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September 03, 2024Podcast #132: IGEL Future-Proof Solutions For End-User Computing Deployments
This week, Brian is joined by Matthias Haas, IGEL’s Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director, Storagereview Contributor, and preeminent EUC expert Tom Fenton. IGEL Technology is a virtual desktop and end-user computing leader focused on thin client development. Check out Tom’s recent coverage of IGEL Disrupt.
This week, Brian is joined by Matthias Haas, IGEL’s Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director, Storagereview Contributor, and preeminent EUC expert Tom Fenton. IGEL Technology is a virtual desktop and end-user computing leader focused on thin client development. Check out Tom’s recent coverage of IGEL Disrupt.
Matthias describes himself as an “EUC visionary helping customers to future-proof their endpoint deployments at scale for a multi-cloud-enabled world.” He has been in IT for over 15 years, starting as a System Engineer focused on Linux security. During his tenure in software development, Matthias developed a deep technical understanding he used to create customer-oriented solutions. These products and solutions had a clear technical strategy but also answered customers’ day-to-day challenges.
Although a successful business model, IGEL has moved away from the hardware business typically associated with thin client technology and developed a secure, purpose-built thin operating system. Creating a thin operating system addresses the current transformation in multicloud deployments. The disruption to virtualization generated by Broadcom’s recent VMware acquisition adds angst to users dependent upon cloud technologies. Of course, many of the major hardware. Many enterprise software and hardware vendors have jumped on the VMware migration bandwagon. Still, IGEL has addressed this effect on end-user computing, creating a secure, easy-to-use, thin operating system.
For those unfamiliar with Tom’s work, he has over twenty years of experience working with virtualization and cloud technologies and over twenty-five years of Enterprise IT experience. He has a track record of keeping up with new technologies and presenting solutions to complex problems. Tom has been a key contributor to Storagereview.com.
This is an essential topic since EUC touches most of us daily. Although shorter than most of our podcasts, it is packed with information. If you have the time, give this a complete view, but if you are strapped for time, we have provided a time-stamped breakdown of the transcript.
 00:00 Introduction
Tom gets a compliment from Brian
Matthias provides some IGEL history
Disruption due to Covid
05:00 What do you mean it doesn’t support Windows 11?
IGEL Disrupt announcements
Fully integrated
Partnerships
IoT
IGEL Disrupt 2024 dates
App Create Portal
10:00 Build that app
Build and sign on the App Create Portal
Content streaming
Pushing the Edge
Building the Insight Module
Secure the app
15:00 It’s agnostic
Reducing the attack surface
Talking about browsers
Managing the footprint
Make it permanent or temporary
Managing the identity
20:00 What’s needed to run a system?
Run it on top of Windows or macOS?
Providing the best user experience
Developing local apps
Zoom
Teams
WebEx
Supporting AI
25:00 Neural Processing Units
Functionality
Inferencing
AI is a moving target for end users
GPUs in the cloud
Leveraging the capabilities
30:00 Running workloads on an endpoint
Or should workloads run in the data center or on a GPU?
Browsers will continue to be important
Secure browsers
Enterprise browsers
35:00 Digital signage infrastructure
Learn more from the IGEL website (link below)
IGEL slack community
Run IGEL OS 12
Runs anywhere
39:00 Wrap up
Podcast on YouTube
IGEL Technology
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The post Podcast #132: IGEL Future-Proof Solutions For End-User Computing Deployments appeared first on StorageReview.com.
40 min
July 15, 2024Podcast #131: SSD Industry Vet Jonmichael Hands – The Latest on Enterprise SSDs
This is another live podcast in which Brian checks in with long-time friend and industry veteran Jonmichael Hands for this fast-paced, technically focused podcast. Jonmichael is currently the Senior Director of Product Planning at FADU but has an extensive storage, networking, and blockchain background.
This is another live podcast in which Brian checks in with long-time friend and industry veteran Jonmichael Hands for this fast-paced, technically focused podcast. Jonmichael is currently the Senior Director of Product Planning at FADU but has an extensive storage, networking, and blockchain background. He also has a patent for Accelerated data recovery in a storage system, a recipient of The Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology Award, and, while at Intel, was a member of the NVM Express marketing group.

Brian and Jonmichael are passionate about flash technology and seem on the same page. Jonmichael brings some deep and varied industry knowledge to the conversation, making this a candid learning session.
If you are interested in flash technology and want to hear more about the future of SSD in this AI universe, you will enjoy this one. But if you are only interested in a few topics, we have highlighted them in five-minute increments.
0-5 minutes
Introduction and Background
Introducing Jonmichael, noting their long history and expertise in the industry.
Reminisces about their last meeting involving Topo Chico and discussing chia, blockchain, and crypto.
Ongoing crypto craze and Jonmichael’s return to the SSD world.
The challenging market conditions for IPOs and crypto over the last two years.
Transition back to tech and improvement in the SSD market, potentially leading to the best year for SSD revenue.
5-10 minutes
NAND Prices and AI Impact
NAND costs during COVID, recent increases in SSD prices.
