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If Intel's diminutive PCs weren't big enough already, today's conditions have driven even more interest in Intel NUCs. In fact, our recent piece on installing ESXi on an Intel NUC 9 was a top 10 article for May. To help satiate your hunger for more info on Intel NUCs, this podcast with Kristin Brown covers a lot of territory. Brian and Kristin talk the future of networking on NUCs (2.5GbE/10GbE), the background on how and why the NUC 9 Pro came to be and whether or not there will be a more storage dense NUC in the future.

In this week's podcast Brian sits down with Kris Moore from iXsystems. Kris gives an update on the progress of merging FreeNAS and the TrueNAS code bases together, which eventually turns FreeNAS into TrueNAS CORE. CORE is the same software and feature set, with a fancy new name. Kris also gives an update on an announcement from this week, the unveiling of TrueNAS SCALE, which opens up a ton of potential for the TrueNAS platform, highlighted by scalability of course, and an option to run in an HCI configuration.

In this week's podcast, Brian sits down with our end-user computing specialist, Tom Fenton. Tom and Brian have a little bourbon talk, with a hot tip on how to blow off steam during events at the Venetian in Las Vegas. The guys eventually dive into a number of issues like the variety of ways organizations can enable their remote workforce with good solutions. One of which is HP ZCentral Remote, which Tom is in the process of writing up a paper on. Brian talks about a plan destined to fail, a live stream on YouTube June 4th, with iXsystems, showing off the latest build of TrueNAS CORE.

In this podcast Brian talks with Steve Searles, CTO of Zimcom, a public cloud service provider. Steve launched an effort to move to an all-flash datacenter a few years back and as of last year, successfully made that transition. Zimcom is also a big believer in OpenStack as a cloud management platform, they've managed to leverage OpenStack well, shuttering much of their more expensive VMware environment. They also use Cinder for block storage provisioning in OpenStack.

David Tuhy, amongst other things, is the GM - Data Center Optane Storage Division, at Intel. In this podcast Brian and David discuss the modern data center and the impact of Optane SSDs on these architectures. Some of the new use cases include traditional architectures like Dell EMC PowerStore, which is using dual-ported Optane NVMe SSDs. For an emerging use case, David highlights VAST Data, which has a software-defined solution that leverages Optane SSDs in conjunction with low-cost QLC SSDs to deliver a blend of performance and aggressive economics.

Caitlin Gordon joins Brian on this podcast to talk all things Dell EMC PowerStore with a little Brady/Gronk mixed in. PowerStore is an entirely new platform for Dell EMC that is intended to take over as the lead product in the all-flash midmarket space. The clean sheet design allowed Dell EMC to take the best of their existing lines like XtremIO and SC Storage to create a platform that is actually quite unique. PowerStore scales both up and out, and has the ability to run apps natively on the box, which adds a little flair of HCI to the equation.

In this week's podcast Brian talks with Alex Kantrowitz, author of the new book Always Day One. In his book, Alex profiles a number of the tech giants we all know and maybe love, including Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Google and Facebook. The book highlights what these companies are doing culturally to encourage innovation.

In this week's podcast Brian sits down with Geoffrey Cain, author of an amazing book, Samsung Rising.  Geoffrey details in amazing clarity the origins of Samsung - documenting the scandals, success and failures along the way. The book covers off on the rise of the semiconductor business as well, which includes details on how that NAND business got off the ground in the first place. Spoiler alert, this involves ripping off Micron by memorizing and copying their engineering designs. Moves like this would have led to mass arrests for corporate espionage today, but in the 80s, Samsung was used to getting away with such behavior.

In this week's podcast Brian sits down with Jeff Kennedy from Eaton. Brian and Jeff discuss Eaton's new line of racks designed for edge use cases. Incidentally, StorageReview just had the Eaton MiniRaQ come into the lab, YouTube video coming very soon. The edge racks are designed to be wall-mounted and can fit a full-length server (22-35") and come in sizes from 2U to 10U. Brian and Jeff also cover off on PDUs, Eaton's IT Galaxy infographic game and much more.

In this week's podcast Brian sits down with Howard Lo, Vice President of Sales and Marketing of DataON. DataON provides an extensive set of products and services around Microsoft solutions. In our experience with DataON, that's meant Azure Stack HCI primarily. Howard walks through the latest developments in their business, what customers are doing with Azure Stack HCI and dives into their new two-node switchless HCI solution for small offices and edge use cases. In fact, there's a Kepler system en route to the StorageReview lab right now, expect a new video next week. Howard closes out the podcast interview with dangerous poker advice.