Storage Unpacked

A weekly podcast on deploying and managing enterprise storage and data

Guest Speakers

#180 – SmartNICs – Pliops Storage Processor

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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 acts … [Read more...] about #180 – SmartNICs – Pliops Storage Processor

#178 – Monetising the Value of Data

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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...] about #178 – Monetising the Value of Data

#175 – IBM FlashSystem Deep Dive (Sponsored)

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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...] about #175 – IBM FlashSystem Deep Dive (Sponsored)

#174 – Introduction to Zoned Storage with Phil Bullinger

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This week, Chris and Martin chat to Phil Bullinger, Senior VP and General Manager for the Data Centre Business Unit at Western Digital. As storage media capacities increase, recording methods are introducing challenges to maintaining resiliency and performance. SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) and ZNS (Zoned Namespaces) are two techniques that have developed to address the … [Read more...] about #174 – Introduction to Zoned Storage with Phil Bullinger

#173 – Transparent Enterprise Storage Pricing

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Enterprise storage pricing has all the simplicity of a mobile phone tariff. Vendors love to obfuscate the costs, whereas prospective purchasers just like a good, honest price. Why does enterprise storage pricing have to be so complicated and can't we just have pricing online? Chris and Martin chat to George Crump from StorONE about strategies for pricing from both the … [Read more...] about #173 – Transparent Enterprise Storage Pricing

#172 – Tintri SQL Integrated Storage

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This week, Chris and Martin talk to Shawn Meyers, Field CTO at Tintri about SQL Integrated Storage. The Tintri VMstore platform originally provided the ability to apply policy-based management to virtual machines on shared storage. This capability has now been extended to databases, in particular Microsoft SQL Server. SQL Integrated Storage (or SIS) works by exposing an SMB … [Read more...] about #172 – Tintri SQL Integrated Storage

#171 – Exploiting Persistent Memory with MemVerge

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This week the team double down on the topics of in-memory computing and persistent memory. Chris and Martin talk to Charles Fan, CEO at MemVerge about Big Memory and using persistent memory technology (specifically Optane) to supplement system DRAM. DRAM is expensive and as capacities scale linearly, the price of memory increases exponentially. Systems are limited by … [Read more...] about #171 – Exploiting Persistent Memory with MemVerge

#169 – In-Memory Computing and Apache Ignite

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This week Chris and Martin talk to Nikita Ivanov CTO and founder of GridGain Systems. The topic is in-memory computing and specifically Apache Ignite, an open-source key-value store that also supports SQL99 and POSIX-compliant file interfaces. The idea of running applications purely from memory isn't a new one. DRAM is the fastest "storage" component but isn't designed as … [Read more...] about #169 – In-Memory Computing and Apache Ignite

#167 – Adapting Open Source Storage for the Enterprise

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This week Chris and Martin catch up with Phil Straw, CEO at Softiron for a discussion on packaging Open Source storage solutions for adoption by the enterprise. Softiron sells a software appliance based on Ceph which has been tuned to deliver high performance with high efficiency. So, exactly how do vendors go about making Open Source more consumable without breaking the … [Read more...] about #167 – Adapting Open Source Storage for the Enterprise

#166 – Infinidat Elastic Storage Pricing with Eran Brown (Sponsored)

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This week, Chris and Martin are joined by Chris Mellor from Blocks & Files and Eran Brown from Infinidat to discuss flexible pricing strategies in light of current business disruptions. Infinidat has introduced an elastic pricing model for both capex and opex purchases. How is this implemented and what platform features enable Infinidat to deliver this capability? As … [Read more...] about #166 – Infinidat Elastic Storage Pricing with Eran Brown (Sponsored)