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.
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.
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 marketplace.
Dell has offered to buy 3PAR for about $1.1 billion. So, a number of my customers have called and emailed me asking what this all means? They want to know how I view the addition of 3PAR to Dell’s storage portfolio? What does this mean for the storage industry, and should they seriously start/stop looking at 3PAR? What about all this discussion about monolithic vs. modular storage? Is 3PAR really Tier-1 storage?
Lately, I’m being asked more and more what my recommendations are around path management. In this blog entry I describe the current state of path management and outline some recommendations for the use/implementation of path management software in the data center.
I was wondering how long it would take before these three decided to get together and try to push out the competition. For a customer that hasn’t really done anything with Virtualization due to the perceived risk with implementation this would be a …
What’s the real cost of storage? I get asked this question all the time, and it’s so difficult to answer because it really does depend on so many factors from storage team to storage team. What’s really surprising to me is that I’m being asked the que…
Cloud ComputingI don’t know about you, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about “Cloud Computing” lately. A lot of space has been devoted to the topic in the blogosphere, that’s for sure. Some people think it’s the “next big thing”, others say not o…
So, I’ve been sitting here thinking that with the current economic distress everyone is looking to save money. In the storage business, this means an almost myopic focus on something called “storage efficiency”. Everyone wants to get the most “bang for…
I have spent a lot of time lately talking with some of my coworkers, friends, etc. on the topic of wide striping. This topic keeps coming up since there are now a number of vendors selling storage arrays with SATA drives that claim to have “the same pe…
