Stephen Foskett

Stephen Foskett

About the Author:

Stephen Foskett is an active participant in the world of enterprise information technology, currently focusing on enterprise storage, server virtualization, networking, and cloud computing. He organizes the popular Tech Field Day event series for Gestalt IT and runs Foskett Services. A long-time voice in the storage industry, Stephen has authored numerous articles for industry publications, and is a popular presenter at industry events. He can be found online at TechFieldDay.com, blog.FoskettS.net, and on Twitter at @SFoskett.

Articles by Stephen Foskett

Rich Brambley Talks About His VIRTUMANIA Podcast

April 1, 2010

We were pleased to learn about Virtumania, the new podcast put together by Rich Brambley of Gestalt IT and VM/ETC with help from just about everyone else we know, especially including the InfoSmack crew of Marc Farley and Greg Knieriemen.

Multipath: Active/Passive, Dual Active, and Active/Active

March 31, 2010

Although it’s rare in the PC world, multipath I/O is not new in enterprise IT. I’ve been juggling paths to storage and networks as long as I’ve been a systems administrator, and that’s a bit longer than I care to admit. But the proliferation of technologies has made it difficult to understand path management. What’s the difference between “dual active” and “active/active”? Is “active/passive” really that bad?

How Did Microsoft and Intel Get 1 Million iSCSI IOPS?

March 23, 2010

Ever since Microsoft and Intel declared that the combination of Windows and Nehalem could deliver over a million iSCSI IOPS, I’ve been curious about just how they did it. What black magic could push that many I/Os over a single Ethernet connection? And what was on the other end? Now Intel has revealed all in a whitepaper, and the results are surprising!

Gearing Up For Tech Field Day Boston

March 22, 2010

Tech Field Day Boston is just two weeks away. The alumni delegates have put together two documents about what to expect, and we are preparing Twitter, Facebook, Slinkset, and Vimeo pages for the event!

Announcing Gestalt IT Tech Field Day Boston 2010

March 8, 2010

Gestalt IT is pleased to announce the first date of 2010 in our ongoing series of Tech Field Day events. Our next event will convene in Boston, MA on April 8 and 9, engaging some of the most innovative and interesting IT infrastructure companies in Massachusetts.

The Rebirth of Overland Storage

March 3, 2010

It’s been a long, strange trip for Overland Storage. Best known in recent years for the tape backup libraries it sold through Hewlett-Packard, Overland is in the midst of an iSCSI-focused renovation at the hands of former Snap Appliance and Data Robotics execs. Could this reboot breathe new life into Overland as well as the SMB storage market it is focused on?

Innocence, Fairness, and Technology Benchmarks

February 26, 2010

HP recently commissioned Tolley Group to benchmark their BladeSystem c7000 against the Cisco UCS 5100. The short report focuses on two results, and reads like so many competitive benchmarks in the IT industry: Tolley focuses on metrics that highlight the strength of HP’s solution and the weaknesses of Cisco’s. What’s the real value of pinpoint maximum-performance benchmarks like this?

Dell Scoops Up Exanet After All

February 8, 2010

Dell picked up clustered NAS pro Exanet, finally signing the dotted line after months of speculation. The US $12 million purchase follows reports that the company was going into receivership in December after failing to repay a US $10 million loan from Kreos Capital.

Extreme Tiered Storage: Flash, Disk, and Cloud

February 5, 2010

In this video, I present the shortcomings of traditional tiered storage and propose a solution: Although merely using different disk types will never deliver the goods, adding flash and cloud to an integrated, automated solution will be truly revolutionary. I look forward to the day when all of today’s buzz-worthy technologies (flash, cloud, thin provisioning, automated tiering, post-RAID) are mixed together to form a really revolutionary storage system.

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