The cyclical nature of Nand prices and renewed challenges.
AI’s impact on data center storage demand and the importance of flash.
Emphasis on increased CapEx for data centers and the unsung hero status of storage in AI.
Upgrading legacy SAN infrastructure for high-end AI GPU work.
10-15 minutes
Meta Engineering and AI Storage
Comments from listeners and viewers.
Meta’s engineering efforts in AI storage solutions,
Building exabyte-scale storage.
There is a need for more extensive flash capacity for training large multi-modal models.
Emphasis on the cost and importance of fast SSDs in training servers.
The complexity of modern AI data centers and advanced storage solutions.
Significance of high-end SSDs and storage technology in AI training servers.
15-20 minutes
Storage Technologies and Market Trends
Power requirements and storage challenges in data centers.
Advantages of high-performance SSDs
The need for efficient networking.
Broadcom’s high-speed NICs and the importance of network bandwidth for GPU clusters.
The role of switching in supporting AI workloads and infrastructure.
Benefits of running GPUs locally and the competitive advantage of private data sets.
20-25 minutes
AI Strategy and Industry Insights
AI strategies and the importance of GPUs.
Setting up AI tools like Nvidia’s AI studio for private data use.
Running AI models on affordable NAS systems for private data protection.
Importance of AI tools for improving productivity and creativity.
SSD form factors and the evolution of E1 and E3 standards.
25-30 minutes
Form Factors and Industry Adoption
E1 and E3 form factors in hyperscale and enterprise markets.
Transitioning to new form factors and customer preferences.
Benefits of E3 form factors.
Form factors for industry adoption.
30-35 minutes
Hyperscale and Enterprise SSD Adoption
E1.S form factor in hyperscale and enterprise training servers.
Limited availability of Gen 5 E3 drives.
Transition challenges to Gen 5 E3 drives.
Potential improvements for Gen 6.
Demise of Gen 4 for U.2 drives.
E1.S and E3 form factors.
Thermal management and capacity options.
35-40 minutes
Client-Side Storage and Form Factors
Slow uptake on client-side for Gen 5 drives.
Inefficiency of M.2 for high-performance Gen 5 drive.
Differences in performance requirements between laptops and desktops.
Potential of E3 form factor in consumer desktops.
Benefits of PCIe cabling standards.
40-45 minutes
Flexible Data Placement (FDP) Technology
Flexible Data Placement (FDP) technology.
Benefits in reducing write amplification factor (WaF).
FDP allows data to be tagged and placed more efficiently on the SSD.
FDP can be implemented without requiring software to be FDP-aware.
Comparison of FDP with zone namespaces.
Complexities involved in the zone namespaces.
Flexibility and benefits of FDP for different workloads.
50-55 minutes
Host Management vs. Drive Management
Rely more on host systems for storage management.
Complexities of host-level management.
Understanding SSD internals.
E1.S, benefits for dense storage arrays.
Upcoming 128TB and 256TB drives.
Expected market impact.
55-60 minutes
Controller Technology and Performance
Importance of controller technology in SSD performance.
Advantages of 16-channel controllers for power efficiency and performance.
Performance per watt as a critical metric in SSD evaluation.
Ongoing developments and the future potential of FTP technology in the market.
Wrap-up of the discussion and promotion of blogs and future sessions on related topics.
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The post Podcast #131: SSD Industry Vet Jonmichael Hands – The Latest on Enterprise SSDs appeared first on StorageReview.com.
1 hr 2 min
July 05, 2024Podcast #130: The Latest from Pure Storage – ’24 //Accelerate Highlights
Brian invited Peter Skovrup, VP of Product Management for Pure Storage, to continue their conversation from the Pure //Accelerate Las Vegas event in June. Brian and Jordan spent a few days with Pure, learning the latest for what’s new with Pure Storage technology – like their 150TB flash module!
Brian invited Peter Skovrup, VP of Product Management for Pure Storage, to continue their conversation from the Pure //Accelerate Las Vegas event in June. Brian and Jordan spent a few days with Pure, learning the latest for what’s new with Pure Storage technology – like their 150TB flash module!
This is another live event where the audience gets to ask Brian’s guests questions as they arise throughout the conversation. In case you missed it, our first two live events had a few hiccups, but we seem to have ironed those out now. This jam-packed session covers hardware and software, the all-important NPS scores, flash technology, and how it all fits together with Pure Storage solutions.
This is an exciting conversation that also tends to be a learning experience. If you have the time, it is worth listening to this entire podcast. However, if you are short of time or need to find details on a particular topic, we have created an easy way to jump around the podcast to get to the issues that are most interesting to you.
The podcast timestamps have been broken down into five-minute increments to make finding what you are looking for easier.
