Microsoft Releases Managed Disks, Scale Sets
In an effort to simplify virtual machine (VM) storage and scaling in Azure, Microsoft released two new capabilities. Managed Disks eliminate the need to configure "storage accounts" for holding VM disks. Scale sets make it possible to deploy hundreds of identical VMs at once.
Collision: How Flash Storage Will Transform IT
Massive reductions in cost for flash storage along with new technologies promise to dramatically change how well IT shops can satisfy what's expected of them in the cloud era. John Roese, CTO of EMC lays out a case for why companies need to adopt new technologies in order to out-perform their competitors.
Docker 1.9 Brings Improvements on Networking, Storage and Clustering
Docker Inc. has presented Docker Engine 1.9 at DockerCon EU, which has taken place this month in Barcelona. This new release, which Docker announced at the beginning of the month, includes major changes on networking and volume management. Docker Swarm is ready for production and several improvements were made in Docker Compose, Docker Toolbox and Docker Registry.
Amazon Web Services Announces File Storage Service
At the AWS Summit last week, Amazon has announced a new storage offering called Elastic File System.
Microsoft adds New Features to Azure Backup
Microsoft has added a set of new features to Azure Backup that addresses key enterprise use cases.
HybridCluster announce free non-commercial licenses
HybridCluster have announced a free for non-commercial use license for their cloud hosting platform. The platform supports Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) applications, and provides high availability and auto scaling with a combination of ‘AwesomeProxy’ a proprietary multi-protocol proxy server, lightweight containers and a ZFS based storage fabric.
Cloud Storage Provider Nirvanix Shutting Down
Cloud storage provider Nirvanix has announced that it is shutting down. Giving customers just a few weeks to migrate their files to other storage providers has called into question the wisdom of using cloud storage services (or indeed any cloud services), particularly from smaller startup providers.
VMware Details Networking and Storage Improvements in Drive Towards Software Defined Data Center
VMware launched new networking and storage capabilities for its Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) at the opening keynote of VMworld 2013, delivering products it promised a year ago.
Enterprise Chef Expands Reach and Depth into Data Centers
Opscode has just announced Enterprise Chef with new capabilities for automating configuration of Microsoft Windows, networking and storage. Enterprise Chef will be the successor to Private Chef and Hosted Chef as Opscode's new offering to provide the capabilities for configuring entire infrastructures.
New in Google Cloud: SDK 1.5.5, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage, Prediction API and Premier Accounts
Google Cloud Services has announced a new version of the App Engine SDK (1.5.5) -the frontend request deadline has been raised from 30 sec. to 60 sec., Python 2.7-, Cloud SQL, Cloud Storage and Prediction API are out of Code Labs, and Premier Accounts.
Windows Azure News: Support for Windows 8, SDK 1.5, Storage Replication and Others
Microsoft has announced at the BUILD conference a number of new tools for developing applications that interact with the cloud: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8, Windows Azure SDK 1.5, Windows Azure Marketplace, Replication for Windows Azure Storage, Service Bus September Release, and Windows Azure Service Management API.
Google Storage is Now Available to All Developers
Google has announced at I/O 2011 the availability of their Storage service to all developers without the need for an invitation. The service has been enhanced with OAuth 2.0 support, simplified account management through the API Console, a new EU storage region, and a new API version.
jclouds Beta 7 Coming: Interview With Adrian Cole
The open source, Java-based cloud computing and storage adaptor, jclouds, releases a new beta the end of this month. InfoQ interviewed Adrian Cole, the project lead, for his take on marrying Java to the cloud.
Google Offers Cloud Storage to Developers
Google Storage for Developers (GSD) is a new RESTful service providing data storage which is replicated across several data centers located in US. GSD is called “for Developers” because data is transferred and accessed though an API based on regular HTTP commands like GET, POST, PUT, HEAD, and DELETE.
The 4 KiB Sector Performance Issue
If using HDDs from Western Digital (WD) with the string "EARS" in the model name, poor performance may have been encountered. Normally HDDs store data with a sector size of 512 bytes; WD's Advanced Format Technology uses 4096 byte sectors. Alignment of data on disk is essential to get the best performance. It's also only a matter of time until other vendors ship disks with non-512-bytes sectors.
