In this iteration of Gestalt Server News:
– Caching vs Tiering? The On-Premise IT Roundtable wants to clear up the confusion!
– StorMagic’s SvSAN for the edge
– and weird DNA storage
Plus Preston de Guise begs the question: what constitutes a successful backup?
Dell EMC Ethernet Switching Update
Sadly, Gestalt IT can’t be on the ground to cover the announcements directly from Dell EMC World 2017. But when people like John Herbert are there, it’s just as good. He provides some great insight into how Dell EMC is finally differentiating their networking group from an afterthought to a viable option. John also gives a rundown of the updates to their switch lineup.
Hardware vs. Software Innovation
Ray Lucchesi recently weighted in on where innovation is occurring in IT, hardware or software. He considered Dell EMC’s decision to kill their DSSD NVMe storage device, and frames it in the continuing debate. Ray thinks it’s further evidence that we are in a software innovation cycle. As further evidence, recent releases by both Excelero and E8 Storage. Both are using commodity hardware to achieve high level performance, over 4 million IO/sec with ~120 to ~230µsec response times. It’s an interesting discussion, and Ray gives both sides their due.
Dell EMC Post Merger, A.I Gets to Work, and an Epic Server Configuration Fail in Gestalt Server News 17.4
In this week’s Gestalt Server News:
– Get a look at how Dell EMC is handling their merger in the VxRail division
– Next IT is finding ways to put AI to work
– A New York airport finds out why your should check your server configuration.
Plus, what else can you buy for $8988 instead of Intel’s top of the line Xeon.
Dell EMC: When Two Hearts Beat As One
At Tech Field Day, we heard from three different components of Dell EMC’s not inconsiderable family. The first was an update on VxRail, their hyperconverged infrastructure offering. I knew this was going to be a different type of presentation, because in the overview, they were upfront that they’d be going over what’s been working for the merged division, and where they were falling short. Most companies will be honest when asked about their shortcomings, but not every one will put it directly into their slide deck. It’s a frankness that I found refreshing.
Walkthrough: Building distributed Docker persistent storage platform for Microservices using DellEMC RexRay & ScaleIO
Persistent distributed storage for Docker is the focus of a lot of attention in the enterprise space. Heck, Docker bought Infinit to help them do it internally. But that solution is quite a bit down the road. Right now, Ajeet Raina has a walkthrough of how to accomplish this with Dell EMC’s ScaleIO. Essentially, ScaleIO creates a server-based SAN to function as this storage.
Transform and Scale Out with Isilon
Going into their building for their presentation, I was immediately struck by the building as an institution. Other companies we saw had offices, perhaps a floor. Dell EMC has a campus. When you’re there, the company surrounds you, ensconces you in a building created just for them. It was a space you could explore, perhaps get lost in. Luckily we were given generous supervision to get us to the Isilon presentation.
A Closer Look at the All-Flash Isilon, aka Nitro
These days, it’s hard to be impressed by storage capacity. Every year Seagate or Western Digital rolls out a new slate of drive, each with more bits crammed onto more precisely dense platters. The emergence of flash storage didn’t seem to reignite any enthusiasm for capacity. If anything, high initial prices, the bandwidth limitations of […]