Garbage Collection Archives - Unpacked Network

#215 – Stateless Compute Machines

Chris Evans 29 October 2021Garbage Collection, NVMe, SmartNICs, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this week’s episode, Chris and Martin discuss network booting and the ability to create completely stateless servers. The idea of SAN booting has been around for two decades, enabling both the operating system disk and data disks to be delivered from SAN storage. NVMe/TCP and other NVMe-oF protocols promise the ability to implement the same capability for modern systems. Can this be done today? Why are more servers not booted from SAN? Is this a technical issue or one of practicality and comfort? With large-scale computing platforms, perhaps network booting will make (or already …

#214 – Can CloudFlare R2 Disrupt AWS S3?

Chris Evans 15 October 2021AWS, Cloud, CloudFlare, Garbage Collection, Object Storage, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the announcement from CloudFlare of R2, a new object storage solution. With such a widely dispersed CDN network, could CloudFlare become a real competitor for S3, considering that the R2 platform will have no egress fees? This episode digs into the details, to look at what additional features object storage vendors need in their arsenal and whether there’s any other vendor likely to come close to competing with AWS. At the outset of the podcast, Chris mentions Dark Star, which did indeed have a tiny budget of only $60,000. …

#213 – Kubernetes-Native Data Protection

Chris Evans 8 October 2021Data Management, Data Protection, Garbage Collection, Storage Unpacked Podcast

With KubeCon North America 2021 looming, Chris and Martin spend this week looking at data protection for Kubernetes-native environments. Vendors have started to introduce backup solutions, some working within the container environment itself, some outside as part of existing products. Exactly what should be backed up and how should these products work? Are we right to continue using snapshots or is there a better way? Do these solutions capture and retain enough metadata to provide for efficient data recovery? Lots of questions to ask and be answered in this show. Elapsed Time: 00:39:00 Timeline Related …

#212 – File Not Found

Chris Evans 1 October 2021Data Management, Garbage Collection, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this week’s podcast, Chris and Martin get together to discuss the curious case of missing files. In this instance, the files weren’t actually missing, but according to an article in The Verge, students running a software simulation didn’t know how to determine their location. In a world where the current generation have grown up on iPhones and iPads (or similar devices) that present no inherent file and directory structure, is it any surprise that these concepts seem alien? What benefit is there to retaining strict and rigid file system structures and can we move …

#208 – NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage – More Than a Good Marketing Message?

Chris Evans 6 August 2021Garbage Collection, NVIDIA, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this week’s podcast, Chris and Martin look at NVIDIA’s GPUDirect Storage (GDS), a technology for moving data directly from persistent storage to GPUs, bypassing the CPU. The aim of the technology is to provide greater throughput to keep GPUs active, and looking at some of the thoughts from our podcast with Liqid (#204), it’s clear that this feature is needed. However, with such quick adoption by many storage vendors, is the announcement of GDS more of a marketing exercise? We dig into the details and what the announcement of GDS could mean for the …

#199 – Quantifying Data Storage Innovation

Chris Evans 30 April 2021Garbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the level of innovation seen in the data storage industry over the last decade. This topic is one that comes up repeatedly as we review the market, startups and incumbents. In reality, of course there’s been innovation, whether the “micro-innovations” that move the storage media industry along, or the more significant changes like NVMe and persistent memory. What happens when you look at innovation by market spending or VC investments? Is there an alignment of innovation with the development of patentable technology? Finally, the discussion concludes with areas where …

#197 – Prioritising Disaster Recovery Planning

Chris Evans 26 March 2021Data Protection, Garbage Collection

The ongoing saga at OVH highlights the need to have solid disaster recovery plans that reflect the risk and impact of systems failure on the business. In this episode, Chris and Martin dig into the issues at OVH and how they represent a wake-up call for businesses in general. High profile failures have been apparent over many years, so does DR get the investment and respect it deserves? With so many more businesses operating with a 100% dependency on technology, you would expect so. Why does DR continue to be an afterthought and how has …

#196 – Creating a Multi-Cloud Data Strategy

Chris Evans 19 March 2021Cloud, Data Management, Garbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the issues of building a multi-cloud data storage strategy. The range of options for private, public and hosted data services is huge, with each offering a different set of services and implemented in subtly unique ways. How can an enterprise take advantage of these services, while maintaining data protection, cost control and service availability all front and centre? This conversation is incredibly wide-ranging, touching on data centre build and usage, Finops for cloud, global name spaces, operating system envy and finding that killer app for the public cloud that …

#188 – Is Intel Optane Ready for Primetime?

Chris Evans 15 January 2021All-Flash, Garbage Collection, Intel, NVMe, Persistent Memory

This week, Chris and Martin dig deeper into the adoption of Intel Optane technology in both the consumer and enterprise markets. Optane is a new persistent memory technology that offers greater performance and lower latency compared to NAND flash, but currently is more expensive and offers smaller capacity devices. As Optane becomes more prevalent in both markets, how is it being adopted and what needs to change to increase adoption levels? Note: Since recording, Chris has tried out the Intel H10 device and the results were disappointing. Read more here. Elapsed Time: 00:31:49 Timeline 00:00:00 …

#187 – End of the Year Show 2020 – Part Two

Chris Evans 30 December 2020Garbage Collection

This week, Martin and the two Chris’s conclude their end of year discussions. This episode covers “Turkeys” of 2020, Missing in Action companies and those technologies that should be put into Storage Room 101. These are the products we never want to see darken our doors again. Finally, the team finish on a discussion of what to expect in 2021. And for your delight, here are some Hitachi Mr T videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1S2tsxVHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boZyHDJ5qCs Elapsed Time: 00:49:54 Timeline 00:00:00 – Intros 00:01:00 – What are the Turkeys of the Year? 00:01:40 – Is secondary data re-use …