00:00 Introduction
Brian introduces Peter and talks a bit about Pure //Accelerate
Advancements in Pure Storage, flash modules, AI integrations, and Evergreen enhancements
The importance of NPS
06:00 Core Products
Where Peter is focused
FlashArray for Scale-up
FlashBlade for Scale-out
Operate as a unified storage system
System Architecture
DirectFlash Module (DFM)
10:00 Why DFM is important to Pure
Personal anecdotes about football
What is it
What does it do
Global management for flash storage
Online Community
15:00 Energy Efficiency
DFM benefits
Reducing flash power consumption at DFM level two
Simplifying design by limiting DRAM
Centralizing processing
DRAM becomes part of the controllers
Increasing density and efficiency in storage systems
21:00 Questions from the Live Audience
What are the speed trade-offs?
Challenges managing increased data storage
Performance impacts
Pure’s approach to non-disruptive updates
Business aspects for non-disruptive operations
26:00 Pure Storage Evergreen//One
Clarification on how Evergreen programs work for customers
Discussion on the financial and operational benefits of continuous upgrades
Explanation of subscription models and their flexibility
Benefits of Evergreen One and subscription-based storage solutions
Focus on delivering performance SLAs and scalability
30:00 Back to the importance of NPS
Traditional hardware investment model vs. Evergreen program
Emphasis on the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Pure Storage’s upgrade process
Financial planning benefits of Evergreen programs
Importance of the clarity and visibility of costs
Non-disruptive upgrades and flexibility for customers
36:00 Introduction of Pure One
Introduction of Pure One
Data visibility features
Simplifying storage management
Management-as-a-service capabilities
Copilot
Workload planner, anomaly detection, and security assessment
Benefits of Pure One for operating and optimizing storage environments at scale
42:00 Finally, mentioning AI
AI workloads and the importance of data support
Nvidia’s presence at the event
Collaboration with Nvidia and the certification of Superpod
45:00 SuperPod at scale
Importance of 400 gig Ethernet for AI workloads
Flashblade’s scalability and performance for AI and HPC environments
Hardware requirements for AI workloads and the advantages of Flashblade
Flashblade’s architecture and its benefits for AI and unstructured data
Flashblade versus other parallel file systems
Importance of metadata operations in high-performance file storage
51:00 Data Management
Challenges of managing data for AI
Importance of a comprehensive storage solution
SLA-based solutions for AI workloads
Long-term investments in AI
Guiding customers
Pure Storage’s technology for large AI deployments
58:00 Managing data for AI
Pure Storage scalability
Small deployments
Pure Fusion
Edge and Distributed deployments
Non-disruptive operations
Optimization and Utilization
Evergreen programs
62:00 Wrapping up
Brian and Peter begin wrapping up the discussion
Let’s talk real football—The EUROs
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The post Podcast #130: The Latest from Pure Storage – ’24 //Accelerate Highlights appeared first on StorageReview.com.
1 hr 5 min
June 22, 2024Podcast #129: Keeping Your Cool With Noctua
Brian goes for another live podcast this week featuring Jakob Dellinger, the “air cooling guru” at Noctua. We have featured Noctua fans in a number of our reviews, most notably our recent “Noctua Unveils NH-D15 G2, Thermosiphon, and Next-Gen Fans” and the HomeLab45 update “The HL15 Homelab Server Goes Shhhhh with New Noctua Kit.”
Brian goes for another live podcast this week featuring Jakob Dellinger, the “air cooling guru” at Noctua. We have featured Noctua fans in a number of our reviews, most notably our recent “Noctua Unveils NH-D15 G2, Thermosiphon, and Next-Gen Fans” and the HomeLab45 update “The HL15 Homelab Server Goes Shhhhh with New Noctua Kit.”

Noctua has taken fan assembly to a higher level with products for everything from laptops to data centers. They pride themselves on innovation and reducing fan noise levels across the spectrum. Based in Austria, Noctua (the Little Owl) was founded in 2005 and quickly became one of the most acclaimed suppliers of premium-quality quiet cooling products that are apparently inspired by, but do not smell like, coffee.
This is another live podcast where our YouTube audience joined the conversation and submitted questions to Jakub and Brian. We are pushing the boundaries on these live podcasts, inviting our audience and guests to have a genuinely interactive conversation on topics that interest them.
After dealing with several hiccups at the show’s beginning, Brian got down to business. His first question was, “Why do people love your products so much?”
00:00 Introduction
Attention (obsession) to detail
Quality and Performance
Started as an OEM
Focused on quiet, highly efficient, quality components
Engaged with Taiwanese partner to develop cooling components
05:00 Finding the inspiration
The CEO hated loud PCs
Fix it before the machine is powered on
Recap Vince’s video series for his Home Lab (Unleash the Hush: Noctua Fans and Eaton Sound Proof Rack Combine for a Peaceful Studio)
Why are Noctua Fans beige and brow?
