Blocks & Files

Blocks & Files

Publication
0 followers

Enterprise storage and data infrastructure news underpinning Big Data and analytics.

NetApp Seals Elastio and Commvault Deals for More Resilience and Less Ransomware
NewsMar 25, 2026

NetApp Seals Elastio and Commvault Deals for More Resilience and Less Ransomware

NetApp announced partnerships with Elastio and Commvault to bolster its Ransomware Resilience Service. Elastio’s agent‑less detection and Provable Recovery controls will be embedded in ONTAP snapshots to spot zero‑day ransomware and provide immutable recovery points. Together with Commvault, NetApp will...

By Blocks & Files
US Clouds Cast Long Shadow over EU Data Sovereignty, Says Osmium
NewsMar 25, 2026

US Clouds Cast Long Shadow over EU Data Sovereignty, Says Osmium

Osmium Data Group warns that using US‑owned cloud providers for backups undermines European data‑sovereignty, even when the physical datacenter sits in the EU. The firm evaluated four source‑and‑destination scenarios, ranking a Europe‑owned source and datacenter as highest compliance, while a...

By Blocks & Files
XCENA Bets on CXL Memory with Compute Baked in, CEO Explains
NewsMar 25, 2026

XCENA Bets on CXL Memory with Compute Baked in, CEO Explains

South Korean startup XCENA, formerly MetisX, is commercializing CXL‑based memory pooling that embeds RISC‑V compute in its MX1 product. The company has raised roughly $50 million to date and is now pursuing a Series B round to scale deployments. MX1’s Near‑Data Processing...

By Blocks & Files
Seagate: If You're Adding Platters, You've Hit a Density Wall
NewsMar 25, 2026

Seagate: If You're Adding Platters, You've Hit a Density Wall

Seagate’s SVP Jason Feist says the company is doubling down on areal‑density growth, leveraging its Mozaic 3 and upcoming Mozaic 4 HAMR drives that deliver 3‑4 TB per platter, rather than adding more platters like Western Digital. He notes that hyperscalers prefer higher‑density, cost‑efficient...

By Blocks & Files
NGX Rolls Out ExaScale Block Storage for AI Workloads
NewsMar 24, 2026

NGX Rolls Out ExaScale Block Storage for AI Workloads

NGX announced the ExaScale software‑defined block storage array, a scale‑out system that can grow from a few terabytes to exabytes of usable capacity. Designed for AI, analytics and other data‑intensive workloads, it leverages NVMe, RDMA and three‑way replication to deliver...

By Blocks & Files
Kioxia Eyes GPU Memory Stack with High-Bandwidth Flash Push
NewsMar 20, 2026

Kioxia Eyes GPU Memory Stack with High-Bandwidth Flash Push

Kioxia announced the GP Series, a high‑IOPS SSD built on Gen 2 XL‑Flash, targeting GPU servers with dramatically faster data access. The drive, packaged in an E1.S PCIe 5 enclosure, aims for 10 million IOPS by 2026 and 100 million random‑read IOPS by 2027....

By Blocks & Files
Future of Memory and Storage Event Sold to Terrapinn
NewsMar 20, 2026

Future of Memory and Storage Event Sold to Terrapinn

The Future of Memory and Storage (FMS) conference, the premier flash‑focused event, has been sold by Conference Concepts to Terrapinn, the world’s largest privately owned events firm. The 20th‑anniversary edition is slated for August 4‑6, 2026 at the Santa Clara Conference...

By Blocks & Files
Storage Ticker - 20 March
NewsMar 20, 2026

Storage Ticker - 20 March

The March 20 Storage Ticker roundup highlighted a wave of enterprise‑focused innovations, from Broadcom’s world‑first post‑quantum‑safe Emulex SecureHBA to Alation’s outcome‑based metadata governance automation. AI‑ready storage gained traction as Cloudian earned Nvidia‑certified foundation status and Denodo added a Lakehouse accelerator...

By Blocks & Files
Big Changes in Latest GigaOm Unstructured Data Management Radar Report
NewsMar 17, 2026

Big Changes in Latest GigaOm Unstructured Data Management Radar Report

GigaOm released version 6 of its Unstructured Data Management Radar, expanding the vendor set to 23 and appointing James Brown as the new analyst. The report reclassifies 11 suppliers as leaders and 12 as challengers, with notable moves such as Panzura shifting...

