LSI Corporation and Seagate announced the delivery of a complex integrated read channel technology for Seagate's latest hard disk drive (HDD) products. Together, the companies have enabled the industry's first hard disk drives with low-density parity check (LDPC) read channel in 65nm process system-on-chip (SoC) technology.

The co-development effort combines Seagate LDPC digital back-end read channel and hard drive controller IP with LSITM analog front-end read channel (RC) and physical layer (PHY) technology. The combined LDPC read channel has been incorporated into high-capacity SoC solutions that enable new levels of performance and storage capacity for leading-edge Seagate HDDs.

HighPoint Technologies, announces shipment of the RocketRAID 2722. The RocketRAID 2722 delivers the next generation of SAS 6Gb/s performance with 8 channels of external point-to-point direct connectivity. The newest member broadens the HighPoint SAS 6Gb/s RAID product portfolio which now includes all generations of SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s & 1.5Gb/s) and SAS 6Gb/s storage interface.

HighPoint RocketRAID 2722 is first 8 channel external member of the SAS/SATA 6Gb/s RAID host adapter family series. There two SFF-8088 connectors to support up to 8 external SAS/SATA devices. A PCI-Express 2.0 x8 bus interface is backward compatible to PCI-Express 1.0. HighPoint hardware assisted RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBOD offers a balance of storage performance with protection.

Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of Flash storage solutions and DRAM memory modules, today announced a new line of SAS Solid State Disks, the ShuttleCraft Series SAS SSD.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is a new interface standard designed to meet the storage needs of the Enterprise market. SAS features key benefits required by enterprise servers including: high performance, strong reliability and advanced management features.

Already known for extreme reliability, Solid State Disk (SSD) technology can be improved to meet the needs of the enterprise by implementing advanced: Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management, Error Correction and Power Failure Management features. These new features are the cornerstones of our ShuttleCraft Series SAS drive products.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, unveils the Deneva Series Solid State Drives, a new enterprise line that is based on cutting-edge architecture that utilizes Sandforce's 1500 SSD processor with MLC and eMLC to address the performance and reliability demands of enterprise storage environments.

"Our new Deneva Series of drives are designed to improve performance and are the first to deliver Tier-0/1 Enterprise level reliability, using a range of lower cost flash technologies including eMLC and MLC in processes as low as 3xnm," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "Deneva SSDs deliver exceptional price to performance and reliability ratios while giving customers the freedom to design in a variety of interfaces including SATA , SAS, FC and PCIe and an assortment of form factors, giving clients the ultimate flexibility and control to address their distinct enterprise requirements."

RunCore released enterprise-grade variants of its Kylin II series SSDs which it introduced a few months ago in the consumer SATA interface form. The new variants come in 2.5" and 3.5" form-factors, and use the Serial attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Kylin II uses single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash, though multi-level cell (MLC) variants are also available. The Kylin II features native ECC to eliminate read/write errors. Despite the ECC overhead, the drives manage read/write speeds of up to 270 and 260 MB/s, respectively. The SandForce SF-1500 SSD processor makes use of 64 MB cache memory. The Kylin II comes in capacities ranging from 50 GB to 400 GB. Although RunCore didn't let out its pricing or availability, it is expected to cost a premium for being enterprise-grade.

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for computing devices and systems, is pleased to announce the Company has become an official LSI Alliance Partner. OCZ enterprise class Intrepid SSDs are now qualified for use with LSI's MegaRAID controllers, ensuring optimal compatibility, performance, and reliability.

"OCZ and LSI are both dedicated to the development of innovative, high-performance SAS/SATA solutions, and the partnership between both organizations demonstrates our shared commitment to deliver robust total solutions to our clients that address the complete spectrum of enterprise applications," stated Alex Mei, CMO, OCZ Technology Group.

LSI Corporation today announced it is sampling a PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage (SSS) solution to OEM customers. The LSISSS6200 PCIe SSS card provides a high-performance storage solution with enhanced reliability and industry-leading storage density for enterprise servers. For easy system integration and management, the card uses the industry-standard SAS protocol and widely deployed LSI SAS software. The card is designed to maximize transactional I/O performance for applications such as Web serving, data warehousing, data mining, online transaction processing and high-performance computing.

