Microsoft and Intel Pushing iSCSI Performance Limits
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 07. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
“Maximizing Hyper-V iSCSI Performance with Microsoft and Intel” might sound like another “blah blah” marketing piece, but a little birdy tells me that this webcast will drop a bombshell about iSCSI performance.
Of Emulated Fibre Channel, Virtualization, And The Right Tool For The Job
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 12. Dec, 2008 | View Comments
EMC’s Chuck Hollis is one smart guy, and a very verbose blogger. As usual, he sparked a bit of a storm recently when comparing unified storage on EMC’s Celerra NX4 to NetApp’s multiprotocol FAS2020 filer. But it was one phrase in particular that got the attention of Alex McDonald and Kostadis Russos of NetApp, Martin/Storagebod, and Tony [...]
Changes in Technology Drive Changes in IT Organizations and Roles
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 03. Dec, 2008 | View Comments
Lots of my IT infrastructure management clients are talking about how the advent of Ethernet/IP and virtualization is changing the roles of storage, server, and network administrators. The evolution of the storage role in particular in enterprise IT organizations has been a topic of particular interest to me for a while: I definitely remember thinking about [...]
Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 07. Nov, 2008 | View Comments
Just over three months after releasing Update 2 for ESX 3.5, VMware has released Update 3. That last Update brought major storage changes like VSS support, hot VMFS extension, Storage VMotion across Fibre Channel and iSCSI, and support for 10 Gb Ethernet and 8 Gb FC support.
For more information on Update 2, see my article, Storage [...]
Reality Check: The FCoE Forecast
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 19. Oct, 2008 | View Comments
This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.
There has been a lot of discussion in the storage industry about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), making it the toast of Storage Networking World, but this technology remains relatively unknown to [...]
We Need a Storage Revolution
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage on 28. Sep, 2008 | View Comments
Storage protocols continue to mimic direct attached storage, with the concepts of block and file at its core. No amount of virtualization, and no new protocol, will fix this – we need a storage revolution.
A Consultant’s View Of The Enterprise Storage Market
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 21. Sep, 2008 | View Comments
This is part of an ongoing series of longer articles I will be posting every Sunday as part of an experiment in offering more in-depth content.
I am not the typical enterprise storage user. In fact, I am not an enterprise storage user at all – I am a consultant focused for over a decade on [...]
Xen 3.3 Update Brings Paravirtualized SCSI
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 28. Aug, 2008 | View Comments
One of the new features in Xen 3.3, released this week, caught my eye: Paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI), which allows a guest OS to directly interact with a SCSI (or Fibre Channel) HBA. This should allow more specialized applications to be virtualized in Xen environments that use SCSI or FC storage without requiring the addition of [...]
Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 28. Jul, 2008 | View Comments
VMware just released Update 2 for VMware ESX Server 3.5 (Virtual Infrastructure), and it includes some storage fixes of note:
Support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for filesystems Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 guests. This means VMware services like VCB and SRM can now signal Windows Server to quiesce filesystems before creating a clone [...]
Which Storage Protocol For VMware?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 18. Jul, 2008 | View Comments
I had two great storage virtualization seminars this week, in New York and Philadelphia. As usual, audience participation was key, and interest in VMware and Hyper-V remains high.
One of the main questions I always get is which protocol one should use for VMware storage. My recommendation remains that the answer is an organizational one more [...]
