http://www.demartek.com/ Demartek.com - Real-world, Hands-on Research and Analysis Research Reports Copyright 2004-2012 Demartek.com en-us 240 http://www.demartek.com/Images/Demartek_white2_RSS.png http://www.demartek.com/ 144 38 Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present two sessions at the Storage Decisions Conference in Chicago on Wednesday, June 20, 2012. These sessions are: "Where (and How and Why) to Implement Solid-State Storage" and "Innovations in Storage Networking: Next-Gen Storage Networks for Next-Gen Data Centers". http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2012-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2012-06.html Mon, 14 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT SSD SDCHI12 Flash Fibre Channel FCoE 10GbE 16GFC Storage Decisions StorageEvents Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin's presentation from the SCSI Trade Assocation (STA) Technology Showcase on May 9, 2012 is now available. In addition, there is also a link to the other presentations from this event on this page. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_STA_Showcase_2012-05-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_STA_Showcase_2012-05-09.html Thu, 10 May 2012 19:00:00 GMT SAS STAShowcase Speaking Engagements Solid state storage is transforming the entire computing industry. Solid state storage has completely revolutionized consumer electronics products, replacing spinning disk drives in virtually every category of consumer devices. This same enthusiasm for solid state storage has moved into the data center. Because of this interest, Demartek has produced this Demartek SSD Deployment Guide 2012-Q2, one in a series of technology deployment guides. This guide covers NAND flash characteristics, SSD form factors, data placement strategies and more. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Deployment_Guide.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Deployment_Guide.html Thu, 19 Apr 2012 13:15:00 GMT Research Report SSD FlashSoft Nimbus Data OCZ SMART Storage Systems We added IOmeter output results to our Benchmark Output File Formats page. IOmeter 2010 can produce three different types of output files. These are: Pseudorandom, Full Random, and Repeating. There are two sample images of each output type, taken from different locations within the file. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats_IOmeter2010.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats_IOmeter2010.html Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:00:00 GMT Research Report Benchmark At the SCSI Trade Assocation (STA) Technology Showcase on May 9, 2012, Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will explore how SAS is maturing in the datacenter. He will discuss SAS as a disk drive interface, as a host interface to modern storage systems, and in a small shared storage environment. He will also explain how SAS compares to other storage interfaces, and how this technology fits into IT departments and enterprises of all sizes. In addition, he will discuss the current 6Gb/s SAS interface and the roadmap for 12Gb/s SAS, along with newer cabling options and more. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_STA_Showcase_2012-05-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_STA_Showcase_2012-05-09.html Fri, 6 Apr 2012 19:00:00 GMT SAS STAShowcase Speaking Engagements Enterprise-level flash technology is transforming the computing environment and is bringing high performance storage to the datacenter environment. Flash-based caching is an excellent way to bring the high performance and low latency of flash technology at a minimal cost and without requiring application changes or back-end storage changes... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_NytroXD_Evaluation_2012-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_NytroXD_Evaluation_2012-04.html Mon, 2 Apr 2012 12:00:00 GMT LSI SSD iSCSI Flash Research Report SSD technology is transforming the computing environment and enterprise SSDs are bringing high performance storage to the datacenter environment. Here we evaluate the SMART Storage Systems XceedStor server-grade SSDs for performance. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SMART_XceedStor_Evaluation_2012-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SMART_XceedStor_Evaluation_2012-03.html Thu, 8 Mar 2012 16:30:00 GMT SMART Storage Systems SSD Research Report As the deployment of bandwidth-intensive applications such as public and private cloud computing continue to increase, IT administrators are turning to 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) technology for cost-effective and flexible methods of addressing growing network traffic demands. A key component of the 10GbE network is the network adapter with network protocol processing offload capabilities... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57810_10GbE_Evaluation_2012-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57810_10GbE_Evaluation_2012-03.html Tue, 6 Mar 2012 17:05:00 GMT Broadcom 10GbE Research Report Demartek announces its evaluation of the EMC VFCache flash caching solution, showing test results for servers running Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server database transaction workloads connected to EMC storage systems. "PCIe caching is an excellent way to deploy solid state storage, and the EMC VFCache flash caching solution provided performance improvements of 2.5 to 3.5 times the performance of the baseline tests," said Dennis Martin, Demartek President... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_VFCache_Evaluation_2012-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_VFCache_Evaluation_2012-02.html Mon, 6 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT EMC PCIe SSD Research Report Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present three sessions and moderate a panel session at the Storage Networking World (SNW) in Dallas, Texas in November 2012. Topics include 16G Fibre Channel, Using file server protocols for block storage, and I/O Virtualization. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWUSA_2012-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWUSA_2012-04.html Thu, 2 Feb 2012 15:30:00 GMT Fibre Channel Windows 8 I-O Virtualization SNWUSA Speaking Engagements We added FIO output results to our Benchmark Output File Formats page. FIO is an I/O tool meant to be used both for benchmark and stress/hardware verification. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats.html Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:15:00 GMT Research Report Benchmark Dennis Martin, Demartek President, was interviewed by SearchDataCenter about SSDs as part of their Expert Q and A series. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_SSD_FiveQuestions_2012-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_SSD_FiveQuestions_2012-01.html Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:45:00 GMT SSD Interview In a relatively short time, solid-state storage has become a viable alternative for enterprise storage applications. It offers far superior performance over magnetic media while using much less power and creating little heat. Solid-state storage is, however, still considerably more expensive than spinning disk, so a cost-effective approach to implementation is required. In this free, multi-city, half-day seminar, Dennis Martin, President of Demartek will cover the key solid-state technologies and the specs that users need to know, along with the various implementation alternatives... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Seminar_Multicity_2012.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Seminar_Multicity_2012.html Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT SSD Flash Speaking Engagements I spent two days at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2012) looking for technologies and products that bring consumer and datacenter technologies a little closer together. We are seeing the "Consumerization of IT" in many areas and I wanted to get a glimpse of what is available now and what is coming this year or in the not too distant future... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2012.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2012.html Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:00:00 GMT CES2012 Ultrabook Tablet 3D 4K USB 3.0 HDBaseT Wireless Power SSD Consumer Electronics Show Commentary NetApp commissioned Demartek to evaluate its FAS3240, one of the members of its full line of unified storage solutions, for its ability to handle a full load of mixed traffic types simultaneously. The NetApp FAS3240 storage system was able to handle multiple file and block protocols simultaneously including NFS, iSCSI, FC and FCoE, and supported the bandwidth allocation capabilities of DCB known as Enhanced Transmission Selection (ETS). It also provides traditional Fibre Channel data access on separate Fibre Channel connections within the same storage controller... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_NetApp_Multiprotocol_Evaluation_2012-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_NetApp_Multiprotocol_Evaluation_2012-01.html Fri, 6 Jan 2012 17:15:00 GMT NetApp DCB 10GbE FCoE Fibre Channel iSCSI Research Report Demartek announces the addition of a new small, fast server that will augment its virtual server and I/O testing capabilities. This server includes one Intel® Xeon E3-1280 (“Sandy Bridge”) 3.5GHz four-core processor that supports hyper-threading, the new AES instructions and I/O device virtualization (Intel VT-d). With 32GB of DDR3 RAM, this new server is capable of running operating systems and applications in physical environments or can be used to run a few virtual machines in environments such as VMware, Hyper-V and other virtual server environments. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SandyBridge1_2012-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SandyBridge1_2012-01.html Wed, 4 Jan 2012 17:45:00 GMT Lab Validation Virtualization Hyper-V VMware FCoE Fibre Channel iSCSI SAS SSD Demartek's second SSD Giveaway will occur on February 29, 2012. We will select the winner by randomly drawing names from our free monthly email newsletter list. This second SSD giveaway is for an eMLC SSD from SMART Modular... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:00:00 GMT SSD Flash SMART Modular Giveaway Because of the great interest in solid state storage (SSS) technology, we have compiled this summary document providing some basic information for solid state drive (SSD) or solid state disk technology. The terms SSS and SSD are often used interchangeably. Technically, SSD refers to a specific form factor, while SSS refers to any solid state storage form factor... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Primer.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Primer.html Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:00:00 GMT Research Report SSD We run a variety of benchmark tools in the course of our lab validation tests. We were curious about the actual data that these tools write in their respective data files, so we decided to look inside these files, and share that data. These benchmark tools include IOmeter, SQLIO and others. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Benchmark_Output_File_Formats.html Fri, 9 Dec 2011 19:30:00 GMT Research Report Benchmark Demartek will be closed Saturday, December 24, 2011 through Sunday January 1, 2012 for the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_2011_Holiday_Schedule.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_2011_Holiday_Schedule.html Fri, 2 Dec 2011 17:00:00 GMT News Dennis Martin participated in a panel session on the topic of Storage Efficiencies at the Comdex Virtual Conference in November 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_ComdexVirtual_2011-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_ComdexVirtual_2011-11.html Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:00:00 GMT SSD Commentary Dennis Martin, Demartek President, was interviewed by SearchDataCenter about FCoE as part of their Expert Q and A series. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_FCoE_2011.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_FCoE_2011.html Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:00:00 GMT FCoE Interview Everybody knows that solid-state storage runs fast and cool, and uses far less power than hard disk alternatives. And everybody knows that solid state is expensive, too. In this session, we will see where SSD can have the most impact in a storage environment, including looking at the various implementation alternatives. We will discuss the device choices and data placement choices you need to make when considering SSD deployments. Included in the presentation will be results from various SSD lab tests conducted at the Demartek lab. We will also discuss the Demartek SSD Giveaway. