Western Digital Redefines DRAM Caching

In a recent announcement, Western Digital (or at least the HGST part of the company) announced the release of an interesting if not curious solution for extending DRAM with fast storage.  The Ultrastar DC ME200 extends server DRAM using proprietary caching software in an attempt to fully exploit the capabilities of modern multi-core processors.  In… Read more »

ESXi on ARM – Why?

This is certainly a question I’ve been pondering for a few weeks since the announcements at VMworld 2018 and where Ray O’Farrell presented ESXi running on an ARM Cortex A72 device.  Since my last post covering some VMware news, I’ve been asking – is there any logic in running a hypervisor on an IoT platform… Read more »

Technology First? Requirements First!

As more an observer of the technology industry these days, something struck a chord with me as I listened to a recent podcast recording.  Paul Stringfellow hosts a weekly podcast called Tech Interviews.  In Episode 77, he spoke to Matt Watts from NetApp on “cloud first” as a strategy.  The TL;DR of the discussion is… Read more »

HDD Capacity Threshold Reaches 15TB

Western Digital has announced what is currently the largest capacity hard drive available on the market today.  The Ultrastar DC HC620 has 15TB of capacity in a helium-filled 3.5″ form-factor.  This is a 7% increase (or obviously 1TB) over the 14TB drive announced in October 2017. Incremental The new capacity drive looks more like an… Read more »

IBM Buys Red Hat

Probably the biggest talking point this week is the announcement that IBM intends to buy Red Hat Inc, purveyor of the open source Red Hat operating system and an entire ecosystem of products around it.  The acquisition is interesting, firstly because of the attention it has garnered, but also for the implications to public cloud,… Read more »

Database Replication is Hard

I can only feel sympathy for the team at GitHub, after they suffered an outage recently, due to issues with database replication.  The problem was caused by a mere 43-second break in network connectivity.  We’ve all been there – keeping replicated data in sync is a thankless task and one that can be a nightmare… Read more »

Evolving Enterprise Storage Buying Models

One of the most tedious of tasks I’ve had to undertake over the years has been the planning and deployment of new storage technology.  In that respect, I’m not referring to the physical installation, but rather the process of capacity planning, sourcing and agreeing terms on new storage capacity.  Increasingly, internal businesses consume storage on-demand… Read more »

Building a modern data platform – exploiting the cloud

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – exploiting the cloud” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. No modern data platform would be complete if we didn’t talk about the use of public cloud. Public cloud can play a very… Read more »

Building a modern data platform – Out on the edge

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – Out on the edge” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. In this series so far we have concentrated on the data under our control in our datacentres and managed clouds and protected… Read more »

Building a modern data platform – Prevention (Office365)

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – Prevention (Office365)” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. In this series so far, we have looked at getting our initial foundations right and ensuring we have insight and control of our data… Read more »

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Latest

  • Western Digital Redefines DRAM Caching

    In a recent announcement, Western Digital (or at least the HGST part of the company) announced the release of an interesting if not curious solution for extending DRAM with fast storage.  The Ultrastar DC ME200 extends server DRAM using proprietary caching software in an attempt to fully exploit the capabilities of modern multi-core processors.  In… Read more »

  • ESXi on ARM – Why?

    This is certainly a question I’ve been pondering for a few weeks since the announcements at VMworld 2018 and where Ray O’Farrell presented ESXi running on an ARM Cortex A72 device.  Since my last post covering some VMware news, I’ve been asking – is there any logic in running a hypervisor on an IoT platform… Read more »

  • Technology First? Requirements First!

    As more an observer of the technology industry these days, something struck a chord with me as I listened to a recent podcast recording.  Paul Stringfellow hosts a weekly podcast called Tech Interviews.  In Episode 77, he spoke to Matt Watts from NetApp on “cloud first” as a strategy.  The TL;DR of the discussion is… Read more »

  • HDD Capacity Threshold Reaches 15TB

    Western Digital has announced what is currently the largest capacity hard drive available on the market today.  The Ultrastar DC HC620 has 15TB of capacity in a helium-filled 3.5″ form-factor.  This is a 7% increase (or obviously 1TB) over the 14TB drive announced in October 2017. Incremental The new capacity drive looks more like an… Read more »

  • IBM Buys Red Hat

    Probably the biggest talking point this week is the announcement that IBM intends to buy Red Hat Inc, purveyor of the open source Red Hat operating system and an entire ecosystem of products around it.  The acquisition is interesting, firstly because of the attention it has garnered, but also for the implications to public cloud,… Read more »

  • Database Replication is Hard

    I can only feel sympathy for the team at GitHub, after they suffered an outage recently, due to issues with database replication.  The problem was caused by a mere 43-second break in network connectivity.  We’ve all been there – keeping replicated data in sync is a thankless task and one that can be a nightmare… Read more »

  • Evolving Enterprise Storage Buying Models

    One of the most tedious of tasks I’ve had to undertake over the years has been the planning and deployment of new storage technology.  In that respect, I’m not referring to the physical installation, but rather the process of capacity planning, sourcing and agreeing terms on new storage capacity.  Increasingly, internal businesses consume storage on-demand… Read more »

  • Building a modern data platform – exploiting the cloud

    This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – exploiting the cloud” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. No modern data platform would be complete if we didn’t talk about the use of public cloud. Public cloud can play a very… Read more »

  • Building a modern data platform – Out on the edge

    This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – Out on the edge” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. In this series so far we have concentrated on the data under our control in our datacentres and managed clouds and protected… Read more »