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

  • Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Oracle

    This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018.  For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/. There are few people in the IT world who haven’t heard of Oracle.  The company has dominated the… Read more »

  • Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: Rubrik

    This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018.  For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/. Over my career, data protection has never been one of the most exciting areas for which I’ve been… Read more »

  • Cloud Field Day 3 Preview: NetApp

    This post is one of a series of previews of companies presenting at Cloud Field Day 3, an invitation-only event in Silicon Valley, taking place 4-6 April 2018.  For more information, see the dedicated CFD3 events page https://blog.architecting.it/events/cloud-field-day-3/. NetApp has been an interesting company of late, with an evolving portfolio of cloud-related products.  Historically, NetApp was… Read more »

  • Podcast #1 – Serverless and Containers 101

    In what might become a more regular series, I spent some time yesterday chatting with Christian Beedgen, CTO and co-founder of Sumo Logic and Alex Chircop CTO and co-founder at StorageOS.  We recorded the conversation as a live podcast, which is an introduction to the concepts of containers and serverless computing.  The aim here was… Read more »

  • Rent Out Your Spare Disk Space With Storj

    As I think I’ve mentioned a few times on this and other blogs before, around the late 1990s I looked at the practicality of creating a distributed storage platform that would act as a backup for personal storage.  As the amount of data being personally stored was increasing (via photos, video and other content), being… Read more »

  • Storage Market Shows Growth – But Not In External Arrays

    It’s been about six months since I last looked at the IDC quarterly storage market figures.  The latest data for 4Q2017 has just been released, so it’s time for an update.  I’ve also found some missing data, which means I can show the annual growth figures for both 2016 and 2017, providing 7 years of… Read more »

  • ScaleIO Becomes Software Defined on Hardware

    Chris Mellor posted an article on The Register yesterday that follows up on the recent Dell EMC re-organisation.  ScaleIO, originally a pure SDS (software-defined storage) play will now only be sold in conjunction with Dell hardware (in VxRack FLEX), as it moves into the server business unit.  At a time when vendors are starting to… Read more »

  • Modern Storage Architectures: Datrium

    This is one of a series of posts that will cover new storage architectures for the enterprise data centre and form part of an Architecting IT white paper later this year. Storage platforms for primary workloads have generally fallen into a few standard categories, such as dual-controller or scale-out.  With spinning media, the overhead of… Read more »

  • 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 »