#140 – Introduction to Document-Orientated Databases

#140 – Introduction to Document-Orientated Databases

Chris EvansDatabases, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin speak to David Koppe, Director of Information Strategy at MongoDB. The discussion covers document-orientated databases, or simply document databases, and their appeal to the enterprise. Document databases differ from traditional relational databases in that the data is stored within each “document” as a series of key-value pairs. In this instance a document is not to be confused with a Word or PDF file. Unlike relational databases, document records don’t have to be “symmetrical” and aren’t required to contain every field (or a null value for empty fields). This makes the …

#135 – Introducing Datrium DRaaS Connect with Simon Long

#135 – Introducing Datrium DRaaS Connect with Simon Long

Chris EvansData Management, Data Protection, Guest Speakers

This episode was recorded live at the Datrium offices in Silicon Valley. Chris chats to fellow Brit Simon Long about the announcement of DRaaS Connect and Instant RTO. Both are new features/products in the data mobility and DR space and complement Datrium’s existing storage and virtualisation offerings. Enterprises traditionally implement DR failover for virtual environments using techniques like storage replication and SRM. Datrium has offered DVX, Cloud DVX and Automatrix as tools to abstract and deliver DR capabilities to virtual machines. For customers that can’t immediately move to DVX, DRaaS Connect provides the capability to …

#134 – Introduction to Datera with Hal Woods (Sponsored)

#134 – Introduction to Datera with Hal Woods (Sponsored)

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Software-Defined Storage, Sponsored

This week Martin and Chris catch up again with Hal Woods, CTO at Datera. In this sponsored episode, we look in detail at the Datera Data Services Platform and how it differs from traditional storage. DSP is a software-defined solution, which is purchased either as a software licence or in conjunction with partners. Software-defined storage has been around for some time, but hasn’t really offered the disaggregation from hardware performance that applications need in the enterprise. DSP enables administrators to set performance and availability policies that are then implemented by DSP, based on the hardware …

#133 – FlashArray//C Deeper Dive with Pete Kirkpatrick

#133 – FlashArray//C Deeper Dive with Pete Kirkpatrick

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers, Pure Storage

This episode was recorded live at Pure Storage offices in Silicon Valley. Chris talks to Pete Kirkpatrick, Chief Hardware Architect at Pure Storage about the FlashArray//C platform. FlashArray//C is a new solution announced at Pure Accelerate 2019 that offers a lower-cost all-flash solution for less latency-sensitive workloads. FlashArray//C uses QLC technology, a cheaper, but slower flash alternative to SLC, MLC or even TLC that is being used in all-flash arrays today. Developing a solution using QLC requires more flash management, however using DirectFlash compared to standard SSDs offers Pure Storage cost and management advantages. How …

#132 – Accelerating Ransomware Recovery with Eran Brown (Sponsored)

#132 – Accelerating Ransomware Recovery with Eran Brown (Sponsored)

Chris EvansData Management, Data Protection, Guest Speakers, Sponsored

This week Chris and Martin talk to Eran Brown, EMEA CTO at Infinidat about the challenges of ransomware and expediting fast recovery. Ransomware is a big challenge for IT organisations as hackers attempt to extort money from a range of businesses that include everything from large enterprises to healthcare organisations. However, is the traditional route of “restore from backup” actually practical or do IT organisations need a more comprehensive set of data protection and recovery techniques? Eran sets the scene by describing the impacts of ransomware attacks on businesses. Companies with customer-facing websites risk lost …

#131 – Hitachi Next 2019: Content Intelligence Update

#131 – Hitachi Next 2019: Content Intelligence Update

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Hitachi NEXT 2019

In this podcast episode, we continue the discussions from Hitachi NEXT 2019. Chris talks to Scott Baker, Senior Director, Emerging Business and Data Intelligence at Hitachi Vantara. Scott covers the HCP object storage platform and has responsibility for data protection solutions. This conversation looks at updates to the Hitachi HCP portfolio and associated tools and products. The discussion starts with a look at Data Ops. This is a relatively new term in the industry that we discussed on a podcast earlier this year with CMO Jonathan Martin and John Magee (episode #103). As businesses mature …

#128 – Reflections on Commvault GO with Glenn Dekhayser

#128 – Reflections on Commvault GO with Glenn Dekhayser

Chris EvansCommvault, Data Management, Data Protection, Guest Speakers

This episode was recorded live (as you can tell from the background noise) at Commvault GO, held in October 2019. Chris talks to Glenn Dekhayser, Field CTO at Red8 about his reflections on the announcements from the event. The biggest news from the show was arguably the release of Metallic, a SaaS data protection offering for midrange customers. You can learn more about the specifics from the links at the end of this post. Glenn walks us through his opinion on how Commvault is adapting to change and releasing new products like Metallic to an …

#127 – Hitachi Next 2019: CI & HCI Solutions Update

#127 – Hitachi Next 2019: CI & HCI Solutions Update

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

This is the third in a series of podcasts recorded earlier this year at Hitachi NEXT 2019 in Las Vegas. This episode is a discussion on updates to the Hitachi Vantara UCP CI & HCI solutions portfolio with Chris Gugger (Director, Infrastructure Marketing) and Ed Reidenbach (Senior Director, Product Management). Hitachi produces two updates a year, covering spring and autumn (fall). The fall update 2019 introduces support for Cascade Lake processor architectures, VSP 5000 storage and Arista switches. Hitachi has updated UCP Advisor to cover multi-VMware and bare metal environments. The interesting aspect of UCP …

#126 – Software-Defined Storage in Review with Hal Woods

#126 – Software-Defined Storage in Review with Hal Woods

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Software-Defined Storage

This week, Chris and Martin talk to Datera CTO, Hal Woods about the state of the software-defined storage (SDS) market. SDS emerged around ten years ago as a solution to overcome the expense of buying storage appliances. With cheap hardware, IT organisations could simply buy software or use one of many open-source solutions. Has SDS been successful and how has it evolved? Early modes of deployment simply ran existing storage software on commodity hardware. As the category developed, software defined storage has been built specifically to address a new set of requirements. These are typically …

#125 – Hitachi Next 2019: Ops Center

#125 – Hitachi Next 2019: Ops Center

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Storage Management

This is the second recording from the Hitachi NEXT 2019 conference held in Las Vegas in October 2019. In a previous episode we looked at the new VSP 5000 platform. In this discussion, Chris talks to Stan Stevens, Director of Infrastructure Software Product Marketing, about Ops Center, the new platform for Hitachi storage management. Ops Center has four main components; Analyzer provides insights into systems through the use of telemetry collated across the storage footprint. Automator provides workflow orchestration and integrates with common automation tools. Administrator provides the tools to provision storage. Instance Director implements …