ServeTheHome – Intel Xeon AMD Opteron RAID Controller Reviews

On September 12, 2010 NetApp and Oracle agreed to dismiss an ongoing lawsuit over ZFS and WAFL. The original suit was filed by NetApp accusing then Sun Microsystems’ (which Oracle recently acquired) ZFS file system of infringing on NetApp’s patents.

Two intervening factors in the dismissal are likely that Sun was purchased by Oracle and on the other side of the equation NetApp recently announced that Matt Fawcett joined as the company’s new General Counsel and Secretary. Matt was instrumental in a lot of the JSDU/ JDS Uniphase litigation that the company won recently and has a lot of credibility for understanding big litigation.

This is a great announcement for those wishing to build a ZFS based FreeBSD or OpenSolaris system as it means one less threat to the longevity of ZFS. There is still a quite real possibility that Oracle will stop supporting ZFS but that is unlikely to happen in the near term due to support contracts for Sun hardware still being active.

Feel free to read NetApp’s announcement on this issue explaining that the suits have been dropped.

Today, Intel warned of an earnings miss on potentially weaker sales. This comes just after HP, Dell, and Cisco did something similar in the past month or so. I have not read this in other publications, but the reason for this is fairly well known to every tech executive that I have talked to in the past month or two.

During the recession, supplier slashed production in the face of weaker demand and also cut inventory. In early 2010, the stock market rallied, and it appeared as though the economy was getting better. When companies saw upticks in demand, businesses needed to start replenishing lean inventories. When most companies went to their suppliers during this time, their suppliers had constrained production capacity, so companies, in fear of running out of stock themselves, “double ordered”. As a result, suppliers ramped production to fill the double orders.

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I have been using Adaptec products for over a decade, and have generally been a fan (with a few exceptions over the years). My first Windows Home Server was based upon an Adaptec 31605 RAID controller.  Today, PMC-Sierra acquired Adaptec’s channel storage business, including their RAID business for $34m USD in cash.

This is probably a sign of things to come in the storage space. I am also guessing some larger players (Dell and HP) will be interested in picking up a few smaller storage vendors in the coming year.

Hopefully PMC-Sierra will have the resources to make some cool controllers in the future. I hope PMC-Sierra continues Adaptec’s MaxIQ SSD caching and expands it to work very well with commodity SSDs.

In the event that you missed it: PMC-Sierra, Inc. Investor Relations – Corporate & Product News Release on Adaptec Business Acquisition

I have decided to post a little roadmap of what’s next on the site. I am a list making person, so this will hopefully keep me goal oriented. The next few weeks I will be focusing on some Windows Home Server add-in reviews and guides, some Linux/ OpenSolaris on Hyper-V guides, and some hardware testing. Other potential thoughts I have are to write up how to get decent network performance from a WHS (i.e. over 90MB/s which it seems like there are people who can’t figure this out). I may also move into trying some ESXi virtualization guides, some FreeBSD/ OpenSolaris ZFS guides, and some hardware reviews and benchmarks.

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HP has created what to some will certainly be a killer add-in. The add-in allows a user to transfer files from the TiVo to the MediaSmart WHS and back and then also watch shows from any PC or Mac provided you use the correct software for TiVo’s DRM.

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As many have saw, Intel Corporation unvieled its new Atom platform for small business and home storage/ NAS products at CeBIT. It seems like this is not a Windows Home Server V2 (WHS V2) or Vail solution.
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For those using HP MediaSmart and DataVault X510 v. 3.0 and higher software, HP has released v. 3.2.1.4990 software. You will need a HP MediaSmart EX490, HP MediaSmart EX495,  HP Data Vault X510, or to have upgraded to v. 3.0 to be able to install this patch. Go to HP.com here to download the patch.

As multiple personal computing devices become more prevalent in people’s homes, the need for home servers likewise increases. Today’s home users capture multitudes of digital files such as pictures, videos, music files, as well as traditional office format files. Simply put, home users now have the power to collect multitudes of data, and have a need to share this data throughout the home, as well as outside the home when they are connected via mobile devices.

Further complicating this mixture is that platforms are becoming more varied. For a decade as personal computer and internet usage exploded in the decade spanning 1995 to 2004, Windows based PC’s were the primary tools home users utilized to access information. As OSX gained in popularity, mobile devices such as BlackBerry’s and iPhones found their way into consumers’ pockets, and the netbook segment exploded, the viewing tool variety and overall mobility of home users similarly expanded. Showing a picture on a phone or netbook in a coffee shop is great, however it is even better to have access to an entire private library of photos from wherever you are.

All of these new tools, although more stable than their predecessors, are not immune to mechanical failures, loss, theft or other events that cause data loss. Today’s computers hold memories in the form of vast picture libraries and videos that in the past were relegated to albums, boxes, shelves, and closets. Vast knowledge and work product is stored in the form of office documents. Contacts and e-mails are oftentimes locally archived. Music and video libraries now represent investments that continue to displace optical disc libraries at very fast rates representing nothing short of a large financial loss if disaster strikes.

For these reasons home servers continue to gain popularity. Like the personal computer that preceded them, the movement to home servers is simply a logical progression of business grade technology becoming more accessible and usable by the average person.