QoS), a key enabler that delivers intelligence about system performance and enables users to act on and...
Increasingly higher levels of VM density in virtual infrastructures are bringing users tremendous benefits on the compute side, including high utilization and efficiency. But as the number of VMs per physical server increases, storage and network resources often come under tremendous pressure. Each VM on a given server opens its own virtual storage connections and sends tens of thousands of IO requests over the same physical cables and to the same arrays. The stressed physical network and...
Louisville, Colorado-based solid state storage developer NexGen Storage said today that it has upgraded its products, to provision and guarantee performance for VMware datastore storage volumes. The firm said its updated ioControl 2.1 software lets specifcy VMware datastore performance from within vCenter, which will help its customer guarantee application performance in virtual environments. The updated software also provides monitoring of workloads, quality-of-service settings, and...
NexGen Storage Inc. is beefing up storage monitoring and performance automation for its hybrid flash arrays designed to handle heavily virtualized workloads.
The Louisville, Colo., startup's new ioControl 2.1 management software has more granular storage performance and quality of service (QoS) metrics than the previous version. It shows how key metrics, such as block size and queue depth, affect system response times to applications. It also has a new vCenter plug-in to apply QoS...
Price is considered a hurdle to deploying solid-state storage, but some organizations find flash systems can actually save money for specific applications.
That is especially the case for newer storage systems designed to take advantage of solid state at lower costs. Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., spent an estimated one-third as much with a NexGen hybrid SSD array for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) as it would have with traditional disk storage. And Fort Worth, Texas-...
Louisville, Colorado-based solid state storage provider NexGen Storage said today that it has deployed its systems at the Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire, as part of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment. Financial details of the win were not disclosed. NexGen said that the college is using its NexGen n5 Series storage system, to deploy 600 VDI desktops. Virtual desktops are used by companies to remotely manage and centrally deploy desktop PC images, rather than maintaining...
Louisville, Colorado-based solid state storage developer NexGen Storage has significantly bolstered its executive ranks, saying Tuesday that it has named David Bangs as Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales, Bruce Helart as Vice President of Engineering and Operations, and named Larry Cormier to its board of directors. Bangs was previously at Drobo, and also had headedup HP's StorageWorks sales division. Helart joins from Seagate Technology, where he was most recently R&D Project...
NexGen Storage today announced the expansion of its management team with the appointment of David Bangs as senior vice president of worldwide sales and Bruce Helart as vice president of engineering and operations. The company also named Larry Cormier to its board of directors. Bangs, Helart and Cormier each bring strong track records of success and proven leadership, and will focus on accelerating NexGen’s growth strategy, building its leadership position in solid-state storage and...
3X more raw capacity with equivalent IO/s per rack unit vs. all-SSD arrays.
NexGen Storage, Inc. unveiled its first solid-state performance guarantee. Under the terms of its offer, the company guarantees that it will improve performance per rack unit or capacity density versus any other storage system by delivering:
10X more IOPS per rack unit versus conventional disk-based storage arrays(1,2)
3X more IOPS per rack unit versus conventional hybrid storage arrays(1,3)
3X...
NexGen Storage and Veeam Software have announced a technology alliance through which Veeam instant VM restores, and backup and offsite replication capabilities for disaster recovery, are available now to NexGen customers of n5 Series systems at no additional cost. The companies say that Veeam Backup & Replication, combined with NexGen's n5 Series storage systems leverages next generation PCIe SSD storage technology and integrated backup images to enable VM recovery within seconds versus...
NexGen Storage, Inc. has formed a technology alliance partnership with Veeam Software, Inc. to deliver instant VM restores, faster backups, and offsite replication capabilities for DR.
The new offering, available to NexGen customers at no additional cost, allows customers to replicate data from a NexGen Storage system to any other storage system supported by Veeam and protects existing storage system investments.
"NexGen's cutting-edge solid-state technologies deliver fast...
Louisville, Colo.-based NexGen Storage is previewing its NexGen Storage vCenter Plug-in, which allows VMware administrators to provision and manage virtual machine datastore capacity and performance by leveraging NexGen’s Quality of Service (QoS) feature set.
The QoS feature set includes Provision Data Stores that allow administrators to provision new QoS-driven datastores from a single interface...
PCIe solid-state storage system provider NexGen Storage has joined forces with backup and recovery developer Veeam Software to create a “technology alliance partnership” aimed at providing SMBs with instant virtual machine (VM) restores, faster backups, and offsite replication capabilities for disaster recovery (DR).
The new offering, available to NexGen customers at no additional cost, enables SMBs to replicate data from a NexGen Storage system to any other storage system...
Startup hybrid hard drive and flash storage array vendor NexGen Storage this week made a play for mindshare in the SAN market with a guarantee that its array would significantly increase performance over a customer's existing infrastructure.
