Storage Nation » NetApp

PMR Type 2

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:48:03 +0000

I hadn’t heard of this before a few days ago, when I was fact checking some of the info on Fujifilm’s video interview around its breakthrough with IBM in tape capacity. I had thought that the IBM-Fujifilm tape capacity demonstration showed the application of PMR head technology to a new tape coating that used BaFe particles to achieve the great density improvement.

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PMR Type 2

On the Air at 2PM EST

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:58:25 +0000

Tech Target is taking a video they shot of my last DR Planning seminar and is streaming it on the Internet right now. Here are the details I received after pinging the site.

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On the Air at 2PM EST

The Netapp vSphere 4.1 decoder ring

admin — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:31:34 +0000

There was a lot written last week surrounding VMware's release of vSphere 4.1 . Netapp appeared to have a lot to say, but it was confusing to figure out what they were really talking about. I think I've got it now. It's unusual for a company to be invited as a centerpiece of high-visibility festivities and then mysteriously decide not to follow through

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The Netapp vSphere 4.1 decoder ring

Oh if ONLY there was a way to

admin — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:15:12 +0000

The lament of many cloud compute providers as we engage with them… “I wish someone would offer a storage subsystem:” Was transactional (which VMware needs today to host VMDK storage) – but scaled, so I could manage at scale with less: scaled out linearly to large clusters (lets say 16 nodes – for a total of 128 intel cores for dealing with the IO load), using commodity x86 servers, but commodity components built for a service provider. where any resource in that cluster – brains, ports, caches could all service any IO – meaning it’s one big pool. A datastore literally is everywhere, but also dependent on no one element. that could scale up to huge capacity (let’s say petabytes) without increasing my FTE cost because it’s designed for management at scale (hey, just like Cisco UCS!) where everything could be wide-striped across the entire backend of the array – so it acts as one big aggregate pool of ports, IO, brains, IOps and GBs

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Oh if ONLY there was a way to

Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital: A man with broad responsibilities and 3PAR storage

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:46:23 +0000

3PAR customers like that fact that 3PAR arrays are so easy and fast to manage. In this video, Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital in London talks about all the various things he does, his Windows-based infrastructure, how 3PAR’s thin provisioning helps him manage it all and how simple it was to protect it with 3PAR Remote Copy.

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Robert Cockerill from Thames River Capital: A man with broad responsibilities and 3PAR storage

Ineption No 1: The CRO gives The Storage Arrogance his dream job

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:34:28 +0000

Today is the grand opening of a new cartoon strip, Ineption (Click the cartoon to see a larger image)

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Ineption No 1: The CRO gives The Storage Arrogance his dream job

vSphere 4.1 – What do the vStorage APIs for Array Integration mean to you?

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:03:36 +0000

Well – in a nutshell – more, for less. The vStorage APIs for Array integration (or VAAI) have been something that we previewed back at VMworld 2009. Now that vSphere 4.1 is officially out, we can now talk about it without tapdancing around a lot of stuff

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vSphere 4.1 – What do the vStorage APIs for Array Integration mean to you?

Microsoft’s mediocre cloud appliance

admin — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 18:44:07 +0000

A short while ago, Microsoft announced their plans to create a stack platform appliance for Azure . This was done, presumably, to deal with the competitive threat from VMware , which is part of the V-Block-centered Acadia business venture. Sorry Microsoft, but IMHO, this is a clear signal that the cloud stack has been catapulted to the stratosphere of hype. There are a couple assumptions about clouds in a can that show the ready-fire-aim nature of these types of solutions. The first is that clouds in a can will provide an on-ramp for private cloud infrastructures to to use public cloud infrastructures in the future. Oh yes, and how exactly will that work? Vaporware drawn on white boards with clouds in the middle? The allure of an easier future through stacks rivals any of the malarkey that our industry has ever produced. The second assumption is that customers will save money with stacks and appliances.

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Microsoft’s mediocre cloud appliance

Storage Is Software

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:43:38 +0000

The title of this post is a variant on the intriguing " infrastructure is code " meme from the #devops community. I think it's a useful idea to remind ourselves of — especially as technology transitions. Even though some of you reading this might thing the statement is blindingly obvious, it's clear that the vast majority of people think of boxes with blinking lights when you say the word "storage"

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Storage Is Software

My Friday Rant — Transparency

admin — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:10:25 +0000

Four things happened this week that sort of bothered me, and it finally struck me that all four revolved around the concept of transparency. Transparency is one of those things I didn't realize was truly important until later in my personal development. Once I learned of its importance, though, life became better for me and those around me. I can only hope that others aren't as slow as I was to catch on ..

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My Friday Rant — Transparency