#123 – Hitachi Next 2019: VSP 5000

#123 – Hitachi Next 2019: VSP 5000

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers, NVMe, Storage Hardware

This is the first of a series of podcast episodes recorded at Hitachi NEXT 2019 in Las Vegas. Hitachi announced the next generation of VSP storage arrays, the VSP 5000 at the show. The new platform provides greater performance and capacity than previous systems at lower latency. Chris meets with Colin Gallagher (VP Product Marketing for the Infrastructure Portfolio) and Dan McConnell (SVP of Infrastructure Product Management) to discuss the details. VSP 5000 offers up to 21 million IOPS at 70µs and up to 69PB of internal capacity. This level of performance can be delivered …

#58 – Storage Vendor Hero Numbers

#58 – Storage Vendor Hero Numbers

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris Mellor is back and the team take a dive into the subject of storage vendor hero numbers.  What are hero numbers?  We’ve all seen them, they’re the huge performance figures quoted by all-flash storage vendors aimed at putting their products forward in the best light possible. Are hero numbers believable or should we be looking at certified vendor benchmark testing as a guide to capability?  Do users even look at benchmark or hero numbers in the first place?  Could the whole exercise be a waste of time?  The conversation moves to talk …

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

#54 – Are we at All-flash and HDD Array Price Parity?

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week, Chris and Martin discuss the subject of price parity between all-flash and hybrid or HDD-based storage arrays.  From Martin’s perspective, he is starting to see vendor pricing getting close to parity and it making more sense to buy all-flash than a spinning media device.  However, what are the issues?  TCO is one – it’s not all about array pricing.  Also, flash offers more opportunity to be Opex focused, as it’s easier to increment flash in an array than adding many disks to maintain performance. So what about hybrid?  Does it have a position, …

Soundbytes #009: FlashArray Update With Ivan Iannaccone at Pure Accelerate

Soundbytes #009: FlashArray Update With Ivan Iannaccone at Pure Accelerate

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Pure Storage, Soundbytes

The following podcast was recorded at Pure Accelerate in San Francisco in June 2017.  The recording was made behind the main stage, so apologies for the background noise which does get pretty loud for a while!  Chris talks to Ivan Iannaccone, Director of Product Management (also known as Emperor of Flash) at Pure Storage.  The conversation goes through the new software features of FlashArray, including ActiveCluster, VVOLs, NVMe and snapshots. Elapsed Time: 00:20:34 Timeline 00:00:00 – Introductions 00:01:04 – A wealth of new announcements 00:01:50 – ActiveCluster – synchronous replication 00:06:00 – Meta – AI …

Garbage Collection – All-flash Market Consolidation

Garbage Collection – All-flash Market Consolidation

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

In this opinion piece, recorded on 31 October 2016, Martin Glassborow, Chris Mellor and Chris Evans discuss the state of the all-flash market and what we can expect to happen to the remaining all-flash startup vendors.  We discuss Violin’s delisting, talk about the range of vendors and size of the market.  Mr Mellor presents his interpretation on the “Supernatural Quadrangle” of all-flash vendors and products.  We then speculate on the Chinese and the similarity of IBM’s storage portfolio to, well you’ll just have to listen…. One other thing – we promise to get ChrisM a headset …

All-Flash – Does it Justify a Market Segment?

All-Flash – Does it Justify a Market Segment?

Chris EvansAll-Flash, Guest Speakers

All-Flash has been highlighted as a specific market segment within the storage industry.  Initially this was probably justified because of the number of new start-ups that were developing for the market.  With all of the major storage vendors either amending or acquiring technology, is there really a justification for having a separate market segment for all-flash or should we flip this on its head and say all-flash is the norm and the rest are legacy arrays? In this podcast, recorded on 24 October 2016, we talk with Bob Madaio, VP Infrastructure Solutions at Hitachi Data …