Although I’m not a programmer, the need has occasionally arisen for me to write some code. These essential tools from my technical toolbox are included here.
Understanding the accumulation of data
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EMC Redefine Possible (TL;DR Edition)
EMC made quite a few announcements today at their “Redefine Possible” event in London. There’s a lot of coverage out there already, so I decided to present a summary of the whole thing in “too long; didn’t read” (TL;DR) fashion. Note that this isn’t an attempt to list everything from the event but rather to pull out what [...]
EMC Acquires TwinStrata
TwinStrata is a technologically impressive cloud gateway for enterprise, and as of now it’s part of EMC. This was the biggest news so far from today’s “Redefine Possible” event in London, which I’m attending. TwinStrata was founded in 2007 and has been shipping product since 2010. Their “cloud integrated storage” product is mainly known for adding iSCSI [...]
Cloud Without Virtualization
Lots of folks conflate cloud computing and virtualization, but these are not necessarily intrinsically related. Although most cloud servers today use a hypervisor like KVM or Xen to share compute hardware, there’s no reason it has to be this way. My takeaway from Gigaom Structure this week is that an alternative paradigm is emerging: Cloud without [...]
Why SanDisk + Fusion-io = Awesome
The storage industry was abuzz yesterday with news that SanDisk will buy Fusion-io for $1.1 billion. Lots of folks seem confused by this, but I think that’s because they don’t know who SanDisk really are. After having been exposed to both companies’ management, products, and strategy, I think this is a great fit and excellent news for the storage [...]
Truth in Storage: Minneapolis and Chicago
This week I’m back on the road for another pair of seminars in my Truth in Storage series with Truth in IT. These seminars are really enjoyable for me, since I am able to talk Storage tech for hours on end. It’s great to be back on the storage topic, after two years of trying [...]
PacITPros TechDays SF
This week I’m off to San Francisco to attend two events: Fusion-io promises to “change the way you look at flash storage” on Wednesday, and I’ll be presenting on Microsoft Windows storage technologies at PacITPros TechDays SF on Thursday! I don’t actually know much about the Fusion-io event. It’s not secret, and I’m sure I’ll be [...]
Why OpenStack Doesn’t Need Fibre Channel Support
Last week, J Metz penned an article entitled “Thoughts on #OpenStack and Software-Defined Storage” in which he argues (rightly) that OpenStack Cinder should take storage networks into account and also (wrongly) that it should also encompass existing protocols such as “the 11 Billion ports of Fibre Channel that currently exist as part of a holistic [...]
The PNY StorEDGE is a Must-Have MacBook Accessory
Although I appreciate Apple’s decision to go all-SSD on the MacBook line, it does cause some problems capacity-wise. Even 256 GB is an expensive proposition from Apple, and it’s not easy or cheap to expand storage on these laptops. One option is a fast USB 3 drive like the SanDisk Extreme, and there’s also some external Thunderbolt [...]
Is Storage the Killer App for Software-Defined Networking?
Software Defined Networking (SDN) has always looked a bit like a solution in search of a problem, at least in the enterprise data center. But there are lots of potential applications that need a dynamic and scalable network. In my mind, storage is chief among these, since scalability and flexibility has always been extremely difficult to achieve.
Software-Defined Data Center Symposium, April 22 in Santa Clara, CA
I’ve written and spoken quite a bit on the “software-defined” future, what it means and how it will come about. Although it seems like a marketing buzzword to some, I feel it is a fairly accurate description of the future of the enterprise and service provider data center. That’s why I’m working to organize the next Software-Defined Data Center Symposium, and am happy to announce that it will be held in Santa Clara, CA on April 22, 2014.