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

  • VMware – Software is Not Enough

    In an interesting turn of direction, rumours abound that VMware might be about to enter the hardware business with a converged server/storage offering – details are here in The Register. According to the article update VMware have stressed that they are a software-only company but do collaborate with OEM partners.  So if VMware was to… Read more »

  • Iaas Series: Amazon S3 Version Objects Lifecycle Management

    S3, or Simple Storage Service is Amazon’s high capacity, high resiliency object store.  The company recently announced a new feature, which allows versioned objects (those objects where multiple versions are retained for historical archive purposes) in S3 to be managed with lifecycle rules that either move data to AWS Glacier or assign a time period… Read more »

  • What Does The Future Hold For Pure Storage?

    Timing is everything in this game and following my last post (by mere minutes) on Pure Storage’s new FlashArray announcements, Chris Mellor at The Register wrote an article discussing Pure’s future evolution. The inevitable comparison is made with NetApp and their “single” platform of 20 years, namely Data ONTAP.  Forgive me for sounding like a… Read more »

  • Flash Shipment Bragging Rights (Updated)

    There’s a lot of “willy waving” comments being thrown around at the moment regarding flash storage shipments.  The news from one vendor is barely out before another is claiming they have already exceeded those figures.  So what are the claims, can we assume any facts and of course does any of it matter? I’ve done… Read more »

  • Project Liberty – A Brave Step For EMC?

    In the run-up to EMC World next week, EMC has released information about something they are calling “Project Liberty”, which appears to be a virtual appliance based on VNX.  Is this a serious attempt to deliver products for the ethereal Software Defined Data Centre and what risk does this pose to EMC’s traditional storage business?… Read more »

  • SolidFire Releases Element OS Version 6

    In anticipation of the upcoming Storage Field Day 5, this post will discuss the new features made available by SolidFire with the release of version 6 of Element OS, the software that drives their storage system.  Much of this information was discussed at the first SolidFire Analysts’ Day, held in February 2014.  If there’s a… Read more »

  • IaaS Series: Cloud Storage Pricing – How Low Can They Go?

    With recent “price wars” between Google, Amazon and Microsoft, the cost of storage in the cloud has never been cheaper.  The question is, how long can these vendors keep reducing their prices and are we any closer to the bottom as far as Infrastructure as a Service is concerned? The latest price drops from the… Read more »

  • IaaS Series – Google Compute Engine Sustained Use Discounts

    Over the coming weeks and months I will be covering public cloud computing and discussing the offerings from the major vendors in the market.  Initially this will focus on Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS from Google (Google Cloud Platform), Amazon (Amazon Web Services) and Microsoft (Azure), although where possible I will include other providers,… Read more »

  • Project Mystic – EMC & VMware Do Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

    If the rumours are to be believed, EMC and VMware are teaming up to develop their own converged infrastructure solution.  With the imminent release of VMware’s Virtual SAN platform, it appears even the storage “giants” of the industry are accepting that converged infrastructure is a force to be reckoned with. The CRN article above is… Read more »