#100 – Optimising Unstructured Data with Krishna Subramanian

#100 – Optimising Unstructured Data with Krishna Subramanian

Chris EvansData Management, Guest Speakers

This week, Martin and Chris talk to Krishna Subramanian, President and COO at Komprise.  We mentioned the Komprise technology back on episode #75 (It’s ILM All Over Again) as part of a discussion on managing the movement of files to and from archive storage.  Krishna joins this discussion to fill in some background on the challenges of managing unstructured data, including how to implement solutions with as little lock-in as possible. Why do we need to manage data in the first place?  With around 75% of all data having no access in over 12 months, …

#98 – Shared Storage for Scale-out Databases with Walt Hinton from Pavilion Data

#98 – Shared Storage for Scale-out Databases with Walt Hinton from Pavilion Data

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

In this third recording from Dell Technologies World 2019, Chris talks with Walt Hinton, Head of Corporate and Product Marketing at Pavilion Data Systems.  The topic of conversation is the alignment of shared storage with scale-out NoSQL databases that typically place storage components on separate local disks. As rack-scale computing becomes more widely adopted, local storage will migrate back into bottom-of-rack shared storage infrastructure.  In this instance, does it make sense to put shards of databases back on the same hardware?  Walt thinks it is the next logical step in optimising scale-out applications and introducing …

#97 – Building Storage Using NVMe/TCP with Kam Eshghi from Lightbits Labs

#97 – Building Storage Using NVMe/TCP with Kam Eshghi from Lightbits Labs

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

This episode was recorded live at Dell Technologies World 2019.  Chris talks to Kam Eshghi, VP of Strategy & Business Development at Lightbits Labs.  Lightbits has pioneered the development of NVMe/TCP, which allows standard Ethernet NICs to be used for NVMe-over-Fabrics storage traffic. The ability to implement NVMe-oF without custom NICs (like RDMA) offers the potential to deploy NVMe fabrics in hyper-scaler and enterprise data centres with lower cost and complexity compared to existing solutions, but what are the drawbacks?  Kam explains how NVMe/TCP can be implemented on high-speed networks that even include multiple switch …

#96 – Discussing SmartNICs and Storage with Rob Davis from Mellanox

#96 – Discussing SmartNICs and Storage with Rob Davis from Mellanox

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, SmartNICs, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this podcast, recorded live at Dell Technologies World 2019, Chris talks to Rob Davis, VP of Storage Technology at Mellanox, about the development of SmartNIC technology and storage.  SmartNICs offload tasks such as encryption, compression and protocol traffic from core CPUs.  This allows system vendors to create more efficient and cheaper products.  It can also provide a backward compatibility for legacy applications and operating systems. Rob takes us through the implementation of SmartNICs on both the initiator (host) and target (array) side of the storage network.  We discuss vendors using the technology and what …

#95 – Quantifying Storage Vendor Guarantees with Chris Mellor and Eran Brown

#95 – Quantifying Storage Vendor Guarantees with Chris Mellor and Eran Brown

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

This week, Chris E is joined by Chris Mellor and returning guest Eran Brown.  The team discuss the usefulness of storage vendor guarantees like de-dupe ratios and uptime.  Do vendors use these metrics as a marketing tactic to attract new customers or is there any value in them? The idea of a sales/marketing guarantee sounds appealing.  Storage vendors have been using them for years to entice customers and offer some sort of incentive to buy.  Most recently we’ve seen de-dupe and compression ratios being a battleground for optimising the cost of all-flash arrays.  Digging down, …

#94 – Backblaze HDD Reliability Stats with Andy Klein

#94 – Backblaze HDD Reliability Stats with Andy Klein

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

In this episode, Martin and Chris talk to Andy Klein from Backblaze.  Since 2014, Backblaze has been collecting and publishing hard drive reliability information for their storage pods.  The pods are custom-built and used to hold backup data from customers and to support the B2 cloud storage offering.  Rather than buy an expensive storage platform or use the public cloud, Backblaze initially decided to build their own solution at a fraction of the cost of other options.  Once at scale, it seemed logical to use the platform for B2. Over the years, the Backblaze team …

#92 – Introduction to Elastifile with Jerome McFarland (Sponsored)

#92 – Introduction to Elastifile with Jerome McFarland (Sponsored)

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Sponsored

This week, Chris talks to Jerome McFarland, VP of Marketing with Elastifile, Inc.  Elastifile has developed a scale-out distributed file system called ECFS – the Elastifile Cloud File System. ECFS runs either on-premises, in the public cloud as a marketplace offering or, most recently as a full native storage service in GCP.  In addition to the base file system, Elastifile provides the capability to move any on-premises NAS data into the public cloud with CloudConnect.  ClearTier provides the facility to use the public cloud for tiering of cool or inactive data. Jerome explains the reasons …

#90 – Dell EMC’s Enterprise NVMe Strategy with Vince Westin (Sponsored)

#90 – Dell EMC's Enterprise NVMe Strategy with Vince Westin (Sponsored)

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Sponsored

This week, Chris talks to Vince Westin, Technical Evangelist within the PowerMax Group at Dell EMC.  PowerMax is the latest in a storage product line with lineage back to the original Symmetrix systems of the early 1990s.  PowerMax is an all-NVMe storage array, reflecting an industry move towards faster, low latency media.  Vince takes us through the rationale for moving to NVMe across the Dell portfolio and PowerMax in particular. Some of the more interesting aspects of the transition include the ability to simplify code paths with NVMe compared to back-end SAS.  NVMe introduces a …

#89 – Choices in NVMe Architectures

#89 – Choices in NVMe Architectures

Chris EvansGuest Speakers

This episode was recorded while Chris was in Silicon Valley for Storage Field Day 18.  Although not part of the event, Chris took time to catch up with Pavilion Data. in particular Jeff Sosa, VP Product Management and Walt Hinton, Head of Corporate and Product Marketing.  Both Jeff and Walt have a long history in the storage industry, including companies like Virident, Western Digital, Fusion-io, Brocade, NetApp and Data Domain – to name but a few!  It’s great to get opinions on the future of storage technology from industry experts, in this case on the …

#88 – Nigel Tozer returns to talk about Ransomware

#88 – Nigel Tozer returns to talk about Ransomware

Chris EvansData Management, Guest Speakers

This week Chris and Martin talk to Nigel Tozer, Solutions Marketing Director for EMEA at Commvault.  Nigel was a guest about 12 months ago and on that episode he talked about GDPR.  This time the discussion is about ransomware and what businesses can do about it. The challenges of protecting data from theft or extortion are greater than ever.  So, can we identify a common attack model?  Are specific operating systems more vulnerable?  Most important, how do you develop a plan that protects your data and systems?  The process is more than just patching primary …