By Blocks & Files
Dell’s AI Story Electrified by Lightning
NewsMar 16, 2026

Dell’s AI Story Electrified by Lightning

Dell unveiled an AI Data Platform built with Nvidia that adds a four‑layer architecture and a new parallel file system called Lightning. Lightning delivers up to 150 GB/s per 1‑RU enclosure and can be stacked to achieve roughly 6 TB/s per rack,...

By Blocks & Files
Women Get Data-Driven Health Boost as FA Tackles Sports Science's Male Bias
NewsMar 16, 2026

Women Get Data-Driven Health Boost as FA Tackles Sports Science's Male Bias

The Football Association (FA) has partnered with Google Cloud to address the historic male bias in sports science by collecting and analyzing female‑specific health data for England’s Lionesses. A 2024 audit showed only 4% of research examined female cohorts, leaving...

By Blocks & Files
Solidigm Strikes Out in New AI Computer Vision Direction
NewsMar 13, 2026

Solidigm Strikes Out in New AI Computer Vision Direction

Solidigm, traditionally a NAND fabber and SSD supplier, has launched Luceta, a generative‑AI computer‑vision platform aimed at manufacturing inspection. The software lets customers create and train models in weeks, achieving over 90 percent precision and enabling rapid edge deployment. While Luceta...

By Blocks & Files
Qdrant Pockets $50M to Push Composable Vector Search
NewsMar 12, 2026

Qdrant Pockets $50M to Push Composable Vector Search

Qdrant announced a $50 million Series B round, raising its total capital to $87.5 million since its 2021 launch. The funding will accelerate its push for composable vector search, a model that lets developers combine dense, sparse, and metadata‑based retrieval at query time....

By Blocks & Files
VAST Data Raises $1B at $30B Valuation as AI Storage Demand Surges
NewsMar 11, 2026

VAST Data Raises $1B at $30B Valuation as AI Storage Demand Surges

VAST Data announced a $1 billion Series F raise that lifts its valuation to $30 billion, making it Israel’s most valuable private high‑tech firm. The funding round pushes total capital raised to $1.38 billion and signals a dramatic jump in annual recurring revenue, now...

By Blocks & Files
VDURA Pairs V5000 Flash with WD Data60 and Data102 Disk Shelves
NewsMar 11, 2026

VDURA Pairs V5000 Flash with WD Data60 and Data102 Disk Shelves

VDURA announced that its all‑flash V5000 system will be paired with Western Digital’s Ultrastar Data60 and Data102 hybrid JBODs, creating a tiered storage solution for AI workloads. The hybrid architecture combines low‑latency SSDs with high‑density HDDs, delivering up to 3.26 PB...

By Blocks & Files
Everpure Stretches ActiveCluster to Metro-Distance DR for File Workloads
NewsMar 11, 2026

Everpure Stretches ActiveCluster to Metro-Distance DR for File Workloads

Everpure announced that its ActiveCluster technology now extends to metro‑distance disaster recovery for file‑based workloads. The feature adds synchronous replication and policy‑driven automation, allowing files to stay online during outages and move across the entire fleet without manual intervention. ActiveCluster...

By Blocks & Files
Box Pitches 'Virtual Filesystem' Layer for AI Agents
NewsMar 9, 2026

Box Pitches 'Virtual Filesystem' Layer for AI Agents

Box unveiled a virtual filesystem layer that lets AI agents interact with enterprise data as if navigating a traditional file hierarchy. The abstraction routes directory prefixes to varied back‑ends—S3, SQLite, local disk, or Box’s own content platform—while preserving versioning, permissions,...

By Blocks & Files
Storage News Ticker – March 9
NewsMar 9, 2026

Storage News Ticker – March 9

In its March 9 storage news roundup, vendors announced a range of security, AI, and edge‑storage initiatives. Commvault introduced identity‑security tools integrating Active Directory with CloudSEK intelligence and added Okta recovery support, while Datadog opened a new UK datacenter to broaden...