"It's the industry's first solid-state storage performance guarantee," said Chris McCall, vice president of marketing for the Salt Lake City-based company.
NexGen also unveiled a joint offering with Baar, Switzerland-based Veeam Software...
NexGen Storage Inc. today declared it will back up its performance claims with a promise to upgrade customers for free if its hybrid solid-state storage array falls short.
NexGen guarantees that its n5-150 combination PCI Express (PCIe) solid-state and hard disk drive array will increase the performance of a customer's previous disk storage system by 10 times, triple the IOPS per rack unit of hybrid storage arrays, or triple the raw capacity per rack unit of all-SSD arrays.
"If...
There are so many new uses of flash storage coming onto the market that it can be hard to keep up. Here are a few of the more innovative applications.
NexGen n5.
By leveraging PCIe solid-state in the n5 systems, NexGen seeks to improve performance by placing solid-state next to the CPU. NexGen Storage has expanded its n5 Series to add more performance and capacity in the same footprint. It delivers PCIe SSD storage system with Quality of Service (QoS) to ensure...
In response to the explosion of new solid-state storage offerings, NexGen Storage today announced an education campaign called Storage Election 2012, featuring a 35-city tour across America. The series of events launches August 1st in San Jose, CA and continues across the rest of the country during the second half of 2012.
...NextGen Storage is taking its solutions on the road.
Storage Election 2012 is a 35-city educational roadshow beginning August 1. Stops along the way include Arlington, VA; Baltimore, MD; Bellevue, WA; Boston, MA; Dallas, TX; Englewood, CO; Indianapolis, IN; Las Vegas, NV; Milwaukee, WI - New York, NY; North Miami Beach, FL; Palo Alto, CA; Parsippany, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; and Winter Park, FL.
The campaign will focus on three different...
Solid-state storage innovator NexGen Storage has expanded its n5 Series of storage systems with new PCIe solid-state offerings. The NexGen n5 Series offers several solid-state configurations that deliver a range of performance levels and price points, and each n5 system offers both 10 GbE and 1 GbE network options.
The expansion gives businesses larger storage capacity options and a range of redundant elements to boost security and data protection. Storage specialist NexGen announced the expansion of its n5 Series of storage systems with Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) solid-state offerings in a range of configurations and all boasting both 10GbE and 1GbE network options in a compact 3U footprint. The appliances feature redundant storage processors, redundant fans, hot-swap disk...
Storage start-up NexGen Storage this week expanded its line of hybrid storage arrays with two new models that combine PCIe solid state storage with spinning disks for customers with applications requiring high-performance hardware. The expansion includes the addition of new low-capacity and high-capacity models, as well as the addition of 10-Gbit Ethernet connectivity on the existing model, giving the company a line of storage systems that provides the performance of SSDs at one-tenth the...
Eight months after coming out of stealth with a storage system using solid-state PCIe cards and using its own type of quality of service,...
Louisville CO-based NexGen Storage has announced the expansion of its n5 Series of storage systems with new PCIe solid-state offerings.
"The whole concept around NextGen has always been to solve shared storage performance issues," said Chris McCall, NextGen's Vice President of Marketing. "Both NexGen's founders and its technical team came out of the LeftHand Networks experience, and with NexGen they built a new architecture from the ground up for Storage QoS."
McCall said NexGen's...
While data storage vendors are improving I/O's on their arrays by replacing disk drives with solid-state drives to (SSDs) or layering SSDs onto traditional drives via tiers of all-SSD storage, Louisville, Colo.-based NexGen Storage is taking a different direction.
The company's new n5 Series arrays blend flash and SAS disk-based storage in an architecture that yields 5x to 10x lower cost per gigabyte than all-SSD arrays while delivering SSD-like performance, according to NexGen...
Interview: EMC has confirmed a 3-layer enterprise flash cake composed of server cache, server-area Thunder array and SAN-attached Xtremio technology, but not a new design hybrid flash and disk drive array.
Start-up NexGen has such an array. We asked NexGen founder and CEO John Spiers questions about his company's views on solid state storage as well as the various aspects of the NexGen flash choice.
The Register: Why is solid state a game-changing technology for the storage...
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD? Short answer NO not yet. There is still a place for traditional storage arrays or appliances particular those with extensive features, functionality and reliability availability serviceability (RAS). In other words, there is still a place for large (and small) storage arrays or appliances including those with SSDs.
Is there a place for newer flash SSD storage systems, appliances and architectures? Yes. ...
Just as the last round of consolidation in the data-storage industry has come to an end, the sudden growth of flash memory in data centers looks poised to start another one.
After big payoffs in the last few years on scale-out storage, venture investors have heavily bet on the next transition in storage–the move away from hard disk drives and toward flash storage in the data center.
