Unpacked Network

#175 – IBM FlashSystem Deep Dive (Sponsored)

Chris Evans 25 September 2020All-Flash, Guest Speakers, IBM, Sponsored, Storage Hardware

This week Chris catches up with Ralf Colbus from IBM to talk about the evolution of FlashSystem. The FlashSystem platform is an enterprise-class block-based storage solution that scales from SMB/SME offerings to high-end all-NVMe and SCM capable devices. At the heart of the design is the software behind Spectrum Virtualise, the SAN Volume Controller or SVC. FlashSystem now offers a standardised portfolio based on SVC. This starts with the 5010 and 5030, both SAS-based solutions that can be all-flash or hybrid flash & HDD. The 5100 upwards (including 7200 and 9200) introduces NVMe and IBM’s …

#174 – Introduction to Zoned Storage with Phil Bullinger

Chris Evans 18 September 2020Guest Speakers, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast, Western Digital

This week, Chris and Martin chat to Phil Bullinger, Senior VP and General Manager for the Data Centre Business Unit at Western Digital. As storage media capacities increase, recording methods are introducing challenges to maintaining resiliency and performance. SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) and ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) are two techniques that have developed to address the scaling issues in modern media devices. SMR is a technique for hard drives that overlays the recording area of tracks on storage media to gain increased areal density. This results in a requirement to re-write entire blocks or zones of …

#173 – Transparent Enterprise Storage Pricing

Chris Evans 11 September 2020Guest Speakers, Vendors

Enterprise storage pricing has all the simplicity of a mobile phone tariff. Vendors love to obfuscate the costs, whereas prospective purchasers just like a good, honest price. Why does enterprise storage pricing have to be so complicated and can’t we just have pricing online? Chris and Martin chat to George Crump from StorONE about strategies for pricing from both the customer and vendor perspective. Vendors mentioned in this podcast: StorONE, IBM, NetApp, Microsoft Azure, Pure Storage, Dell EMC. Find more about StorONE at https://www.storone.com. Elapsed Time: 00:35:05 Timeline 00:00:00 – Intros 00:02:00 – Enterprise storage …

#172 – Tintri SQL Integrated Storage

Chris Evans 4 September 2020Data Management, Databases, Guest Speakers, Tintri

This week, Chris and Martin talk to Shawn Meyers, Field CTO at Tintri about SQL Integrated Storage. The Tintri VMstore platform originally provided the ability to apply policy-based management to virtual machines on shared storage. This capability has now been extended to databases, in particular Microsoft SQL Server. SQL Integrated Storage (or SIS) works by exposing an SMB share from the VMstore platform onto which database files are stored. VMstore is provided awareness of the SQL database structure and can therefore manage the QoS and data management requirements of individual files that comprise a single …

#171 – Exploiting Persistent Memory with MemVerge

Chris Evans 28 August 2020Guest Speakers, In-Memory Computing, MemVerge

This week the team double down on the topics of in-memory computing and persistent memory. Chris and Martin talk to Charles Fan, CEO at MemVerge about Big Memory and using persistent memory technology (specifically Optane) to supplement system DRAM. DRAM is expensive and as capacities scale linearly, the price of memory increases exponentially. Systems are limited by maximum addressable memory per socket. Persistent Memory in the form of Intel Optane provides the capability to massively increase the virtual memory footprint, using a combination of DRAM and Optane DIMMs. How is that memory managed – this …

#170 – The End of Pure Play Storage Companies

Chris Evans 21 August 2020Garbage Collection, Midrange, Object Storage, Software-Defined Storage, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin debate whether we have seen the end of new “pure play” storage companies that go the distance to full independence. Where there used to be many businesses like EMC, Pure Storage and NetApp, the number of public storage-only companies is dwindling. Is this market too challenging to get into or is there simply no money to be made? If we look back 30 years, storage hardware was all the rage. Storage solutions were complex with custom hardware. These days, anyone can build a software-based solution and open source for everyone …

#169 – In-Memory Computing and Apache Ignite

Chris Evans 7 August 2020Data Management, Guest Speakers

This week Chris and Martin talk to Nikita Ivanov CTO and founder of GridGain Systems. The topic is in-memory computing and specifically Apache Ignite, an open-source key-value store that also supports SQL99 and POSIX-compliant file interfaces. The idea of running applications purely from memory isn’t a new one. DRAM is the fastest “storage” component but isn’t designed as a long-term storage medium. Consequently, in-memory solutions such as Apache Ignite require features to ensure data resiliency and consistency. Ignite and similar solutions have a heavy focus on data distribution and protection in order to meet resiliency …

S02E03 – Hybrid Cloud Storage Choices – Rent or Buy?

Chris Evans 27 July 2020Guest Speakers, Hybrid Cloud Podcast

On the face of it, public cloud seems like a great place for long-term retention of unstructured data. However, as volumes of data stored rise, the cost of exiting the cloud cloud become prohibitively expensive. What’s the right strategy to follow? In this discussion, Chris chats to Matt Starr from Spectralogic on how to build out a model of public/private cloud storage and the pitfalls to avoid in the process.

#168 – Storage Unicorns

Chris Evans 24 July 2020Garbage Collection, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week Chris and Martin review the idea of storage unicorns, companies that have a valuation of one billion dollars or more. What exactly is the basis or justification for a billion dollar price tag? Is this something invented by the VC industry or is there a real degree of science behind the assumptions? The list in question comes from a Blocks & Files article written by Chris Mellor, which in turn references the list produced by an analyst firm. While valuation based on some multiple of money invested does give some indication of value, …

#167 – Adapting Open Source Storage for the Enterprise

Chris Evans 17 July 2020Guest Speakers, Softiron, Software-Defined Storage, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week Chris and Martin catch up with Phil Straw, CEO at Softiron for a discussion on packaging Open Source storage solutions for adoption by the enterprise.