Lenovo and EMC create a "strategic worldwide partnership"-- with plans for the sale of EMC network storage products in China while boosting Lenovo enterprise operations outside of Asia. 

In other words, the two companies will leverage on each other's client base and experience in their respective home markets. The agreement also replaces the previous reseller partnership EMC had with Dell. 

The two companies will also share server development, embedding EMC x86-based technology in Lenovo offerings before making it available in "select" EMC storage Read more...

Fujitsu Laboratories reveals technology to automatically resolve problems caused by concentrated access of popular data items in distributed storage systems-- thus clamping down on access time slowdowns. 

Distributed storage combines multiple servers as a single storage space, storing replicas of the same data simultaneously on multiple servers. 

The Fujitsu technology detects spikes in popularity for specific data items, automatically increasing the numbers of replicas to help level-off server loads (a previously manual task). The technology applies Read more...

Overland Storage launches its first enterprise storage solutions-- the SnapSAN 3000 and SnapSAN 5000 appliances, combining HDD and SSD technologies with an enterprise-class software stack. 

Both appliances and are fully redundant systems with what the company claims is 99.999% availability, and are scaleable to up to 288TB capacity. 

The storage software stack includes auto storage tiering and application auto-tuning for the moving of data between SSD and HDD tiers. It also has thin provisioning, replication, encryption and WORM (Write Once, Read Read more...

How much do we take for granted the humble rack, that server “furniture” that allows us to add in all our AV kit to the network.

And these racks are changing!

Increasing server depths, more cabling within cabinets, the need for airflow management, and the desire to maximize floor space within data centers are driving larger racks and enclosures.

Heights of enclosures are rapidly growing, with shipments of 48U racks forecast to grow an average of 15% annually over the next five years, compared to a projected average growth rate of 5% for the standard size of 42U, according to a new study from IMS Research, now part of IHS.

The movement to taller enclosures is driven by customer desire to maximize floor space to limit the need for data center build outs. Currently, 42U (1U = 1.75”) height cabinets account for nearly two-thirds of all enclosure shipments globally, but this share will decline as shipments of taller racks increase. Read more...