Unpacked Network

#43 – All-flash Market Review 2018 with Chris Mellor

Chris Evans 23 March 2018Guest Speakers, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week, Chris and Martin review the all-flash market with Chris Mellor. We looked at this sector around 12 months ago, so we’re ready for an update. Lots of things have happened over the past 12 months. Vendors have gone away and come back (Violin). Existing vendors have seen a resurgence in their sales (IBM and NetApp), while others have struggled. Pure Storage is now an incumbent alongside the likes of Dell EMC, IBM, NetApp and HPE. The conversation moves on to discuss some interesting start-ups like WekaIO and both Excelero and E8 Storage (previous …

#42 – Understanding Storage PR with Fred Monsone

Chris Evans 16 March 2018Guest Speakers

In this week’s episode, Martin and Chris talk to Fred Monsone, founder of A3 Communications, a boutique storage PR and communications company. It’s clear that modern day PR isn’t the right term any more and communications describes the work much more accurately. Fred describes the reasons why start-ups and seasoned companies want to find the right way to engage with the press & journalists, bloggers and other influencers. Dealing with people is a challenge, especially the divas (like Martin), who expect bacon rolls at events! In case you’re wondering, we mentioned A3 Technology Live, an …

#41 – Does Open Source Have a Place in Storage?

Chris Evans 9 March 2018Garbage Collection

This week, Martin, Chris and Gavin reflect on the decision by EMC to disband the {code} team and discuss whether open source has a place in storage. {code} was a project started by EMC before the Dell acquisition. The team focused on open source advocacy and developing tools such as storage plugins for Docker. Looking wider, companies like Red Hat have built their business on open source, but how are the storage platforms working out? Can vendors make money from open source and do we need a benevolent dictator like we have in Linux? Elapsed …

#40 – Garbage Collection: Death of the Storage Admin

Chris Evans 2 March 2018Garbage Collection

This week’s podcast was recorded a few months ago, so apologies for the sound quality. The team discuss the role of the storage administrator and whether we will see the eventual demise of storage admins or simply a transition to another role. The conversation tracks the responsibilities of storage administrators over the last 30 years, from the era of the mainframe to today’s software-defined offerings. Early on, Martin invents a new word (abomnerbation)! The discussions finally agree that the age of the LUN monkey is over. Elapsed Time: 00:26:57 Timeline 00:00:00 – Intro 00:01:00 – …

#39 – Garbage Collection: Storage Mythbusters Part I

Chris Evans 23 February 2018Garbage Collection

In this week’s podcast, the guys talk about some of the myths in the storage industry. The focus is mainly on traditional storage arrays and some of the features that end users might not need. The conversation takes a marketing turn, with questions on how five 9’s availability is marketed and the use of dedupe/compression as a tool to reduce costs. What do you think? Are there any myths you believe exist within the industry? Drop us a line and give us your thoughts or areas we should be discussing. Elapsed Time: 00:31:05 Timeline 00:00:00 …

#38 – Talking Dedicated Backup Appliances with Don Foster from Commvault

Chris Evans 16 February 2018Commvault, Guest Speakers

In this week’s podcast, the team talk to Don Foster, Senior Director for WW Solutions Marketing at Commvault. Initially this podcast was intended to be recorded at Commvault Go last November (2017) in Washington DC, but schedules didn’t align so we did it remotely. The audio quality is not as good as we’d like, so apologies for that. However, there are some good discussions in this episode, including lots to think about if you’re looking to deploy a backup appliance in place of a traditional DIY solution. Don spends some time at the end of …

#37 – State of the Storage Union with Chris Mellor

Chris Evans 9 February 2018Guest Speakers

This week Chris and Gavin catch up with Chris Mellor, Storage Editor for The Register. With so much happening in storage, it’s difficult to know where to start, so the guys focus on the rumour of Dell EMC reversing into VMware. Could this really happen and why is Dell EMC even thinking about this? The conversation flows on to IBM and their super-mega-hyper-uber announcement on NVMe. Is IBM getting its storage mojo back? Finally, the discussion turns to IoT and how storage and compute move to “The Edge” – no, not Dave Evans, but IoT. …

#36 – The Persistence of Memory with Rob Peglar

Chris Evans 2 February 2018Guest Speakers

In this week’s episode, the team talk to Rob Peglar, Senior VP and CTO at SymbolicIO. The conversation covers persistent memory and in particular the NVDIMM format of devices that provide persistent storage in a standard server DIMM slot. Rob explains how the standards are set through JEDEC, with a description of the three types – NVDIMM-N, F and P. The discussion continues to use cases, which seem mainly to be for any application needing low latency with local server persistence. Databases and analytics are the main beneficiary, however Rob believes that the hyper-scalers may …

#35 – The Spectre of Meltdown with Alex Chircop

Chris Evans 27 January 2018Guest Speakers

In this week’s podcast, the team talk to Alex Chircop, CTO at StorageOS about the implications on storage of the recent Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities. Much has been made of the potential impact to I/O performance and by definition storage platforms and products. The guys talk about what the vulnerabilities actually mean for end users and what to expect from storage vendors. Finally, the podcast concludes with some suggestions from Martin, as the token end user in the discussion. Two references were made in the podcast. The first is to a Techspot article comparing NVMe and SSD …

#34 – NAND Shortage? What NAND Shortage! with Jim Handy

Chris Evans 19 January 2018Guest Speakers

In this week’s podcast, the team chat again with Jim Handy from Objective Analysis. Jim is an analyst covering the semiconductor industry and provides some great insight into where pricing is headed in the NAND flash market. The conversation covers some of the technical challenges the industry faces, as well as the impact from China entering the market. Finally, the guys discuss the impact on Enterprise storage pricing. There are some interesting observations in this conversation, such as the capability for NAND to be used in multiple densities and how the ability for the Enterprise …