Pivot3 improves resilience for large-scale HCI deployments with AI and automation capabilities

Pivot3 announced addition of  artificial intelligence (AI) and automation features to its Acuity software to address the data protection challenges often faced in large-scale hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) deployments. These capabilities provide resilience for large multi-petabyte environments, allowing customers who experience catastrophic hardware failures to recover, while ensuring high-availability with auto-healing, quick node rebuild and intelligent monitoring and analytics.

At the core of Pivot3's Acuity software platform is the Pivot3 Intelligence Engine. The Intelligence Engine comprises many advanced data- and performance-management capabilities, including its market leading Business Policy Management feature. This enables customers to map business objectives to resource management through simple policies. 

Pivot3 uses AI and machine learning to understand application performance, protection and security requirements and to make real-time system changes so SLAs are met. The Intelligence Engine also monitors system health and performs predictive maintenance to ensure maximum system availability. This automates time consuming systems administration and maintenance tasks to reduce operating expenses and to allow organizations to scale without adding additional IT resources.

Pivot3’s Intelligence Engine now includes a suite of new auto-healing capabilities. Designed to automate human decisions and tasks, the new features replace manual recovery processes by automatically adding a node back to a cluster once it has recovered from a failure. Pivot3 has also introduced a quick node rebuild feature to reduce repair times up to 90 percent and to eliminate the need for a time-consuming full node rebuild, lowering the risk of a second failure.

Other enhancements to the Intelligence Engine include intelligent automation, AI and analytics for proactive system health, configuration optimization and support. These additional system analytics and diagnostics provide customers with improved system health and performance and the ability to automatically share information to Pivot3’s Support Cloud. 

Proactive system monitoring flags events in real-time with on-alarm dispatch to Pivot3 Support and provides daily status reports. New AI and machine learning techniques analyze phone-home data and alert the customer to options if a system is not in compliance with best practices.

“Customers are increasingly required to manage massive amounts of data generated by video surveillance, both for long term retention and for analysis with video analytics,” said Ben Bolles, vice president of product management, Pivot3. “The sheer scale of the infrastructure needed to support these use cases presents new resilience challenges, and organizations are increasingly concerned about capturing, protecting and capitalizing on this mission-critical data. Pivot3 is meeting this growing challenge with new automation and intelligence capabilities to provide customers with peace of mind, knowing their system is resilient, secure and always available.”

“With the real-time system monitoring, Pivot3 Support now alerts my team to unforeseen failures and provides remediation,” said Jeremiah Francis, director of information technology at Financial Advocates. “Additionally, receiving daily system health and configuration status reports allows us to ensure our system is running at peak performance; we can now more easily resolve potential points of failure and optimize for success.”

Toshiba brings in DT02-V surveillance HDD lineup with high areal density and improves reliability

Toshiba America Electronic Components (Toshiba) announces the DT02-V Series of surveillance HDDs, its product lineup created for digital video recorder (DVR) and network video recorder (NVR) platforms.

The series utilizes latest magnetic recording technologies to achieve high areal density, helping to improve reliability compared to the prior MD04ABA-V Series. With up to 6TB capacity, the new DT02-V Series supports a maximum of 32 high-resolution camera streams and is ideal for use in surveillance DVR and NVR platforms with as many as eight drive bays.

The DT02-V Series is designed for robust 24/7 operation at HDD temperatures as high as 40ᵒC for 600,000 load/unload cycles, at rated workload of 180TB a year. Other features include a SATA 6Gbit/s interface with a 128MiB cache to help minimizing frame drops, and a robust mechanical platform designed to achieve a 1 million-hour MTTF.

“Our latest surveillance HDD family, the DT02-V Series, delivers up to 6TB of storage capacity, and is designed for use with leading surveillance DVR and NVR platforms,” says Shuji Takaoka, general manager of storage products sales and marketing division at Toshiba Electronic Devices & Storage. “It also provides a variety of capacity options while improving reliability for high resolution surveillance video streams.”

The DT02-V Series 4TB samples are currently available, 6TB samples will be planned from January, and a 2TB sample is expected to be available in March.