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_SSD_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_SSD_2011-10.html Mon, 17 Oct 2011 17:00:00 GMT SSD RMWTUG Speaking Engagements Block host interfaces, including Fibre Channel, iSCSI and SAS are all becoming increasingly available for today’s storage systems. While high IOPS is frequently the metric for assessing drive and array performance, in many cases latency is equally as important. For example, in an OLTP application, short response times are critical. A transaction may require many successive queries to a database, where each query depends on answers returned from the previous query. User response times are entirely dependent on how quickly storage can return answers to the queries. We compared four block interface and speed combinations on the same storage system for basic performance. These four host interfaces were 8Gb FC, 10Gb iSCSI, 1Gb iSCSI and 6Gb SAS. At first glance, one might assume that the interfaces with the highest line rates would provide the best overall performance, but we found that this was not the case. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Low_Latency_FC_iSCSI_SAS_Evaluation_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Low_Latency_FC_iSCSI_SAS_Evaluation_2011-10.html Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:30:00 GMT Fibre Channel iSCSI SAS 1GbE 10GbE All the old standards -- FC, iSCSI and NAS -- are still going strong, but FCoE and virtualized I/O are waiting in the wings to help remake our storage networks. Storage networking rarely gets much attention, and it’s frequently overshadowed by the server and storage gear it links together. But there’s renewed interest in storage networking as new or enhanced technologies begin to show up in our data centers. The complete article is available in the October 2011 edition of Storage Magazine. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_StorageMagazine_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_StorageMagazine_2011-10.html Fri, 7 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT DAS FCoE Fibre Channel iSCSI NAS SR-IOV MR-IOV With the increased popularity of PCI Express devices such as PCIe SSDs, Demartek has added PCIe information to the popular Demartek Storage Networking Interface Comparison. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Fri, 7 Oct 2011 11:00:00 GMT Storage Interface Comparison PCIe News Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Efficient Storage: Automated Storage Tiering” and “Making the Case for Solid-State Storage” at the Storage Decisions Conference in San Francisco, November 8, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-11.html Wed, 5 Oct 2011 12:00:00 GMT Storage Decisions StorageEvents SSD Speaking Engagements Demartek is giving away an OCZ Enterprise Deneva 2 SSD as part of its SSD giveaway. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:00:00 GMT SSD Flash OCZ Giveaway Dennis Martin, Demartek President, was interviewed in preparation for his presentations at SNW Europe 2011 by Rose Ross from Omarketing in the UK (Twitter: @o_marketing). The link to this interview is posted here. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_SNWEurope_2011.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interview_SNWEurope_2011.html Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:00:00 GMT SNWEurope SSD Interview Due to the large interest in SSD technology, Demartek will be giving away at least one SSD on October 31, 2011. We will select the winner by randomly drawing names from our free monthly email newsletter list at 10:00 a.m. MST on October 31, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_giveaway_2011-10.html Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:15:00 GMT SSD The five-minute highlight video describing the Demartek iSCSI Deployment Guide 2011 is now available. This video provides highlights from the Demartek iSCSI Deployment Guide 2011. This guide includes iSCSI marketplace and technical information, followed by deployment examples of iSCSI products and solutions from Broadcom, Chelsio, Emulex, HP, Intel, NetApp, QLogic and Xiotech (now known as XIO). This guide is part of the Demartek Deployment Guide series. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide_video_announcement.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide_video_announcement.html Tue, 6 Sep 2011 12:00:00 GMT iSCSI 1GbE 10GbE Research Report Broadcom Chelsio Emulex HP Hyper-V Intel Microsoft NetApp QLogic VMWare Xiotech Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present two sessions and participate in a panel at the Storage Networking World (SNW) in Frankfurt, Germany in November 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWEurope_2011-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWEurope_2011-11.html Mon, 15 Aug 2011 15:30:00 GMT FCoE I-O Virtualization SNWEurope Speaking Engagements Demartek evaluated the Broadcom BCM957712-S 10GbE adapter that supports FCoE with full hardward offload and iSCSI with full hardware offload. We were able to achieve approximately 1.7 million IOPS for FCoE random reads and more than 1 million IOPS for iSCSI ran­dom reads using the Broadcom BCM957712-S adapter. Broadcom has demonstrated very strong per­for­mance and good CPU efficiency when compared to both full-hardware-offload adapters and non-hardware-offload adapters. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57712_FCoE-iSCSI_Evaluation_2011-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57712_FCoE-iSCSI_Evaluation_2011-07.html Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:30:00 GMT News Video Broadcom 10GbE FCoE Ethernet iSCSI We do a fair amount of scripting in our validation and performance testing, and we often require time-related functions for our batch files on our Windows machines. These time-related functions can be divided into three categories: Display the date and/or time, Delay execution (wait) for a specified period of time, and Synchronize the clocks between machines. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_lab_tips_time-related-scripting_2011-07-25.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_lab_tips_time-related-scripting_2011-07-25.html Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:15:00 GMT Windows 7 Windows Server Scripting Lab Validation Lab Tips Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “I/O Virtualization - The Next Virtualization Frontier” and will moderate a panel on “Advancements in Fibre Channel” at the Storage Networking Wolrd Conference in Orlando, October 10-13, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_IOV_SNW_Fall_2011-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_IOV_SNW_Fall_2011-10.html Mon, 25 Jul 2011 17:00:00 GMT SNWUSA I-O Virtualization Fibre Channel Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Efficient Storage: Automated Storage Tiering” and “Making the Case for Solid-State Storage” at the Storage Decisions Conference in New York, September 19-20, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-09.html Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:00:00 GMT Storage Decisions StorageEvents SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will participate in two panel discussions at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, August 9-11, 2011. These panel discussions are “Implementing Solid State Storage Technology in the Database Infrastructure” and “Solid State Drive (SSD) Technology,” at which Dennis will serve as chairperson. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2011.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2011.html Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:15:00 GMT Flash Memory Summit SSD Speaking Engagements Our web logs indicate that the Demartek iSCSI Deployment Guide 2011 was downloaded more than 1000 times during the first 30 days that it became available. This count excludes web crawlers, bots and other non-human accesses. Here are a few statistics regarding these downloads... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide_statistics_2011-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide_statistics_2011-07.html Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:30:00 GMT Commentary iSCSI Demartek announces its evaluation of the Broadcom BCM957712-S 10Gb Ethernet/FCoE/iSCSI Offload Adapter. This Broadcom adapter supports 10Gb Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) with full hardware offload and iSCSI with full hardware offload. This adapter fits the description of a Converged Network Adapter (CNA). We were able to achieve 1.7 million IOPS for FCoE random reads and more than 1 million IOPS for iSCSI random reads using this Broadcom adapter. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57712_FCoE-iSCSI_Evaluation_2011-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Broadcom_BCM57712_FCoE-iSCSI_Evaluation_2011-07.html Mon, 11 Jul 2011 12:00:00 GMT 10GbE FCoE Fibre Channel iSCSI Demartek announces the addition of a large-memory server that will augment its virtual server and I/O testing capabilities. This server includes two Intel® Xeon X5680 (“Westmere”) six-core processors that support hyper-threading, for a total of 24 logical processors. With 144GB of DDR3 RAM, this new server is capable of running many virtual machines and will be used for VMware, Hyper-V and other virtual server environments running real-world applications, boot storms and more. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Westmere1_2011-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Westmere1_2011-06.html Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:30:00 GMT Lab Validation Virtualization Hyper-V VMware FCoE Fibre Channel iSCSI SAS SSD There are various reasons why it may be necessary to convert physical systems directly into virtual machines (VMs). Aging, out-of-warranty or failing hardware may necessitate such a migration, as may the simple need to consolidate underutilized systems to reduce operating costs. It is certainly possible to manually build guest VMs and migrate the applications and resources from the physical systems over to them, but this can be a time-consuming and error-prone operation. A simpler alternative is to perform a physical to virtual (P2V) migration to get these servers into a virtualized server environment. Here we’ll discuss Hyper-V P2V conversion, as well as the storage considerations around such a conversion. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_Hyper-V_P2V_2010-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_Hyper-V_P2V_2010-05.html Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:00:00 GMT Virtualization SCVMM Hyper-V VMware Fibre Channel iSCSI This guide is designed to provide basic information about iSCSI and practical guidance for planning and deploying iSCSI technology and products. Although this guide contains some iSCSI marketplace information and discusses specific vendor products, it is primarily a technical document. It focuses on iSCSI primarily, but not exclusively, in a Microsoft Windows environment and is an updated version of the 150-page Microsoft iSCSI Storage Deployment White Paper that we published for Microsoft in June 2007, which is available on our website. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_iSCSI_Deployment_Guide.html Tue, 31 May 2011 22:45:00 GMT iSCSI 1GbE 10GbE Research Report Broadcom Chelsio Emulex HP Hyper-V Intel Microsoft NetApp QLogic VMWare Xiotech This video shows the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator from the perspective of a ten-year old girl in the Demartek lab. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Video_Library.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Video_Library.html Mon, 16 May 2011 16:45:00 GMT News Video iSCSI Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written an article describing how SSD technology affects the performance balance among CPU, memory, networks and storage. The article also explains why SSDs and 10 gigabit networking can be a good match. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SSD_CPU_Performance_2011-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SSD_CPU_Performance_2011-04.html Wed, 27 Apr 2011 20:30:00 GMT Research Report 10GbE SSD The Spring 2011 Storage Networking World (SNW) conference held last week in Santa Clara, California was a great conference for us. I had the great pleasure of giving three sessions at this SNW conference covering topics such as SSDs, Unified Storage Networking and FCoE, and I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV and MR-IOV). In addition, we met with several companies including Avere Systems, Dataram, Fusion-IO, Marvell, Micron, Nimbus Data, Pliant Technologies, Scality, Texas Memory Systems, Viking Modular, Virident, and others discussing SSD technology and cloud computing. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Commentary_SNW_2011_Spring.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Commentary_SNW_2011_Spring.html Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:30:00 GMT Commentary SNWUSA SSD FCoE DCB I-O Virtualization Avere Systems Dataram Fusion-IO Marvell Micron Nimbus Data Pliant Technologies Scality Texas Memory Systems Viking Modular Virident Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written an article describing SSD data placement. Data placement for solid-state storage technology can be achieved in two ways: via SSD caching or primary storage. Learn about the pros and cons of both methods of implementation and how to determine which is right for your environment. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SSD_Caching_vs_PrimaryStorage_2011-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SSD_Caching_vs_PrimaryStorage_2011-04.html Wed, 13 Apr 2011 11:30:00 GMT Research Report SSD A new "Connector Types" section has been added to the Demartek Storage Network Interface Comparison reference page. Information for mini SAS, Copper CX4, Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP and SFP+) and Quad Small Form-factor Pluggable (QSFP and QSFP+) connectors has been provided. In addition, this new section includes diagrams of the connectors and some comments about future technology trends. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Sat, 2 Apr 2011 13:00:00 GMT News Storage Interface Comparison Fibre Channel 10GbE Ethernet FCoE Infiniband iSCSI SAS SATA USB Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present "Everything You Need to Know to Deploy iSCSI in Your Datacenter", a SNIA webcast, that will include a discussion of iSCSI technologies and best practices. This webcast is open to the public and will be held on Thursday, April 21, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNIA_iSCSI_webcast_2011-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNIA_iSCSI_webcast_2011-04.html Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:00:00 GMT iSCSI Speaking Engagements Robocopy (“robust file copy”), included with Windows operating systems, is a rich file copy utility with many options. For this presentation we compared the results with and without the multithread option: robocopy /MT. Using the multithread option in most cases results in faster or significantly faster file copy operations than without the multithread option. View the presentation given at the RMWTUG March 2011 meeting, which includes test results for local, 1GbE and 10GbE file copy operations. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:55:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows Server Windows 7 Robocopy Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Making the Case for Solid-State Storage” and “Automated Storage Tiering in General” at the Storage Decisions Conference in Chicago on June 21, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_StorageDecisions_2011-06.html Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:45:00 GMT Storage Decisions StorageEvents SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak at the March 2011 Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) meeting. This meeting will be held at the Demartek Lab in Arvada, Colorado on March 22, 2011. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_March_2011-03.html Mon, 14 Mar 2011 17:30:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows Server Windows 7 Robocopy Speaking Engagements QLogic Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate the ease of installation and the ease of use of HP StorageWorks Simple SAN Connection Manager (SSCM) enterprise software that QLogic developed for HP as part of the HP StorageWorks H-series Fibre Channel switch portfolio. SSCM enterprise software provides a simple, wizard-based procedure to configure and manage Fibre Channel SAN agent components, including host bus adapters, Fibre Channel switches, and storage arrays. We found that the HP SSCM software handled all the nuances of Fibre Channel storage deployment in an automated fashion without manual intervention, and we were able to complete the process in approximately 15 minutes. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_QLogic-HP_SSCM_Software_Evaluation_2011-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_QLogic-HP_SSCM_Software_Evaluation_2011-02.html Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:00:00 GMT News Video HP QLogic Solid state storage can be deployed directly as primary storage where the users decide what data to place on the storage, or it can be deployed as a cache in front of traditional storage, where the storage controller determines what data is placed on the SSS or solid state disk (SSD). Each implementation has advantages. LSI Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate MegaRAID FastPath software in a web server environment. FastPath software is a high-performance IO accelerator for SSD arrays connected to a MegaRAID controller card. FastPath is an optimized version of LSI’s MegaRAID technology that is designed with SSDs in mind, taking advantage of the increased read and write performance of SSDs. FastPath is used for primary storage where the user places files directly on the SSD devices. We achieved outstanding results in the web server environment using FastPath software. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_FastPath_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_FastPath_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT News SSD Video LSI LSI Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate their WarpDrive Acceleration Card, a solid state storage implementation that plugs into the PCI Express® (PCIe) bus in a server. The purpose of this evaluation was to compare the performance of a web server using WarpDrive for web content storage versus HDD. WarpDrive is able to provide 300GBs of storage and by interfacing to PCIe, more transactions per second and higher throughput can be supported compared to HDD. “We achieved tremendous web server performance, very quick response time and low power consumption with the LSI WarpDrive card,” said Dennis Martin, Demartek President. “We had to move to our 10GbE network to get the full performance of the WarpDrive, achieving more than 100 million web hits in 90 minutes.” http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_WarpDrive_Performance_Evaluation_2011-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_WarpDrive_Performance_Evaluation_2011-01.html Mon, 21 Feb 2011 17:30:00 GMT News SSD Video LSI There has been much confusion and discussion about the ease of installation and the ease of use of Fibre Channel storage. Some technology professionals, after looking at Fibre Channel storage technology, have decided that it is too complicated and have concluded that deploying iSCSI storage, running over Ethernet, would be simpler. Although Ethernet may be ubiquitous, many network administrators have little knowledge or experience managing storage. Basic storage management knowledge is needed to successfully manage storage regardless of the interface to the storage. QLogic Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate the ease of installation and the ease of use of HP Simple SAN Connection Manager (SSCM) software that QLogic developed for HP as part of the HP StorageWorks H-series Fibre Channel switch portfolio. SSCM provides a simple, wizard-based procedure to configure and manage Fibre Channel SAN agent components, including host bus adapters, Fibre Channel switches, and storage arrays. SSCM allows a complete Fibre Channel SAN to be deployed in minutes. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_QLogic-HP_SSCM_Software_Evaluation_2011-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_QLogic-HP_SSCM_Software_Evaluation_2011-02.html Wed, 16 Feb 2011 20:45:00 GMT Research Report QLogic Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, spoke at the February 2011 Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) meeting. In his presentation, Dennis provided an overview of the architectures and technologies of solid state storage devices, including some of the physics of NAND flash and power consumption comparisons with spinning hard disk drives. Dennis discussed the difference between deploying SSD technology as a cache and as primary storage, highlighting the advantages of each deployment style. Dennis also shared how SSD technology can move the bottleneck from storage to other areas of I.T. infrastructure. In the last part of this presentation, Dennis included some of the recent results from his solid state storage performance testing of a web server using Microsoft Server 2008 R2 and IIS 7.5 in the Demartek lab. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_February_2011-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_February_2011-02.html Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:30:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows Server Windows 7 SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present three sessions at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Santa Clara, California, April 4-7, 2011. These sessions are: "Unified Storage Networking," "Deep Dive on SSD," and "I/O Virtualization — The Next Virtualization Frontier." http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_FCoE_IOV_SNW_Spring_2011-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_FCoE_IOV_SNW_Spring_2011-04.html Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:45:00 GMT SNWUSA FCoE DCB I-O Virtualization SSD Speaking Engagements I spent this past weekend attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011 in Las Vegas. Although this is not a datacenter event, I spent a full day there looking at technologies that were interesting mostly on a professional level, though I admit I did spend some time on technologies that were interesting to me personally. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2011.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2011.html Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:30:00 GMT Commentary 3D Wireless USB SATA SSD Consumer Electronics Show We have been testing SSD technology for quite a while in our lab, so I decided that it was time to put some SSDs into production at Demartek. Over the 2010 Christmas and New Year’s holidays, we installed SSDs as boot drives in the desktop computers of all our staff, as well as in our production file server. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_production.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_production.html Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:30:00 GMT Commentary Windows 7 Windows Server SSD When users have a choice of websites to do their business, providing acceptable response times is critical in retaining customers. As the client base grows, the high demand for serving pages may cause users to experience slow page delivery. To solve this problem, businesses may spread the web page demand across scores of systems each capable of providing web pages. This report evaluates whether using solid state storage will allow fewer systems to be deployed. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_WarpDrive_Performance_Evaluation_2011-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_WarpDrive_Performance_Evaluation_2011-01.html Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:25:00 GMT Research Report SSD LSI With Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft has again made several changes to the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE) to increase performance and reduce the frequency of reads and writes. Two of the major changes are to perform fewer, larger and more sequential I/O operations and to increase the page size to 32KB. In order to eliminate confusion and provide a side-by-side comparison of the estimated IOPS for Exchange Server 2003, 2007 and 2010, we have compiled the data provided by Microsoft for each of the three versions of Exchange Server into a single table for comparison. We have also provided some charts that help to visualize these differences. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Exchange_2003_2007_2010_I-O_Comparison_Summary.