By Blocks & Files
Missouri Team Shows How to Rewrite Bits Stored in DNA
NewsMar 4, 2026

Missouri Team Shows How to Rewrite Bits Stored in DNA

University of Missouri researchers have demonstrated a technique to rewrite data stored in DNA, overcoming the long‑standing limitation that DNA‑encoded information was immutable. The method pairs a compact electronic module with a nanopore sensor, translating electrical signals into binary bits....

By Blocks & Files
Storage News Ticker – March 2
NewsMar 2, 2026

Storage News Ticker – March 2

Snowflake expanded its Cortex Code CLI to run in local environments, enabling AI‑assisted coding across dbt, Apache Airflow and other non‑Snowflake data sources under a subscription model. London‑based Cristie Software introduced FSBlocker, a lightweight kernel driver that locks down files...

By Blocks & Files
Druva Uses Graph Relationships to Mine Metadata
NewsMar 2, 2026

Druva Uses Graph Relationships to Mine Metadata

Druva has introduced Dru MetaGraph, a graph‑database layer that stores backup metadata as interconnected nodes, enabling AI agents to answer security and compliance questions with real‑time context. The approach stems from three drivers: security queries are fundamentally relationship‑based, customers need instant,...

By Blocks & Files
Scality RING Becomes Back-End Object Store for WEKA NeuralMesh
NewsFeb 25, 2026

Scality RING Becomes Back-End Object Store for WEKA NeuralMesh

Scality and WEKA announced that Scality RING will serve as the back‑end object store for WEKA’s NeuralMesh high‑performance AI file system. The partnership leverages NeuralMesh’s SSD‑based front‑end with RING’s cost‑efficient, disk‑based object tier, delivering up to ten times faster performance than...

By Blocks & Files
How AI Is Forcing Storage Back Into the Enterprise Conversation
NewsFeb 19, 2026

How AI Is Forcing Storage Back Into the Enterprise Conversation

Early enterprise AI projects allocated most budgets to compute, treating storage as a leftover expense. As AI moves from experimentation to production, organizations discover that data readiness and storage performance, especially for retrieval‑augmented generation and inference, are the real constraints....

By Blocks & Files
StorONE Arrays Adopt External Flash JBODs in Flash Program
NewsFeb 19, 2026

StorONE Arrays Adopt External Flash JBODs in Flash Program

StorONE introduced a 9x ROI on Flash program that pairs its S1 disk‑drive array with external SSD JBODs, creating an automatic two‑tier system that places hot data on flash and warm or cold data on HDDs. The solution leverages the...

By Blocks & Files
Platters: WD New Disk Drive Tech Hits Lucky 14
NewsFeb 18, 2026

Platters: WD New Disk Drive Tech Hits Lucky 14

Western Digital announced a 14‑platter hard‑disk drive architecture that boosts capacity by roughly 27% over its current 11‑platter models, enabling 40 TB drives in 2026 and paving the way for 44 TB HAMR units later this year and 100 TB drives by 2029....

By Blocks & Files
Pure Storage Wants to Demolish Your Storage Silos
NewsFeb 17, 2026

Pure Storage Wants to Demolish Your Storage Silos

Pure Storage’s Cloud service extends its Purity operating environment to AWS and Azure, delivering a single‑pane‑of‑glass storage layer that feels identical to on‑prem FlashArray. By abstracting the underlying cloud hardware, the platform offers native APIs, replication, and security while adding...

By Blocks & Files
Dell VP Says Discrete Beats Disaggregated Storage for AI
NewsFeb 16, 2026

Dell VP Says Discrete Beats Disaggregated Storage for AI

Dell VP David Noy announced that discrete storage architectures outperform disaggregated designs for large‑scale AI workloads, reversing Dell’s earlier promotion of disaggregation. He cites PowerScale’s integrated controller‑drive chassis as delivering lower rack space, fewer switches, and reduced power consumption. The...

By Blocks & Files
SK Hynix Proposes HBM and HBF Hybrid for LLM Inference
NewsFeb 16, 2026

SK Hynix Proposes HBM and HBF Hybrid for LLM Inference

SK Hynix unveiled H³, a hybrid architecture that couples high‑bandwidth memory (HBM) with high‑bandwidth flash (HBF) on a single interposer to accelerate large‑language‑model (LLM) inference. HBF provides up to 16× the capacity of HBM while maintaining comparable bandwidth, serving as...

