Software Defining Your Storage

There is a lot of talk in the technology industry of “software defining”, the idea that elements of our technology stack, traditionally based on a hardware appliance can be abstracted from it and made available as a software-only appliance that can be installed on any hardware.  But why? Wouldn’t you rather your key assets were… Read more »

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 »

Building a modern data platform – what have we learned?

This is a guest post by Paul Stringfellow from Gardner Systems and was originally posted at Building a modern data platform – what have we learned? where you can also find Paul’s “Tech Interviews” podcast. As I reach the end of this series, it raises the question “what have we learned?”. If you’ve read through it all,… 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 »

Elastifile Cloud File Service Now Available on Google Cloud

Elastifile has announced the availability of a fully managed scale-out file service for Google Cloud.  This is more than just another marketplace offering.  The company’s Cloud File Service is now fully integrated into the Google Cloud ecosystem.  Storage is configured through GCP APIs and GUIs and billed by Google based on consumption.  This is a… 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 »

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 »

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Latest

  • Solid State Arrays: Pure Storage Inc

    A clear focus of the recent Tech Field Day #8 event was the use of flash storage (or SSDs) for storage arrays or within hybrid solutions.  Pure Storage offers an all flash storage array, which they say can be delivered at the same cost or less than traditional solutions.  It’s a big claim, bearing in… Read more »

  • Who Will Be The First Solid State Array Vendor To Be Acquired?

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two years, you can’t have failed to notice that solid state storage is here and is here in a big way.  Two weeks ago at TFD#8, we had presentations from two all-flash array startups, Pure Storage and SolidFire.  I’ll have more specifics on these companies… Read more »

  • Why Does Microsoft Hyper-V Not Support NFS?

    I recently wrote an article covering storage for virtualisation and was surprised to find out that Microsoft does not support the use of NFS shares with Hyper-V.  At first I thought perhaps I was doing something wrong and that my configuration was in error.  But after a lot of lab testing and eventually finding some… Read more »

  • So Your AWS-based Application is Down? Don’t Blame Amazon

    After a busy day in London I returned home to read the news of issues in one of Amazon’s US data centre locations causing problems with EC2 and database (RDS) instances.  It seems the services of many Internet companies were affected including Reddit, Quora, Hootsuite and FourSquare,  Is it fair that Amazon should shoulder the… Read more »

  • You can’t trust what you read on the Internet – Unless it’s EMC

    Seems like Chris Mellor has struck a raw nerve with EMC and in particular Chad Sakac over this article he wrote for The Register.  Unfortunately Chad’s response makes him appear more like a spoilt child than a marketing professional who’s prepared to take the rough with the smooth in IT marketing.  Of course this isn’t… Read more »

  • Enterprise Computing: The Slow Demise of The Hard Drive

    Yesterday Nimbus Data Systems announced the release of their S-Class storage array.  What’s different about this storage device is that it uses purely NAND memory rather than traditional spinning disk.  With it’s arrival, we’re seeing another nail in the coffin of the traditional hard drive. OK, so the S-Class isn’t going to replace hard drives… Read more »

  • Enterprise Computing: Thin Provisioning and The Cookie Monster!

    The Gestalt IT Field Day was a great success in bringing together a mixture of delegates from varying discplines. Following the presentations from 3Par and Symantec, there was heated debate about the implementation of Thin Provisioning and the ability to reclaim released storage resources. This post covers the basic concepts of Thin Provisioning and more… Read more »

  • Enterprise Computing: Why Thin Provisioning Is Not The Holy Grail for Utilisation

    Thin Provisioning (Dynamic Provisioning, Virtual Provisioning, or whatever you prefer to call it) is being heavily touted as a method of reducing storage costs.  Whilst at the outset it seems to provide some significant storage savings, it isn’t the answer for all our storage ills. What is it Thin Provisioning (TP) is a way of reducing… Read more »

  • Whatever Happened to Hybrid Drives?

    Over 18 months ago, I discussed in a post (here) the Hybrid Storage Alliance who were looking to increase the performance of hard drives by adding large amounts of flash to each device. But where are they now? A quick check on their website shows precious little information. In fact what’s on offer seems to… Read more »