Storage Unpacked

A weekly podcast on deploying and managing enterprise storage and data

Storage Hardware

#217 – Introduction to CXL with Jim Pappas

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This week, Chris and Martin discuss the emerging CXL technology with CXL Consortium Chair, Jim Pappas. CXL or Compute Express Link, is a new solution that will provide improved connectivity between processors and accelerator devices connected through the PCIe 5.0 bus. With CXL, central processors, GPUs and other co-processors can share memory and operate closer together with … [Read more...] about #217 – Introduction to CXL with Jim Pappas

#216 – The Data Explosion with VAST Data CEO Renen Hallak

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This week, Chris chats to VAST Data CEO, Renen Hallak about the explosion in data and the challenges of analysing and managing huge quantities of unstructured content. VAST Data has built a scale-out unstructured object store that customers are now using to store petabytes of complex data. But what does complex mean, and how is that data being used? Renen explains how many … [Read more...] about #216 – The Data Explosion with VAST Data CEO Renen Hallak

#215 – Stateless Compute Machines

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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

#209 – Discovering Unified Fast File and Object with Pure Storage (Sponsored)

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In this week's episode, Chris and Martin meet with Brian Carpenter, Senior Director of Unstructured Technology Strategy at Pure Storage, to talk about UFFO - Unified Fast File and Object. UFFO is a technology bringing together the two main types of unstructured data into a single platform - FlashBlade. The discussion centres on the benefits of using a single platform that … [Read more...] about #209 – Discovering Unified Fast File and Object with Pure Storage (Sponsored)

#203 – Storage and Chia Cryptocurrency Farming

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This week, Martin and Chris delve into cryptocurrency mining in a lengthy discussion on Chia with Robert Novak. Chia is a new cryptocurrency technology that differs from previous online currencies in that the basis for earning rewards (or coins) is based on the volume of data stored on disk, rather than raw compute performed. Rob takes the team through a discussion of the … [Read more...] about #203 – Storage and Chia Cryptocurrency Farming

#202 – Enterprise Storage Consolidation with Phil Bullinger from Infinidat (Sponsored)

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In this week's sponsored episode, Chris and Martin talk to Phil Bullinger, newly appointed CEO at Infinidat. The company has reached their ten-year anniversary, shipping over seven exabytes of capacity in that time. With successful growth in every quarter during 2020, we discuss how Infinidat is helping drive the consolidation story for large enterprises and MSPs looking to … [Read more...] about #202 – Enterprise Storage Consolidation with Phil Bullinger from Infinidat (Sponsored)

#190 – NVIDIA BlueField SmartNICs & DPUs

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This week, Chris and Martin chat to Kevin Deierling, SVP of Marketing for Networking Products at NVIDIA. SmartNICs and DPUs (Data Processing Units) are starting to become mainstream as application use-cases such as AI and analytics drive a need for greater data throughput and performance. Kevin explains the design and thinking behind BlueField, NVIDIA's family of DPU products … [Read more...] about #190 – NVIDIA BlueField SmartNICs & DPUs

#185 – Pure-as-a-Service 2.0 (Sponsored)

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This week Chris and Martin talk to Rob Walters, GM for Pure-as-a-Service at Pure Storage. The company has recently announced upgrades and expansion of the "as-a-service" model, formerly known as Evergreen storage. The name change and the widening of the portfolio represents an opportunity for customers to see transparent pricing and a greater depth of service offerings. … [Read more...] about #185 – Pure-as-a-Service 2.0 (Sponsored)

#183 – Magnetic Tape AMA (Ask Matt Anything)

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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 conversation, … [Read more...] about #183 – Magnetic Tape AMA (Ask Matt Anything)

#181 – Is There a Future for Storage Infrastructure Companies?

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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...] about #181 – Is There a Future for Storage Infrastructure Companies?