By Blocks & Files
Cubbit Powers Swiss Cantonal-Level Sovereign Cloud for Ailanto
NewsFeb 16, 2026

Cubbit Powers Swiss Cantonal-Level Sovereign Cloud for Ailanto

IT integrator Ailanto announced a sovereign cloud service for Swiss organizations built on Cubbit’s DS3 Composer software‑defined object storage. The offering launches with 1 PB of capacity hosted in Swiss‑based data centres and will expand later in 2026. It provides S3‑compatible,...

By Blocks & Files
Xinnor's Alternative Software RAID Filer for AI
NewsFeb 12, 2026

Xinnor's Alternative Software RAID Filer for AI

Software RAID vendor Xinnor unveiled xiNAS, an all‑flash NAS filer built on its xiRAID stack, XFS, and NFS over RDMA, targeting AI, HPC and data‑intensive workloads. In a Supermicro validation, a single node achieved up to 74.5 GB/s sequential read and...

By Blocks & Files
Simplyblock Provides Postgres Git-Style Branching
NewsFeb 10, 2026

Simplyblock Provides Postgres Git-Style Branching

Simplyblock has launched Vela, a self‑hostable platform that provides instant, Git‑style branching for PostgreSQL databases without copying data. The solution leverages copy‑on‑write on local NVMe storage and deep Kubernetes integration to deliver high‑performance, low‑latency environments. Vela targets AI workloads that...

By Blocks & Files
Simplyblock Provides Postgres Git-Style Branching
NewsFeb 10, 2026

Simplyblock Provides Postgres Git-Style Branching

Simplyblock unveiled Vela, a platform that delivers instant PostgreSQL branches using copy‑on‑write technology on its high‑performance block storage. The solution eliminates traditional snapshot‑restore cycles, offering developers rapid, cost‑effective cloning without data duplication. Vela is cloud‑agnostic, Kubernetes‑native, and supports NVMe/TCP and...

By Blocks & Files
IBM Refreshes FlashSystem Lineup with Faster 5600, 7600, and 9600 Arrays
NewsFeb 10, 2026

IBM Refreshes FlashSystem Lineup with Faster 5600, 7600, and 9600 Arrays

IBM announced a refresh of its FlashSystem all‑flash storage family, introducing the 5600, 7600 and 9600 models that replace the 5300, 7300 and 9500 generations. The new arrays feature Gen 5 FlashCore Modules with up to 105.6 TB per drive and a...

By Blocks & Files
IBM Refreshes FlashSystem Lineup with Faster 5600, 7600, and 9600 Arrays
NewsFeb 10, 2026

IBM Refreshes FlashSystem Lineup with Faster 5600, 7600, and 9600 Arrays

IBM has refreshed its FlashSystem all‑flash portfolio, introducing the 5600, 7600 and 9600 arrays to replace the 5300, 7300 and 9500 models. The new 9600 delivers up to 6.3 million IOPS, 3.3 PB raw capacity and a compact 2‑RU chassis, while the...

By Blocks & Files
Storage News Ticker – 9 February 2026
NewsFeb 9, 2026

Storage News Ticker – 9 February 2026

The storage‑focused news ticker highlighted a wave of AI‑centric and security‑driven product launches, from Aerospike’s default Dynamic Data Masking to Cloudera’s on‑prem AI inference and Trino‑powered warehouse. Databricks secured a $5 billion equity round, reporting $5.4 billion ARR with strong AI revenue,...

By Blocks & Files
VMware Exiteeers Targeted by Alibaba’s NexaVM
NewsFeb 9, 2026

VMware Exiteeers Targeted by Alibaba’s NexaVM

Swiss‑based NexaVM, backed by Alibaba, delivers an all‑in‑one VMware replacement aimed at mid‑market cloud service providers, sovereign‑cloud operators, and hardware‑agnostic OEMs. The platform bundles a production‑grade KVM hypervisor, Ceph‑based hyper‑converged storage, integrated Kubernetes‑as‑a‑Service, and multi‑tenant management under a subscription licence....

By Blocks & Files
VAST Data Plans Funding Round so Early Stock Holders Can Get Cash
NewsFeb 5, 2026

VAST Data Plans Funding Round so Early Stock Holders Can Get Cash

VAST Data is closing a $1 billion financing round that values the AI‑focused storage vendor at roughly $30 billion. The bulk of the cash will come from a secondary sale where existing shareholders dump 5‑6 shares for each new issue, generating $700‑$850 million...