Infortrend optimizes data center footprint with high density 4U 60-bay storage

Infortrend Technology Inc. has introduced the 4U 60-bay unified storage system to address rapid data growth and limited datacenter space challenges. The 4U 60-bay EonStor GS Gen2 features advanced performance, and its high density enclosure can accommodate up to 896 drives in one system, delivering 10PB+ massive capacity for data-intensive applications.

EonStor GS 3000/4000 Gen2 is the latest generation of Infortrend’s high availability enterprise unified storage which integrates NAS/SAN/Cloud gateway into one system. 

Compared with the previous solutions, GS Gen2 NAS performance is improved by 60 percent, reaching up to 9,900/5,500 MB/s read/write throughput. It also supports 900K IOPS performance. Other enhancements include double memory capacity, four onboard 10GbE ports for high-speed I/O connections, and comprehensive form factors.

The EonStor GS 3000/2000 series are comprehensive enterprise solutions with exceptional SAN and NAS transmission performance to meet the storage needs of SMBs to large enterprises. Besides various form factors, they also offer up to 4 sets of modular host boards to fulfill the requirements of numerous applications or architecture transformation to allow more deployment flexibility. 

Furthermore, the system also comes with high expandability of more than 8PB storage capacity to easily meet the needs of future data growth. As such, its outstanding performance, flexibility, and high expandability can run critical applications for SAN and NAS on the market. The GS 3000 is perfect for the performance-conscious, while the GS 2000 is ideal for the budget—conscious as it can meet all general storage needs.

With the support of Intel’s advanced CPU platform, and the newly-released 4U 60-bay form factor, GS Gen2 is designed to empower customers to overcome the issues of rapid data volume growth in terms of storage performance and capacity, while optimizing datacenter space utilization.   

The EonStor GS 5000/4000 series forms the backbone of our high performance solution for enterprises with its powerful performance, flexibility, and high expandability to efficiently boost overall productivity. They can handle large amounts of I/O and file transfers even under high workloads, and are especially ideal for hybrid environments that adopt SAN, NAS, and cloud integration. 

The GS 5000 is perfect for those who want performance, capacity, and a high port count, while the GS 4000 is ideal for the budget-conscious as it can easily meet all general storage needs.

“Infortrend releases the 4U 60-bay GS Gen2 series to prepare businesses for the enormous data management requirements,” said Thomas Kao, senior director of product planning. “This new solution is especially future-proof for data-intensive applications, such as media & entertainment, surveillance, and HPC (high performance computing).”

Arlo and Verisure announce alliance to provide European clients with latest offerings in smart home segment

Arlo Technologies and Verisure Sàrl, provider of monitored security solutions in Europe, announced that they have entered into definitive agreements to create an alliance that leverages both companies’ capabilities to create incremental scale to address growing demand for residential and commercial security. 

The companies will combine Arlo’s connected cameras and cloud services platform with Verisure’s professionally monitored security solutions to provide a new level of smart security for European customers.

The deal will create the first European multi-channel go-to-market strategy for consumer security and surveillance services by adding Arlo’s retail and e-commerce channels to Verisure’s existing direct sales channels. 

The addition of Arlo’s European commercial operations will enable Verisure to accelerate adoption of security and surveillance services across Europe, as well as bolster Arlo’s position in smart home security solutions.

The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other closing conditions and is expected to close by the first quarter of next year, upon which Verisure will assume full ownership of Arlo’s European commercial operations, including sales, marketing and customer care. Arlo users will continue to enjoy the same user experience through the Arlo app and services such as Arlo Smart, and all backend services including cloud recordings will continue to be managed and operated by Arlo Technologies.

Verisure is a European provider of professionally monitored security systems with 24/7 response services. The company’s mission is to bring peace of mind to families and small business owners by providing them with the best security solutions and services. Verisure is known for category-creating marketing, sales excellence products and services, and customer-centricity. 

Verisure also has a highly satisfied and loyal customer base, with some of the strongest growth rates and best retention rates globally in consumer-facing services, demonstrating its service levels and strong value proposition to its customers.

