This week, Chris and Martin talk to Daniel Waddington, Principal Research Staff Member in the Global Storage Research Group at IBM Research. Daniel is developing MCAS - Memory Centric Active Storage - a high-performance key-value store designed for persistent memory. The aim is to create a platform that can be used to bring storage and compute closer together. Persistent … [Read more...]
#183 – Magnetic Tape AMA (Ask Matt Anything)
This week Chris and Martin take the opportunity to grill (not broil) Matt Starr from Spectralogic to learn everything about magnetic tape. This episode came out of a discussion with Chris Mellor (episode #176) in which we asked the question why tape media doesn't wear out. The answer is obviously within the podcast so you'll need to listen to find out! In this … [Read more...]
#182 – FaunaDB – Client Serverless Computing
This week, Chris and Martin chat to Evan Weaver, CTO and co-founder at Fauna. The company has developed a database as a service, available simply through a globally available API. Fauna calls the platform "client serverless". How can a database be made globally available and still guarantee performance, resiliency and most important, data consistency? Of course, you will … [Read more...]
#181 – Is There a Future for Storage Infrastructure Companies?
This week Chris and Martin debate the future of on-premises storage infrastructure companies in light of announcements and events from IBM, Dell and NetApp. IBM is splitting in two, while Dell and NetApp have recently held virtual versions of their annual conferences. Is the on-premises infrastructure business shrinking and becoming too low-margin to be worthwhile? Martin … [Read more...]
#180 – SmartNICs – Pliops Storage Processor
This week Chris and Martin chat to Steve Fingerhut, CMO at Pliops. Pliops has developed a "Storage Processor" in the form factor of an AIC (add-in card) that offloads storage functions from application software. This discussion looks at why the technology is needed and how Pliops has implemented the solution to drop into an existing server. The Pliops Storage Processor … [Read more...]
#179 – The Myth of Cheap Cloud Storage
Everyone thinks cloud storage is cheaper than on-premises, but is that really true? When cloud storage like AWS S3 was first introduced, vendors dropped their $/GB prices on a frequent basis. However, AWS hasn't reduced the base price of S3 in five years, instead preferring to offer cheaper tiers of storage. In this week's episode, Chris and Martin debate the reasons for the … [Read more...]
#178 – Monetising the Value of Data
This week, Chris has a great conversation with Bill Schmarzo, Chief Innovation Officer at Hitachi Vantara. Bill maintains a consultancy practice within Hitachi that helps customers build processes and identify data that can be used to create business value within an organisation. In this discussion, Bill outlines the process for identifying opportunities, capturing the data … [Read more...]
#177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey
This week Chris and Martin look at SmartNIC technology and the announcement of Project Monterey. SmartNICs are offload devices that provide networking, storage and security functions with additional benefits such as centralised management. VMware has announced Project Monterey, a preview solution that takes SmartNICs and offloads storage and networking tasks from the ESXi … [Read more...]
#176 – Opinionated Storage Opinions with Chris Mellor
This week, Martin and Chris catch up with Chris Mellor in his "pandemic infused isolation". Without a particular theme, this episode looks at the unchanging landscape of tape and media, Dell EMC building another new storage platform and Nutanix still not making a profit. In the future zone, we speculate on AMD and Micron getting together to build an Optane challenger, the … [Read more...]
#175 – IBM FlashSystem Deep Dive (Sponsored)
This week Chris catches up with Ralf Colbus from IBM to talk about the evolution of FlashSystem. The FlashSystem platform is an enterprise-class block-based storage solution that scales from SMB/SME offerings to high-end all-NVMe and SCM capable devices. At the heart of the design is the software behind Spectrum Virtualise, the SAN Volume Controller or SVC. FlashSystem now … [Read more...]