News & Media

Gavin McLaughlin at X-IO warns against getting swept up by the fervour surrounding flash. Like many other parts of the IT industry, the storage industry has had its fair share of disruptive technologies over the years. Read More »

The best thing that ever happened to mass data storage? No, it’s not flash memory, and it’s not the hard disk or tape drive, either. No, it’s actually software — in other words, logic that can overcome the frailties and limits of physical and semiconductor storage devices. Read More »

Why did X-IO, the leader in performance-driven storage, select SMART Storage Systems’ Optimus SSD to improve their Hyper ISE 7-series? Performance and endurance were just two of the many reasons. X-IO’s Chief Technology Officer, Steve Sicola, provides more insight on X-IO’s partnership with SMART Storage Systems in this visual case study. Read More »

X-IO – ehemals Xiotech – will endlich auf dem deutschen Markt Fuß fassen. Read More »

Mentions X-IO viewpoints on the pros and cons of SSD Read More »

“We believe X-IO is an important storage company to watch.” Read More »

(With Dell and IBM) Read More »

(Talking Head style piece with others) Read More »

At a SNW briefing session today, X-IO (Xiotech) talked a lot of sense about Big Data; in fact it was almost the most sense that I have… Read More »

If I were a betting man when it came to the prospects of storage businesses I might be tempted to put some money on the mid-long term prospects of X-IO. X-IO – which revealed an addition to its hybrid flash array line this week… Read More »

X-IO is set to launch a new product in its Hyper ISE 7-series hybrid flash/HDD array line, the 740, which will double existing SSD capacity from 1.6TB to 3.2TB. Read More »

X-IO Hyper ISE 7-Series Leverages Industry-Leading Optimus SAS SSD to Deliver 300,000 IOPS and 10 Drive Writes Per Day; To be Displayed at SNW Fall Read More »

At a SNW briefing session today, X-IO (Xiotech) talked a lot of sense about Big Data; in fact it was almost the most sense that I have… Read More »

If I were a betting man when it came to the prospects of storage businesses I might be tempted to put some money on the mid-long term prospects of X-IO. X-IO – which revealed an addition to its hybrid flash array line this week… Read More »

X-IO is set to launch a new product in its Hyper ISE 7-series hybrid flash/HDD array line, the 740, which will double existing SSD capacity from 1.6TB to 3.2TB. Read More »

X-IO Hyper ISE 7-Series Leverages Industry-Leading Optimus SAS SSD to Deliver 300,000 IOPS and 10 Drive Writes Per Day; To be Displayed at SNW Fall Read More »

“The storage market has long been defined by two primary objectives: capacity and performance. Throughout the history of computing the storage market has seen continuous growth in the capacity of individual drives, with regular upgrades in the I/O performance of storage devices via changes to the drive interfaces. In addition, improved controller and host bus adapter technology, along with data architectures spread across multiple drives, have continued to improve the I/O throughput of storage systems.” Read More »

“As readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of RESTful management (1) because it is incredibly efficient when properly implemented, and (2) because REST itself is part of a suite of open standards, avoiding the lock-ins that too often accompany proprietary approaches to management. My favorite case study has been X-IO’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) technology, which is completely instrumented for management via REST.” Read More »

“X-IO has a reputation for producing state-of-the-art storage products, and the star of the bunch is its Intelligent Storage Elements (ISE) and architecture, which is a tightly integrated storage environment, purpose-built to maximize performance and reliability.” Read More »

Hyping up Hyper ISE: the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center is raving about X-IO’s ISE storage brick performance, saying it outperformed all other storage systems that the centre has tested over the past three years.

The centre found… Read More »

We’ve been covering a smattering of storage-related news of late, and it’s not surprising: Storage is bursting at the seams. X-IO is looking capitalize on that demand by flexing its storage muscle, all thanks to the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center. According to Microsoft-run storage benchmarks, X-IO’s Hyper-ISE exceeded the “wildest expectations.” The VAR Guy’s interest is piqued … Read More »

High performance and capacity at a lower cost than pure SSDs Read More »

QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC) today announced that it has teamed with Microsoft Corp., Temenos and X-IO Technologies to achieve record-breaking results on the TEMENOS T24 (T24) performance benchmark. The high-water benchmark testing, conducted at the Microsoft Platform Adoption Center using QLogic® 2500 Series 8Gb Fibre Channel adapters, SQL Server 2012 and X-IO Hyper ISE storage, included a mix of standard, real-world banking transactions typical for a large tier-1 retail bank with an extensive customer base. Read More »