10:00 Scratch ‘n Sniff
Brian shares a tidbit from his youth and asks Yakub to create a fan that emits an espresso aroma
That is on the punch list
Comments from the audience
Computex
Delivering new products
Square frame
Fan radiator
Socket support
NVIDIA prototype
Yakub goes deep
16:00 Squeezing Enterprise boards into workstations
Training LLMs
Edge servers where quiet matters
Liquid cooling
There’s a place for air-cooled systems, too
20:00 PC and Workstation case design
Thermal design
Not just for workstations
Getting creative
Let the users do crazy stuff with the fans
Heat sinks and heat distribution
Applying thermal paste
Potential to lose performance with poorly adhered heat sync
26:00 How to check for performance loss
Yakub gets into a deep discussion about cooling options
More than one option for every situation
31:00 Questions from the audience
Aftermarket contact frame
Better results from the 1mm washer mod
More from Computex
Noctua power supply
35:00 Showing off new products
Even in the early development cycle
Family-owned and run business
No Shareholders to report to
Delivering to the customer
40:00 Cooling GPUs
DIY water cooling
Voiding the warranty
Mixed results
Preconfigured workstations seem so loud
Consumer-level cards are more advanced today
46:00 More on the HomeLab 15
Fan design
Thicker fan materials provide alternative options
Thicker may not be better
Fan size does matter
50:00 Wrap up
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The post Podcast #129: Keeping Your Cool With Noctua appeared first on StorageReview.com.
51 min
June 01, 2024Podcast #128 – The Best Storage for Veeam with Object First
For this show, Brian sits down with Anthony Cusimano, Director of Technical Marketing, at Object First. If you are not familiar with Object First, you can check out our deep dive earlier this month, Object First Ootbi: Simple Ransomware-Proof Backups For Veeam.
Another live podcast! Thank you to all who attended.
For this show, Brian sits down with Anthony Cusimano, Director of Technical Marketing, at Object First. If you are not familiar with Object First, you can check out our deep dive earlier this month, Object First Ootbi: Simple Ransomware-Proof Backups For Veeam.
 Here’s a brief intro to Object First. It was founded by the original founders of Veeam and introduced its flagship product, Ootbi (Out-of-the-Box-Immutability), in 2023. Despite the common skepticism surrounding the notion of “ransomware-proof” technology, especially in the context of backups and storage, the technical prowess and on-premise testing of Ootbi suggest they can make this promise a reality for many organizations.
Anthony has been with Object First for over two years and serves as its Chief Evangelist and Director of Technical Marketing. Prior to joining Object First, Anthony spent six years in sales and marketing with Veritas Technologies. Throughout his career, he has focused on security and preventing cyber attacks.
This is an engaging discussion covering the departure of Veeam founders to establish an appliance hardware company, that runs Veeam! Customers enjoy enhanced security by controlling both the software and hardware.
If you don’t have the time to watch end-to-end, we have highlighted segments below.
00:00 Introduction
Object First background
What was once old is new again
Focus on Veeam customers
Ootbi short intro
05:00 Getting more information
A little detail on our deep dive
It’s all about security
Immutability Flag
11:00 Security Measures
Why immutability is important
Educating the masses
Making life easier
Getting some of your time back
16:00 Questions from YouTube viewers
Implementing security
The reasons for immutability
Educating the users
How to make it more secure
20:00 Beating the drum for Zero Trust
Zero Trust Data Resilience
Research paper download to enhance security
Update cadence
25:00 Cooking what’s next
Enhancements
Easy updates
Solid hardware
Solid software
Hinting what’s coming
30:00 Looking at mid-enterprise
Options for more enterprise customers
Reaching out for feedback
35:00 Hey! What about AI?
Compliance and analytics
Hold on to that data
30 minutes in, and this is the first AI conversation
Things can only get bigger
Slow backup vs slow recovery
40:00 Attacks work because they are clever
And devastating
It’s more than just data
Organizations need to practice the plays just like a football team
Practice the processes
Attacks cause surgery delays
Comments from Chrome Donkey and Beard of Knowledge
45:00 Talking hardware
Appliance configuration
How it works
Eliminate bottlenecks
What guides hardware decisions
Taking customer feedback
50:00 The case for smaller customers
There’s no value in free
Ensure true immutability
Internal malice
55:00 Cutting the tube
Anthony talks about the SR liquid cooling video
Assume breach, verify integrity
Internal breaches
Accidental deletions
Beware of puppetry
60:00 Neverending Story
Anthony’s banner
How it relates
Brian’s luck dragon with wings
Wrapping up
65:00 Wrap up
Full Video
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1 hr 6 min
May 24, 2024Podcast #127 – Backblaze Drive Report
Brian welcomes Andy Klein to the Podcast this week. Andy is the Principle Storage Cloud Storyteller at Backblaze. In addition to the storyteller role, Andy currently serves as the Technical Marketing Director. Andy has been associated with storage and security technology for most of his career and has been with Backblaze for over 12 years.
Brian welcomes Andy Klein to the Podcast this week. Andy is the Principle Storage Cloud Storyteller at Backblaze. In addition to the storyteller role, Andy currently serves as the Technical Marketing Director. Andy has been associated with storage and security technology for most of his career and has been with Backblaze for over 12 years.
