This week, Martin, Chris and Gavin reflect on the decision by EMC to disband the {code} team and discuss whether open source has a place in storage. {code} was a project started by EMC before the Dell acquisition. The team focused on open source advocacy and developing tools such as storage plugins for Docker. Looking wider, companies like Red Hat have built their business on … [Read more...]
#40 – Garbage Collection: Death of the Storage Admin
This week's podcast was recorded a few months ago, so apologies for the sound quality. The team discuss the role of the storage administrator and whether we will see the eventual demise of storage admins or simply a transition to another role. The conversation tracks the responsibilities of storage administrators over the last 30 years, from the era of the mainframe to … [Read more...]
#39 – Garbage Collection: Storage Mythbusters Part I
In this week's podcast, the guys talk about some of the myths in the storage industry. The focus is mainly on traditional storage arrays and some of the features that end users might not need. The conversation takes a marketing turn, with questions on how five 9's availability is marketed and the use of dedupe/compression as a tool to reduce costs. What do you think? Are … [Read more...]
#38 – Talking Dedicated Backup Appliances with Don Foster from Commvault
In this week's podcast, the team talk to Don Foster, Senior Director for WW Solutions Marketing at Commvault. Initially this podcast was intended to be recorded at Commvault Go last November (2017) in Washington DC, but schedules didn't align so we did it remotely. The audio quality is not as good as we'd like, so apologies for that. However, there are some good discussions … [Read more...]
#37 – State of the Storage Union with Chris Mellor
This week Chris and Gavin catch up with Chris Mellor, Storage Editor for The Register. With so much happening in storage, it's difficult to know where to start, so the guys focus on the rumour of Dell EMC reversing into VMware. Could this really happen and why is Dell EMC even thinking about this? The conversation flows on to IBM and their super-mega-hyper-uber announcement … [Read more...]
#36 – The Persistence of Memory with Rob Peglar
In this week's episode, the team talk to Rob Peglar, Senior VP and CTO at SymbolicIO. The conversation covers persistent memory and in particular the NVDIMM format of devices that provide persistent storage in a standard server DIMM slot. Rob explains how the standards are set through JEDEC, with a description of the three types - NVDIMM-N, F and P. The discussion continues … [Read more...]
#35 – The Spectre of Meltdown with Alex Chircop
In this week's podcast, the team talk to Alex Chircop, CTO at StorageOS about the implications on storage of the recent Spectre/Meltdown vulnerabilities. Much has been made of the potential impact to I/O performance and by definition storage platforms and products. The guys talk about what the vulnerabilities actually mean for end users and what to expect from storage … [Read more...]
Disaggregated Storage Part III with Josh Goldenhar from Excelero
Continuing on our theme of disaggregated storage, Gavin and Martin talk to Josh Goldenhar, VP Products at Excelero. In this podcast, recorded on 6th November 2017, the guys talk about NVMesh, the Excelero technology that transforms servers and NVMe drives into a distributed storage mesh. As we're starting to see, there are some common themes developing here, with Linux-based … [Read more...]
Disaggregated Storage Part II with Zivan Ori from E8 Storage
In this podcast, originally recorded on 30 October 2017, Chris and Gavin follow up on the subject of disaggregated storage with Zivan Ori, CEO at E8 Storage. E8 is a start-up that markets and sells a storage array that uses a disaggregated architecture. The conversation covers what disaggregation really means and how E8 focuses on splitting the data and control paths of … [Read more...]
Soundbytes #011: Tech Trailblazers Update with Rose Ross and Jon Toigo
In this special episode, recorded on 28th September 2017, Gavin talks to Rose Ross, Chief Trailblazer with Tech Trailblazers, the global awards programme that promotes and supports new technology startups. Joining Gavin and Rose is Jon Toigo, industry veteran and Managing Partner at Toigo Partners International LLC. Jon is a member of the Tech Trailblazer judging panel. For … [Read more...]