hds

Last of the storage independents

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

How Hitachi's Hu Yoshida got the last word

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

Fujifilm offers up two very similar megazooms

How important to you is an HDMI output on your camera? That's the question you'll have to ask yourself when deciding between the new Fujifilm FinePix S1800 and the S2550HD.

Both 12-megapixel models feature a Fujinon 18x zoom and 28-504mm-equivalent lens, HD movie recording (720p), mechanical sensor-shift image stabilization, and a 3-inch LCD and electronic viewfinder. The S2550HD, however, has a Mini-HDMI out for connecting directly to an HDTV or monitor, which will cost you roughly $30 more.

The S1800 does have a couple extras to make you think twice about spending the extra cash, though. For some … Read more

Samsung starts mass production of 256GB SSDs

The main things keeping solid-state drives out of the mainstream are their high costs and low capacities. Currently, 128GB SSDs sell for around $400, far more expensive than comparable traditional mechanical drives while still holding less data.

Samsung's aiming to fix that with its new 256GB SSD, which it's just put into mass production. The storage size is close to being on par with current laptop hard drives, and by producing them in mass quantities it should be able to bring the price down dramatically. Currently, Axiom 256GB SSDs can go for as much as $7,500, really … Read more