Brian and Andy discuss storage technology and direction and how Backblaze uses and qualifies drives for use in their data centers. This did prove to be a lively discussion around storage products, but not necessarily data center storage products. Backblaze is a service adored by home users.

Andy is one of the techs behind the Backblaze-generated quarterly storage report. The annual report details failure rates for hard drives and, in a limited sense, SSDs in use at Backblaze. Backblaze is one of the best in being open and communicative about drive usage and failures.
We decided to go live with this podcast and invited our Discord to join. Of course, since it was live, ran into a bit of an issue getting started, so there had to be a restart to get back on track.
00:00 Introduction
Details from Q1 storage report
Backblaze indexes over 300k hard drives
High-level overview
Drive-farming
Drive insights delivered that are unavailable elsewhere
05:00 Operational details
16K 4TB drives
20K 1TB drives
Drives stay relevant because they work
Different drives have different failure rates
45 drive chassis
drive chassis
Densities
Cost per TB
Reference to Podcast #124: The Path to 50TB HDDs with Frickin Lasers
10:00 Procurement Process
Testing them all
No smart drives
Heavy performance penalty
Delete and rewrite
Encouraging users to delete files
Smart drives don’t fit the Backblaze model
Catching the drives destined to fail
Weeding out the drives that won’t fit the model
Discord question
Aggregating drive families or even brands
Every drive has a different personality
Inconsistent model numbers
15:00 Making it easy to track drive changes
The report is geared to making it easy to follow trends, changes, failure rates
Firmware versions
Configuration changes
Skew changes
Buying the least expensive drives
Drives that arrive DOA
Let’s go to Costco or Best Buy
Oops! Banned from Costco
20:00 Transitioning to Enterprise drives
Warranties
And then voided warranties
You never get a new drive for replacement
Learning the drive history!
Using Flash
Still buying the cheapest
Use cases
25:00 Operational considerations
Another trip to Costco
Burning out drives BEFORE they fail
Write, delete, write, delete, use, delete
Kinda like a restore server
All data goes to hard drives
Flash drives are for short stashing
Operationally efficient
30:00 Form factors
Discord question
How do form factors influence purchases
Densities can be managed with HDDs
Influenced by environment
Adding a new tier
Dream it, price it
Keep it simple
HAMR
Scheduled
Pulled back
35:00 Experimental Tech
Watching and Waiting
Planned Helium drives
Filled a small vault
Vault=1200 drives
Striping across 20 systems
Legacy question from Discord
Storage servers are contracted out
Supermicro servers
40:00 Protocol for failure
Cloning
Read-only servicing
Recovering data
Liquid cooling
A data center without AC
Nautilus
Pulling water from the river
Some light banter about pulling water from the Ohio for the Cincy Lab!
45:00 Finding the right chassis
Not all Chassis are equal
Savings from water-cooled data center
Running smart software
Servers remember what they were doing in the event of failure
Bringing them back online
Resiliency
Telemetry
50:00 Using Solid Technology
Exposure to just about everything
Staying in sync
Rebuilding on the fly
Discord question
What’s the network fabric
Interconnects
Shard integrity checks
Rebuilding drives
Sustainability
Giving away outdated drives
Recycling
60:00 What’s exciting for the future?
How will larger drives affect business
Costs
What’s on the bookshelf?
Wrap-Up
Full Video
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The post Podcast #127 – Backblaze Drive Report appeared first on StorageReview.com.
1 hr 5 min
January 12, 2024Podcast #126: A Myriad of Storage Topics with Quantum
Our podcast has Brian introducing Jordan Winkelman from Quantum Corporation. If you remember, we did a deep dive review of Quantum Myriad a few weeks ago. To prepare for that review, Brian traveled to the Quantum office in Denver, where he met up with Jordan in the breakroom. The discussion expanded to include AI topics like security and surveillance, all things storage and a bit of space-related topics.
Our podcast has Brian introducing Jordan Winkelman from Quantum Corporation. If you remember, we did a deep dive review of Quantum Myriad a few weeks ago. To prepare for that review, Brian traveled to the Quantum office in Denver, where he met up with Jordan in the breakroom. The discussion expanded to include AI topics like security and surveillance, all things storage and a bit of space-related topics.
Jordan has spent over 25 years in the technology industry with technical roles supporting advertising, retail, medical, VoIP, and enterprise software and infrastructure solutions. More recently, for the past eight years, he has supported scale-out storage and field technology practices at Quantum. Jordan brings a wealth of experience in designing, testing, validating, and optimizing technology solutions for businesses of all sizes.
Quantum was very engaged in the review process and provided great support and detail. This podcast reveals the same level of attention from Jordan and provides a lively discussion on storage, security, containers, and a lot more.
Jordan and Brian go deep on technology and how the storage market has progressed over the years. There’s reminiscing about old 40MB storage drives and how difficult it is to get funding from Silicon Valley for a storage company startup. It’s a fun discussion and worth the time.
If you want to skip around the podcast, we have provided a timeline below, so feel free to jump to the topics that are more important to you.
Live on our Discord.
