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.
EMC
Storage for Server Virtualization: I Need Numbers
As I work to build out my Storage for Server Virtualization seminar content, one thing becomes clear: I need numbers. The most-common question at events like this is, “how many people are using this or that?” It’s wrong to answer those questions anecdotally: Although I personally know people using NetApp, EqualLogic, HP, and EMC storage for their ESX environments, does this make them the market leaders? So I’m putting out a call for numbers: Please help me fill in these blanks!
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!
Is TRIM Useful For Thin Provisioning?
If WRITE_SAME can be a semaphore for thin un-provisioning, what about TRIM? It sounds like a perfect fit, and has wider implementation to boot! Let’s take a deeper look.
