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

  • Dropbox Files for IPO

    It’s arrived.  Dropbox, the ubiquitous file-sharing platform, has finally submitted a rather light S-1, indicating an Initial Public Offering is on the way.  From the various reports written so far, it’s likely the company is intending to raise around $500m. Subsidies The first thing that leaps out at me when looking into the announcement is… Read more »

  • Dell Terminates {code}

    Dell Inc has apparently pulled the funding for the {code} team, a set of projects to develop open source software within the company.  As reported by The New Stack, the team is being wound up, with the work allegedly being picked up other teams.  However, blogs like this from Kendrick Coleman indicate that perhaps the… Read more »

  • Data Mobility – Global/Scale-out Data Platforms

    This is one of a series of posts looking at data mobility for the hybrid cloud. You can find a link to all of the published articles as they become available here.  (link). Probably the most elegant solution to data mobility is to seemingly make data appear in many places at the same time.  Imagine… Read more »

  • The Practicality of In-Situ Processing

    On last week’s Storage Unpacked podcast, we talked to Chris Mellor about IoT.  He raised the subject of “in-situ processing” or basically taking compute to storage.  On the face of it, this seems like a good idea.  In fact, last year I talked to Enrico Signoretti, Head of Product Strategy at OpenIO about the company’s… Read more »

  • Backblaze HDD Statistics for 2017

    For the last four years, Backblaze has been producing statistics from their pool of hard drives.  The company provides cloud storage that started with backup and now covers S3-like capabilities.  The figures for 2017 were recently released and make interesting reading. SMART Backblaze now has a set of data spanning just over 93,000 live drives. … Read more »

  • Rubrik Acquires Datos IO – Backup Wars Looming?

    Congratulations to the team at Datos IO for their acquisition by Rubrik.  It’s hard enough getting funded in the first place, but surely a joy to become part of a bigger entity that justifies the original vision.  Is this purchase a one-off for the industry or perhaps part of a larger backup consolidation? Old and… Read more »

  • In Storage, Software is the New Hardware

    This week Kaminario announced a software-defined storage offering called Cloud Fabric, which packages the company’s storage software for cloud service providers.  E8 Storage announced a software-only version of the company’s flagship product that can run on pre-qualified hardware platforms.  Has the golden age of Software Defined Storage finally arrived? Software First In some respects, the… Read more »

  • Storage Performance Benchmarks in Light of Spectre/Meltdown

    This week E8 Storage announced that the company had successfully beaten the SPEC SFS 2014 benchmark, with a test based on an E8 appliance and IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS).  The test chosen was software build, which generates lots of I/O activity across many files.  As the press release from E8 says, this workload emulates the… Read more »

  • Kaminario Goes Software-Defined

    Kaminario recently announced that the company is moving to a software-based business model.  Rather than build and support storage arrays, Kaminario will partner with Tech Data for logistics and essentially focus on the software part of their offering.  Is this an admission of defeat or a sign of the times? A Hardware History Kaminario has… Read more »