As we move to a hybrid and multi-cloud world, IT organisations need standardisation in operational processes. This is particularly true for data protection, where consistent policies and compliance are essential. This week, Chris chats to Subbiah Sundaram from HYCU about data protection in public clouds and the ability to bring a consistent reporting model with HYCU Protege. Why is consistency important? Public cloud providers have relatively basic data protection options, that might not align with existing enterprise requirements. As workloads move around, backup needs to be consistently applied, whether that data is on premises or …
S02E02 – Hybrid Cloud Storage Adoption and Disruptive Business Models
The public cloud offers new ways to consume IT resources, but what does it mean for the way in which businesses look at the cost of IT? On-premises vendors need to get more flexible and creative in the way they offer services to their customers. In this podcast episode, Chris talks to Eran Brown, EMEA CTO at Infinidat about the challenges of aligning on-premises and public cloud consumption from a financial, business and technical perspective. Timeline 00:00 – Intros 02:00 – What does hybrid cloud storage mean? 03:00 – Cloud storage looks different in public …
#164 – Introduction to StorONE S1: All-Flash Array.next with George Crump (Sponsored)
Storage startup StorONE has introduced the S1: All-Flash Array.next (also known as S1:AFAn) which accelerates performance using Intel Optane technology. In this podcast, Chris and Martin discuss the benefits of Optane within the S1 platform in a conversation with George Crump, CMO at StorONE and formerly the founder of Storage Switzerland. S1 is a software-defined storage solution that optimises the use of hardware resources to deliver an efficient and low-cost multi-protocol shared storage platform. The architecture of S1 enables Intel Optane to be used as a tier of storage that acts as the primary target …
#163 – Inflection Points in Storage Deployment Strategies
Technology refreshes are a constant part of the IT landscape. Businesses need to frequently update and modernise their infrastructure. Typically, the inertia to move between vendors is strong, but inflection points do occur, when the cost and risk of change is outweighed by the benefits. How do you identify inflection points in your environment and then take advantage of the opportunity? In this podcast, Chris chats with three guests (Matt Watts from NetApp, Lee Nolan from MTI and Kam Panesar from Atradius) to get views from a vendor, solutions provider and end user perspective. The …
#162 – The Evolving Role of Storage Administration
The role of the storage administrator has changed over the years and is in many ways influenced by the three “V”s typically used to describe AI. Admins have to deal with increased data Volumes, with the Velocity of delivering resources and with a wide Variety of application profiles. This week, Chris talks to Clay Ryder (Senior Director of Enterprise Marketing) and Frank Shepherd (Principal Systems Engineer) from Tintri to gain their insights on how technology and process is changing storage administration to meet the Three Vs challenge. Exponential data growth has always been an issue …
#161 – Seagate MACH.2 Dual Actuator Drive Deep Dive
This week, Chris and Martin look at the dual actuator drive technology developed by Seagate, also known as MACH.2. This conversation with Colin Presly and Tim Walker digs down into the detail of the hardware implementation and the operational aspects of deploying a hard drive that acts as two physically independent units. Dual actuator technology was developed to overcome the performance limitations of traditional hard drives. Over the years, drive capacities have increased almost exponentially, while performance has followed a linear track. MACH.2 divides the read/write heads of a traditional drive into two separate components, …
#160 – Updates on Hitachi Ops Center with Stan Stevens (sponsored)
In this week’s episode, Chris catches up with Stan Stevens, Director of Software Product Marketing at Hitachi Vantara to talk about updates to Hitachi Ops Center. Ops Center is the storage management platform for administering Hitachi VSP storage products. Stan discusses new features (including Ops Center Protector and support for VSP E990), and provides a view on what to expect in the future. Ops Center is divided into four main components – Administrator for provisioning and systems management; Analyser for AIOps functionality, including problem resolution; Automator for workflow automation and Protector for data protection and …
#159 – Introduction to MRAM with Joe O'Hare from Everspin
This week, Chris and Martin dig deeper into storage media and look at magneto-resistive RAM, commonly known as MRAM in this conversation with Joe O’Hare, Director of Distribution and Product Marketing at Everspin Technologies. MRAM is a persistent memory technology that uses resistance to determine the state of data. Everspin, the leading provider of MRAM technologies offers two product types – Toggle and Spin Transfer Torque. These two solutions provide different characteristics of endurance and scaling, but both offer low latency reads and writes at around 35 nanoseconds. MRAM is already finding uses in embedded …
#158 – Midrange Teardown with Chris Mellor
This week we continue with the discussion on midrange storage platforms with a more in-depth look at PowerStore and other recent announcements. PowerStore is the new Dell midrange platform that’s expected to replace XtremIO, SC Series and Unity. We learned more on the platform from Dell earlier in the week (see the links in related episodes). This episode looks to unpack some of the detail with reference to the wider storage market. Will AppsON be a success? What does it mean to have an integrated hypervisor? Could PowerStore run in the public cloud? All questions …
#157 – Introduction to Dell PowerStore (sponsored)
In this sponsored episode, Chris and Martin look at the newly announced midrange storage platform from Dell Technologies. PowerStore is a new all-flash midrange storage solution that offers both scale-up and scale-out capabilities. As we find out in the discussion with Dan Cummins and Devon Reed, this is only one aspect of the new technology. Through a feature called AppsOn, customers can run their own applications on a native ESXi hypervisor. In building a new storage platform, how did Dell Technologies leverage the assets already in the portfolio? We find out that XtremIO, SC Series …