Today was a big one for EMC, with the company launching or updating 41 storage products, including the new VNX storage system. EMC’s press and analyst event was equally notable, with a large crowd of insiders (including me) brought to New York City to watch a sideshow of world records set. Although Wall Street noticed all the fuss and rewarded the company with a 52-week high stock price, some actions away from the Equitable Center drew the ire of EMC competitor, NetApp.
Computer History
Considering the history of computing, from the enterprise to the home.
The Three Requirements To Overcome Inertia
In Philosophiæ Naturalis, Sir Isaac Newton defined inertia. Although he was referring to physical objects, the power of inertia affects companies, markets, and relationships in the same manner. Humans are creatures of habit, and change is challenging. When faced with a choice of continuing along the same road or branching off in a new direction, most will choose familiarity.
Granularity of Thin Provisioning Approaches
Although I consider it the main stumbling block for thin provisioning, communication (or lack thereof) is being addressed with metadata monitoring, WRITE_SAME, the Veritas Thin API, and other ideas. But communication isn’t the only issue. Let’s talk about page sizes. You’ll often see vendors tossing this “softball” objection at their competitors, claiming that their (smaller) page size makes for more-effective thin provisioning. And that’s true, to a some extent.
Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, January 7, 2011
It’s been a slow week (the holidays) and a crazy one. I’ve started pouring out the thin provisioning series, with 10 posts so far, as well as launching a new video “talk show” about enterprise IT. And I’ve got a new post over at SearchStorage, too. Whew!
Talking Cloud Storage Gateways With Nasuni and Cirtas
I’ve got a new video podcast up and running: Raising the Floor is a series of discussions about the future of enterprise IT. I kicked the series off talking about one of my favorite topics: Cloud storage. It was a pretty broad discussion, all packed into less than half an hour, but I wanted to share a few excerpts.