Scalability and Significant Cost Savings Validated in Benchmark Tests Read More »

“Startups are figuring out ways to cut down on the “micro-vibrations” that make hard drives less efficient” a conversation with XIO Chief Technology Officer Steve Sicola Read More »

THE GAZETTE – Colorado Springs-based computer storage manufacturer XIO named a veteran technology executive who is a partner from a venture capital fund that owns a majority of the company as president and CEO and made its former CEO a non-executive chairman Tuesday. Read More »

This blog is the second in a two-part series. Read More »

This blog is the first in a two-part series. The second part will uncover the truths, half-truths and myths about storage. Read More »

A Look at the ‘New’ XIO and its Unique Approach to Optimizing SSD Performance Read More »

Xiotech is changing its name to XIO (pronounced X-I-O) as part of an overhaul that really started in 2008 when it launched its ISE architecture and accelerated with the appointment of Alan Atkinson as CEO in late 2009. Read More »

Servers and networks have the pedal to metal, but storage is struggling to keep up. As applications crave more and more performance, data storage vendors will need to find new solutions. Read More »

All change, all change. Xiotech has gained new funding, a new marketing officer, changed its marketing, has benchmarks coming and is setting up a European infrastructure. Read More »

Xiotech built its systems with cloud and virtual desktop-to-data centers in mind and provides high-performance systems for storage in many innovative ways. Read More »

Data storage technologies continue to evolve somewhat predictably, with the introduction of smaller and smaller drives holding more and more data. Solid-state media is part of the trend toward faster, smaller storage footprints. Read More »

Six months after it was announced, Xiotech’s go-faster flash-enhanced ISE storage blade is here, and ready to rock and roll. Read More »

Xiotech Corp. announced Wednesday general availability of its Hybrid ISE platform that combines SSD and HDD leveraging its application-aware Continuous Adaptive Data Placement technology providing ideal price/performance/capacity ratios. Read More »

“Microsoft Tech•Ed took place in Atlanta, Georgia, this year—and a month earlier in the year, avoiding the oppressive heat that afflicted last year’s humid New Orleans event. In tune with the weather, Tech•Ed was a cool and cloudy affair. Indeed, the convention air was filled with talk about the cloud, and it only made sense that our Best of Tech•Ed awards program introduced a new Best Cloud Computing Product/Service category into the mix.” Read More »

“Just met with Keith Hageman (storage technology evangelist) and Blair Parkhill (technical marketing engineer) of XIO to talk about their Best of TechEd award finalist, the Hyper ISE Storage Blade. This 3U system combines hard disk drives and SSDs to provide more than 60,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS). The Hyper ISE offers a stunning 14.4TB of usable capacity.” Read More »

“While replicating data in real time does a pretty good job at protecting the data from loss in the event of an array, or larger, failure, replication alone does nothing to ensure that the applications that access that data keep running. If there’s a disaster there better be a recovery procedure or our apps could be offline a long time. XIO with ISE Continuous Availability is the latest vendor to come up with a solution that not only keeps the data safe but also keeps it available even through an array failure.” Read More »

“While desktop virtualization is very different from server virtualization, it also has an impact on storage management. Since the total desktop virtualization solution includes hypervisors, clients virtualization, desktops, storage and network components, you can see that management of the environment is not necessarily simpler than a traditional desktop solution. Rather than just handing this new application to the respective infrastructure teams, some companies (such as XIO) are recommending giving the storage for VDI to the desktop team. In an online poll on managing VDI, there was general agreement that adaptation of roles is required; most believed that there should be someone knowledgeable about storage that oversees the solution even if some of the management is relinquished to other groups. At a recent stop of TechTarget’s desktop virtualization roadshow with Brian Madden, Wikibon spoke with XIO Chief Architect, Rob Stevenson about the requirements of technology and management of VDI storage:” Read More »

A new strategy for 2011+: Desktone Direct Read More »

“XIO, a company that provides high-performance storage blades based on its patented Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) technology, announced it will begin shipping its upcoming Continuous Availability offering in the third quarter — with early access for customers beginning in April.

