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 »

Pure Storage announces NVMe-oF support for FlashArray

Pure Storage recently announced support for NVMe over Fabrics on FlashArray.  The technology is implemented by an upgrade to Purity (the platform O/S) and installation of RDMA-capable Ethernet NICs.  Pure has chosen to go with Ethernet as the first NVMe fabric offering, while other vendors have chosen the Fibre Channel route.  How has this choice… 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 »

MAX Data: Optimising Application Performance with SCM

As the slowest part of the computing architecture, persistent storage is in a constant battle to improve performance.  That goal has moved from being focused on throughput a few decades ago to one of reducing latency as low as possible.  To that end, NVM Express and NVMe over Fabrics have become an area of focus… Read more »

NetApp buys into Kubernetes Orchestration with StackPointCloud

In September 2018, NetApp acquired a little-known cloud services company called StackPointCloud.  StackPoint offers a managed Kubernetes service that enables customers to build Kubernetes clusters across a range of public cloud providers.  Why would NetApp want to acquire this technology and where could it be used? Containerisation First of all, let’s take a step back… Read more »

Performance Benchmarks: Reading Between the Lines

As we move into 2019, storage performance becomes more important than ever.  At the media level, vendors are pushing the boundaries with fast solid-state technologies like NAND flash and 3D-Xpoint.  These products provide performance capabilities we’ve never seen before.  Storage system vendors then take components and build storage solutions, either as bespoke hardware or part… Read more »

NVMe in the Data Centre 2.0 Now Published

You can download the latest version of our NVMe in the Data Centre report by registering through the link below.  We do not share email addresses and only use them to send out follow up papers.   Download Now  

Understanding HPE’s Storage Product Portfolio

Towards the end of 2018, I was invited to attend HPE Discover in Madrid.  In previous years, this has been a great opportunity to get up to speed on the storage strategy the HPE Storage team is following.  What did we learn this year? Intelligent Storage Platform The message being broadcast for the last year… Read more »

Databases are the next battleground for Public Cloud

This week, Amazon Web Services announced the availability of Amazon DocumentDB, a MongoDB-compatible document database.  For AWS at least, the database market has been heating up recently.  With so many offerings to choose from, are databases the next land-grab for the public cloud? DocumentDB Let’s look first at the announcement of Amazon DocumentDB.  This new… 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 »

◀ ▶
Latest

  • Tech Field Day 10 Preview: SolarWinds

    This is one of a series of posts discussing the presenters at Tech Field Day 10, occurring 3rd – 5th February 2016 in Austin, Texas, at which I am an attending delegate.  See links at the end of this post to other presenting vendors.  Details of the event can be found on the Tech Field… Read more »

  • Tech Field Day 10 Preview: Dell

    This is one of a series of posts discussing the presenters at Tech Field Day 10, occurring 3rd – 5th February 2016 in Austin, Texas, at which I am an attending delegate.  See links at the end of this post to other presenting vendors.  Details of the event can be found on the Tech Field… Read more »

  • Tech Field Day 10 Preview: Rubrik

    This is one of a series of posts discussing the presenters at Tech Field Day 10, occurring 3rd – 5th February 2016 in Austin, Texas, at which I am an attending delegate.  See links at the end of this post to other presenting vendors.  Details of the event can be found on the Tech Field… Read more »

  • Tech Field Day 10 Preview: VMTurbo

    This is one of a series of posts discussing the presenters at Tech Field Day 10, occurring 3rd – 5th February 2016 in Austin, Texas, at which I am an attending delegate.  See links at the end of this post to other presenting vendors.  Details of the event can be found on the Tech Field… Read more »

  • Tech Field Day 10 Preview: Diablo Technologies

    This is one of a series of posts discussing the presenters at Tech Field Day 10, occurring 3rd – 5th February 2016 in Austin, Texas, at which I am an attending delegate.  See links at the end of this post to other presenting vendors.  Details of the event can be found on the Tech Field… Read more »

  • 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 »