The Artist Formerly Known As Network Appliance
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage on 10. Mar, 2008 | View Comments
Network Appliance is no more. The company that made the second enterprise storage device I ever used, added the terms “filer” and “appliance” to the enterprise IT lexicon, and long suffered from a confusing array of names, is now officially called NetApp.
This is probably a good idea. A company needs a single name, [...]
Which Storage Protocol For VMware?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 07. Mar, 2008 | View Comments
One of the hits from my TechTarget storage virtualization seminar this week was a discussion of the relative merits of different storage protocols. Sounds deadly, but this can be quite a religious issue for folks, and it generated lively debate. I’m firmly in the “do what works” camp – there is no always-right [...]
Reacting to TechTarget’s Storage Products of the Year
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage on 11. Feb, 2008 | View Comments
TechTarget’s Storage magazine today announced the winners of their annual Products of the Year awards, and it’s an impressive array of technologies. Although I did not contribute to the voting this year, I heartily endorse the outcomes!
Overall, I was impressed with many of these products this last year, but certainly CommVault, HDS, ProStor, Xsigo, [...]
Yowza! VMware is a Rocket!
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 14. Aug, 2007 | View Comments
EMC floated 10% of VMware today as an IPO (NYSE:VMW) and wow, is it taking off. Starting at $29, it’s at $51 after a couple of hours of trading, making EMC’s $635 million investment in 2003 worth $19 billion today. If this price is maintained (which I doubt it will be), VMware would [...]
Commercial SSDs Are Here?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Terabyte home on 14. Aug, 2007 | View Comments
Anyone paying attention knows I’m not particular sanguine about the near-term prospects for solid-state disks (SSDs) and hybrid hard disk drives (H-HDDs) in the enterprise storage space, but I’m not foolish enough to discount them entirely. With that in mind, it’s worthwhile noting the debut of the first commercially-available retail(ish) SATA SSD from [...]
Back from the All-Star break
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal on 11. Jul, 2007 | View Comments
I’m finally getting settled back in after my physical storage and migration effort these last few weeks! I’m now located in the heartland of Wooster, Ohio rather than the headland of Massachusetts!
If it’s true that “stuff”, like gas, expands to fill all available space then at least I now have more space [...]
Storage History: The 3Server
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage on 25. Jun, 2007 | View Comments
Being a history buff stuck in the storage industry, I’ve long had an interest in how we got where we are. So much of the storage industry is rooted in legacy, and we can learn much by knowing why things turned out the way they did.
I’d like to kick off a series of articles [...]
NetApp heads to the buffet
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage on 21. Jun, 2007 | View Comments
So NetApp is bundling their software for their low-end iSCSI arrays according to CRN. Aah that perennial battle of a la carte pricing versus bundles… Is it better to offer customers everything they might need at a single price or to give them the chance to pick and choose? Let’s think about it…
