#121 – NVMe 1.4 Deep Dive Part II with J Metz

#121 – NVMe 1.4 Deep Dive Part II with J Metz

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, NVMe, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This podcast episode continues the discussion with Dr J Metz and focuses on the detail of NVMe 1.4 and NVMe over Fabrics 1.1. Both standards are complete and have been published in the last few months. The conversation today digs deeper into what the new standards offer and specifically how NVMe/TCP becomes “officially” part of the NVMe standard. The conversation on NVMe/TCP is particularly interesting as it highlights how the protocol will offer significant benefits over iSCSI. The details in the podcast are quite technical and so it’s worth checking out some of the additional …

#120 – NVMe 1.4 Deep Dive Part I with J Metz

#120 – NVMe 1.4 Deep Dive Part I with J Metz

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, NVMe, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week Chris and Martin talk to J Metz, R&D Engineer in Cisco Systems’ Advanced Storage division. This is a two-parter – the second episode will be published on Monday 30th September 2019. The NVMe 1.4 specification has recently been published and is in the final 45-day ratification process. This discussion provides some background on NVMe then dives pretty deep into the NVMe standards and how design decisions are refactoring the NVMe protocol for version 2.0. NVMe for consumer devices will be different to the feature set used within enterprise storage (although the protocol is …

#119 – Storage Hardware is Back!

#119 – Storage Hardware is Back!

Chris EvansStorage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin catch up with some of the storage hardware on show at Flash Memory Summit 2019. FMS is essentially a trade show and so there are lots of technologies on display that haven’t quite made it to the enterprise. Technology vendors are selling to other vendors and this year there were some interesting hardware solutions to see. Flash has been on the agenda for the last decade and continues to push the boundaries of capacity and performance. Chris and Martin discuss 96+ layer products and the promise of 500 layers in …

#117 – Introduction to Computational Storage with NGD Systems

#117 – Introduction to Computational Storage with NGD Systems

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week’s episode is the final recording from Flash Memory Summit 2019. Chris is joined by the team from NGD Systems for a discussion on Computational Storage. On this podcast are Scott Shadley, VP of Marketing, Nader Salessi, CEO and Ashok Savdharia who has the lovely title of “technologist”. Computational storage uses the processing power of modern SSD controllers to run application workloads directly on the SSD itself. Imagine each drive being a mini blade server, with compute, memory and storage. In the case of NGD Systems, this means a range of devices and form …

#116 – Fixing Gaps in Cloud Storage with Andy Watson

#116 – Fixing Gaps in Cloud Storage with Andy Watson

Chris EvansCloud, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris chats with Andy Watson, CTO at WekaIO in another episode recorded live at Flash Memory Summit 2019. With the recent acquisition of E8 Storage and Elastifile by hyper-scale cloud companies, is this move an attempt to plug the gap in existing cloud storage offerings? Andy provides his opinion on the two acquisitions and how they might fit into the existing ecosystem. Even 1GB/s may not be enough throughput as we see more focus on ML/AI applications and using cloud-based GPUs and TPUs. Some applications expect data in both NFS and SMB format. …

#114 – CIO Storage & Data Challenges with Clay Ryder

#114 – CIO Storage & Data Challenges with Clay Ryder

Chris EvansData Management, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris catches up with Clay Ryder from the DCS (Data Centre Systems) group at Western Digital. The discussion focuses on the challenges for today’s CIO, with an emphasis on storage and data. The division of responsibility between CTO and CIO isn’t always obvious. As we learn in this discussion, there’s a lot of overlap and a lot of interaction between the two. CIOs are focused on data and more specifically information, whereas the CTO has to deliver the right platform to meet application needs. The conversation covers challenges around technical debt, determining what …

#106 – Introduction to VAST Data (Part II) with Howard Marks (Sponsored)

#106 – Introduction to VAST Data (Part II) with Howard Marks (Sponsored)

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers, Sponsored, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this second episode on VAST Data, Chris and Martin continue the discussion with Howard Marks.  You can find the previous episode at #105 – Introduction to VAST Data (Part I).  This time, the conversation continues where the discussion left off, with Howard finishing the explanation of wide striping. To explain exactly how data is accessed on the platform, Howard introduces the concept of v-trees.  These are like b-trees but flatter and wider.  The v-tree is used to hold both metadata and data.  One interesting aspect of the discussion is in understanding exactly how Optane …

#105 – Introduction to VAST Data (Part I) with Howard Marks (Sponsored)

#105 – Introduction to VAST Data (Part I) with Howard Marks (Sponsored)

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers, Sponsored, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin talk to Howard Marks, Chief Storyteller at VAST Data.  You may know Howard as an independent analyst and author for a range of online publications.  Howard recently joined VAST to help explain and promote understanding of their data platform architecture. The VAST Data platform uses three main technologies that have only recently emerged onto the market.  QLC NAND flash provides long-term, cheap and fast permanent storage.  3D-XPoint (branded as Intel Optane) is used to store metadata and new data before it is committed to flash.  NVMe over Fabrics provides the …

#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 …

#87 – The Risks of Storage Media Reuse versus Recycling

#87 – The Risks of Storage Media Reuse versus Recycling

Chris EvansGuest Speakers, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this episode, Chris and Martin talk to Simon Zola from Avtel Data Destruction.  This is a follow-up episode to #85 (Storage for Home and Homelabs) where Martin and Chris questioned the ease of recovering data from pre-owned storage media.  As we find out, the process was pretty easy.  Martin was able to recover significant amounts of personal data with little effort and using standard tools. Media destruction is one route to safely dispose of drives and guarantees that data is destroyed.  But what are the consequences?  Simply disabling a drive and throwing it into …