The strategic partnership includes sale of Arlo’s European commercial operations, and multi-channel supply partnership. Verisure will acquire Arlo’s European commercial operations for $50 million. This will include marketing and distribution of Arlo products and services, the Arlo brand in Europe, and Arlo’s existing installed base in Europe. Arlo will continue to own and grow its channels of distribution in territories outside of Europe. The combined insights and efforts between the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Arlo’s products and services globally.

In connection with Verisure’s addition of Arlo’s retail and e-commerce go-to-market channels, Arlo will become a key supplier to Verisure for smart security cameras. Verisure has a guaranteed minimum purchase commitment of $500 million cumulatively over the next five years. Verisure will also purchase associated cloud services from Arlo, including artificial intelligence, computer vision and other advanced technologies.

With an portfolio of smart security products and services with more than three million registered households worldwide, Arlo will continue to operate all channels outside of Europe and its secure, global cloud operations that enable Arlo users to protect and connect with the things they love most, from anywhere in the world. 

Arlo will also continue to own and innovate their product and services roadmap and the Arlo experience built upon the Arlo app, along with the advanced CV and AI-capabilities of Arlo Smart which provide sophisticated object detection, personalized notifications and cloud storage for additional peace of mind for its users.

“Arlo and Verisure share the same singular mission to provide their customers with peace of mind through connected security products and services that protect what matters most,” said Matthew McRae, CEO of Arlo Technologies. “Today’s agreement enables each brand to further accelerate their growth and innovation streams to deliver smart security solutions across residential and commercial markets, leveraging Arlo’s industry-leading cloud platform and services that deliver more than 120 million video events a day.”

“We are delighted to partner with Arlo, the global leader in the fast-growing camera surveillance area,” said Austin Lally, CEO of Verisure. “We are people protecting people. We believe feeling safe and secure is a human right. It should be for everyone. And, this partnership opens new opportunities for us to accelerate the growth of security and surveillance services, bringing peace of mind to many more European customers. We will now be able to add retail and e-commerce go-to-market channels alongside our existing direct channels. Of course, we will also continue to work closely with our existing technology partners and to leverage our own in-house innovation expertise.”

New Virtium StorFly industrial SSDs come with I-Temp support, shock/vibration tolerance, integrated data protection

Virtium announced on Tuesday that it has doubled the capacity of its StorFly 2.5-inch line of SATA industrial SSDs. Now with a top-capacity of four terabytes (4TB), the drives are ideal for large file-write applications such as security/surveillance and data logging, as well as demanding file-content uses such as 3D mapping and databases in growing demand in the transportation, IIoT, edge computing, and military/aerospace markets.

The new, double-capacity Virtium StorFly industrial SSDs are among the first 4TB 2.5-inch SATA SSDs on the market. The drives are also among the few of that capacity that also feature industrial temperature (I-Temp) support, high shock/vibration tolerance and integrated data protection. Moreover, the 2.5-inch SSDs are designed around triple-level-cell (TLC) 3D NAND flash that yields higher densities at a lower cost per bit. They use the SATA interface for maximum compatibility, and feature a low operating power of 3.4W.

The new, higher-capacity drives’ 2.5-inch form factor enables them to be deployed in standard storage enclosures/racks and to quickly replace older SSDs with lower capacities and/or that are less tolerant of extreme temperature, shock and vibration. 

As with all StorFly industrial SSDs, these new 4TB drives are supported by a suite of tools providing additional data protection and solid-state storage monitoring. These software modules provide users the ability to optimize, protect, manage and qualify SSDs. Additionally, the new StorFly drives feature an integrated AES-256 encryption engine with on-the-fly encryption to protect data at rest, as well as secure-erase capabilities.

Virtium StorFly SSDs use one of the market’s only NAND manufacturer-endorsed industrial-temperature 3D flash storage. This is in contrast to other, previously introduced industrial-temperature 3D NAND that lack manufacturers’ endorsement, posing the risk of longer-term reliability issues. 

With I-Temp support, the drives are designed to operate reliably in extreme temperatures that are typical across the embedded-systems landscape.