Western Digital Redefines DRAM Caching

In a recent press release, Western Digital 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 an age where in-memory computing is increasing 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

  • Hardware Still Delivering – New Products from Nimbus and E8

    Despite all the recent noise around software defined storage (SDS), vendors still keep coming to the market with new hardware solutions.  Over the past weeks we’ve seen new products from Nimbus Data and emerging startup E8. Nimbus Nimbus Data has had what can only be called a ‘chequered’ history.  My first introduction to the company was… Read more »

  • HPE Changes Storage Leadership – Goel out and Philbin in

    It was recently reported in the media that Manish Goel, HPE’s head of storage has left the company. This seems to be one of a number of changes, including the departure of Cloud head Bill Hilf.  Although I didn’t meet him directly, Manish presented to the bloggers/influencers at the latest HPE Discover event in Las… Read more »

  • PernixData and Nutanix – Where’s the Synergy?

    Although not officially announced, it looks like the acquisition of PernixData by Nutanix is a done deal.  Confirmation came from Frank Denneman, Dutch blogger and former tech evangelist for Pernix who has now left the company.  So what can we make of this?  What benefit is there in taking a caching technology and adding it… Read more »

  • RIP XtremIO?

    It’s a contentious title for a blog post, but I felt it worth writing a follow-up to both my Vulcan Cast with Marc Farley and Chris Mellor’s article in The Register.  A rumour circulating last week implied that EMC was considering shutting down the XtremIO product line.  The origin seemed to come from a number… Read more »

  • Windows Containers – Making Windows Server Relevant Again

    One of the most interesting presentations at DockerCon was on the implementation of containers (and Docker specifically) on the Microsoft Windows Server platform.  The Microsoft presentation was given by John Starks and Taylor Brown, although John did the majority of the presenting.  You can find the video online here.  Implementing containerisation for Windows has obviously… Read more »

  • Are DataCore’s SPC Benchmarks Unfair?

    DataCore has been active over recent months with benchmarks based on their new SANsymphony Parallel Server offering.  The most recent of these claims 5.1 million SPC-1 IOPS at $0.08/SPC-1 IOPS and 0.32 millisecond response time.  Other vendors are crying foul on these results, claiming they don’t represent a true test because all of the data… Read more »

  • Docker for Mac & Windows – Changing the Developer Paradigm

    Over the years as a (part-time) programmer I’ve written a huge amount of code.  The specific languages I’ve used have included mainframe assembler, FORTRAN, Pascal, various flavours of BASIC, Visual Basic, Visual C++, C++ native, PHP, Perl, CLISTS, shell scripts of various types, Python, HTML, Java, Javascript and frameworks like Microsoft .NET.  With any of… Read more »

  • Docker & Storage – Solving The Problem of Data Persistence

    This week I’m in Seattle, the home of Starbucks, Boeing and Microsoft for DockerCon 2016.  Compared to the normal events I attend, this one promises to be a more “casual” affair, so I’m sporting polo shirts and vendor hoodies as my standard attire. One of the more interesting problems yet to be fully solved with… Read more »

  • SolidFire Introduces New “FlashForward” Purchasing Model

    If you’ve ever had to scope out and purchase enterprise storage, you’ll know what a nightmare it can be.  Vendors love to make the process as opaque as possible, with quotes that run into multiple pages and dozens of line items – including bezels and racks.  Consider also the issue of adding more hardware (e.g…. Read more »