00:00 Introduction
What isn’t Quantum
43-year-old storage company
A bit of history around Quantum drives
Purchased AIC Scalar Robotic Tape Library
Myriad
What’s coming for Myriad
05:00 Talking about Hard Drives
A bit of history about HDDs
LTO tape
Tape rebound
Tape use
Tape densities
Call it Cold Storage
Erasure coding
10:00 Meeting customer SLAs
Use cases for Object to Tape
Education
Medical
Financial
Things that need to be stored for many years
Financial incentives to retain tape
Where will data be consumed
Viewing in the MSG Sphere
15:00 Is it local, or is it streaming?
Is there a massive secure pipe for video
Is reliable transmission infrastructure available to stream
Media companies are set up for any streaming failure
Multiple data centers
multiple network routes
It works for movies, TV shows, theaters, etc.
How is Quantum addressing streaming vs. live content?
Premier League football
FI
Superbowl
Companies want to monetize all content
Quantum is widely deployed throughout this industry
Using a media asset management system
High likelihood content is flowing through a Quantum product
20:00 Live clips
Higher frame rate, higher resolution
May capture data in 8K but only stream 4K
Having the ability to upres at a later date
Video capture
Cameras can ingest at different frame rates
25:00 Networking impact
Serial Digital Interface (SDI)
M&E still uses FC
mostly because of low latency
Ethernet still has latency issues
Moving to IP-based technologies called 2110
30:00 PCI is changing with Gen 4, Gen 5, and Gen 6
GPU Servers
Storage Heavy
Filling the bays tends to oversubscribe lanes
Use Myriad’s high-performance platform
Ability to support hundreds or thousands of concurrent connections
Systems are designed differently today
Some support high performance for unstructured data
AI Workloads
Requires high-performance Ethernet interconnects
35:00 AI means different things to different people
Training and developing models
Inferencing workloads at the edge
It cannot be run in a silo
Still a breakdown in structured vs unstructured data
Integrated Deduplication and data reduction
Find the place where data lives to generate money
40:00 Power and Cooling
SSDs generate more heat than HDDs
Keeping the GPUs fat
Quantum’s take on liquid cooling
Data center designers understand the physics of cooling
Quantum doesn’t get that involved
Focus on maintaining media stability
Moving to an environmentally controlled box outside the data center
45:00 Where is the best place to store non-revenue data?
Data may have intrinsic value
Where to store that data
The cloud may not be cost-effective for that data
Why didn’t Blu-Ray succeed in the data center?
Why is tape still the best answer
Talk about CD and the misconceptions
DNA based storage, ceramic, optical
Technologies entering the storage market
50:00 DNA Storage
Still a long way off
Quantum has invested heavily in that space
DNA Storage Alliance
Consortiums contribute heavily with knowledge and technology
Hammer Technology has been in the news for over 20 years
Technology takes a long time to go mainstream
New things
Object storage on tape
Tape is not slow
55:00 Fitting media into a footprint
Is it tape?
Is it drives?
Is it tapes and drives?
How can you make the most dense library
cost-effective
Physical footprint
Redundant Array of Independent Libraries (RAIL)
Build off-the-shelf consumer product
Scale
Physical deployment
LTL consortium
60:00 Wrap up
Quantum
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1 hr 2 min
December 04, 2023Podcast #125: 45Drives and the Creation of the HL15 Homelab Storage Server
45Drives has been a cloud-scale staple for some time, delivering some of the first purpose-built storage servers for service providers. Over time the company has added many more servers, most recently an exciting 15-bay rig designed specifically for the homelab enthusiast.
45Drives has been a cloud-scale staple for some time, delivering some of the first purpose-built storage servers for service providers. Over time the company has added many more servers, most recently an exciting 15-bay rig designed specifically for the homelab enthusiast.
Doug Milburn joins the podcast to discuss the origins of 45Drives and the considerations that went into the HL15. Doug also discusses some of the roadmap for the homelab line, which should get enthusiasts bubbling in the event the HL15 isn’t your cup of tea.
Doug describes himself as a “geek by birth.” He likes everything electronic, computer, mechanical, whatever, studying physics for a couple of degrees, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and picking up everything else along the way.
We are just starting our test and review of the HL15, to get up to speed on our progress check out our unboxing and setup video here.
The podcast was done live on Discord – join Discord to keep up to date with all the latest from the SR Lab!
We are transcribing the podcast here, so you can skip to sections that might be more interesting to our listeners. However, if you have time, catch the podcast in its entirety. You won’t be disappointed. The YT video in embedded below for those who prefer the visuals.