"Future customer requirements related to price, performance, power consumption and reliability align well with the benefits of solid-state storage," said Jeff Janukowicz, research manager, Hard Disk Drive Components and Solid State Drives at IDC. "PCIe-based SSS solutions, such as the LSISSS6200, can reliably meet next-generation data center needs with an improved price-to-performance ratio compared to traditional storage solutions."

Seagate is now shipping its 3.5-inch Constellation ES drive, the industry's first 2TB enterprise-class drives featuring 6Gb SAS, to customers worldwide. Designed specifically for multi-drive nearline storage environments, the Constellation ES drive has been qualified by leading enterprise OEMs and system builders who demand storage solutions of the highest capacities with increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security that their customers demand. The Constellation ES drive leverages Seagate's 30 years of leadership in meeting large enterprise customer needs in product development, qualification, and support.

The fourth-generation, 3.5-inch Seagate Constellation ES drive family for 7200-RPM enterprise environments enables cost-effective, highly efficient storage with capacities of 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. Supporting up to 76TB per square foot, it offers best-in-class reliability, leading 6Gb/s SAS or SATA 3Gb/s performance, PowerChoice optimized power and cooling technology, and a government-grade security option - all backed by Seagate.

LSI Corporation today announced a collaboration with Seagate Technology to deliver robust, PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage (SSS) solutions for data center and cloud computing environments. Through this joint effort, LSI is expected to deliver board-level products that integrate LSI SAS and PCIe technology with Seagate solid-state drive (SSD) technology. The products are designed to provide enterprise OEMs and channel partners with new levels of performance, reliability and ease of use while addressing architectural challenges that have limited SSS adoption. Product samples are expected to be available to OEM customers in the second quarter of this year.

"LSI is uniquely positioned to execute a broad solid-state storage strategy," said Jeff Richardson, executive vice president and general manager, Semiconductor Solutions Group, LSI. "We're already deeply engaged in delivering solid-state storage technologies, from custom silicon to storage systems. Entering the emerging PCIe-based SSS market segment is a natural extension of our core competencies. By building upon the industry's most widely deployed SAS software stack, OEMs and system builders will gain a proven, lower-risk path to market and continuity across technology generations."

OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high-reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives, plans to unveil an array of next-generation solid state drives (SSDs) along with other premium hardware at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show to be held January 7-10, 2010, in Las Vegas, Nevada. With its finger on the pulse of emerging and booming markets, OCZ's impending line of SSDs is designed to optimize entire businesses as well as the computing experiences of everyday consumers.

"For this year's Consumer Electronics Show, OCZ continues to build on its lineup of SSD solutions designed for enterprise-class applications," commented Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "We are uniquely positioned as the leading developer of SSDs, which we believe will ultimately replace traditional hard drives. In addition to our robust lineup of 2.5-inch solid state drives, we will be launching new drives at CES with interfaces that include SAS and PCI-E. These interfaces make it easier than ever for enterprise clients to replace expensive-to-maintain, traditional storage media with a higher-performing and more reliable solution."

WD, known for its hard disk drive leadership in the desktop, mobile and consumer marketplaces, today announced its entry into the traditional enterprise market segment with volume production shipments of its first 10,000 RPM, 2.5-inch, small form factor, SAS interface hard drives. The WD S25 provides up to 300 GB of high-performance storage suitable for both mission-critical enterprise server and enterprise storage applications, such as high-I/O-driven applications and configurations, as well as data centers and large data arrays.

"Our entry into the traditional-enterprise market continues the strategic expansion and diversification of WD's broad market and product portfolio, and significantly increases our addressable revenue opportunity," said John Coyne, president and CEO of WD. "As with our previous market expansion and diversification efforts, WD will approach the traditional enterprise space with the same focus on quality, customer service, technology and value that has earned us strong positions in every market we serve."

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) today announced worldwide availability of two new 15,000 RPM Ultrastar hard drives for Tier 0/1, mission-critical, enterprise storage applications. The new drives include the Ultrastar C15K147, Hitachi's first 15,000 RPM, 2.5-inch 6 Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drive, and the new 600GB Ultrastar 15K600, the company's fourth generation 3.5-inch drive with either 6 Gb/s SAS or 4Gb/s Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FCAL) interfaces. To help enterprises protect sensitive data and comply with privacy and data protection regulations, Hitachi now offers industry-compliant, self-encrypting, enterprise-class hard drives as an option across all of its 10,000 and 15,000 RPM Ultrastar drives.

