Storage Unpacked

A weekly podcast on deploying and managing enterprise storage and data

#222 – End of the Year Show 2021 – Part Two

by

In this episode, Chris, Martin and Chris are joined by Infinidat CMO, Eric Herzog. The aim of this continuing discussion is to review the storage news and events from 2021. As usual though, the agenda gets trashed and the conversation goes down a series of rabbit holes. However, the team do manage to discuss the changing world of storage management, SmartNICs, the expansion … [Read more...] about #222 – End of the Year Show 2021 – Part Two

#221 – End of the Year Show 2021 – Part One

by

This week, the team take a review of 2021, looking at the events in storage and a lot more. In fact, this episode goes way off-piste in the conversation, so be prepared for public cloud, China, service models and storage unicorns. This is part 1 of a two-part "double header", the next episode of which will be published in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this … [Read more...] about #221 – End of the Year Show 2021 – Part One

#220 – AWS & Cloud File System Diversity

by

This week, Chris and Martin review the announcements coming out of AWS Reinvent, specifically those covering file systems. AWS announced FSx for OpenZFS and recently added FSx for NetApp ONTAP to the existing offerings. With FSx for Windows Server and FSx for Lustre (plus EFS), AWS now has five different file system solutions. Why has AWS decided to partner or use existing … [Read more...] about #220 – AWS & Cloud File System Diversity

#219 – Anatomy of a Ransomware Attack

by

This week Chris chats to Tony Mendoza, Senior Director of IT at Spectra Logic. The conversation covers the ransomware attack experienced by Spectra in May 2020 and the subsequent response to deal with the problem. On 7th May 2020, the company detected a ransomware exploit was encrypting files across application servers. In their place was a plain text file, demanding money … [Read more...] about #219 – Anatomy of a Ransomware Attack

#218 – Real World Customer Data Protection Experiences with Don Foster (Sponsored)

by

This week, Chris is in conversation with Don Foster, Global Head of Sales Engineering for Commvault. The discussion covers the experiences of customers as IT continues to evolve into public, hybrid and multi-clouds. Don runs the global Sales Engineering teams, tasked with helping customers protect their data in a world that now includes on-premises deployments, the public … [Read more...] about #218 – Real World Customer Data Protection Experiences with Don Foster (Sponsored)

#217 – Introduction to CXL with Jim Pappas

by

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

by

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

by

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

#214 – Can CloudFlare R2 Disrupt AWS S3?

by

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

by

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