I am often questioned during my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar presentations about VMware’s Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA). This system is fairly straightforward and concept: VMware provides native multipathing support for a variety of storage arrays, and allows third parties to substitute their own plug-ins at various points in the stack. But the profusion of acronyms and third-party options makes it difficult for end-users to figure out what is going on.
HDS
Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, April 8, 2011
This regular series features highlights from the week. Read my thoughts concerning HDS following their “blogger day” in London. Also, my good friend W. Curtis Preston announced more Backup Central Live! dates; you really ought to go see him!
Concerning HDS
I’ve been following the progress of Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) for well over a decade. When I participated in high-end enterprise storage system shootouts as an end-user, HDS routinely placed second against EMC, HP and NetApp in the, and the decision was always a close one. But the storage market has changed, with nimble startups innovating around established competitors and industry giants flexing their marketing muscles.
Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, March 25, 2011
This regular series features highlights from the week.
A special video message for NerdBlurt and #HDSday folks …
Evolving vs. Arriving
Cisco’s CleanAir vs the Atheros vendors
MetaGeek – Gestalt IT Wireless Tech Field Day
Hands on with the Metageek Wi-Spy DBx
VMware VAAI Storage Array Support in Plain English
The most exciting enhancements in VMware vSphere 4.1 is the addition of vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI). This new API allows VMware ESX to offload storage processing functions to capable storage arrays, reducing the workload on the server hardware in introducing new and exciting possibilities for performance and efficiency. VAAI in ESX 4.1 includes three separate capabilities: block zeroing, full copy, and hardware assisted locking.