00:00 Introduction
Personal background
Life in Nova Scotia
Education background
Building metal things
Challenges doing research
Building enclosures
05:00 Integrating everything
Materials, research, building, manufacturing equipment, etc
Created 3D CAD software – Protocase Designer
Backblaze cold storage
Met with Netflix to build computers
Drives operating in parallel
incredible data transfer rates
Multiplexing slows things down
Tripping over drivers
10:00 Get up to speed on the HL15
Check out our YouTube Video
Brian talks about building the server
Jordan and Kevin get top billing
Kevin and Jordan try to explain the reasoning
Brian closes his eyes and pretends not to listen
Storage demands were not as significant as today
Data sets were smaller 15 years ago
AI is driving these massive data sets
What’s different for 45Drives today
Focus
Customers drive 45Drives business direction
15:00 Working with government agencies
Federal government creates lots of data
everything from law enforcement to scientific agencies to military
University research
Univ of California San Diego
Wildfire project
Utilizing video cameras for fire observation
Using AI creating massive data sets
Lots of videos to process
Municipalities
Video Everywhere
Forensic data
Body cams
Car dash cams
Creating the Server Zoo
Data is here, there, everywhere
Adopting clusters
What’s interesting to 45Drives
20:00 Cold storage
Enterprises like the reliability that comes from 45Drives
Moving to flash
Flash 32 drive unit
SATA and SAS
First tri-mode unit
Building a machine
Hot-swap drives
16 million IOPs
32 Gb/s
Lab guys love the HL15
Impressive build
25:00 Delivering a clean build to customers
Machines cut the die, but people inspect and clean up
Why 45Drives build safe and solid chassis
Sharing anecdotes
30:00 Building affordable home lab equipment
Affordability range
Get it down to $2K
Business is brisk
Sold in excess of 250 units
Discord question: Why build a white server instead of the traditional black?
Came from feedback from many resources
Discord question: does adding color and graphics add to the cost?
35:00 Built in North America
45Drives is a believer in fair wages
Employees are in with variable pay
Build with quality
Let customers add to it easily
Cost-effective customization
Add whatever drives you want
Use the software you need
40:00 People have their own idea of what they want
45Drives fills 45 percent full builds
55 percent are built with other options
45:00 You can’t please all the people all the time
People should buy what they can afford
Just getting started, buy from eBay
Get a used server like a PowerEdge
build it so you can use it
the HL15 is a premium server
Is there a thin client on the way?
50:00 Looking at the hardware build design
Keeping the price point
Top loading caddy
relieving repetitive stress injury
Do you really need 240 screws?
Reducing vibration on hard drives
Flash vs HDD
The right tool for the job
Cost per terabyte
55:00 Question from Discord audience
How do 45Drives characterize support and warrant for the HL15
Low defect rate
Ship it back, or they send the part via FedEx on 45Drive’s nickel
60:00. Things you should and shouldn’t try
Don’t try what we did in the lab
Want another podcast with 45Drives?
63:00 Wrapup
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The post Podcast #125: 45Drives and the Creation of the HL15 Homelab Storage Server appeared first on StorageReview.com.
1 hr 4 min
October 18, 2023Podcast #124: The Path to 50TB HDDs with Frickin Lasers
Brian invited Seagate’s Colin Presly to the podcast this week to discuss research and developments in hard drives. Colin has been with Seagate for 20 years and is currently the Senior Director in the Office of the CTO. Originally from the UK, Colin moved to Minnesota over 20 years ago. The headline? HAMR is sampling with customers and 50TB HDDs are possible.
Brian invited Seagate’s Colin Presly to the podcast this week to discuss research and developments in hard drives. Colin has been with Seagate for 20 years and is currently the Senior Director in the Office of the CTO. Originally from the UK, Colin moved to Minnesota over 20 years ago. The headline? HAMR is sampling with customers and 50TB HDDs are possible.
Having grown up in the UK, Colin is a big sports enthusiast supporting teams like Liverpool Football Club (good pick), Formula 1, Rugby, and cricket. He is still a fan and continues to follow his teams from Shakopee, MN.
From a technology perspective, Colin considers himself to be an experienced engineering leader and technologist with over 20 years of broad technical and managerial experience in the disc drive industry. He has a proven track record managing diverse cross-functional teams, developing precision capital equipment, and productizing enterprise-quality disc drives.
After a few minutes of talking sports, Brian and Colin got serious about the real topic of this podcast: hard drives. The great thing about Colin is his enthusiasm for sport and technology.
This is a great discussion between two people who have been in the storage industry for a long time and still have the passion to get excited about what’s around the corner. Hear what is around the corner in hard drive development.
Streamed live with StorageReview Discord members.
Full video on YouTube
You should give this podcast a view in its entirety, but if you are stretched for time, the timestamp is below.
00:00 – Introduction
Let’s talk sports
Football (real football).
Formula 1
Rugby
Cricket
05:00 – Let’s talk spinning disks
Hard drive technology
Open them up and see what actually goes into the hard drive
Cloud is a hard drive
Progressive increments in capacity
What goes into the technology
Hard drive inflection point for growth
What are the limitations
10:00 – Hard drive direction
Platters, heads, size, area
Structure
Preventing flipping bits
Scale with larger platters
Is 3.5 inches the right size going forward
Hard to justify changing the HDD’s physical size
Changing the size of the HDD is not the best approach
15:00 – Comparing Flash
New ways to consume storage
Hyperscalers
Challenging in all sectors
OCP
We need the standards
NVMe for hard drives?
