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 »

The Biggest Storage Trends of 2019

It’s time to gaze into the crystal ball and think what might be on the storage agenda for 2019.  What will the biggest storage trends for 2019 be?  Let’s start with some easy ones. NVMe over Fabrics will be big Of course it will.  All of the major storage vendors are already working towards supporting… 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 »

NooBaa is acquired by Red Hat

I was interested to see that Red Hat recently decided to acquire NooBaa, a start-up developing an object storage platform.  What makes this story interesting is not the NooBaa technology itself, but rather that Red Hat is acquiring yet another storage platform to complement those it already owns.  Why add another to the list? NooBaa… Read more »

Will VMware lead the newly public Dell Technologies?

At the end of 2018, Dell Technologies Inc returned to the stock market with the conversion of VMware tracking stock into Class C Dell Technologies shares.  It’s interesting to note that over 90% of Class V shareholders voted to receive cash rather than shares.  However, as the cash return was limited (and paid for by a… Read more »

Processors back under the spotlight for 2019

This is just a quick post to highlight the developments we’re seeing in processors at the moment.  Intel has announced Foveros, enabling more efficient component stacking.  AMD has EPYC, with more PCIe performance for external peripherals like storage.  And of course, we’re seeing a whole host of ARM processors being put into public cloud.  Let’s… 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 »

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 »

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Latest

  • 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 »

  • AWS and VMware Partner to Bring RDS for the Enterprise

    At VMworld 2018, Amazon Web Services and VMware jointly announced a preview of AWS RDS, called RDS on VMware.  The Relational Database Service will in the future be able to run on-premises using VMware vSphere. VMworld 2018 – Divergent VMware VMware on Azure?  Great! Or Maybe Not Enterprise-Class Public Cloud How does this position the… Read more »

  • Enterprise-Class Public Cloud

    Never throw away a good idea, they say (or at least I do).  The same applies to blogs that haven’t yet crystallised into a worthwhile topic.  Generally, I put them on the back-burner until a number of paths align.  After seeing the Oracle Cloud team present at Cloud Field Day 3 in April this year… 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 »

  • Pure Storage – Seeding the NVMe Market

    Interested in learning more about NVMe?  Download our free 21-page white paper report (no registration required) here   NVMe in the Data Centre I’m only just digesting the news from Pure Accelerate 2018, including some of the product updates we saw.  One aspect of the announcements was the positioning of FlashArray with NVMe.  Certainly a hot… 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 »

  • VMworld 2018 – Divergent VMware

    Nobody likes to be wrong, least of all me, and it’s with fascination that I look at the news coming out of VMworld 2018 this week.  I’m comparing the news to my thoughts on VMware’s future two years ago in my Peak VMware post.  Did we reach peak VMware or did we actually reach peak… Read more »

  • QLC NAND – how real is it and what can we expect from the technology?

    Interested in learning more about NVMe?  Download our free 21-page white paper report (no registration required) here   NVMe in the Data Centre Update: This post was originally published on 11 August 2017.  It has since been updated to reflect the advances in QLC technology in the market. Since NAND flash storage was first introduced into… Read more »

  • Automating HCI Data Protection

    I recently wrote a number of posts covering HYCU, a data protection software solution from HYCU Inc.  During the testing I was curious to understand how easy it would be to automate the build of a dedicated backup environment.  Here’s what I found. HYCU Recap HYCU is a software product that was written specifically for… Read more »