marvel-media.com

marvel-media.com



We are seeing some renewed interest in what is now being called "cloud storage": effectively, backing up your personal computers to a network in the cloud. This isn't a new idea. Products like Mozy and SugarSync have been out for some time, but more people now seem to be paying attention. The storage and security vendors all seem to want part of this market as well, not to mention OS vendors like Microsoft and Apple. It's not so much that there are completely new technologies hitting in these areas, but some of the things that have been around for a bit are becoming more popular. Just about every storage maker offers some form of storage virtualization, making it easier to move storage from one physical location to another without the application knowing about the change. as that's the key reason for SANs in the first place. SSDs—typically very fast drives made from SLC flash and special controllers—are getting more attention, particularly in applications where fast reads can help a system handle more transactions. The Impact of Different Hard Drives Like many digital audio players, iPods can serve as external data storage devices when connected to a computer. Current drives are using a technique called perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), which started hitting the market three or four years ago and is expected to continue for several more years. After that, most vendors are talking about using a technique called heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), although other techniques, such as self-ordered magnetic arrays, are also being investigated. Understanding Hard Drive Performance: Storage density, recording technology, platters, form factor, buffer In the enterprise storage market, it's not just drives that matter: It's the controllers and software. Both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) continue to grow, with the latter having become a staple of large enterprises. The full-sized model stores media on a built-in hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory. In a nutshell, it makes a lot of sense to always get the newest hard drive models possible. These will provide the highest recording density and consequently store data on the fewest possible platters. This reduction in complexity generally yields lower power consumption, as well. In a nutshell, it makes a lot of attention in small capacities for netbooks, and in larger capacities for notebooks, where their thin profiles and fast read times show some benefit. For smaller capacities, around 16GB or less, they can compete with hard drives on price, but for larger capacities they are significantly more expensive. Still, we're seeing more of a push for tiered storage, where data is split either manually or automatically among SSDs (for the most immediately needed data, often used almost like a cache), fast Fiber Channel drives (which are typically smaller capacity than traditional drives but faster, and store frequently used data) and traditional SATA-based drives (which are typically smaller capacity than traditional drives but faster, and store frequently used data)