In this week's episode, Chris and Martin discuss network booting and the ability to create completely stateless servers. The idea of SAN booting has been around for two decades, enabling both the operating system disk and data disks to be delivered from SAN storage. NVMe/TCP and other NVMe-oF protocols promise the ability to implement the same capability for modern systems. … [Read more...] about #215 – Stateless Compute Machines
Garbage Collection
#214 – Can CloudFlare R2 Disrupt AWS S3?
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the announcement from CloudFlare of R2, a new object storage solution. With such a widely dispersed CDN network, could CloudFlare become a real competitor for S3, considering that the R2 platform will have no egress fees? This episode digs into the details, to look at what additional features object storage vendors need in their arsenal and … [Read more...] about #214 – Can CloudFlare R2 Disrupt AWS S3?
#213 – Kubernetes-Native Data Protection
With KubeCon North America 2021 looming, Chris and Martin spend this week looking at data protection for Kubernetes-native environments. Vendors have started to introduce backup solutions, some working within the container environment itself, some outside as part of existing products. Exactly what should be backed up and how should these products work? Are we right to … [Read more...] about #213 – Kubernetes-Native Data Protection
#212 – File Not Found
In this week's podcast, Chris and Martin get together to discuss the curious case of missing files. In this instance, the files weren't actually missing, but according to an article in The Verge, students running a software simulation didn't know how to determine their location. In a world where the current generation have grown up on iPhones and iPads (or similar devices) … [Read more...] about #212 – File Not Found
#210 – Building SANs in the Cloud
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the merits of building virtual SANs in the public cloud. Vendors including Silk and Pure Storage now offer virtual storage "appliances" built from virtual instances and cloud storage. Why are these solutions necessary, when the public cloud providers have plenty of high-performance block and file storage offerings? The discussion looks at … [Read more...] about #210 – Building SANs in the Cloud
#208 – NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage – More Than a Good Marketing Message?
In this week's podcast, Chris and Martin look at NVIDIA's GPUDirect Storage (GDS), a technology for moving data directly from persistent storage to GPUs, bypassing the CPU. The aim of the technology is to provide greater throughput to keep GPUs active, and looking at some of the thoughts from our podcast with Liqid (#204), it's clear that this feature is needed. However, with … [Read more...] about #208 – NVIDIA GPUDirect Storage – More Than a Good Marketing Message?
#207 – AWS Gets a SAN Upgrade
This week the team is back after a short break and ready to talk all things cloud - or at least about Elastic Block Store. AWS recently announced io2 and io2 Block Express, the first new EBS block storage offerings for eight years. With such a long gap since io1 was first released, what has AWS been up to and what's new? In this discussion, Martin and Chris question whether … [Read more...] about #207 – AWS Gets a SAN Upgrade
#199 – Quantifying Data Storage Innovation
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the level of innovation seen in the data storage industry over the last decade. This topic is one that comes up repeatedly as we review the market, startups and incumbents. In reality, of course there's been innovation, whether the "micro-innovations" that move the storage media industry along, or the more significant changes like NVMe and … [Read more...] about #199 – Quantifying Data Storage Innovation
#197 – Prioritising Disaster Recovery Planning
The ongoing saga at OVH highlights the need to have solid disaster recovery plans that reflect the risk and impact of systems failure on the business. In this episode, Chris and Martin dig into the issues at OVH and how they represent a wake-up call for businesses in general. High profile failures have been apparent over many years, so does DR get the investment and respect … [Read more...] about #197 – Prioritising Disaster Recovery Planning
#196 – Creating a Multi-Cloud Data Strategy
This week, Chris and Martin discuss the issues of building a multi-cloud data storage strategy. The range of options for private, public and hosted data services is huge, with each offering a different set of services and implemented in subtly unique ways. How can an enterprise take advantage of these services, while maintaining data protection, cost control and service … [Read more...] about #196 – Creating a Multi-Cloud Data Strategy