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Exchange_2003_2007_2010_I-O_Comparison_Summary.html Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:00:00 GMT Research Report Windows Server Exchange Server Mellanox, known primarily for Infiniband adapters and switches, sent us some of their ConnectX 10Gb Ethernet Adapters for a first look in our lab. These are dual-port, PCI-Express (PCIe) 2.0, x8 adapters, which we installed into two of our Nehalem-class (PCIe 2.0) servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 and connected via our copper SFP+ cables into our 10GbE Cisco Nexus 5020 switch. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Mellanox_ConnectX_First_Look_2010-12.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Mellanox_ConnectX_First_Look_2010-12.html Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:30:00 GMT News 10GbE Ethernet FCoE Mellanox In this podcast interview, Dennis Martin, Demartek President, offers up tips on how to choose the right solid-state storage option and under which conditions one type or form factor might be a better choice over another. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SolidStateStorage_Podcast_2010-12.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SolidStateStorage_Podcast_2010-12.html Fri, 03 Dec 2010 21:30:00 GMT News SSD Podcast For this video, we deployed Emulex OneCommand Manager software and equivalent management software from two competitors and compared several aspects of managing HBAs and CNAs in an enterprise environment consisting of Windows Servers and a VMware vSphere server. This video shows some of the highlights of this performance comparison. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_OneCommandManager_2010-08.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_OneCommandManager_2010-08.html Fri, 03 Dec 2010 18:30:00 GMT News FCoE Video Emulex In this video, we implemented the LSI MegaRAID CacheCade software in a web server environment and compared the performance of hard disk drives (HDDs) to solid state disks (SSDs) in this environment. This video shows the highlights of this performance comparison. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_CacheCade_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_Cachecade_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:30:00 GMT News SSD Video LSI LSI Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate MegaRAID FastPath software in a web server environment. FastPath software is a high-performance IO accelerator for SSD arrays connected to a MegaRAID controller card. FastPath is an optimized version of LSI’s MegaRAID technology that is designed with SSDs in mind, taking advantage of the increased read and write performance of SSDs. FastPath is used for primary storage where the user places files directly on the SSD devices. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_FastPath_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_FastPath_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html Mon, 15 Nov 2010 13:00:00 GMT Research Report News SSD LSI LSI Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate MegaRAID CacheCade software in a web server environment. CacheCade software is optimized to enhance read cache performance with features such as hot spot detection and retention. As the operating system makes read requests to a CacheCade-managed volume, the logical block is written to the SSS and subsequent read requests for this cached data are serviced by the SSS. Hot spot detection and retention ensures that only frequently accessed data is placed into the SSD storage. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_CacheCade_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_CacheCade_Performance_Evaluation_2010-11.html Mon, 01 Nov 2010 19:30:00 GMT Research Report SSD LSI The Fibre Channel (FC) roadmap section of the Demartek Storage Network Interface Comparison reference page has been updated with the recently approved 16Gb Fibre Channel standards information. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Tue, 28 Sep 2010 18:00:00 GMT News Storage Interface Comparison Fibre Channel 10GbE Ethernet FCoE Infiniband iSCSI SAS SATA USB At the request of the conference organizers, Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will now present Unified Storage Networking at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Dallas, Texas on Monday, October 11, 2010 at 11:10 a.m. This is in addition to his previously scheduled discussion of SSD technology that will take place on Wednesday, October 13. In "Unified Storage Networking," Dennis will cover existing switch, adapter and cable technologies that are available now and what is still needed, the key protocols and standards such as Data Center Bridging (DCB), also known as Enhanced Ethernet, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) that will make the unified data center work, the advantages and disadvantages of having an integrated network, and how currently installed storage networks will be affected. In addition, Dennis will include some of the results from his unified network testing with DCB and FCoE in the Demartek lab. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_SNW_Fall_2010-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_SNW_Fall_2010-10.html Thu, 23 Sep 2010 20:30:00 GMT SNWUSA FCoE DCB SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Deep Dive on SSD” and “A Practical Guide to Fibre Channel over Ethernet” at the Storage Decisions Conference in San Francisco in November 2010. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-11.html Wed, 22 Sep 2010 15:30:00 GMT Storage Decisions FCoE SSD Speaking Engagements As the interest in converged networks grows, and as the vendors from the traditional Ethernet adapter and Fibre Channel adapter marketplaces produce converged products, questions arise about the capabilities and performance of each type of adapter. Intel commissioned Demartek to compare the performance of the their server adapter that supports Ethernet, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI protocols with those of the two leading Fibre Channel adapter vendors. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Intel_FCoE_Performance_Evaluation_2010-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Intel_FCoE_Performance_Evaluation_2010-09.html Wed, 08 Sep 2010 17:30:00 GMT Research Report FCoE 10GbE Ethernet iSCSI Intel Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate the ease of installation and use of its OneCommand Manager (OCM) software, and to compare its ease of installation and use against the equivalent software from QLogic Corporation and Brocade Corporation. OneCommand Manager manages host bus adapters (HBAs) and converged network adapters (CNAs) manufactured by Emulex. This evaluation focused specifically on the installation process, in a Windows Server environment, applying updates to the adapters and applying adapter parameter settings in a VMware vSphere 4 environment. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_OneCommandManager_2010-08.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_OneCommandManager_2010-08.html Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:00:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel FCoE DCB Emulex Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak at the August 2010 Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) meeting. This meeting will be Thursday evening, August 26, 2010 at Leaderquest, 6825 South Galena Street Centennial, Colorado. Dennis will be presenting “Performance Comparisons for Robocopy with and without Multi-thread Option,” as well as leading the open discussions on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_August_2010-08.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_August_2010-08.html Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:00:00 GMT Windows 7 Windows Server RMWTUG Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present Deep Dive on SSD at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Dallas, Texas on Wednesday, October 13, 2010 at 10:45 a.m. This is an in-depth look at the architectures and technologies of solid state storage devices. The presentation will describe solid state in detail, and compare solid state with traditional magnetic media. In addition, Dennis will include some of the results from his solid state storage performance testing of Microsoft applications in the Demartek lab. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_SNW_Fall_2010-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_SNW_Fall_2010-10.html Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:00:00 GMT SNWUSA SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Deep Dive on SSD” and “A Practical Guide to Fibre Channel over Ethernet” at the Storage Decisions Conferences in New York, September 20-21, 2010. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-09.html Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:00:00 GMT Storage Decisions FCoE SSD Speaking Engagements In June, Dennis Martin presented two sessions at the Storage Decisions Conference in Chicago. The highlights of Dennis Martin's presentation titled, “A Practical Guide to Fibre Channel over Ethernet,” are discussed in this SearchStorage.com article. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_StorageDecisionsFCoE_Article_2010-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_StorageDecisionsFCoE_Article_2010-06.html Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:30:00 GMT News Storage Decisions FCoE We have added references to the new Ethernet Standards for 40Gb/s and 100Gb/s, known as IEEE 802.3ba, as well as the FCoE Standards FC-BB-5 and INCITS 462-2010 to the History and Roadmap sections of the Demartek Storage Interface Comparison page. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Fri, 16 Jul 2010 20:00:00 GMT News Storage Interface Comparison FCoE 10GbE Ethernet Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak at the Server Design Summit in Santa Clara, December 1, 2010. Dennis will present I/O Virtualization – The Next Virtualization Frontier during the I/O Virtualization session in the Workshop on Servers for Cloud Computing from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Server_Design_Summit_2010.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Server_Design_Summit_2010.html Thu, 15 Jul 2010 19:30:00 GMT Server Design Summit I-O Virtualization Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Server Applications at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Frankfurt, Germany, on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 11:35 a.m. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Best_Practices_SNWEurope_2010-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Best_Practices_SNWEurope_2010-10.html Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:00:00 GMT SNWEurope Windows Server Microsoft Speaking Engagements We have recently launched the Demartek Newsletter Archive. This includes links to back issues of the Demartek monthly newsletter, Demartek Lab Notes. New issues will be added as they become available. http://www.demartek.com/Newsletter/Newsletter_main.html http://www.demartek.com/Newsletter/Newsletter_main.html Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:30:00 GMT News Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, August 18, 2010. Dennis will present Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Server Applications during the SSDs and Operating Systems session. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2010.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2010.html Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:00:00 GMT Flash Memory Summit Windows Server SSD Fibre Channel SAS SATA Microsoft Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written an article making the case for solid-state storage. Interest in solid-state storage is high, and with a variety of solid-state implementations available and newer technologies emerging, it's time to take a serious look at how solid state could enhance your storage environment. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SolidStateStorage_Article_2010-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_SolidStateStorage_Article_2010-06.html Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:00:00 GMT Research Report SSD We have recently launched the Demartek Video Library that indexes online events in which Demartek has participated. More videos will be added as they become available. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Video_Library.