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PowerMax, VMAX, XtremIO – the Agony of Choice
Last week Dell EMC announced the next generation of the long-running Symmetrix platform with the release of PowerMax. This all-NVMe array apparently isn’t a replacement for VMAX (or XtremIO). However it is yet another decision point in customer choice for all-flash from Dell EMC. Does the company need another all-flash array or is this just… Read more »
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Are We Suffering Logo Addiction Syndrome?
Remember when converged infrastructure came in? We were told that packaging was the next best thing and doing things in separate towers of skills was bad. Now it appears we’ve developed Logo Addiction and should be looking to build things from scratch again. The basis of this thesis is a presentation at Interop ITX by… Read more »
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Validating HYCU Deployment By The Numbers
Vendors like to claim that their software is “1-click” or installable within 30 seconds. In general these claims are pretty fatuous unless you’re either frequently deploying or looking to automate. I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at a range of storage solutions that are fully software-defined and seeing how easy that deployment process… Read more »
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Dell EMC to Offer Isilon on Google Cloud Platform
It’s Dell Technologies World this week in Las Vegas and the first announcement of interest is the future offering of the Isilon NAS platform on Google Cloud Platform. The details of Isilon Cloud on GCP are scant, to say the least. All I’ve found so far is this community post (link). With little to go… Read more »
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What are TBW (Terabytes Written) and DWPD (Device Writes Per Day)?
TBW is an acronym for Terabytes Written and DWPD is an acronym for Device Writes Per Day. Both are measures of the endurance of flash storage. Conflating Reliability and Endurance in SSDs What is the Technology Behind Samsung Z-NAND? Flash storage has a limit on the number of write (or specifically program/erase) cycles that can… Read more »
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The Burden of Technical Debt
As the issues at TSB continue to unfold, I look on at an IT problem that will likely never be fully explained and eventually disappear into the archives as yet another “computer glitch”. Why does it keep happening, what’s wrong with the industry and how can we do better next time? Experience Who am I… Read more »
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NetApp embraces cloud for future business growth
Technology is a fickle business and surviving more than a few short years is hard to achieve. The industry changes very quickly, as the next greatest thing consigns solutions and products to being legacy, even if they are still running many organisations’ core business. Storage has evolved to be a major part of any IT… Read more »
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Why HCI Data Protection is Different
When so many businesses are totally dependent on their digital information, data protection becomes a key requirement for every IT organisation. The way in which we implement technology changes almost daily and this affects the choices on how we protect it. Where 20 years ago the standard model for deployment was based on physical servers,… Read more »
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Droplet Computing delivers universal app virtualisation
The IT world is great at delivering technically elegant solutions that intrigue and pique my (and others) interest. In recent years the entire virtualisation and containers movements have been good examples of this. Producing something technically interesting doesn’t always lead to a solution that benefits the business. However, in the case of Droplet Computing, the… Read more »