Thin Provisioning and Cloud Storage: My Interop 2010 Topics
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 16. Mar, 2010 | View Comments
I’m pleased to be heading back to Interop this spring with two sessions on enterprise storage. Although significantly changed from the old “Networld + Interop” days, the event is enjoyable and technical, with many interesting sessions and speakers. And the New York show at least had plenty of end user attendees!
Innocence, Fairness, and Technology Benchmarks
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 26. Feb, 2010 | View Comments
HP recently commissioned Tolley Group to benchmark their BladeSystem c7000 against the Cisco UCS 5100. The short report focuses on two results, and reads like so many competitive benchmarks in the IT industry: Tolley focuses on metrics that highlight the strength of HP’s solution and the weaknesses of Cisco’s. What’s the real value of pinpoint maximum-performance benchmarks like this?
Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage on 03. Feb, 2010 | View Comments
In this video, I present the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage and propose a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.
CommVault Gives Cloud Storage A Seat At The Adult Table
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 01. Feb, 2010 | View Comments
Only mature technologies are taken seriously and granted equal status when enterprise architectures are defined. That’s why I’m pleased to see today’s announcement that CommVault has completely integrated API-driven public cloud storage with Simpana, their impressive data protection and archiving suite. Now there are three equal backup targets: Tape, disk, and cloud.
Drobo Adding 4K Drive Support – What About Everyone Else?
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home on 28. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
Drobo is adding support for 4K-sector “Advanced Format” drives across their product line, but others do not seem as responsive.
What I’ve Learned From Vendor Blogging
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 21. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
Concluding my series on vendor bloggers, I present my own experiences wearing multiple hats and trying to remain credible.
Vendor Non-Blogs
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 20. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
Biased content isn’t just found on blogs – it’s much more likely to be found in other areas like Twitter and discussion forums. When does discussion become Astroturf?
The Spectrum of Vendor Blogs
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 19. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
There is a spectrum of vendor-oriented blogging in various IT infrastructure areas: Some are more or less open about where they work, some focus on common technology, and others work in marketing. Bloggers are wise to keep these in mind as they move to new companies!
Vendor Bloggers 1: Why Does It Matter?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 18. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
What does it mean for the community when independent bloggers go to work for vendors? The Internet has changed the old game of leveraging publications for PR. Can you still trust what you read?
Ramdisks: Back From the Brink of Extinction
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 15. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
Using system memory for storage is something of a lost art these days. But many of today’s I/O intensive tasks can still benefit from the untouchable quickness provided by a ramdisk. Happily, most operating systems are still capable of creating and using ramdisks.
