#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

The idea of this episode was to put some structure around a set of enterprise storage predictions for 2019.  As you will hear from the dialog, that’s not quite what we achieved!  However, Chris Evans, Chris Mellor and Martin Glassborow do raise some interesting points on the direction of the industry in 2019.  The conversation starts with a look at media.  QLC flash is likely to be a hot topic, but what about storage class memory?  Have hard drives had their day or is the technology moving into a state of equilibrium? The conversation moves …

#81 – Storage or Data Asset Management?

#81 – Storage or Data Asset Management?

Chris EvansData Management, Garbage Collection

This week Chris and Martin talk about the evolution from storage management to data management.  This follows from recent vendor events where data management featured highly, but still seemed to focus on infrastructure products.  Is there a definition that can bridge the gap – something like Data Asset Management? The team start by trying to get a handle on what storage and data management actually mean.  In the data protection world, for example, DLP – data leakage prevention, or data loss prevention refer to more advanced versions of simple backup.  Things get more complex when …

#75 – It’s ILM All Over Again with Chris Mellor

#75 – It's ILM All Over Again with Chris Mellor

Chris EvansData Management, Garbage Collection

Data volumes have always increased over time as we store more information with the hope that one day some of it will be useful.  Even 30 years ago on the mainframe, Information Lifecycle Management or ILM was a thing with tools like DFHSM used to move content around between disk and tape.  This week Martin, Chris Evans and Chris Mellor talk about the new range of data management or ILM products that are looking to resolve the current issues of data sprawl. How do these products work?  It is all about data ingest, or just …

#66 – Amazon RDS – Coming to a vSphere Cluster Near You

#66 – Amazon RDS – Coming to a vSphere Cluster Near You

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware recently announced that RDS, the Relational Database Service was in tech preview as an on-premises deployment on vSphere.  Running a service outside of Amazon’s data centre represents a big change for the company.  The only non-core offering to date has been Snowball, the edge data appliance.  In this week’s recording, Martin and Chris discuss the implications of running a service on-premises, what’s in it for the customer, for VMware and for AWS. The database market is a lucrative business.  It’s reasonable to expect that end users will look to …

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week’s conversation follows up on Chris’ recent visit to Flash Memory Summit in the US.  Chris and Martin discuss the storage startup landscape and the range of companies appearing at the event. What makes a company successful?  Is IPO or acquisition the right route?  The discussion starts with a simple, yet tricky question – why does storage continue to be such a diverse market place, with so many solutions to problems?  We see a storage “pendulum” effect, with vendors moving between hardware and software.  At the moment, there seems to be more focus on …

#58 – Storage Vendor Hero Numbers

#58 – Storage Vendor Hero Numbers

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris Mellor is back and the team take a dive into the subject of storage vendor hero numbers.  What are hero numbers?  We’ve all seen them, they’re the huge performance figures quoted by all-flash storage vendors aimed at putting their products forward in the best light possible. Are hero numbers believable or should we be looking at certified vendor benchmark testing as a guide to capability?  Do users even look at benchmark or hero numbers in the first place?  Could the whole exercise be a waste of time?  The conversation moves to talk …

#56 – Defining Scale-out Storage

#56 – Defining Scale-out Storage

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week’s podcast is a conversation between Martin and Chris, talking about how we define scale-up and scale-out storage.  A recent discussion on Twitter about Pure1 and the idea of federated scale-out generated some interesting feedback, so we thought it might be good to get some definitions in place. The opening discussion talks about how scale-up and scale-out should be defined and what definitions of scale-out exist.  Volume managers used to be the old-school way of implementing federation, as was storage virtualisation.  So perhaps federation is a genuine use case. Martin and Chris move to …

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the subject of price parity between all-flash and hybrid or HDD-based storage arrays.  From Martin’s perspective, he is starting to see vendor pricing getting close to parity and it making more sense to buy all-flash than a spinning media device.  However, what are the issues?  TCO is one – it’s not all about array pricing.  Also, flash offers more opportunity to be Opex focused, as it’s easier to increment flash in an array than adding many disks to maintain performance. So what about hybrid?  Does it have a position, …

#44 – Ultra High Capacity Flash Drives

#44 – Ultra High Capacity Flash Drives

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the availability of super-high capacity or ultra-capacity flash drives.  The conversation comes out of an announcement from Nimbus Data that has produced a 100TB SATA SSD.  This follows up from last year’s 50TB drives that were OEMed to Viking and Smart Modular.  You can find some more background at Architecting IT here.  With so much capacity in a single 3.5″ form factor that could cost upwards of $50,000, is this product practical?  How do the drives survive failure?  Can they be repaired and who would build systems from them?  …

#41 – Does Open Source Have a Place in Storage?

#41 – Does Open Source Have a Place in Storage?

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Martin, Chris and Gavin reflect on the decision by EMC to disband the {code} team and discuss whether open source has a place in storage.  {code} was a project started by EMC before the Dell acquisition. The team focused on open source advocacy and developing tools such as storage plugins for Docker.  Looking wider, companies like Red Hat have built their business on open source, but how are the storage platforms working out?  Can vendors make money from open source and do we need a benevolent dictator like we have in Linux? Elapsed …