The solution, which will work across a metro area, aims to provide complete business continuity capabilities, without the cost and hassles of more expensive solutions high-availability systems.” Read More »

“We take it for granted when applications work, until they don’t. The bottom line is that most storage requires constant care and feeding to ensure continuous availability,” said Steve Sicola, XIO CTO. “ISE was designed to be storage that is invisible and just works. With ISE Continuous Availability we are extending the true active-active nature of an ISE storage blade across an entire ISE infrastructure — that reaches across the data center, the campus, or even a metro area. This is about ISE driving application uptime and powering real business continuity.” Read More »

“XIO has added continuous availability to its ISE storage blades across datacentre, campus and metro areas.

If one ISE (Integrated Storage Element) – a sealed canister of disk drives and intensive firmware – fails, then connected physical or virtual server applications are automatically switched to a second ISE, with no interruption to processing. The same is true if the network infrastructure linking servers to one ISE fails, rendering it inactive. As long as there is a network link to the second ISE, then applications can continue their operations.” Read More »

“SMART Modular Technologies, a manufacturer of solid-state storage (SSD) products and memory modules, announced a partnership with XIO to deliver innovative storage solution to enterprises.

XIO (News – Alert) has selected SMART’s enterprise-grade XceedIOPS serial-attached SCSI (SAS) SSDs as part of its innovative Hyper Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) line which combines traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) and SSDs.” Read More »

Trying to contextualise solutions for the SME, which were developed for larger enterprises, is no easy task. “Despite promises of ‘ease of use’, we are seeing smaller businesses locked into storage solutions which present hidden costs by way of support, and which don’t adequately empower the small business owner,” says Wernher Mulder, solutions architect at XIO. Read More »

A recent survey by Gartner found that data growth is the biggest data centre infrastructure challenge for large enterprises. The research firm found that enterprise data is growing at an average of 40% to 60% year over year.

“There is no doubt that data is growing exponentially,” says XIO Africa country manager, Derek Rule. “This is driven by factors such as an increase in uptake of Internet-enabled mobile devices. With users now having the ability to access data anywhere, any time, we are seeing more data creation than ever before.” Read More »

“XIO has changed the rules around array-based data protection by adding a native high availability clustering to storage,” said Jon Toigo, CEO of consumer ombudsman and industry watchdog Toigo Partners International. “We have always tended to prefer hardware-agnostic, software-based solutions for data protection for three basic reasons. On-hardware data mirroring typically went hand in hand with performance reduction, limitations on our ability to confirm that replication processes were working and that the right data was being replicated, and of course, vendor lock-in arising from the fact that the same vendor’s gear needed to be used at both ends of the link. However, XIO’s approach eliminates performance impact and provides great visibility into the mirroring process in real-time.” Read More »

XIO – for introducing an order of magnitude improvement in the growing problem of data corruption on disk drives with the introduction of its ISE (Intelligent Stage Element) “brick”. Categories: Simplicity, Virtualization. Read More »

The 2011 Partner Program Guide that follows offers solution providers the information they need to evaluate IT vendors they already work with or are considering working with. The guide is based on detailed applications vendors submitted outlining all aspects of their partner programs. Everything Channel Research crunched the numbers and designated some programs as 5-Star Partner programs. That listing begins on page 20 and expanded charts are available online at www.crn.com. Read More »

“One hot topic in storage right now is “paired storage,” or the combined use of an HDD (hard disk drive) and SSD (solid-state drive), aka a flash drive. A third-party upgrade kit lets owners of the MacBook Pro give this advanced storage architecture a spin.” Read More »

“XIO hopes to change the way computer information is stored with a new technology developed by a Colorado Springs-based team of engineers and computer scientists.” Read More »

“What comes to mind as one of the biggest roadblocks to mass desktop virtualization adoption? Storage might come immediately to mind for most of you. We constantly hear about storage in terms of IOPS, cache and how much it will cost to implement desktop virtualization. Some have taken it even farther by suggesting local disk as an alternative, which gives better performance/lower cost at the expense of sacrificing virtualization features. Is there a way to have the best of both worlds?

