Seagate unveils a hard drive for tablets, shuns SSDs

Computerworld - Seagate today unveiled a new Ultra Mobile Hard Disk Drive designed exclusively for mobile devices, saying it offers seven times the capacity of a "traditional" tablet solid state drive (SSD), but with the same reliability, performance and power.

Comparing it to the typical 64GB of embedded flash that comes in tablets, Seagate said its 2.5-in hard drive offers up to 500GB capacity in the thinnest height available today, just 5 millimeters. Most 2.5-in drives come in 7mm or 9mm heights.

Earlier this year, Seagate announced a 2.5-in "solid-state hard drive" (SSHD), that includes both flash and a hard disk drive in a 7mm high form factor.

The new single-platter drive is different from the SSHD as it comes with with Seagate's Mobile Enablement Kit, which includes Seagate's Dynamic Data Driver software technology. Seagate claims the software provides SSD-like data protection through the use of enhanced motion sensor and thermal monitoring algorithms to control drive access and avoid usage conditions that might harm it.

Seagate is not claiming that its hard drive alone can achieve SSD-performance, which is often four or five times greater for reads and writes. Instead, Seagate said equipment manufacturers can position the drive along with 8GB of internal flash to act as cache, which will produce SSD-like performance at a much lower cost.

The Mobile HDD and Dynamic Data Driver software use the same power as the flash storage in a 64GB tablet and offer performance equal to that of a 16GB tablet, while costing less than either, the company said.

The drive is "so well insulated that in many cases a dropped device's screen would break before its hard disk drive," the company said in a statement.

"Coupling an ultra-thin, high-capacity HDD with software designed to optimize integration into tablets at a value-add price has allowed us to deliver a truly ground-breaking solution, enabling our partners to reimagine the mobile device," Steve Luczo, CEO of Seagate, said in a statement.

Luczo called the Ultra Mobile Hard Disk Drive a "game changer" and said tablet and other mobile device makers should re-think their mobile marketing.

John Rydning, IDC's research vice president for hard disk drives and semiconductors, said today's tablets trade storage capacity for low-power usage and a light and thin form factor.

"Seagate's new Mobile Enablement Kit will bring PC-like storage capacity to future thin and light tablet designs, and position Seagate as a potential storage solutions provider to the fast-growing tablet market," he said.

Seagate said that what sets its new 5mm drive apart from its past mobile HDDs is its shock management, heat and vibration and gyroscopic motion capabilities, all of which have been "heavily tested to ensure the drive delivers the best experience in a tablet...."

The Ultra Mobile HDD integrates Seagate's own Zero Gravity Sensor, which detects when a device is falling or being jostled, and temporarily pauses drive operations to protect mechanical parts.

"Incorporated power modes support the drive in sleep, standby and idle, enabling it to consume as low as 0.14 watts, and thereby support the long battery life demanded by tablets," Seagate said.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at  @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

See more by Lucas Mearian on Computerworld.com.

Read more about Data Storage in Computerworld's Data Storage Topic Center.

Small and midsize businesses are moving to the cloud to host their communications capabilities. Learn how enterprise-quality phone benefits, online management, conferencing, auto attendant, and ease of use are built into a system that is half the cost of a PBX.

Read now.

View the original article here

Red Hat unveils new offerings, cloud certification at VMworld

With VMworld 2013 in full swing in San Francisco, Red Hat wasted no time today showing off its upcoming cloud and virtualization offerings. The open source solutions provider unveiled demos of its forthcoming CloudForms 2.1 cloud management technology, a new product designed to integrate Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, and a new training and certification offering for deploying and managing OpenStack.

"We agree that an all-public cloud isn't the answer, as VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger acknowledges," says Bryan Che, general manager of Red Hat's Cloud Business Unit.

[ Learn how to install Apache on Linux in InfoWorld Test Center's step-by-step guide. | Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog and Technology: Open Source newsletter. ]

"This is a conversation Red Hat has been leading for some time now. However, we do not buy into the premise that a private or a hybrid platform based on one vendor's technologies and products is the answer either, says Che That goes against the compelling industry trends of openness and choice that have increasingly put customers in control of their own destinies and strategic direction. Instead, we are focused on delivering what we believe customers really want: an open hybrid cloud."

For that to happen, Che says, a hybrid cloud can't just run on a homogeneous software stack. It needs to work across the enterprise's entire business and IT, spanning Red Hat, Microsoft, VMware and Amazon. That's where OpenStack comes in.

OpenStack is free open source software-actually a series of interrelated open source projects for controlling pools of processing, storage and networking resources through a datacenter-supported by a wide array of vendors, from Red Hat and IBM to Rackspace and HP.

CloudForms is Red Hat's answer to operating and managing an OpenStack environment. Its capabilities include a comprehensive cloud service catalog, chargeback and metering, service orchestration, policy and governance, reporting and forecasting and more. And, as Che notes, it can provide these capabilities from a diverse array of cloud environments-VMware, Red Hat, Amazon-all from a single pane of glass.

"This means, then, that with CloudForms, you can build and manage a hybrid cloud that spans not just Red hat technologies or VMware technologies but a choice and diversity of providers," he says. "And, you can do this all with a unified and interoperable set of tools and interfaces. In an open hybrid cloud, your cloud is not locked into a single vendor or technology stack; rather you can build and manage a cloud that spans all your important assets in an integrated and seamless way."

Red Hat also introduced a new product offering: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Promotional Offering. It integrates Red Hat's enterprise Linux platform with its virtualization management system for servers and desktops. The Enterprise Virtualization Promotional Offering will be made available as a single subscription offering in fall 2013.

The open source solutions provider also announced its Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), a class and certification intended to ensure that enterprise customers' IT professionals can deploy and manage OpenStack.

Red Hat says the class will cover essential OpenStack skills, including installing and configuring a Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform deployment, configuring and managing images and managing storage using Object Storage (Swift) and Block Storage (Cinder).

"We built the industry's leading Linux certification program by focusing on rigorous, hands-on testing of real-world skills," says Iain Gray, vice president of Global Services at Red Hat.

"Our Red Hat Certified Professionals love this because it is a meaningful test of their skills. IT employers love it because it offers assurance that the certificate holders can apply their skills and knowledge in real-world situations, says Gray. We have applied these same principles to the Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Infrastructure as a Service. Organizations are seeking capable professionals to help bring OpenStack into their IT environments. As with Linux, we expect to set the benchmark for a technology that is rapidly proving to be a game changer in the industry."

Thor Olavsrud covers IT Security, Big Data, Open Source, Microsoft Tools and Servers for CIO.com. Follow Thor on Twitter @ThorOlavsrud. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline, Facebook, Google + and LinkedIn. Email Thor at tolavsrud@cio.com

Read more about certification in CIO's Certification Drilldown.

View the original article here