EMC Corp.’s $430 million purchase of XtremIO Ltd., a pre-revenue flash storage start...
Just as the last round of consolidation in the data storage industry has come to an end, the sudden growth of flash memory in data centers looks poised to start another one.
After big payoffs in the last few years on scale-out storage, venture investors have heavily bet on the next transition in storage--the move away from hard disk drives and toward flash storage in the data center.
NexGen Storage is now available through Promark Technology's Government Service Administration schedule. With the GSA listing, federal, state, and local government agencies can purchase NexGen's midrange shared storage line from authorized Promark resellers.
NexGen's products offer Storage QoS for managing performance and Serve Levels to guarantee performance for mission-critical applications in mixed workload and virtual server environments. GSA schedules streamline the...
Streamlines Purchasing for Government Agencies and Offers Profitable Growth Opportunities for Resellers. NexGen Storage recently announced that its products are now available through Promark Technology’s Government Service Administration (GSA) schedule. NexGen provides the only midrange shared storage solution that offers both Storage QoS for managing performance and Service Levels to guarantee performance for mission-critical applications in mixed-workload and virtual server...
It’s always interesting when you’re made to re-evaluate and look at things differently. Cirque du Soleil has been doing that for years now; traditional ‘circus’ acts became fascinating entertainment, that could make us stroke our chins or drop our jaws. In other words, something you thought you knew was presented in a new light. And yet the underpinnings of what Cirque does are not brand new – it did not invent the wheel or discover fire; instead, it took elements that existed already, and...
For delivering midrange SAN with storage QoS. NexGen Storage, Inc. announced an Enterprise Strategy Group Lab Validation Report on the NexGen n5 Storage System's ioControl storage. Typically available only with multi-million dollar systems, NexGen is the first storage vendor to deliver storage QoS in a...
High performance and capacity at a lower cost than pure SSDs. Popular replacement for standard magnetic hard disk drives. Not every hybrid SSD solution is created equal. Price has come down considerably over past few years. Solid state disks (SSDs) are a popular replacement for standard magnetic hard disk drives. I've used several SSDs in my various computers over the past few years and can vouch for the extreme performance increase, not to mention the reduced heat and noise and excellent...
The next big thing: It's a subject that keeps analysts, entrepreneurs and computer science majors up at night. But what on earth is it going to be? For every one that captures the popular imagination and generates a new crop of billionaires, hundreds of others fall by the wayside. Yet the folks quoted below have gone out on a limb and shared their thoughts on that elusive next big thing. Don't be too hard on them. Performance Quality of Service (QoS): Kelly...
NexGen’s n5 Storage System a Top Pick for the 2012 International Green IT Awards. NexGen Storage today announced that its n5 Storage System is a finalist in the Virtualization Product of the Year category of the 2012 Green IT Awards. The Green IT Awards is an international competition that showcases technology companies that have made significant contributions to improving the IT industry’s environmental performance during the past year. The prestigious selection recognizes NexGen's...
It was just last year that many of us in the storage chattering class were talking about how the market for mainline storage systems had consolidated after 3Par and Compellent were swallowed up by HP and Dell respectively leaving the market with just one or two smaller vendors to keep the big boys honest. That discussion failed to recognize that solid state storage had made the transition to the mainstream, and there was a new wave of startups building storage systems optimized for flash....
There has been a surprising surge in storage startups in recent weeks. Here are some of the notables. Storage virtualization is the target for a couple of the startups listed here. With so much server virtualization going on, after all, the storage side has to catch up.
"Virtualization initiatives in the SME market are causing more than 100 percent annual storage growth, which in turn causes a tremendous amount of technical and operational headaches," said Steve Duplessie,...
By Chris Mellor
Using flash memory, deduplication and predictable performance the iSCSI array has been reinvented by the founders of LeftHand Networks in the shape of NexGen Storage's n5.
LeftHand Networks was acquired by HP and is now the HP P4000 line. It competes with Dell's EqualLogic iSCSI arrays, and NexGen is...
Disk-flash storage mix biz chief argues his corner. Using flash memory, deduplication and predictable performance the iSCSI array has been reinvented by the founders of LeftHand Networks in the shape of NexGen Storage's n5.
LeftHand Networks was acquired by HP and is now the HP P4000 line. It competes with Dell's EqualLogic iSCSI arrays, and NexGen is squaring up to both of them as well as EMC and NetApp iSCSI storage products.
In these days of SSD-enhanced disk arrays, all-...
Louisville CO-based NexGen Storage, which recently emerged from stealth with a solid state storage offering with Quality of Service designed for business critical virtualization, has inked its first distribution deal, with Promark Technology.
The deal covers both the U.S. and Canada. There is short term exclusivity, but Charles Bass, vice president, vendor relations and strategic accounts for Promark, expects that once they grow NexGen's business to the 8-12 million level, "they...