Yes. I give you XIO Hyper ISE, a 3U box with hybrid SSD and SAS drives. To be exact, it has 20 SSD drives and 20 10K SAS drives, which collectively generate up to 60,000 sustained IOPS and a usable capacity of about 15TB.” Read More »

“The simple fact, however, is that technologies such as de-dupe are not the things that need to be — or should be — performed by array controllers. From an architectural standpoint, these functions don’t need to be done on the array at all. Moreover, when they are part of the hardware kit, they tend to increase storage costs in many ways — offsetting the labor cost savings they portend to provide.” Read More »

“The proliferation of virtual servers connected to data storage has given rise to a thorny storage management issue: How much control should server administrators have over storage? While there’s no simple blanket answer to that question, it clearly points to a need for better communication between groups to handle end-to-end management of servers and storage devices.” Read More »

“XIO, meanwhile, is revving up its storage capabilities through its Hyper ISE (Intelligent Storage Element) “brick” that combines 20, 2.5-inch, 900 GB hard disk drives and 20, 200 GB MLC flash drives in a 3U chassis.” Read More »

“In the case of VDI, the reality is the impact the technology has on existing storage infrastructure. For many organizations, the need to shore up legacy systems has been a major factor in the relatively lukewarm embrace of VDI despite its vast potential to cut costs and streamline data operations.” Read More »

“Storage company XIO has launched a new product in its ISE range of products claiming that it combines the best of hard disk drives and solid state disks into a single product.” Read More »

“XIO recently added blades to its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) architecture that combine hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid state disk (SSD) drives – which the company calls Hybrid ISE — marking the first time that SSDs are available on the ISE architecture.” Read More »

“In a briefing at Cloud Expo in the UK, CEO Alan Atkinson reckoned that the recently launched Hyper ISE – the one with solid state drives (SSDs) as well as hard disk drives inside – is opening more enterprise customer doors.” Read More »

“XIO, the ISE Company, recently announced the newest member of its groundbreaking ISE technology family, Hyper ISE. Hyper ISE combines both hard disk drives (HDD) and solid state disks (SSD) into a hybrid storage pool that delivers consistent, high performance in the face of random and multi-tenant workloads, thanks to Continuous Adaptive Data Placement.” Read More »

“We knew that when XIO finally released a hybrid array that combines the speed of solid state drives (SSD) with 10K RPM Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) hard drives, the results would be spectacular.” Read More »

“XIO, which is known for its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) storage platform, is building on its past innovations by providing a new Hyper ISE appliance. Designed to merge the benefits of both traditional hard disks and solid state disks, Hyper ISE has the potential to be a high-performance and high-density storage pool. Here are the details…” Read More »

“It’s no surprise that companies like Seagate at the drive level, and XIO at the system level are figuring out how best to utilize the benefits of SSD without the huge cost burden. They are “adapting” to a changing world where SSD and HDD will co-exist.” Read More »

“XIO today unveiled a Hyper ISE offering that combines solid-state drives (SSD) and hard disks in a single storage pool…The Hyper ISE is also the first instance of a new ISE 2.0 architecture that is based on multi-core processors that leverage the Jasper Forest Intel chipset per controller, up to 20 SSD and 20 hard disk drives, up to 8GB Fibre Channel ports, a 6GB SAS interface and 8GB of total memory.” Read More »

“XIO today added blades to its Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) line that combine traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) and solid-state disk (SSD) drives.” Read More »

“Tiering today, like reacting to weather reports, follows a chain of people, process and technology that often results in many actions happening when the storm is already at its peak,” said Alan Atkinson, CEO of XIO. “Hyper ISE has the ability to not only collapse that timeframe and lessen the impact of a building I/O storm that can hobble application response, but approach a level of almost ‘precognitive performance.’ Hybrid ISE has the ability to enable profile-based tiering driven directly by application I/O. We see this not only as the future of ISE, but as the future of storage as we know it.” Read More »

“XIO has unveiled a new version of its self-contained ISE data packs which adds SSD technology and the ability to automatically tier between SSDs and hard drives.” Read More »

“The Hyper ISE combines both hard disk drives and SSDs in a 3U (5.25-inch) form factor that provides more than 60,000 input/output operations per second, that can scale to almost 900,000 IOPS in a rack, with 14.4Tbytes of useable capacity, for a starting price of $100,000.” Read More »

“XIO has announced its go-faster Hyper ISE storage brick containing a mix of solid state drives and spinning disk drives.” Read More »

“XIO is adding solid-state drives (SSDs) to its ISE self-healing architecture with Hyper ISE blades, which put a new spin on how to deliver SSDs and manage data on them in enterprise data storage systems.” Read More »

“What is Intelligent Storage Element (ISE) technology? How can it help enterprises to optimize their storage infrastructure?” Read More »