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Video_Library.html Mon, 10 May 2010 16:30:00 GMT News Video IBM and QLogic commissioned Demartek to perform a hands-on evaluation of a server and storage solution using Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Fibre Channel (FC) technologies working together in an end-to-end solution. This evaluation included installing and deploying an IBM server with a QLogic Converged Network Adapter (CNA) connected to an FCoE infrastructure that was connected to an IBM DS4700 Fibre Channel storage system. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FCoE_IBM_QLogic_Evaluation_2010-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FCoE_IBM_QLogic_Evaluation_2010-05.html Wed, 05 May 2010 17:00:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel FCoE IBM QLogic We have added details on OM1, OM2, OM3 and OM4 multi-mode fiber optic cables and OS1 single-mode fiber optic cables to the Demartek Storage Networking Interface Comparison page. Additional information includes technical characteristics along with distance and speed information. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:00:00 GMT Research Report Storage Interface Comparison Fibre Channel FCoE 10GbE Ethernet This may have been the best Storage Networking World (SNW) conference I have attended in quite a while. This may seem surprising to those who have attended previous versions of this event, especially a few years ago before travel budgets were slashed due to the recession... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Commentary_SNW_2010_Spring.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Commentary_SNW_2010_Spring.html Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:30:00 GMT Commentary SNWUSA FCoE DCB I-O Virtualization Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written an article describing Fibre Channel Director-Class Switches. A single director-class switch can replace multiple smaller switches while offering growth flexibility, high availability and a bevy of advanced features. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_FCDirectors_Article_2010-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_FCDirectors_Article_2010-04.html Wed, 07 Apr 2010 18:00:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel Demartek evaluated the Torridon disk storage test equipment from Quarch Technology, Ltd. in the Demartek lab. This equipment provides automated testing functions for storage arrays by managing and manipulating the individual control lines between disk controllers and individual disk drives. The Torridon system allows for full automation of insertion and removal of disk drives from a storage enclosure without physically having to remove or insert the drives. The Torridon system also allows virtually any error condition to be programmatically created and repeated, with precise timings for each of the signals on the interface. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Quarch_Torridon_TestEquipment_2010-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Quarch_Torridon_TestEquipment_2010-03.html Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:00:00 GMT Research Report Quarch Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Deep Dive on SSD” and “A Practical Guide to Fibre Channel over Ethernet” at the Storage Decisions Conferences in Chicago, June 9-10, 2010. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SSDs_and_FCoE_StorageDecisions_2010-06.html Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:30:00 GMT Storage Decisions SSD FCoE DCB Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek and RMWTUG President will present two short sessions at the RMWTUG March 2010 meetings, in an online format on Friday, March 12 and repeated on Saturday, March 13, 2010. The topics are “New Features in Windows 7” and “Storage Interface Comparison Overview.” http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_2010-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_RMWTUG_2010-03.html Mon, 8 Mar 2010 16:00:00 GMT Storage Interface Comparison Windows 7 RMWTUG Speaking Engagements On the March 2, 2010 Wikibon Peer Incite public call, we discussed how virtualization and cloud computing are influencing business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR). One of the themes that emerged during the call was the notion that virtualization and cloud computing, either together or separately, might allow us to streamline some or all of our DR processes and procedures... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_50_page_disaster_recovery_plan_2010-03-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_50_page_disaster_recovery_plan_2010-03-03.html Wed, 3 Mar 2010 21:00:00 GMT Commentary Demartek announces the addition of several Intel X25-E SLC solid state drives (SSDs) to its test lab, the first in a series of SSDs to be added for SSD testing. These 2.5-inch SATA interface SSDs will be used for testing the two basic types of deployments of solid state disk technology: Caching and Primary Storage. Plans include running synthetic benchmarks such as IOmeter and real-world application tests using these SSDs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_2010-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_2010-02.html Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:00:00 GMT Lab Validation News Dennis Martin, Demartek President, commented on the File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) that is part of Windows Server for an article at SearchWindowsServer.com. The file classification infrastructure gives users and administrators the ability to provide additional metadata to files as they are created or modified. This feature is especially useful for those organizations that need to organize and classify data for regulatory compliance or other similar needs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchWindowsServer_File_Classification_Infrastructure_Article_2010-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchWindowsServer_File_Classification_Infrastructure_Article_2010-02.html Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:00:00 GMT Commentary Because of the number of interfaces and related technologies that are used for storage devices, we decided to compile a summary document providing some basic information for each of the interfaces. This document will be updated periodically. This document may become larger over time. Contact us if you’d like to see additional information in this document. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Interface_Comparison.html Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:15:00 GMT Research Report Storage Interface Comparison Fibre Channel FCoE Ethernet Infiniband iSCSI SAS SATA USB 10GbE Dennis Martin, President of Demartek and Wikibon Storage Mastermind, will present two sessions at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Orlando, Florida, April 12 - 15, 2010. These sessions are “Unified Storage Networking” and “I/O Virtualization — The Next Virtualization Frontier.” http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWUSA_DCB-FCoE_IOV_2010-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_SNWUSA_DCB-FCoE_IOV_2010-04.html Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:15:00 GMT SNWUSA I-O Virtualization FCoE DCB Speaking Engagements On the February 2, 2010 FCoE Fact vs. Fiction call, we discussed some of the potential technology advantages of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). FCoE is the first major application to take advantage of the enhancements to Ethernet described by Data Center Bridging (DCB), and this is being implemented on a 10GbE technology base. Since we now have the possibility to converge LAN and SAN technology, let’s examine what can be done today and begin to plan for the future... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_FCoE_Math_Lesson_2010-02-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_FCoE_Math_Lesson_2010-02-03.html Wed, 3 Feb 2010 21:00:00 GMT Commentary FCoE Wikibon Microsoft made significant changes in moving from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007. The primary change is that Exchange Server 2007 is a 64-bit application, which gives it much larger memory addressability. This report provides a short I/O comparison summary of these changes. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Exchange_2003_2007_I-O_Comparison_Summary.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Exchange_2003_2007_I-O_Comparison_Summary.html Tue, 2 Feb 2010 23:00:00 GMT Research Report Windows Server Exchange Server Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written an article describing I/O Virtualization. Servers are virtualized, storage is virtualized, but what about your storage network? New products now make it possible to pool and share networking resources. Storage network virtualization, also known as I/O virtualization (IOV) or I/O consolidation, comprises an emerging family of technologies that extend the concept of virtualization to the major types of input and output (I/O) handled by today’s servers. Technologies discussed in this article include PCI Express, SR-IOV, MR-IOV, Infiniband, 10GbE and others... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_IOV_Article_2010-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchStorage_IOV_Article_2010-02.html Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:30:00 GMT Research Report I-O Virtualization Infiniband 10GbE Ethernet Demartek, LLC and Evaluator Group, Inc. jointly announced a partnership that will result in the delivery of in-depth lab validation and benchmarking services to Evaluator Group’s end user and vendor clients. Demartek’s state-of-the-art lab facilities are located in the Denver, Colorado area and include dual, quad, and Nehalem server configurations, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) testing facilities, as well as 10Gb Ethernet, 8 Gb Fibre Channel and iSCSI connectivity. The combined Demartek/EGI team is available to assist in testing, validation, and results analysis for virtualization, storage, and data protection environments... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EvaluatorGroup_Joint_Partnership_2010-01-26.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EvaluatorGroup_Joint_Partnership_2010-01-26.html Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:00 GMT News FCoE 10GbE Ethernet Fibre Channel iSCSI Evaluator Group Demartek evaluated NetApp’s native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Data Center Bridging (DCB) storage solution for its flexibility and performance in satisfying multiple storage protocols. NetApp introduced general availability in August 2009 of native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Data Center Bridging (DCB) connectivity with its FAS and V-Series storage systems. Via the same 10GbE unified target adapter (UTA), NetApp also began demonstrating publicly support of FCoE, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS over a single port, with general availability planned in 2010. This report primarily focuses on the FCoE implementation of the NetApp storage solution, with some look at iSCSI and other Ethernet storage protocols in a 10-Gigabit Enhanced Ethernet environment. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_NetApp_Unified_Ethernet_Storage_2010-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_NetApp_Unified_Ethernet_Storage_2010-01.html Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:00:00 GMT Research Report FCoE 10GbE DCB iSCSI Ethernet NetApp Demartek publica Consejos para Prevenir el Robo de Identidad y Comentario. Este informe sobre la Prevención de Robo de Identidad está dirigido a individuos y organizaciones, y sugiere medidas importantes para ayudar a reducir el riesgo de robo de identidad. Los temas cubiertos incluyen el manejo de documentos de papel, asuntos relacionados con el teléfono y la computadora, congelamientos de crédito, y los programas de Pasaporte de Robo de Identidad. Este informe también provee referencias de agencias gubernamentales que brindan información y asistencia, además de que se discuten algunas leyes actuales y propuestas. Se proporcionan enlaces a recursos disponibles en cada uno de los 50 estados de la Unión Americana, así como del Gobierno Federal de los Estados Unidos y los Gobiernos Nacionales y Provinciales de Canadá. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Identity_Theft_Prevention_Tips_and_Commentary_ES.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Identity_Theft_Prevention_Tips_and_Commentary_ES.html Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:00:00 GMT Identity Theft Prevention On Tuesday, February 2nd at 12:00 noon Eastern time, Dennis Martin, Demartek President, will join the Wikibon community discussion “FCoE: Fact vs. Fiction” with several well-known bloggers and respected technologists. Please join us and participate in the conversation, which is open to the public... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_FCoE_Fact_vs_Fiction_2010-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_FCoE_Fact_vs_Fiction_2010-01.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:45:00 GMT FCoE Wikibon Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, Demartek President, spent this past weekend attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Some of the technologies on display at CES are part of Demartek’s core business and some are not. Most of this report will focus on the technologies that are of interest to us... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2010.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_CES_2010.html Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:30:00 GMT Commentary USB SSD SATA Consumer Electronics Show Dennis Martin, Demartek President, has written a series of articles explaining the unified data center fabric, covering topics such as Data Center Bridging (DCB) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). These articles are available at SearchNetworking.com. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchNetworking_Unified_Data_Center_Fabric_Primer_2010-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SearchNetworking_Unified_Data_Center_Fabric_Primer_2010-01.html Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:00:00 GMT Research Report FCoE DCB Emulex sent some of their iSCSI UCNA cards to the Demartek lab in order to take a “first look” at these 10Gbps adapters with full iSCSI offload. We installed one of these cards into one of our “Nehalem” servers running Windows Server 2008 and connected it to our 10Gb Ethernet/DCB/FCoE infrastructure. This infrastructure includes a Cisco Nexus 5020 switch and a NetApp filer running iSCSI, FCoE and other protocols... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_iSCSI_UCNA_First_Look_2009-12-18.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_iSCSI_UCNA_First_Look_2009-12-18.html Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:30:00 GMT Commentary Ethernet 10GbE FCoE iSCSI Emulex Identity theft, also known as “ID theft” and “identity fraud,” is a widespread and fast-growing crime. Although potentially anybody can be targeted, there are a number of things that can be done to reduce the risk of becoming an identity theft victim. The recent well-publicized security breaches, ruin of financial reputations and even mistaken arrests of victims have triggered calls to action by individuals, businesses and government. The updated Demartek Identity Theft Prevention report lists suggestions for individuals and organizations to help reduce the risk of identity theft. The areas covered include the handling of paper documents, telephone-related issues, computer-related issues, credit freezes, and the Identity Theft Passport programs. This report also provides references from government agencies for information and assistance and discusses some current and proposed laws. Information specific to the USA and Canada is included. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Identity_Theft_Prevention_Tips_and_Commentary.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Identity_Theft_Prevention_Tips_and_Commentary.html Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:15:00 GMT Identity Theft Prevention Emulex’s strategic direction is to help IT shops provide additional data protection and privacy by encrypting data at the source - in the host server. There has been plenty of news about data breaches and literally millions of data records at risk, and some of the laws requiring public disclosure of data breaches. More recently, some states within the USA have passed laws requiring encryption for transmission or storage of personally identifiable information outside of a secure system. CIOs can no longer debate about whether to encrypt. Encryption is no longer an option, but a requirement... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_Encrypting_HBA_Comments_2009-11-13.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_Encrypting_HBA_Comments_2009-11-13.html Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:30:00 GMT Commentary Fibre Channel Emulex Demartek has added support for web slices to Demartek.com. Web slices are portions of web pages that can be individually tracked. Web slices are supported natively with Internet Explorer 8 and with add-ons for other web browsers. Native support for web slices in other browsers is expected in the future. Web slices use the hAtom microformat that enables the publication and consumption of an item or portion of a web page. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_WebSlice_Support.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_WebSlice_Support.html Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:00:00 GMT News With increasing demands on storage in popular application servers, the server manufacturers have begun to provide 6-Gbit/sec (Gbps) SAS RAID controllers as the standard RAID controllers. It is useful to understand how well these controllers work under sustained heavy loads, especially in real-world workload situations. With this purpose in mind, IBM commissioned Demartek to test their standard 6-Gbps SAS RAID controller in one of their popular servers and compare its performance to the standard 6-Gbps SAS RAID controller provided by Hewlett Packard (HP) in one of their equivalent popular servers. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_IBM_LSI_6Gbps_SAS_RAID_Evaluation_2009-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_IBM_LSI_6Gbps_SAS_RAID_Evaluation_2009-10.html Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:45:00 GMT Research Report SAS SATA IBM HP Today Emulex announced general availability of its OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNA) and OneCommand Manager software. With this announcement, Emulex is making a strong move into the 10Gb Ethernet network adapter marketplace, while continuing its existing Fibre Channel HBA business. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_UCNA_Comments_2009-10-27.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_UCNA_Comments_2009-10-27.html Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:30:00 GMT Commentary 10GbE Ethernet Fibre Channel Emulex By popular demand, Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present two sessions at the Storage Decisions Conference in San Francisco, November 17, 2009. One session covers SSD technology and one session covers FCoE, Converged Enhanced Ethernet and related technologies. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_To_Present_StorageDecisionsSanFrancisco_2009-11.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_To_Present_StorageDecisionsSanFrancisco_2009-11.html Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:00:00 GMT Storage Decisions SSD FCoE DCB Speaking Engagements By popular demand, Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present two sessions at the Storage Decisions Conference in New York City, September 22-23, 2009... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_To_Present_StorageDecisionsNewYork_2009-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_To_Present_StorageDecisionsNewYork_2009-09.html Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:00:00 GMT Storage Decisions SSD FCoE DCB Speaking Engagements FalconStor commissioned Demartek to validate the performance of the FalconStor Virtual Tape Library (VTL) solution and its deduplication solutions, as they come from the factory, without any special tuning adjustments. The sustained performance of these solutions is impressive, and was measured using conservative data intended to be typical of many enterprises. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FalconStor_VTL_Deduplication_Performance_2009-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FalconStor_VTL_Deduplication_Performance_2009-07.html Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:15:00 GMT Research Report Deduplication FalconStor Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present “Unified Storage Networking” at the Storage Networking World Conference (SNW) in Phoenix, Arizona, October 12 - 15, 2009... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Unified_Storage_Networking_SNWUSA_2009-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Unified_Storage_Networking_SNWUSA_2009-10.html Tue, 7 Jul 2009 20:30:00 GMT SNWUSA FCoE DCB Speaking Engagements Demartek announces the addition of the first of a series of Intel Xeon 5500 (“Nehalem”) servers to its test lab. This server includes seven (7) PCI Express 2.0 expansion slots and will be used to test SSD, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, FCoE, 10GbE, Infiniband, 6-Gbit SAS and other advanced technologies requiring advanced processor and I/O capabilities. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Nehalem1_2009-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Nehalem1_2009-07.html Mon, 6 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT News SSD Fibre Channel iSCSI FCoE 10GbE Ethernet Infiniband SAS Intel Lab Validation I was given the opportunity to speak at the Storage Decisions Conferences in June 2009, June 1-2 in Chicago and June 16 in Toronto. I was delighted to speak on two topics, Integrating Solid State Storage and Unified Data Center Network Infrastructure (also known as Converged Networking)... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Storage_Decisions_2009-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Storage_Decisions_2009-06.html Fri, 19 Jun 2009 19:54:00 GMT Commentary Storage Decisions SSD FCoE DCB Deduplication Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present a storage best practices session at the Flash Memory Summit 2009 in Santa Clara, California. His presentation will take place on Wednesday, August 12, 2009 as part of the SSDs in Enterprise Storage track. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2009.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Flash_Memory_Summit_2009.html Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:00:00 GMT Flash Memory Summit Windows Server SSD Microsoft Speaking Engagements On June 11 2009, Dennis Martin participated in the Wikibon Peer Incite Research Meeting with Burzin Engineer, Shopzilla’s Vice President of Infrastructure Services to discuss their implementation of a NAS compression solution... http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Matching_Physical_and_Logical_2009-06-12.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Matching_Physical_and_Logical_2009-06-12.html Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:00:00 GMT Commentary Wikibon Due to increased interest in 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters, Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to update its previous evaluation (September 2008) of its 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) with recent 8 Gb/s HBA offerings from Brocade. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_8Gig_2009-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_8Gig_2009-06.html Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:00:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel Brocade Emulex Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate its 8-Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) in the Microsoft Hyper-V environment with competitive HBAs. This report includes the findings of the performance tests run with eight virtual machines using dual-port 8-Gb/s HBAs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_HyperV_8Gbps_FC_HBA_Comparison_2009-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_HyperV_8Gbps_FC_HBA_Comparison_2009-05.html Tue, 26 May 2009 12:10:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel Emulex Microsoft Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, discussed the Windows 7 Release Candidate and Windows Server 2008 R2 Release Candidate at the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (www.rmwtug.org) May 2009 meetings. This presentation was a discussion and demonstration of a few features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, using the recently released Windows 7 Release Candidate on his laptop computer. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_7_Preview_RMWTUG_2009-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_7_Preview_RMWTUG_2009-05.html Fri, 22 May 2009 16:20:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows 7 Windows Server Speaking Engagements For best viewing of Demartek.com on your mobile device, go to: http://demartek.com/m and set your view to “Fit to screen.” http://www.demartek.com/m.index.html Sat, 09 May 2009 13:05:00 GMT News Demartek has added a few sample reports to its Lab Validation page on www.demartek.com. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_lab_validation.html Demartek_lab_validation.html Mon, 04 May 2009 23:50:00 GMT News Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, is planning some best practices sessions at the upcoming Best Practices conference in August 2009 for SQL Server and SharePoint server. He is looking for the specific topics of interest to the SQL Server and SharePoint communities with respect to server, network and storage configurations. He will run various tests in the Demartek lab and share the results at the conference. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_BP01.html Demartek_BP01.html Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:15:00 GMT SharePoint Best Practices Conference Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present Integrating Solid State Storage at the Storage Decisions Conferences in Chicago and Toronto in June 2009. The Chicago conference will be held June 1-2, 2009. The Toronto conference will be held June 16, 2009. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Integrating_Solid_State_Storage_StorageDecisions_2009-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Integrating_Solid_State_Storage_StorageDecisions_2009-06.html Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT Storage Decisions SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present Not “Just a Switch” Anymore -- Data Center “Backbone” Architectures at the Storage Decisions Conferences in Chicago and Toronto in June 2009. The Chicago conference will be held June 1-2, 2009. The Toronto conference will be held June 16, 2009. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Unified_Data_Center_Network_Infrastructure_StorageDecisions_2009-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Unified_Data_Center_Network_Infrastructure_StorageDecisions_2009-06.html Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:30:00 GMT Storage Decisions FCoE Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, comments on Storage Networking World Spring 2009. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_SNW_2009_Spring.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_SNW_2009_Spring.html Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT Commentary SNWUSA SSD FCoE SAS Deduplication Wikibon Dennis Martin, Demartek President, brings his industry analysis and hands-on technical expertise to the Wikibon Storage Industry Mastermind Alliance. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Mastermind_Alliance_2009-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Wikibon_Mastermind_Alliance_2009-04.html Thu, 02 Apr 2009 17:00:00 GMT News Wikibon Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will present Storage Best Practices for Microsoft Applications at the Storage Networking World Conference in Orlando, Florida on April 6, 2009. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Best_Practices_MSFT_Applications_SNW_2009-03.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Best_Practices_MSFT_Applications_SNW_2009-03.html Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT SNWUSA Windows Server Microsoft SSD Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, discussed storage performance for Microsoft server applications (Exchange Server and SQL Server) at the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group February 2009 meetings. This presentation compared the Exchange Server and SQL Server performance of similar configurations of SSD, SAS and SATA disk drives. The beginning of the presentation was a quick review of the January 2009 presentation. The slide deck includes an addendum slide not shown at the meetings. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Performance_MSFT_Applications_RMWTUG_2009-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Performance_MSFT_Applications_RMWTUG_2009-02.html Thu, 19 Feb 2009 18:00:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows Server Microsoft SSD SAS SATA Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, discussed storage technologies and their best practices in the Microsoft server application (Exchange Server, SQL Server, SharePoint Server) environment at the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (www.rmwtug.org) January 2009 meetings. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Update_MSFT_Applications_RMWTUG_2009-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Storage_Update_MSFT_Applications_RMWTUG_2009-01.html Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:45:00 GMT RMWTUG Windows Server Microsoft SSD SAS SATA Speaking Engagements Is the current state-of-the-art in NAND Flash memory ready for the enterprise? Demartek President Dennis Martin comments on SSDs in the enterprise. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Article_2008-12-19.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_SSD_Article_2008-12-19.html Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:00:00 GMT Commentary SSD Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate its 8 Gbps Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and compare them with recent HBA offerings from Brocade. The evaluation includes a variety of topics including the installation experience, operating system support, HBA management, HBA performance and others. This report includes actual steps taken to install and use the 8 Gbps HBAs and the respective management software. This report also includes a basic performance evaluation of the respective HBAs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_8Gig_2008-10.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_8Gig_2008-10.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT Research Report Fibre Channel Brocade Emulex Demartek announces the addition of 10 Gigabit Per Second (Gbps) Enhanced Ethernet (10GbE) infrastructure and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) infrastructure to its test lab. Demartek has added a 40-port 10GbE Enhanced Ethernet switch that also supports FCoE and 4-Gbps Fibre Channel. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_10GbE_FCoE_2008-08.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_10GbE_FCoE_2008-08.html Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT News 10GbE Ethernet FCoE Lab Validation Demartek announces the addition of 8 Gigabit Per Second (Gbps) Fibre Channel infrastructure to its test lab. Demartek has added a 24-port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel switch and several 8 Gbps host bus adapters (HBAs), including single-port and dual-port 8 Gbps HBAs, to it testing resources. All 24 ports of the switch are fully 8 Gbps capable, and are backward compatible with 4, 2, and 1 Gbps Fibre Channel. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_8gbps_FC_2008-08.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_8gbps_FC_2008-08.html Fri, 01 Aug 2008 11:15:00 GMT News Fibre Channel Lab Validation QLogic, Cisco and NetApp Corporations commissioned Demartek to perform a hands-on evaluation of new Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) technology and to participate in the FCoE Test Drive Event, held June 4 - 6, 2008 at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego, California. The Demartek reports from these activities are now available. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FCoE_First-Look_Test-Drive_2008-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_FCoE_First-Look_Test-Drive_2008-07.html Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:45:00 GMT Research Report FCoE Cisco NetApp QLogic Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, gave Part 2 of a short “15 Minutes of Fame” presentation at the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (www.rmwtug.org) July 2008 meetings. Part 2 includes review of hardware and operating systems used and test results. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_File_Copy_Speeds_RMWTUG_2008-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_File_Copy_Speeds_RMWTUG_2008-07.html Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:45:00 GMT RMWTUG Speaking Engagements Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, gave a short “15 Minutes of Fame” presentation at the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) June 2008 meetings. Part 1 of this presentation includes the background of SMB 1.0 and SMB 2.0 in various versions of Microsoft Windows and its effect on network file copy speeds, especially in WAN settings. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_File_Copy_Speeds_RMWTUG_2008-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_Windows_File_Copy_Speeds_RMWTUG_2008-06.html Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:30:00 GMT RMWTUG Speaking Engagements The Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) announces that Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, has been elected President of the RMWTUG at its May 2008 meetings. “I’m very excited to serve the group as President again,” said Mr. Martin. “There are so many exciting things happening with the technology these days, and there are many equally exciting opportunities for the group. The members expressed interest in many topics at the recent May meetings, which we plan to address in the upcoming months. We already have a great line-up of interesting presentations for this summer, and are looking forward to the rest of the year.” http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_DennisMartin_elected_President_of_RMWTUG_2008-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_DennisMartin_elected_President_of_RMWTUG_2008-05.html Fri, 23 May 2008 20:44:00 GMT News RMWTUG Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak about Power Efficiency in computers and about 64-bit Microsoft Windows platforms to the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) at their May 2008 meetings. The Denver chapter meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 20 at 7:00 p.m. and the Colorado Springs chapter meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 21 at 7:00 p.m. These meetings are free and open to the public. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_PowerEfficiency_64bit_RMWTUG_2008-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_PowerEfficiency_64bit_RMWTUG_2008-05.html Wed, 14 May 2008 18:45:00 GMT RMWTUG Speaking Engagements Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate its Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and compare them with recent HBA offerings from Brocade. The evaluation includes a variety of topics including the installation experience, operating system support, HBA management, HBA performance and others. This report includes actual steps taken to install and use the HBAs and the respective management software. This report also includes a basic performance evaluation of the respective HBAs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_2008-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_Brocade_Comparison_2008-05.html Tue, 13 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT Research Report Emulex Pillar Data Systems commissioned Demartek to compare the drive rebuild times to hot spares of the Pillar Data Systems Axiom 500, EMC CX3-40 and Network Appliance FAS3050c storage systems. Due to the interest in drive rebuild times of storage systems with large-capacity drives, the storage systems tested were populated with four drive shelves of 500-GB SATA disk drives. Each system had at least 52 500-GB disk drives. This report provides a complete description of the drive rebuild tests, shows the results of the drive rebuild tests and discusses the architecture of the Pillar Data Systems Axiom 500 storage system. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_PillarData_DriveRebuild_White_Paper_2008-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_PillarData_DriveRebuild_White_Paper_2008-04.html Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:00:00 GMT Research Report SATA Pillar COLORADO SPRINGS and ARVADA, Colo., Feb. 20 -- Olocity Corporation, a leader in delivering open standards-based systems management technology and services, has partnered with the testing lab Demartek to provide the first independent testing services for IT vendors implementing emerging industry standards for systems management like SMI-S, DASH, SMASH, and CDM. Olabs is focused on helping IT vendors streamline the task of implementing these standards in products while simultaneously ensuring that these products succeed in production systems deployment. Olocity provides the first complete solution for IT vendors implementing these revolutionary standards with development tools, consulting, testing, and project management services. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Partners_With_Olocity_2008-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Partners_With_Olocity_2008-02.html Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:20:00 GMT News Olocity EMC Corporation commissioned Demartek to perform a hands-on evaluation of EMC’s new entry-level CLARiiON AX4 iSCSI storage system. This evaluation included installing and deploying the AX4 in the Demartek lab facilities and reviewing several features including system installation configuration, provisioning storage to hosts, capacity expansion, data migration within the system, and creation of snapshot copies. All features evaluated by Demartek are included with the base CLARiiON AX4 system. This report shows the actual steps taken to install and use the AX4 storage system. Screen shots are included. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_CLARiiON_AX4_White_Paper_2008-01.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_CLARiiON_AX4_White_Paper_2008-01.html Tue, 8 Jan 2008 21:00:00 GMT Research Report iSCSI EMC Demartek is now publishing selected reports in non-English languages. The Demartek News page includes the complete list of reports in all languages. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news.html Sat, 4 Aug 2007 20:00:00 GMT News EMC Corporation commissioned Demartek to perform a hands-on evaluation of EMC’s new entry-level Celerra NS20 multi-protocol storage platform. This evaluation included installing and deploying the NS20 and reviewing several features including multiple-protocol connectivity, Celerra Manager Wizards, snapshot integration, automated volume management, and thin provisioning. Demartek was especially interested in the ease of installation and ease-of-use of the NS20 and its rich feature set. This report shows the actual steps taken to install and use the NS20 storage platform. Screen shots are included. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_Celerra_NS20_White_Paper_2007-07.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_Celerra_NS20_White_Paper_2007-07.html Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:00:00 GMT Research Report EMC In an effort to provide an improved experience for the growing iSCSI storage market, Microsoft and its storage partners have created various iSCSI target solutions for the Microsoft Windows Server environment. These solutions include iSCSI targets based on Microsoft’s iSCSI target software and storage partner hardware, and iSCSI targets based on storage partner iSCSI target software and hardware. This paper provides an update on the state of iSCSI storage technology, specifics on several Microsoft storage partner solutions, including the deployment of each solution for specific solutions such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS). This report is designed for managers of IT departments and system administrators who are exploring the possible benefits of iSCSI storage solutions or who are looking for actual deployment examples of iSCSI storage solutions. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Deploying_iSCSI_Storage_Solutions_2007-06.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Deploying_iSCSI_Storage_Solutions_2007-06.html Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:00:00 GMT Research Report iSCSI Microsoft The Demartek iSCSI Storage presentation given at the May 2007 RMWTUG meetings is now online. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_iSCSI_RMWTUG_2007-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_iSCSI_RMWTUG_2007-05.html Thu, 17 May 2007 16:25:00 GMT News iSCSI RMWTUG Dennis Martin, President of Demartek, will speak about Internet SCSI (iSCSI) storage to the Rocky Mountain Windows Technology User Group (RMWTUG) at their May 2007 meetings. The Denver chapter meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 15 at 7:00 p.m. and the Colorado Springs chapter meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, May 16 at 7:00 p.m. The public is invited. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_iSCSI_RMWTUG_2007-05.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Presenting_iSCSI_RMWTUG_2007-05.html Mon, 14 May 2007 17:00:00 GMT iSCSI RMWTUG Speaking Engagements For a growing number of organizations, email archiving solutions have become an ideal and recommended way to retain and ensure access to corporate records that are created, transmitted and stored in email systems. These email archiving solutions enhance a company’s ability to comply with regulatory and internal standards for data retention and the ability to find data when needed, either for internal use or for legal discovery. However, individual users find some centrally-managed email archiving solutions too rigid to adapt to individual or departmental needs. Some users prefer the flexibility they previously enjoyed with storing email in local PST or NSF files. An email archiving solution that can provide the right balance of user flexibility and familiar experience with centrally-managed email archiving functions can be a great advantage to an organization. This white paper examines the new User Directed Archiving functions of EMC EmailXtender and its blend of user-organized folders with central email archiving management. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_EmailXtender_User_Directed_Archiving_White_Paper_2007-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_EMC_EmailXtender_User_Directed_Archiving_White_Paper_2007-04.html Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT Research Report EMC Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate the performance of Emulex Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) in the VMware ESX Server environment, and compare this performance to the equivalent QLogic HBA. Storage performance characteristics and implementation details are different when running in virtual environments such as VMware with guest operating systems as compared to running a native operating system on a server. Emulex sought an independent view of its Fibre Channel HBA performance in a VMware environment. This report shows the results in a four virtual machine environment. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_VMware_White_Paper_2007-04.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBA_VMware_White_Paper_2007-04.html Mon, 16 Apr 2007 13:00:00 GMT Research Report Emulex Emulex Corporation commissioned Demartek to evaluate the ease of installation and use of its HBAnyware software, and to compare its ease of installation and use against the equivalent software from QLogic Corporation. HBAnyware software manages host bus adapters (HBAs) manufactured by Emulex. This report shows the actual steps taken to install and use the HBAs and the management software associated with those HBAs. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBAnyware_White_Paper_2007-02.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Emulex_HBAnyware_White_Paper_2007-02.html Tue, 27 Feb 2007 14:00:00 GMT Research Report Emulex Demartek adds Intel Dual-Core and Quad-Core processors to its online Intel processor comparison database. Access to this Demartek online database is free of charge with the “TestDrive” username. The link to the Product Comparison page is at the bottom of the Demartek home page. http://www.demartek.com/index.html http://www.demartek.com/index.html Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:00:00 GMT News Intel LSI Logic designed its Simplicity Storage Manager to be simple to install and use, especially for the part-time storage administrator. In its lab facilities, Demartek evaluated the installation and ease of use of Simplicity Storage Manager for managing the LSI 1333 Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) storage system. This paper includes the time and effort required to install Simplicity Storage Manager and manage the storage associated with it. Simplicity Storage Manager is designed to manage current and future storage arrays targeted at small and medium-sized businesses. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_Simplicity_White_Paper_2006-12.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_LSI_Simplicity_White_Paper_2006-12.html Wed, 6 Dec 2006 17:00:00 GMT Research Report SAS LSI Microsoft and its storage partners have determined to make Storage Area Networks (SANs) simple to deploy and manage by creating the Simple SAN program. This Demartek white paper examines the goals and accomplishments of the Simple SAN program, including actual deployment of Fibre Channel and iSCSI Simple SAN solutions. This paper also discusses the new File Server Resource Manager (FSRM), and the basic storage resource management (SRM) features it provides. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2006-06-23.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_Simple_SAN_White_Paper_2006-06.html Fri, 23 Jun 2006 20:00:00 GMT Research Report Microsoft Demartek has added CA Message Manager, formerly known as iLumin Assentor Enterprise, to the Demartek email archiving software product comparison database. The Demartek email archiving product comparison database now includes four email archiving products: C2C Archive One Policy 4.2, CA Message Manager 3.4, Mimosa Systems NearPoint 1.1, and ZipLip Unified Email Archival Suite 5.1.39. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2006-03-13.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2006-03-13.html Mon, 13 Mar 2006 15:00:00 GMT News Demartek has increased the number of feature criteria for its email archiving software comparison to more than 110 features. The new features include information about language support, industry-specific lexicons, and email surveillance features that many email archiving products provide. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2006-01-20.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2006-01-20.html Fri, 20 Jan 2006 23:00:00 GMT News Demartek has added a free sample version of its email archiving software product comparison. This free sample includes a subset of the feature criteria from the full comparison. Not all the fields are populated in the free sample version. The full email archiving software comparison is available to subscribers. An overview, pricing and FAQ page provide information about the interactive reports for subscribers. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2005-12-29.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2005-12-29.html Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:55:00 GMT News Demartek publishes its interactive email archiving software product comparison. The first three products in this comparison are C2C Archive One Policy, Mimosa Systems NearPoint, and ZipLip Unified Email Archival Suite. This interactive online database includes more than 90 feature criteria for each product, including pricing, architecture and many more. Additional email archiving products will be added to this online product comparison shortly. http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2005-12-09.html http://www.demartek.com/Demartek_news_2005-12-09.html Sat, 10 Dec 2005 15:00:00 GMT News Demartek is currently developing a comparison of email archiving software solutions. This comparison will be published in December 2005. To receive an email notification when this comparison is published, send an email message to info@demartek.com with the words Email Archiving in the subject or message body. http://www.demartek.com/ EmailArchiving0001 Tue, 4 Oct 2005 03:45:00 GMT News Identity theft, also known as ID theft and identity fraud, is a widespread and fast-growing crime. Although potentially anybody can be targeted, there are a number of things that can be done to reduce the risk of becoming an identity theft victim. This free Demartek report is provided for our clients and friends due to the tremendous attention generated by identity theft. http://www.demartek.com/identitytheft200505.html http://www.demartek.com/identitytheft200505.html Wed, 11 May 2005 19:00:00 GMT Identity Theft Prevention While most computer operating systems and file systems provide basic file management attributes that have proven adequate in the past, emerging requirements are forcing change. This paper compares the existing file management attributes of several operating systems and provides a foundation for possible new attributes to consider in light of regulatory compliance, improved security and such topics as information life-cycle management. http://www.demartek.com/filesystemcomparison200407.html http://www.demartek.com/filesystemcomparison200407.html Thu, 29 Jul 2004 18:00:00 GMT Research Report