The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has already ratified IEEE 802.3ba, so 40 GbE and 100 GbE are available but not commonly used. Today, 40 GbE is pretty pricey and is typically only used in the switches in the core of the network -- you don't really see it on application servers or desktops. Once it becomes a little more pervasive and the prices come down on that equipment, you can certainly run iSCSI hard disk 40k1043 on it. To provide trunking between switches in the data center, 40 GbE and 100 GbE are used as inter-switch links.

The adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) has definitely impacted the speed of iSCSI. Obviously, it's 10 times faster than 1 GbE. The other important thing is that while you might have previously had to do multipathing to get multiple 1 GbE connections, you can now consolidate on a 10 GbE connection. Because you have a pipe that’s 10 times the size, you see a significant performance improvement. You also get a little bit management to a certain extent by going with 10 GbE.

How big of an impact does the adoption of 10 gigabit Ethernet have on iSCSI speed and what will even faster Ethernet mean for iSCSI 492620-b21 hard drives?

With 1 GbE, it's not uncommon to see four, six or eight network interface card (NIC) ports in a server hdd 504062-b21 to handle data traffic and management functions. This also means that the same number of cables are connected to that server. In many cases, these multiple NIC ports are used for multipathing to get more overall bandwidth. If a dual-port 10 GbE NIC is used, the number of cables will be drastically reduced and additional bandwidth will be available, either in aggregate or for failover scenarios. The need for multipathing would be reduced, except for failover needs. But there's a requirement for 10 GbE NICs that's not required for 1 GbE NICs, and that's the type of slots in the server. A dual-port 10 GbE NIC requires a PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 x8 slot in the server  aj698a HDD to get full bandwidth on both ports. A single-port 10 GbE NIC requires a PCIe 2.0 x4 or PCIe 1.0 x8 slot.

Dell Inc. dropped a hint about its mysterious cloud storage strategy last week via a tweet that included a link to a PDF with details about a reseller deal with Nirvanix Inc.From Dell's statement this week, it appears the vendor is working on building out its cloud storage services40k1024 beyond what it is doing with Nirvanix. Maybe Dell will let us in on the secret soon."We were one of their key customers for storage," he said. "We utilize Dell for a lot of our infrastructure and they saw a lot of traction in multipetabyte cloud deployments.

According to the Dell/Nirvanix online document, customers can store up to four copies on Nirvanix's cloud infrastructure under a one-year term agreement. Dell will configure the service, handle account administrative activities 293556-b21 and transition the customer to Nirvanix, which will manage infrastructure, onboarding, maintenance and support, and operational service levels.Unfortunately, a hint was all we received about the overall Dell cloud storage plans. The vendor has yet to lay out a cohesive cloud strategy, and declined to elaborate after the Nirvanix tweet. Requests for an interview with Dell Services brought only an email response several days later, stating "we can confirm that we are working with Nirvanix to offer customers a STaaS [storage as a service] solution. We are also exploring additional options to further build out our STaaS offering based on customer feedback and will be happy to speak when we have something more to announce."

Nirvanix vice president of marketing Steve Zivanic is never shy about discussing his company’s services, and filled in some blanks about the deal. Dell will use Nirvanix software for public, private and hybrid clouds that provides key capabilities 40k1047 such as a global namespace, granular multi-tenant file structure and live replicas.Nirvanix and Dell aren't strangers. Nirvanix has used Dell products in large-scale deployments, Zivanic said.

People throughout the storage industry are wondering what the top-tier vendors will do to compete with clouds from Amazon, Google and Microsoft Windows Azure. Nirvanix has an OEM deal with IBM Global Services , and Hewlett-Packard (HP) 364621-b23 went live with its HP Cloud Object Storage and Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) using OpenStack software in August. Pure-play storage vendors EMC, NetApp and Hitachi Data Systems focus more on selling infrastructure to cloud providers while helping customers set up private clouds. But all of these vendors' plans appear to be fluid.

"This is the first time Dell is selling a pay-by-the-drink model 627117-b21, something EMC and NetApp cannot offer," Zivanic said. "They can compete with service providers, Microsoft Azure, Google and Rackspace. This gives them a leg up on the traditional storage companies."Until now, the Dell cloud storage strategy consisted mostly of the company's plans to deliver an AppAssure cloud by the end of the year. That would be based on the AppAssure backup software Dell acquired in February, which Dell executive director of storage strategy Carter George described as "key to our cloud strategy" in June.

“[We are now] providing engineering samples to our customers. In the first half of calendar 2013, we will be supplying call samples and gearing up for volume kind of activity the back half of 2013,”said Mr. Milligan.The president of Western Digital Corp. said on Monday that the interest towards hybrid hard drives (HHDs) designed by the company is high and that WD is on-track to ship such products to computer makers in the second half of 2013.

WD unveiled its 5mm and 7mm hybrid hard drives this September. Unlike hybrid hard disk drives that are available today from Seagate Technology and Toshiba, WD's HHD utilizes multi-level cell NAND flash memory and utilizes the concept of tiered storage. Data accessed most frequently (often referred to as ‘hot’data) is managed using speedy NAND flash to ensure fast response times, while data accessed less often (‘cold’data) resides on the magnetic disks. The magnetic disk backs up all files residing in the NAND, protecting the user from inevitable NAND wear and preserving it for the more hot data handling. WD’s hybrid technology works in conjunction with the PC operating system to deliver higher performance than current hybrid offerings while minimizing NAND wear to allow the use of less expensive MLC NAND.

“All major PC OEMs have shown strong interest in our 5mm and 7mm hybrid designs as an alternative to solid-state and dual drive configurations,”said Stephen Milligan, the president of WD who will become chief executive in January, during a conference call with financial analysts.WD on Monday reported revenue of $4.0 billion, hard-drive shipments of 62.5 million and net income of $519 million, or $2.06 per share, for its first fiscal quarter ended September 28, 2012. In the year-ago quarter, the company reported revenue of $2.7 billion, net income of $239 million, or $1.01 per share, and shipped 57.8 million hard drives.