What Happened to Storage Spaces Direct?

Can this article on The Register be true?  Has Microsoft removed Storage Spaces Direct from the latest Windows Server build? To be honest I’d initially not given this article much thought until I decided to have a look at the latest Windows Server build myself.  I was interested to find that I can’t actually download… Read more »

Block is Not the Solution for Persistent Container Storage

It appears we’re reaching a consensus that persistent storage is needed for containers.  Despite early resistance, with an assumption that containers and their data should be transient, the logic of data persistence is starting to take hold.  To be honest it simply makes sense. Yes, I could keep my data in sync between multiple nodes… Read more »

Can Violin Systems Successfully Rise from the Ashes of Violin Memory?

I recently met up with the CEO of Violin Systems, Ebrahim Abbasi, for a chat about the industry and the future of the company.  Those who knew Violin Memory will be familiar with this company as it is essentially the assets and IP of the failed Violin, acquired by the Soros Group and relaunched as… Read more »

That 100TB Drive Is Closer Than You Think

Another day goes by and we have another story about hard drive technology.  Yesterday, Western Digital held a media event (I wasn’t invited) to announce MAMR, the latest technology for improving hard drive density.  MAMR stands for Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording and is a process to increase the stability of recording with very small grain… Read more »

Fixing the Problem of I/O With Parallel Computing – DataCore MaxParallel

The idea of improving the performance of applications through the use of parallel computing isn’t a new concept.  Look back 50 years and we can see that Amdahl’s Law shows how to predict the performance improvement that can be achieved by using multiple processors.  You can find details of Amdahl’s Law on Wikipedia, but essentially… Read more »

It’s Time for Hard Drives to Join Tape In The Archive Tier

This week we’ve seen the announcement of 14TB 3.5” hard drives from one vendor and 12TB from another. It’s hard to imagine the concept of 14TB in a single hard drive when ten years ago we were looking at only 1TB devices. However, these devices have a problem. The throughput and latency has remained relatively… Read more »

Azure Enterprise NFS by NetApp – Initial Thoughts

One of the big announcements coming out of NetApp Insight in Las Vegas is the release of Microsoft Azure Enterprise NFS Service using Data ONTAP technology.  The idea that a cloud hyperscaler could use a mainstream technology for storage instead of building their own is unique enough, but the more interesting scenario is the ability… Read more »

Scale Computing Debuts HC3 in Google Cloud Platform

Hyper-converged infrastructure is a great technology for running a range of mixed workloads.  With HCI how do you manage DR?  Typically the standard solution might be to run up another cluster in a separate data centre and run both 50% active/active or have one purely for standby.  What about running in the public cloud?  With… Read more »

Qumulo Releases QF2 – A Cross-Cloud Scale-Out File System

Over the last few weeks, I’ve talked a lot about data mobility and exactly how we should get data into the public cloud from on-premises locations.  You can find links to the posts at the end of this blog entry.  Much of what I’ve talked about revolves around moving data in a relatively static way,… Read more »

Measuring the Size of the Storage Market

Last week I posted a small comment on the latest IDC Storage Tracker figures.  The data shows ODM Direct as the largest category and the one with the most growth (73% year on year).  For some time I’ve wondered if the reporting of hardware really represents the state of the industry.  After all, it’s a… Read more »

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Latest

  • Hitachi Expands Flash Portfolio With Cheetah

    Just when we thought there were enough all-flash products on the market, Hitachi (or HDS if you prefer) has released a new line of all-flash systems under the brand name “Hitachi Flash Storage” or HFS.  The Cheetah reference in the title is the project name of the product during its development.  Before digging into technical… Read more »

  • Storage and Analytics – Creating Shared Knowledge

    A few years ago I worked with a company called Storage Fusion that provided a SaaS offering for analysing storage systems.  With a few simple scripts it was possible to collect the configuration information on one or more storage arrays and use that data to gain insights into metrics such as utilisation, performance and efficiency.  One benefit of… Read more »

  • Hardware Still Matters – Even With Software Defined Storage

    This week Atlantis Computing, a vendor of hyper-converged and software defined storage solutions, released a new hardware appliance in their “Hyperscale” range, aimed at the ROBO (Remote Office Branch Office) market.  I’ll come back to the details in a moment, however what is interesting in this announcement is that despite appearances to the contrary, hardware still… Read more »

  • Has S3 Become the De-Facto API Standard?

    “The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from” This quote is variously attributed to Grace Hopper and others in the computer industry and in some respects it’s ironic that a statement about multiple standards is attributed to multiple authors!  However, that said, it is true that technology seems… Read more »

  • Software Defined Storage and TECHunplugged Austin

    Vendors love buzzwords and phrases and nothing exemplifies this more than the term Software Defined Storage or SDS.  Look back a few years ago and storage appliances were going to be replaced by commodity hardware driven by software.  Naturally that was the hope of those vendors selling software-only solutions; they needed end users to believe that… Read more »

  • The Rise of Ultra-Fast Storage Appliances

    Updated 16 October 2017 with new companies. The early days of shared storage were focused around fixing some of the problems experienced with having multiple disk drives in every server, namely – availability, resiliency, shared access and efficiency.  Shared storage arrays resolved many of these issues by providing centralised shared, optimised and managed storage resources…. Read more »

  • Nutanix Files For $200 million Initial Public Offering

    As the year closes, news has emerged that Nutanix Inc, a vendor of hyper-converged solutions has finally filed an S-1 with the US SEC for an Initial Public Offering (IPO), presumably to happen in early 2016.  There are rumours that the timing was chosen as “a good time to bury bad news” (a reference to… Read more »

  • ZeroStack – A Better Way to do OpenStack

    My first opportunity to see OpenStack in action was a 2011 event at Vinopolis in London (sadly Vinopolis closes at the end of this year, so that experience won’t be repeated).  Throughout the presentations I was surprised to see a focus on how fast code had been written (statements like, “we did that in 2 days”,… Read more »

  • Flash Consolidation: NetApp to Acquire SolidFire

    Amid much rumour, Monday finally saw the announcement that NetApp Inc intends to acquire SolidFire Inc, an all-flash storage startup.  The agreement sees the company acquired for $870 million in cash, somewhat short of the $1.2 billion rumoured value.  Those of you following my posts (and other work) will know I’ve talked about both companies… Read more »