The computing industry is seeing dramatic growth in the use of "shared nothing" database architectures where each node functions independently of one another and is self-sufficient (Hadoop Distributed File System for example). For the sake of performance, contention among nodes for shared disk resources (SAN and NAS) is one of the things these architectures avoid by dedicating storage resources to each node, i.e. no shared disk.

While these computing architectures are best-known in the context of Web-based applications and development activities, they are no longer confined to the Web. EMC Greenplum, IBM Netezza, and ParAccel are all … Read more

Late last year I posted a blog item about big data and if/when it would present opportunities for storage vendors. I concluded by saying that, while it was a bit early for next-year prognostications, I expected to see the number of storage devices aimed at analytics applications blossom in 2011 with more storage vendors pursuing the opportunity.

It's now 2011 and I stand by that prediction. However, at least three definitions of big data have blossomed since that posting:

What's in a Vblock? It's a cloudy mix onto which a very experienced CEO is shedding more light.

Michael Capellas, the former chief executive of Compaq, MCI, and First Data, and current CEO of Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) Coalition, updated industry analysts with VCE progress as of early December 2010, slightly more than a year after Cisco Systems and EMC announced the VCE joint venture, which integrates servers and networking gear from Cisco, storage and management software from EMC, and the VSphere virtual operating system of VMware into Vblocks.

While the VCE Coalition is a privately held entity … Read more

Earlier this year, EMC surprised the storage community with its acquisition of Greenplum, a small producer of sophisticated software that can be used to both scale-out and accelerate data warehousing and business analytics applications. Its core technology is based on a convergence of Google's MapReduce process, and SQL. The result is a business analytics engine that is now being used to process very large data sets from a variety of online and traditional database sources. EMC created a new Data Computing Division around Greenplum and has recently released a Data Computing Appliance to compete with a number of accelerated … Read more

I'll bet that, until November 10, you'd never heard of a company called Bus-Tech. Now that EMC has made Bus-Tech yet another acquisition target, you're wondering why. In a statement Wednesday, Frank Slootman, president of EMC's Backup Recovery Systems division, positioned Bus-Tech in mainframe backup and recovery: "The addition of Bus-Tech will enable us to deliver a suite of next-generation mainframe backup products that are highly differentiated in terms of performance, integration and supportability."

Since its founding in 1987, Bus-Tech has occupied a place in mainframe channel protocol conversion--a relatively small niche. Now Bus-Tech … Read more

The end of Lime Wire as it has existed for years appears to be at hand.

U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood issued an injunction today against the company that operates the long popular file-sharing software LimeWire and orders managers there to disable "the searching, downloading, uploading, file trading...and/or all functionality" of the LimeWire software, Lime Wire announced.

In May, Wood, who serves the Southern District of New York, granted summary judgment in favor of the music industry's claims that Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright … Read more

For years, storage vendors have been offering two types of disk storage: block and file. Block-based storage is commonly associated with SANs (storage area networks) while-file based storage is commonly referred to a NAS (network attached storage) and attached to Ethernet networks.

Lately, the vendors of either flavor have developed an interest in selling storage arrays that swing both ways--a storage system that provides both block and file access simultaneously. The moniker for these converged SAN/NAS systems is "unified storage."

With unified storage arrays, block access is accomplished through use of an interface to the array such … Read more

If you're an Hitachi Data Systems storage customer, you by now know that HDS announced its latest virtualized storage platform codemnamed Victoria, also known as the Virtualized Storage Platform or VSP. And if you were an HDS customer at the announcement event held Monday at the Santa Clara, Calif., Hyatt, then you would also have seen Hitachi's VP and CTO Hu Yoshida bring closure to a debate that once raged over where a storage virtualization engine should live.

As storage-networking technology was maturing in the early 2000s, storage and networking vendors started testing the market for customer receptiveness … Read more

In a surprise move, IBM is acquiring a business analytics vendor named Netezza.

I say "surprise" first because few in my line of work saw this one coming (IBM already has products in this space. Why buy another?), and second because IBM is paying $1.7 billion for a company that earned $4.2 million during its latest fiscal year on revenue of $190.6 million. That's a long way away from $1.7 billion. And, need I say this again? IBM already has a whole portfolio of Smarter Planet business analytics products and services.

However, Netezza … Read more