Podcast #3 – Chris & Matt review the SFD18 presenters

Here’s a little extra podcast Matt Leib and I recorded this afternoon in preparation for Storage Field Day 18.  You can tell this wasn’t recorded in a studio, but actually Matt’s hotel room!  Matt preps coffee in his mini-Nespresso device while we discuss each of the presenting vendors. The discussion is ad-hoc, off the cuff… Read more »

Thoughts from Hitachi NEXT 2018

Earlier this year I was invited to Hitachi NEXT in lovely San Diego.  As part of my trip, I took the time to learn a little more about some of the technology Hitachi has been working on and bringing to market either directly through Hitachi Ltd or Hitachi Vantara.  You may remember that Hitachi Vantara… 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 »

Building a modern data platform – Control

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – Control” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. In the first parts (here and here) of this series we have looked at ensuring the building blocks of our platform are right… Read more »

Building a modern data platform – Availability

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – Availability” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. In part one we discussed the importance of getting our storage platform right, in part two we look at availability. The idea that availability is a crucial… Read more »

Building a modern data platform – The Storage

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at “Building a modern data platform – The Storage” where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. It probably isn’t a surprise to anyone who has read my blogs previously to find out that when it comes to the… Read more »

IDC 1Q2018 Data Shows a Rebound for Storage Hardware Sales

The latest IDC Storage Tracker numbers are out and in the spirit of recent analysis, I’ve put the numbers into my tracking spreadsheet.  The figures represent data for Q1, which now has 12 years’ worth of coverage.  With around 42% growth in the general storage hardware figures and 20% in external storage sales, the numbers… Read more »

Are We Suffering Logo Addiction Syndrome?

Remember when converged infrastructure came in?  We were told that packaging was the next best thing and doing things in separate towers of skills was bad.  Now it appears we’ve developed Logo Addiction and should be looking to build things from scratch again. The basis of this thesis is a presentation at Interop ITX by… Read more »

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Latest

  • Flash Tiering – HP 3PAR Adaptive Cache

    I recently completed a white paper for HPE on a new feature in the 3PAR StoreServ platform called Adaptive Cache.  In disk-based 3PAR systems, flash SSD devices can be used to augment the DRAM cache.  This acts like a second level of memory tiering by cascading cached pages to flash rather than simply flushing them… Read more »

  • Avere Systems Releases Virtual Edge Filer To Deliver Data to Compute

    It’s been a little over three years since I first was introduced to Avere Systems at what was SNW Europe (now Powering The Cloud) in Frankfurt.  At the time, the positioning on their FXT hardware platform was as an edge “caching” filer to allow core NAS assets to be extended to branch offices without sacrificing… Read more »

  • Hewlett Packard Splits In Two

    Overnight news officially broke that Hewlett Packard Inc is to divide its business into two, focusing on PCs and printing through HP Inc and enterprise services and hardware through a company to be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.  Meg Whitman will run one (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise) and chair the other (HP Inc). The idea of spinning off parts… Read more »

  • VMworld 2014: VAIO – vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering

    One of the more interesting announcements at VMworld 2014 this year was a technology called VAIO or vSphere APIs for I/O Filtering.  This new feature was detailed in session TEX1492 (although I didn’t see it) and will allow 3rd party vendors to insert code in the form of a filter driver and deployed as a… Read more »

  • Why Have VVOLs Taken So Long to Deliver?

    Another VMworld has come and gone and still we haven’t seen the production deployment of VVOLs.  Just to recap, VVOLs are the evolution of the packaging of virtual machines that currently reside in data stores.  The main benefit is to be able to apply storage performance and availability policies to a VM object rather than… Read more »

  • VMware Announces EVO – Hyper-Converged Reference Architectures

    The big announcement so far at VMworld 2014 is the final emergence a new reference architecture called EVO and what was covertly known as Project Mystic or Marvin.  EVO is VMware’s hyper-converged offering to take on the likes of Nutanix, Simplivity and Scale Computing. It’s obvious that VMware sees the idea of hyper-converged solutions as… Read more »

  • Two “New” Hardware Products from Violin Memory

    The ups and downs of Violin Memory’s business has been well documented over the last few months.  With a new CEO and management team in place, the company is coming to market with new products, which they hope will revive their fortunes. Windows Flash Array First for discussion is the Windows Flash Array (WFA).  This… Read more »

  • Getting Started With Docker

    In my previous post, I talked about how Docker fits in with workload virtualisation.  In this post, I’ll look at getting started with Docker itself. Installation In this post I’ll look at the basics of installing Docker and creating a container.  I’ll reference the CentOS distribution initially, with more added as I validate and test… Read more »

  • Flash News: Tegile, Nimble, Fusion-io and 3PAR

    Another week goes by and more news on flash storage arrives in my inbox.  This week we’re talking about Tegile Systems Inc, Nimble Storage Inc, Fusion-io and HP’s 3PAR line of arrays. Tegile Launch Intelliflash If you’re not doing things intelligently with flash, you’re not doing it right, as we will see from these announcements…. Read more »