I’ve got a new video podcast up and running: Raising the Floor is a series of discussions about the future of enterprise IT. I kicked the series off talking about one of my favorite topics: Cloud storage. It was a pretty broad discussion, all packed into less than half an hour, but I wanted to share a few excerpts.
Overcoming The Limits Of Thin Provisioning With Automatic Provisioning!
December 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I’ve never been a fan of thin provisioning as a storage management tool. Don’t get me wrong, I love having thin provisioning in my toolkit to overcome the limitations of conventional filesystems. Thin provisioning just gets under my skin when folks try to use it to solve business problems like long deployment time and slow purchasing cycles. If you attended any of the thin provisioning sessions I’ve presented at Storage Decisions, Interop, E-Storm, or elsewhere then you’ve heard my wistful dreaming of real automatic provisioning without the hackery of thin provisioning systems. But perhaps I didn’t mention that actual automatic provisioning actually exists today! It’s one of the many things I love about API-driven cloud storage!
From CAS to Cloud: Revolutionary Storage
October 29, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Change is not a word normally associated with storage, and revolution is practically unheard of. Today’s modern enterprise storage systems and networks employ massive resources to do one simple thing: Emulate the basic hard disk drives used over three decades ago. But cracks are appearing in our mausoleum of fake disks: Application developers are discovering the value of object storage, and storage systems are appearing to support this need.
Podcast 1: Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Overview
April 16, 2010 By Leave a Comment
The Five Rules of Tech Field Day Club
November 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment
GestaltIT Tech Field Day – Day 2: Ocarina, Nirvanix and Data Robotics
November 16, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Day 2 of the Tech Field Day kicked off with a trip to Ocarina Networks. For those who don’t know (a) Ocarina offer a “data reduction” appliance (b) an ocarina is a small oval, china flute. I say data reduction as the Ocarina appliance uses a variety of methods for reducing data size, including [...]
What a Tech Field Day!
November 16, 2009 By 3 Comments
Thanks to everyone, the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day was an amazing success. In fact, we were so pleased with it that we are already planning Tech Field Day 2!
Do You Know Nirvanix?
November 6, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Announcing Gestalt IT Tech Field Day
October 19, 2009 By 1 Comment
Today, we are pleased to demonstrate an expanded vision by announcing the first-ever Gestalt IT event, Tech Field Day! We will be bringing many of our own authors as well as other like-minded folks to Silicon Valley on November 12 and 13, 2009 for a live, in-person event. We have invited some of the most interesting and innovative companies to sponsor the event, presenting their technology and products, inviting feedback, and fostering communication.
Cloud Computing: Cloud Standardisation
September 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
It’s no secret that I’m keen on the idea of Cloud Computing (and cloud storage in particular), so the concept of evolving standardisation is extremely exciting. I would also contend that for certain pieces of the cloud storage infrastructure we do need standards: Security, authentication, and the ability to dynamically switch workloads.