Storage hypervisors is a term that is not as easily understood as that of the server hypervisor. In this post we look at the term storage hypervisor and why a change to the Wikipedia entry has been proposed. If it is good enough on servers, will it work on storage? On the server side the [...]
Archive for category New Research
Infosec in London was an opportunity to explore different approaches to protecting data containers. This post is about the various approaches to security and options available to admins. LOK-IT LOK-IT provides secure USB flash drives. The LOK-IT USB drives look like normal memory sticks with a numeric key-pad on the front. The protection mechanism is [...]
Storage vendors have a habit of stating that their IP consumes a significant proportion of IT spending in the data centre. Being a burden of customers’ spending is an odd thing to boast about, but the argument is made because the practices around content are becoming more and more intensive. And IT departments are clearly [...]
Storage concepts come and go. In this post some of the current hot storage concepts are being explored, and we leave the defunct ones for the historians. Storage Virtualisation Virtualised storage has had an admirable longevity even if it is not necessarily used as it was 10 years ago. Today most people understand it as [...]
Big Data and its relevance
Feb 27
Analytics is preferable as a label describing the practices that elevates an organisation’s ability to find more value in their data (and other sources of data for that matter). But I know a buzzword when I see one and big data is very entrenched; even though I don’t think it is catchy nor that it [...]
Server hypervisors improves utilisation, but what about the attached storage? In fact the server hypervisors are so successful in improving the ability to drive up virtual and physical workloads, that storage can become a casualty. As discussed here earlier. Tintri is another vendor with ideas on how to fix the VMware bottleneck and make a [...]
Having sat through numerous recent briefings about the relative benefits of fast storage, facts have been plentiful. This is about semiconductor based storage. In the following, I refer to this as SSD even though some implementations are not strictly speaking adhering to the SSD definition. SSD Based Innovation Those pesky old-fashioned spinning HDDs have the [...]
Actifio is a provider of a multi-purpose storage appliance which is interesting because it turns storage conventions on their side: Its IP is based on Object Storage It pools all storage which it manages into a single pool. (Although it enables 2nd location copies and different tiers of storage and clones) It operates as an [...]
Dell’s first ever European Storage Forum ended today in London. It was similar in format to the Florida event I attended, about which I wrote this post. This meant senior execs flying in to first of all meet customers, but also channel partners, industry analysts, bloggers etc. And to participate in hospitality with the attendees. [...]
What Technology Means?
Jan 9
What are your favourite examples of the pinnacle of human engineering: The aluminium drink can? A Saturn V rocket? Sophisticated programming code running on a microprocessor? All three are examples of engineering beauty demonstrating complexity and sequences of many individual events that together formed the basis of the end product. Referring to technology in these [...]