While enterprise operating costs continue to escalate, most IT budgets are either flat or trending downward. At the same time, enterprise data is proliferating at an unabated rate and sensitive data must be protected. These factors combine to make storage efficiency, data protection and return on assets (ROA) among the most pressing concerns for today's data center managers. In these environments, every possible technique must be applied to achieve maximum value, efficiency and security. This could mean applying tiered storage methods, implementing encryption technologies, reducing power, maximizing cooling while minimizing space requirements, or obtaining maximum performance out of individual components and systems.

Pliant Technology, developer of Enterprise Flash Drives (EFDs), a new class of high-performance, high-reliability storage drives, today announced the availability of its first family of products. Pliant's Lightning EFDs integrate an advanced software architecture and a proprietary ASIC controller design to dramatically improve performance and reliability of storage and IT systems, while significantly reducing cost, space requirements and energy consumption.

Pliant's Lightning EFDs enable enterprise data centers, financial services organizations, high-performance computing (HPC) environments, and digital media applications to 'do more for less,' by providing IT managers and system architects with breakthrough levels of performance, reliability and efficiency. Lightning EFDs deliver the industry's highest sustained performance with the most predictable performance profile across a wide range of read/write workloads, and have been specifically designed for demanding, mission-critical 24x7 applications.

Intel is excited to announce the launch of Intel RAID Controller RS2BL080 - the first in a series of RAID products designed to deliver significant performance improvements and SAS 2.0 features to Intel-based servers. The Intel "RS2" portfolio of Intel RAID products will allow customers to design higher-performing storage solutions for a diverse set of environments including those based on either mainstream 3 Gb/s SAS/SATA or the latest 6 Gb/s SAS drives.

The Intel RAID Controller RS2BL080, a first-generation 6G SAS adapter incorporating LSI MegaRAID technology, offers unprecedented performance with exceptional data protection and design flexibility. Features including LSI SAS2108 6Gb/s RAID on Chip (ROC) silicon and a native PCI Express Generation 2 architecture allow for significant performance gains for both 3Gb/s and 6Gb/s drive-based solutions. Data protection and availability are enhanced by new features including Decision Feedback Equalization for greater signal integrity, enhanced diagnostics, and more robust error reporting.

Seagate announced it is now shipping its technology-leading Cheetah 15K.7 enterprise-class hard drives into the worldwide distribution channel. As the highest performing, highest capacity 3.5-inch mission critical hard drive with best-in-class reliability for Tier 1 environments, the Cheetah 15K.7 drive is ideal for a wide range of server and storage applications. With the Cheetah 15K.7 hard drive, Seagate's technology leadership moves firmly past the competition as it delivers the industry's first 15K-rpm drive to reach the 600GB capacity point while providing record reliability of 1.6 million hours MTBF.

The Cheetah 15K.7 drive is available with the latest 6 Gb/s SAS or 4 Gb/s FC interfaces, and includes Seagate PowerTrim technology, which dynamically reduces power consumption. Together, these features enable system builders to deliver lower-cost, multi-drive servers and storage systems, making the Cheetah 15K.7 ideal for use in environments ranging from small and medium-sized businesses to the largest enterprises.

Thecus, the leader in digital storage, today announced the availability of its latest 7-bay NAS server, the N7700SAS. Offering massive storage capacity and cutting-edge technology, the N7700SAS is an enterprise class NAS server providing incredible flexibility, reliability, and expandability.

The N7700SAS brings the latest technologies to the table, including seven SATA/SAS hard disk bays that accommodate multiple terabytes of storage. To manipulate all of this data, an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB of DDR2 memory allow for more concurrent connections and quicker system response. For data protection, the N7700SAS lets you choose from a wide selection of RAID modes, including RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 and JBOD. The N7700SAS also supports multiple RAID volumes, enabling system administrators to choose the right combination of RAID volumes for the network. Should changes need to be made, the N7700SAS also features online RAID expansion, online RAID migration, and auto rebuild for maximum flexibility.