#181 – Is There a Future for Storage Infrastructure Companies?

#181 – Is There a Future for Storage Infrastructure Companies?

Chris EvansGarbage Collection, Storage Hardware, Storage Unpacked Podcast

This week Chris and Martin debate the future of on-premises storage infrastructure companies in light of announcements and events from IBM, Dell and NetApp. IBM is splitting in two, while Dell and NetApp have recently held virtual versions of their annual conferences. Is the on-premises infrastructure business shrinking and becoming too low-margin to be worthwhile? Martin mentions Lou Gerstner’s book – linked here – Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? The Simpson’s episode where Mr Burns runs for Governor is “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” – without a doubt a …

#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. …

#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, …

#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 …

#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

#82 – Storage Predictions for 2019

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

The idea of this episode was to put some structure around a set of enterprise storage predictions for 2019.  As you will hear from the dialog, that’s not quite what we achieved!  However, Chris Evans, Chris Mellor and Martin Glassborow do raise some interesting points on the direction of the industry in 2019.  The conversation starts with a look at media.  QLC flash is likely to be a hot topic, but what about storage class memory?  Have hard drives had their day or is the technology moving into a state of equilibrium? The conversation moves …

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

#64 – Success & Failure in Storage Startup Land

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week’s conversation follows up on Chris’ recent visit to Flash Memory Summit in the US.  Chris and Martin discuss the storage startup landscape and the range of companies appearing at the event. What makes a company successful?  Is IPO or acquisition the right route?  The discussion starts with a simple, yet tricky question – why does storage continue to be such a diverse market place, with so many solutions to problems?  We see a storage “pendulum” effect, with vendors moving between hardware and software.  At the moment, there seems to be more focus on …

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

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

Chris EvansGarbage 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 …

#37 – State of the Storage Union with Chris Mellor

#37 – State of the Storage Union with Chris Mellor

Chris EvansGuest 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.  …

Garbage Collection #006 – LTO-8 and the Future of Tape

Garbage Collection #006 – LTO-8 and the Future of Tape

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

This week LTO-8 was announced, with raw cartridge capacities of up to 12.8TB.  In this podcast, recorded on 23rd October 2017, Chris and Martin discuss the evolution of LTO from a lowly 100GB to todays media with 120x the capacity. Tape is changing and becoming more of an archive medium, as backup has increasingly moved to disk.  This begs the question, should standard formats like LTFS be more common?  How should media be recycled and what other ways are there for getting data onto tape media? For a bit of nostalgia, there’s mention of the …

Garbage Collection – Implementing a Multi-Vendor Storage Strategy

Garbage Collection – Implementing a Multi-Vendor Storage Strategy

Chris EvansGarbage Collection

  In this podcast, Chris and Martin discuss the issues in designing and implementing a multi-vendor storage strategy.  The discussion covers whether any one vendor can provide all of today’s storage products and who multiple vendors can be used to deliver a single requirement. Elapsed Time: 00:36:26 SFW: Yes 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:00:45 – A look at the market – product categories 00:01:30 – Vendor Roundup 00:03:20 – The product overlap problem 00:05:30 – Is storage unique in the data centre? 00:06:30 – Data Gravity 00:07:00 – Why do people change vendors? 00:07:50 – tension …