There has been a lot of discussion lately about the NetApp deduplication technology, especially on twitter. We had a lot of misinformation and FUD flying around, so I thought that a blog entry that takes a close look at the technology was in order. But first a bit of disclosure, I currently … [Read more...]
EMC FAST and NetApp FlashCache a Comparison
September 21, 2011 by 4 Comments
This article is intended to provide the reader with an introduction to two technologies, EMC FAST and NetApp FlashCache. Both of these technologies are intended to improve the performance of storage arrays, while also helping to bend the cost curve of storage downward. With the amount of data that … [Read more...]
Flash Storage and Automated Storage Tiering
September 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment
In recent years, a move toward automated storage tiering has begun in the data center. This move has been inspired by the desire to continue to drive down the cost of storage, as well as the introduction of faster, but more expensive storage in the form of Flash memory in the storage array … [Read more...]
Thoughts On A Dell Acquisition Of Compellent
December 9, 2010 by 10 Comments
The news came out this morning that Dell is in exclusive talks to acquire network storage specialist Compellent for just under $900 million. I will leave it to the real reporters to track the ups and downs of the story; what piques my interest is the value Dell gets from Compellent's technology and … [Read more...]
NetApp: Live From Tech Field Day San Jose
November 11, 2010 by Leave a Comment
The Tech Field Day staff have been working behind the scenes to improve the quality and timeliness of video output from our event. We are pleased to present the first result of this work, in the form of live streaming from Tech Field Day 4 in San Jose this week. Tech Field Day in San Jose began … [Read more...]
Manage Data Not Storage
October 15, 2010 by 1 Comment
With Automated Tiering solutions now rapidly becoming de rigeur, well in announcement form anyway; perhaps it's time for us to consider again what is going to go wrong and how much trouble the whole thing is going to cause some people. Fully Automated Tiering solutions are going to cause … [Read more...]
3 Questions For Field Day Sponsor, Compellent
July 9, 2010 by 1 Comment
As Compellent, a sponsor for Gestalt IT's Tech Field Day Seattle, interviewed me for a post on their blog, I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and interview them right back! You will notice some similarity in the questions and answers - this was entirely coincidental, since we did not see … [Read more...]
Four Pillars – Service: The Service Catalogue
May 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment
As discussed previously, the Service Catalogue is a key component of delivering storage as a service. In this post, I’ll explore some thoughts on developing a Service Catalogue and how its abstraction from technology allows the delivery of a more efficient operation. What’s in a Name? Some … [Read more...]
“Storage tiering is dying.” But purple unicorns exist.
March 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Chris Mellor over at the Register put an interview online with NetApp CEO Tom Georgens. To quote from the Register piece: He is dismissive of multi-level tiering, saying: “The simple fact of the matter is, tiering is a way to manage migration of data between Fibre Channel-based systems and … [Read more...]
Autonomic for the People
March 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Autonomic computing was a phrase coined by IBM in 2001; arguably the frame-works which were defined by IBM as part of this initiative could form much of what is considered Cloud Computing today. And now 3Par have taken the term Autonomic and applied it to storage tiering. This is really a subset … [Read more...]