#148 – Unpacking HPE’s Storage Strategy

#148 – Unpacking HPE's Storage Strategy

Chris EvansObject Storage, Software-Defined Storage, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

As reported by Chris Mellor, HPE recently announced Q1 2020 figures that show storage down 8% and servers down 15%. In light of these numbers, we look at HPE’s storage products, partners and overall strategy in the market. HPE primary products are strong contenders, with XP8 for high-end/mainframe, 3PAR & Primera, Nimble and MSA. Outside of the main platforms, HPE has some data protection hardware and of course, tape. To meet file and object storage needs, HPE partners with the likes of Qumulo, Scality, Weka and others. But finding details on these companies is hard. …

#147 – Introduction to Key Value Stores and Redis

#147 – Introduction to Key Value Stores and Redis

Chris EvansData Management, Databases, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin look at Key-Value stores and in particular, Redis, with Kyle Davis, Head of Developer Advocacy at Redis (formerly Redis Labs). Key Value stores are at first glance a lightweight way to store structured data. As it turns out, the implementation of Redis includes significantly more features and functionality as well as multiple complex data types. Redis runs in-memory and is typically used accelerate traditional databases or store state for web-based applications. The ability to store and retrieve data from memory enables fast response times for features like shopping carts or …

#146 – Coronavirus and Impacts on the Technology Industry

#146 – Coronavirus and Impacts on the Technology Industry

Chris EvansEvents, Garbage Collection, General

In this episode we take a look at the impact of COVID-19, commonly known as the Coronavirus. Since the outbreak in China towards the end of 2019, tens of thousands have been infected, thousands of people have died. As the spread of the disease moves outside China, we look at the effect on business, conferences and the positive benefits that may occur with reduced travel. During the podcast we make some specific references. Here’s a link to the report on supply chain impacts. Here’s a link to the article on the reduction in emissions over …

#145 – Anthos Ready Storage for the Enterprise

#145 – Anthos Ready Storage for the Enterprise

Chris EvansCloud, Containers, Garbage Collection

This week Chris and Martin discuss the announcement of Google Cloud partners offering Anthos Ready Storage. Anthos is Google’s on-premises cloud infrastructure running Kubernetes-based containers. Platform users can now deploy locally in their data centre, on local hardware, while using the GCP management plane. What is the benefit of having storage certified for Anthos? The discussion looks initially at why containers need persistent storage, moving on to examine the profile of the first ARS certified storage companies. Is this a move simply to gain more access to enterprise customers? There’s lots questions in this discussion, …

#144 – Introduction to Storage as a Service

#144 – Introduction to Storage as a Service

Chris EvansData Management, Data Protection, Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin chat to Gary Breder (Director of Cloud and Services Product Marketing) and Diane Clay (Sr Manager of Cloud and Services Product Marketing) from Hitachi Vantara about storage as a service. While we’ve had different consumption models in the past, does StaaS offer anything different? Perhaps the key takeaway from this conversation is the use of service-based offerings as a way to financially engineer more attractive cost structures to businesses. The vendor shoulders the risk with the customer by putting resources on the floor with an expectation of usage at some …

#143 – Storage Adoption Myths & Realities

#143 – Storage Adoption Myths & Realities

Chris EvansData Management, Guest Speakers

This week, Chris and Martin chat to Paul Stringfellow, CTO at Gardner Systems, about the realities of technology adoption. We hear lots of talk about Kubernetes, HCI, all-flash and even SCM technologies. But are all organisations deploying these technologies from day one? In reality, businesses deploy technology in a timeline that matches a normal distribution curve. As detailed in “Crossing the Chasm” by Geoffrey Moore, there’s a gap between early adopters and the mainstream IT organisations. What causes this inertia? Some of the challenges relate people and process, however there’s also a desire to implement …

#142 – Storage, Automation and DevOps

#142 – Storage, Automation and DevOps

Chris EvansData Management, Garbage Collection, Storage Management

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the automation of storage. In a follow-on from the Dell EMC presentation at Storage Field Day 19, this conversation looks at the challenges of opening storage provisioning and management to the wider developer community. In the past, SRM tools have focused on providing the “record of truth” for storage and well as the interface to provision resources to hosts. Dell EMC tried to create a separate data and management plane with ViPR, but the industry didn’t adopt this approach – potentially because Dell/EMC continued to own the technology. Today, …

#141 – Building Storage Systems of the Future

#141 – Building Storage Systems of the Future

Chris EvansData Management, Guest Speakers, Storage Hardware

This week Chris and Martin are joined by Erik Kaulberg, Vice President at Infinidat. Erik has appeared on the podcast before and this time is here to talk about how we build storage systems of the future. You can tell from the introductions that we recorded this episode towards the end of 2019 – we haven’t been transported into the future! With many choices in new media, system builders have a wide choice of persistent storage from which to build new architectures. There’s NAND flash, traditional hard drives and a range of technologies such as …

#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 …

#139 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part II)

#139 – Storage Predictions for 2020 (Part II)

Chris EvansContainers, Data Management, Data Protection, Garbage Collection

This is the second of our predictions shows for 2020 that anticipates what we can expect in enterprise storage for the year ahead. This episode covers solutions and vendors. We open with a discussion on cloud-native storage, which saw a lot of traction in 2019. Will the future be one of these companies or as Chris says, should we just rely on VMware to underpin our container environments? The discussion moves on to object storage and in particular a look at a company called MinIO. As an open-source solution with S3 compatibility, MinIO could be …