Watch this space – an exploration activity
20:00 – The appeal of one interface
Convincing the market
Hyperscalers have a major influence
SMR
Writing wider tracks
Challenges on Read
PMR and CMR
Restrictions
Want to get to the next BIG step
ISOMER
HAMR- Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording
25:00 – Intent to launch larger hard drive
Game changer
Increased drive capacity
Shifts in data center technology take time
A customer has nothing to change
Plasmonic effect
Heat in the media allows for changing media type
30:00 – Executing heating of an area
Heat is localized – nanometers
Heat makes the bit flip
Seagate has put years of effort into the project
Miniaturization journey
35:00 – Challenges in thermal and magnetic stability
Directing heat to the interface
Surviving that amount of heat
Experiments to get where they are today
HAMR is the next leap in technology
Is HAMR a play for small drives
Power consumption
40:00 – Replacing older 4TB drives with 20TB drives – energy savings
Big demand for that 2TB increment can save operation costs
Positive environmental impact
The demand will drive development
45:00 – GenAI driving storage capacity
Density is critical
Legal reasons to increase density
Political trends
Video
Keeping the data long-term
50:00 – Referencing CORVAULT 106 Drive System
Multi-actuator
Colin ran the program
Splits in two inside the drive
Creates a parallel operation
Performance per TB
55:00 – Wrap-up
Seagate HAMR
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The post Podcast #124: The Path to 50TB HDDs with Frickin Lasers appeared first on StorageReview.com.
57 min
September 26, 2023Podcast #123: Cloud-Based GPUs For AI
This podcast features a conversation between Brian and Jeffrey Gregor (he prefers Gregor). Gregor is the General Manager for OVHcloud® US, a leading cloud provider with a global presence. Prior to joining OVHcloud, Gregor was a Navy Officer, a highly decorated Navy Officer, with over 15 years serving the US.
This podcast features a conversation between Brian and Jeffrey Gregor (he prefers Gregor). Gregor is the General Manager for OVHcloud® US, a leading cloud provider with a global presence. Prior to joining OVHcloud, Gregor was a Navy Officer, a highly decorated Navy Officer, with over 15 years serving the US.
OVHcloud was established in 1999, with some borrowed funds and hardware, as a web-hosting startup in northern France and has grown steadily, expanding across Europe. Following the expansion into Canada in 2015, OVHcloud opened offices in the US. Gregor joined OVHcloud when the company opened offices in northern Virginia. And the expansion continues.
We recently posted a deep-dive review for OVHcloud US, focusing on GPUs in the cloud and how to approach cloud training for AI. The review is worth the time as it provides background on OVH, how we performed our tests, and the results.
Gregor explains the
Streaming live on the StorageReview Discord.
00:00 Introduction
What you need to know about OVHcloud
Company structure
Services offered
New acquisition to target the edge market
Partnerships
VMware
Nutanix
06:00 Competition
Providing building blocks for multicloud
Fitting in the multicloud environment
Platform-as-a-Service
Open Source Software support
Footprint
New investments
Design and built servers
Adding new data center in central US
11:00 Expanding OVH
Gridscale acquisition
Provides cloud workloads
growing points-of-presence
Why metal-bending offers OVH advantages
Custom configurations
Proprietary water cooling system
Environmentally friendly
18-month hardware refresh
Repurpose existing servers
Not all customers need the latest and greatest
16:00 Making it cost-effective
Low-cost options
Access to a robust playground
Flexibility
Avoiding long-term contracts
Build freedom in the cloud
Delivering high-value, high-performance
Sweet spot is SMB, small enterprises
20:00 Helping customers move to the cloud
Providing a broad range of products and services
Predictable pricing
Taking the first step to migrate to the cloud
Modernizing applications
Familiarization
Understanding the ecosystem
Managed services
Kubernetes
public cloud
private cloud
Sustainability
Liquid-cooling
Repurposing storage
Getting more life out of products and systems
Green from the beginning, not because it’s the right thing to do
26:00 Security
SOC- and ISO-certified
PCI
DSS
HIPPA compliance
Physical security
Logical security
Secure Infrastructure
Customers secure their applications
Great reputation for thwarting DDoS attacks
Anti-DDoS system
Building your own has advantages
30:00 GPU Instances ties everything together
Easy to use
Cost-effective
NVIDIA V100S
H100’s are on the way when available
Allows users to go to the next level
No lock-in contract
35:00 Geeky, Nerdy Engineers
Constantly testing hardware and software
Building for the Next Big Thing
DPUs, GPUs, accelerators
Data sovereignty
Cloud AI and LLMs
40:00 Toronto Data Center
Discord users want to visit the Toronto site
No FEDRAMP yet-maybe future
SLED certification
Getting started with OVH
private cloud
Credit is available when signing up
45:00 Wrap-up
YouTube Channel
OVHcloud US
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The post Podcast #123: Cloud-Based GPUs For AI appeared first on StorageReview.com.
48 min

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