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 »

Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Riverbed

This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018.  For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/. If someone asked me what business Riverbed was in, I’d have said WAN acceleration.  In past lives, I’ve… Read more »

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Latest

  • 6TB HGST Helium Drive Continues Move to Two-Tier Storage

    Over the years, hard disk drives have steadily increased their speeds, peaking at 15,000 RPM, with only a fleeting attempt by Western Digital to push the boundaries up to 20K.  As we know, at that point solid-state drives became more viable than faster HDDs and manufacturers have reined back their aspirations.  Recently we’ve seen more… Read more »

  • NFS Vendor Benchmarks – Caveat Emptor

    This week we’ve seen an update on NFS benchmarks with Hitachi announcing their latest results (via Hu’s blog) using HUS File and FMDs (Flash Module Drives).  Of course Hitachi wouldn’t be announcing if they hadn’t beaten EMC with the figures; no-one releases data that makes them look worse, after all.  But what are the data… Read more »

  • The Psychology of Pricing

    It’s been another interesting week in IT.  Following on from recent rumours, Nirvanix have finally publicly announced they are closing down, replacing their website with a single holding page directing customers to IBM.  Yesterday, Violin Memory released their shares to the public and floated on the New York Stock Exchange.  Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot… Read more »

  • The Fall of STEC and Rise of Western Digital

    In a news announcement yesterday, STEC Inc, makers of solid state flash drives (SSDs) announced a “merger” with (i.e. was acquired by) Western Digital, one of the leading hard disk drive manufacturers.  It’s a spectacular fall for a company that at one stage had a share price of over $41/share in September 2009.  However an… Read more »

  • HP 3PAR 7450 All Flash Array

    I mentioned in a previous post that I would delve a little deeper into what HP have done to optimise performance on the new 3PAR 7450.  I was lucky to be able to catch up at the 3Par booth with Priyadarshi Prasad, who works in marketing for HP 3PAR.  We took some time to talk… Read more »

  • Defining Software Defined Storage

    The term Software Defined Storage has generally accepted within IT as a process for delivering storage without the lock-in of hardware from the vendor.  How has our understanding of the term evolved over recent years? It’s easy to use the examples of server virtualisation and networking as reasons why thinking of storage virtualisation for SDS… Read more »

  • Review: AWS Storage Gateway

    Cloud Storage Gateways provide the ability to write data directly into a cloud service/storage provider, either via a physical or virtual onsite appliance.  There are many vendors in the marketplace today and some are making serious money, (as reported by Chris Mellor today in The Register).  Amazon Web Services, seen as a leader in Infrastructure… Read more »

  • Violin Memory acquires Gridiron Systems

    Yesterday, Violin announced that they have acquired Gridiron Systems, a vendor of cache acceleration hardware and software.  At the outset it may seem odd that an all-flash vendor would want to acquire a company offering acceleration for traditional arrays, however this could be a very smart deal indeed in a number of ways. Software is… Read more »

  • Vendor Lock-in with Cloud Storage – Good or Bad?

    There have been two interesting and contrasting announcements covering cloud storage in the last couple of weeks.  The first was NetApp, who have announced “NetApp Private Storage for AWS”.  which seems to a proprietary way of replicating data into the AWS cloud.  The second comes from Nirvanix and Violin Memory; Violin have deployed their all-SSD… Read more »