The TeraTelly sports 1.2TB of storage for storing and recording your music, photos, and video. It run a custom Linux OS and applications for video recording. Here's a full review. Unless this thing has a portable media player companion, like the Creative Zen Portable Media Center, I'll have to stick with my desires to purchase a Medica Center PC, preferablly the Alienware DHS 5

posted: 12:20:04 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Not via Firewire or USB, thanks. I-O Data’s HDZ-UE1.6TS puts 1.6 terabytes on your desk. Put it on the network and it might be interesting. I'd be interested in seeing the specs on this device. Unfortunately, the web site is only available in Japanese. [via Engadget]

posted: 12:07:35 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

This InforWorld article, entitled A Rationale for ILM, on ILM is nothing more than a weak attempt to perpetuate the fizzling ILM story. Don't get me wrong. I believe ILM is very important, yet extremely difficult to do today. The article is 12 paragraphs long. The first four paragraphs tell us how easy it is to set up a SAN these days. Five more paragraphs tell us how tape backups today don't fit into the ILM model. The remaining three paragraphs tell us an "ice age" in the industry is coming if we don't adopt ILM and point us to other sources that define ILM. There was no rationale in this article other than some pseudo-strategic swipes at how data needs to be classified for tools to automatically determine the most cost effective storage for a particular data type.

posted: 2:15:58 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

NiveusMedia has release a 1TB personal storage server. It's got a price tag of $2,999. I'll wait another year before I buy something like this. In 2005 I'll buy a Media Center PC and the gadgets required to make the stuff I record mobile. 2006 will be an upgrade year for my network and storage.

posted: 11:55:55 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Whoa! In doing some research on Media Center PC's I saw HP has included these in their Media Center PC's.

posted: 11:25:33 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I've been kicking around the idea of user driven storage forums for a while now. I actually started them here not too long ago. However, as you may see, they aren't really taking off. So, I'd like to find out how may people who read my storage blog would find these forums useful. I'm conducting a quick poll here. Your input would be greatly appreciated.

posted: 11:02:58 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

While driving this weekend it hit me how much work I've not got to do with the storage forums. The good news is that I can work on them from just about anywhere. Now all I have to do is set aside the time. This is going to be great fun and should produce quite a bit of valuable knowledge in the long run.

posted: 10:26:52 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

In the vane of uniting and connecting storage users, I have begun to set up storage forums here. The goals of these forums are: to connect users, separate the technology from the vendors, help new users get started, and allow experienced users to share tricks of the trade. You can’t have the technology without the vendors, so I have set up a vendor category with a forum for each vendor. If you don’t see your vendor listed, please drop me a comment or a post in the forum request forum and I will be happy to set it up. I will continue to structure the forums in the coming weeks. I did some research and found almost no forums on storage. The Byte and Switch forums are pretty much unusable. Other storage forums out there are peppered with advertisements from vendors which make it difficult to find the information you are looking for.

Notice to vendors: you will get slimed here. Posts will not be deleted just because you don’t like them. These are open forums. I would suggest that you develop an accurate, honest, and detailed response if you find something to take exception to. Post your response and let each individual user make their own decision.

posted: 11:26:28 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

Over a year ago I met with some of the guys at Enterprise Storage Group (now Enterprise Strategy Group), Steve Duplessie and Tony Prigmore to be specific, to pitch a new idea of developing heterogeneous storage reference architectures. They didn’t bite and I don’t blame them. It was an incomplete idea at the time. Part of our discussion branched into how the storage marketplace is completely dominated by the vendors. Every analyst and consulting firm in the storage marketplace is beholden to the vendors for their revenues, including ESG. Vendors like EMC hold the fate of partners in their hands. They know it and like to use the power. Other storage vendors like HP and IBM use storage as a lever to open up other opportunities in accounts. HP and IBM are so large, however, they can’t centralize control over partners enough to exert brute force in the same manner as EMC. One of the world’s largest consulting firms, Accenture, entered into a multibillion dollar partnership with EMC a couple of years ago. Accenture now finds the EMC sales warlords attempting to pillage their accounts. So how is the power wrangled away from the vendors? By uniting the users. The vendors have kept the skills and knowledge in the marketplace proprietary. There are movements afoot via SNIA and market forces like the demand for iSCSI to wrest power away from the vendors. However, these endeavors will be incomplete and the marketplace will remain unbalanced until the users begin to talk, communicate, and collaborate.

posted: 9:50:17 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I've been having a lot of fun testing inline encryption devices at work. While quite cool technology, I wouldn't recommend deploying this technology in production just yet. I saw much as a 53% degradation in performance in some of me tests. However, using these devices to encrypt tape backups might be a good use of these devices today since tape is completely mobile. Who's to say some guy at Iron Mountain isn't grabbing tapes at random hoping to find something valuable?

posted: 7:02:52 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

This comes via Slashdot. This is amazing; 1TB on a DVD sized disk. Could optical storage make a come back against tape with this kind of density? I can see scnenarios where you disk based bacups and archive to optical. Hmm, could this be a case of back to the future?

posted: 10:02:03 AM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()