By Blocks & Files
Cohesity Deepens Google Cloud Integration
NewsFeb 5, 2026

Cohesity Deepens Google Cloud Integration

Cohesity has integrated Google Cloud Threat Intelligence directly into the Cohesity Data Cloud UI and added Google Private Scanning for secure, privacy‑preserving malware detonation. The enhancement gives customers real‑time visibility into indicators of compromise and streamlines threat analysis without leaving...

By Blocks & Files
MinIO Plugs Apache Iceberg Tables Directly Into AIStor
NewsFeb 5, 2026

MinIO Plugs Apache Iceberg Tables Directly Into AIStor

MinIO has made its AIStor Tables feature generally available, embedding the full Apache Iceberg V3 Catalog REST API directly into its object storage platform. The integration lets enterprises treat Iceberg tables as first‑class citizens, unifying structured and unstructured data for...

By Blocks & Files
DDN Appoints Vice Chairman Amid Enterprise AI Expansion
NewsFeb 5, 2026

DDN Appoints Vice Chairman Amid Enterprise AI Expansion

Data Direct Networks (DDN) has named former Cisco and Groq executive Mohsen Moazami as vice chairman, a move seen as positioning the high‑performance computing firm for a public offering. The appointment follows a $300 million Blackstone investment and a strategic shift...

By Blocks & Files
MariaDB Discusses Database Scale and Active:active and Active:passive Architectures
NewsFeb 4, 2026

MariaDB Discusses Database Scale and Active:active and Active:passive Architectures

MariaDB’s chief product officer Vikas Mathur explained the trade‑offs between active‑passive and active‑active database architectures. Active‑passive relies on a primary server with idle standby replicas, offering low complexity but higher cost and unused capacity. Active‑active runs multiple nodes handling reads...

By Blocks & Files
Hitachi Vantara May Be up for Sale
NewsFeb 3, 2026

Hitachi Vantara May Be up for Sale

Hitachi Ltd. is exploring a sale of its Hitachi Vantara data‑storage unit for up to ¥200 billion ($1.3 billion). The move follows a strategic pivot toward higher‑margin businesses such as energy transmission and digital SaaS services. Hitachi Vantara generated roughly ¥300 billion in...

By Blocks & Files
Samsung Shipping Fast and Small PCIe Gen5 Bus 4TB Mini-Gumstick Drive
NewsFeb 3, 2026

Samsung Shipping Fast and Small PCIe Gen5 Bus 4TB Mini-Gumstick Drive

Samsung has begun shipping a 4 TB PM9E1 M.2 2242 SSD that targets space‑constrained AI workstations such as Nvidia DGX Spark. The drive uses Samsung’s 236‑layer Gen 8 V‑NAND, dual‑sided DRAM, and a 5 nm Presto controller, delivering up to 2 million random read IOPS, 2.64 million...

By Blocks & Files
Western Digital Blows Hard Disk Drive Future Wide Open
NewsFeb 3, 2026

Western Digital Blows Hard Disk Drive Future Wide Open

Western Digital announced qualification of a 40 TB UltraSMR hard‑disk drive and unveiled a roadmap that could reach 100 TB using heat‑assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) by 2027. The company introduced High‑Bandwidth Drive (HBD) technology that initially doubles I/O throughput, with plans for...

By Blocks & Files
Commvault Pitches Geo Shield for Sovereign Data Protection
NewsFeb 2, 2026

Commvault Pitches Geo Shield for Sovereign Data Protection

Commvault has launched Geo Shield, a sovereign‑data protection suite that lets enterprises dictate where data resides, who controls access, and who holds encryption keys. The offering spans four deployment models—from local hyperscaler SaaS to private sovereign clouds—supporting both BYOK and HYOK...

By Blocks & Files
Storage News Ticker – February 2
NewsFeb 2, 2026

Storage News Ticker – February 2

The February 2 storage news ticker packed a series of vendor recognitions, product launches and strategic moves across data quality, protection, AI and memory markets. Ataccama earned the top Forrester strategy score, while Coldago’s 2025 map highlighted Cohesity, Commvault, Rubrik and...

By Blocks & Files