Technology:Unpacked

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, […]

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 – Intro

* 00:01:00 – Myth 1: Do I really need synchronous replication?

* 00:07:13 – Myth 2: Snapshots are good enough for backup.

* 00:09:40 – Myth 3: Can I really have a five 9’s storage array?

* 00:14:10 – Myth 4: Non-disruptive upgrades?

* 00:19:42 – Myth 5: Are performance figures really accurate?

* 00:27:20 – Myth 6: Effective capacity claims by vendors.

* 00:30:00 – Wrap Up

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission.

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 […]

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 the podcast talking through the Commvault offering in this space – HyperScale.  Finally we wrap up with thought about how this market will mature.  Is there any future at all for build-your-own solutions?

Elapsed Time: 00:33:13

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro

* 00:01:00 – Commvault background

* 00:04:00 – Why buy an appliance compared to build your own?

* 00:06:30 – What operationally, is the benefit for the customer?

* 00:07:30 – Vendor designs, scale-out or scale-up?

* 00:08:30 – What are the compromises?

* 00:10:00 – Who are the typical customers for the appliance model?

* 00:11:30 – Are appliances simply a way to make better margins?

* 00:14:30 – Design and build is over….

* 00:15:30 – Nobody loves their 10th NetApp – allegedly.

* 00:17:45 – Deeper dive into Commvault HyperScale.

* 00:22:00 – What patching has been done for Spectre/Meltdown?

* 00:24:30 – How are existing non-appliance customers accommodated?

* 00:26:01 – What support is available for public cloud?

* 00:29:30 – How is licensing managed?

* 00:30:30 – What is the future of data protection appliances?

* 00:32:30 – Wrap up

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission.

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 […]

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.  What can we expect from new companies like ScaleFlux and NGDS?  The wrap up puts Chris on the spot for his predictions and gives us a nice follow-up in 6 months time.

Elapsed Time: 00:27:02

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro.

* 00:00:37 – Straight into Dell and the VMware reverse IPO.

* 00:02:31 – IDC numbers for 3Q2017 didn’t favour the big boys.

* 00:03:40 – Is this actually the start of a change in Dell EMC’s business? Solution Stacks!

* 00:04:50 – EMC chopped, shaped and distributed.

* 00:06:40 – IBM Storage reinvigorated with NVMeoF?

* 00:08:00 – Is 2018 the year for NVMe over Fabrics? (Or VDI, or Linux Desktop)

* 00:09:40 – But how big is the NVMeoF market, is it still niche?

* 00:12:00 – How does high the performance technology translate to Edge/IoT?

* 00:13:30 – What is in-situ processing? ScaleFlux, NGDS (Next Generation Data Systems)

* 00:15:30 – How important will compute next to storage be?

* 00:17:00 – Is Edge/IoT too hard, when simple issues like security never gets fixed?

* 00:19:00 – What would the more practical uses of IoT be?

* 00:21:00 – Could IoT be like Cryptocurrency or Bitcoin?

* 00:22:30 – What is the future of Storage? Latency, NVMeoF and SCM…

* 00:26:20 – Wrap Up

Vendors Mentioned in this Podcast

Dell EMC, VMware, IDC, NetApp, IBM, E8 Storage, Lenovo, HPE, Toshiba, Pure Storage, Kaminario, Violin Systems, DSSD, Excelero, FusionIO, X-IO

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 […]

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 be able to take advantage of the technology in the future.

A few references are made during the podcast.  The SNIA Persistent Memory sub-site can be found here at https://www.snia.org/pm.  Here’s a link to the Persistent Memory Summit – https://www.snia.org/pm-summit.  It’s actually Linux kernel 4.2 onwards that adds NVDIMM support as well as Windows 2016.  This Microsoft webinar provides some detail on how NVDIMM can be used with Storage Spaces Direct – Using Non-volatile Memory (NVDIMM-N) as Block Storage in Windows Server 2016.

Elapsed Time: 00:28:46

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro

* 00:00:54 – Persistent Memory defined

* 00:02:00 – Why use it? What is it for?

* 00:04:40 – Why not just use a honking great battery for protection?

* 00:05:20 – Standards from JEDEC

* 00:06:00 – Defining the NV-DIMM formats. N, F and P.

* 00:12:00 – Could 3D-XPoint justify its own definition?

* 00:13:35 – How are these devices supported by the hardware?

* 00:16:00 – What are the application use cases for persistent memory?

* 00:19:00 – Could I trust having NVDIMM as my only source of data?

* 00:23:00 – Who is buying and using NVDMM today?

* 00:27:30 – Wrap up

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission.

 

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 […]

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 performance.  You can find that here.  The second was the reference to an inpromptu Slack group, set up to work on patches.  You can find that here.

Elapsed Time: 00:25:17

Timeline

* 00:00:00 – Intro

* 00:01:00 – Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities defined

* 00:05:30 – How are patches affecting the workload of applications?

* 00:09:30 – How successful have existing patches been?

* 00:10:30 – Was the awareness of the issue handled correctly?

* 00:12:00 – Has the industry overreacted to the problems?

* 00:13:00 – How are storage products affected?

* 00:17:30 – What should end users and storage vendor customers do?

* 00:21:00 – NVMe and all-flash may suffer more than spinning media systems.

* 00:24:00 – Wrap Up

Copyright (c) 2016-2018 Storage Unpacked.  No reproduction or re-use without permission.